| Description |
1 online resource (384 p.) |
| Contents |
Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- I. The Question -- II. Terms Employed -- III. Beauty -- IV. Final Remarks -- Part 1 Dionysus against the Crucified: The Violence of Metaphysics and the Metaphysics of Violence -- I. The City and the Wastes -- II. The Veil of the Sublime -- III. The Will to Power -- IV. The Covenant of Light -- Part 2 The Beauty of the Infinite: A Dogmatica Minora -- I. Trinity |
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1. The Christian understanding of beauty emerges not only naturally, but necessarily, from the Christian understanding of God as a perichoresis of love, a dynamic coinherence of the three divine persons, whose life is eternally one of shared regard, delight, fellowship, feasting, and joy. -- i. Divine Apatheia -- ii. Divine Fellowship -- iii. Divine Joy -- 2. The Christian understanding of difference and distance is shaped by the doctrine of the Trinity, where theology finds that the true form of difference is peace, of distance beauty. -- i. Divine Difference -- ii. Divine Perfection |
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3. In the Christian God, the infinite is seen to be beautiful and so capable of being traversed by way of the beautiful. -- i. Desire's Flight -- ii. Changeless Beauty -- iii. The Mirror of the Infinite -- iv. Infinite Peace -- 4. The infinite is beautiful because God is Trinity -- and because all being belongs to God's infinity, a Christian ontology appears and properly belongs within a theological aesthetics. -- i. God and Being -- ii. God beyond Being -- iii. Analogia Entis -- II. Creation |
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1. God's gracious action in creation belongs from the first to that delight, pleasure, and regard that the Trinity enjoys from eternity, as an outward and unnecessary expression of that love -- and thus creation must be received before all else as gift and as beauty. -- i. Analogia Delectationis -- ii. The Gift -- iii. Desire's Power |
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2. As God is Trinity, in whom all difference is possessed as perfect peace and unity, the divine life might be described as infinite music, and creation too might be described as a music whose intervals, transitions, and phrases are embraced within God's eternal, triune polyphony. -- i. The Divine Theme -- ii. Divine Counterpoint |
| Summary |
The Beauty of the Infinite is a splendid extended essay in "theological aesthetics." David Bentley Hart here meditates on the power of a Christian understanding of beauty and sublimity to rise above the violence -- both philosophical and literal -- characteristic of the postmodern world. The book begins by tracing the shifting use and nature of metaphysics in the thought of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Lyotard, Derrida, Deleuze, Nancy, Levinas, and others. Hart pays special attention to Nietzsche's famous narrative of the "will to power" -- a narrative largely adopted by the world today -- and he offers an engaging revision (though not rejection) of the genealogy of nihilism, thereby highlighting the significant "interruption" that Christian thought introduced into the history of metaphysics. This discussion sets the stage for a retrieval of the classic Christian account of beauty and sublimity, and of the relation of both to the question of being. Written in the form of a dogmatica minora, this main section of the book offers a pointed reading of the Christian story in four moments, or parts: Trinity, creation, salvation, and eschaton. Through a combination of narrative and argument throughout, Hart ends up demonstrating the power of Christian metaphysics not only to withstand the critiques of modern and postmodern thought but also to move well beyond them. Strikingly original and deeply rewarding, The Beauty of the Infinite is both a constructively critical account of the history of metaphysics and a compelling contribution to it |
| Notes |
Description based upon print version of record |
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3. As God utters himself eternally in his Word, and possesses all the fullness of address and response, and as creation belongs to God's utterance of himself (as a further articulation, at an analogical remove, of the abundant "eloquence" of divine love), creation may be grasped by theology as language |
| Subject |
Aesthetics -- Religious aspects -- Christianity.
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Metaphysics -- Religious aspects -- Christianity
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God (Christianity) -- Beauty.
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Aesthetics -- Religious aspects -- Christianity
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God (Christianity) -- Beauty
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9781467421324 |
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1467421324 |
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