Experience and the Absolute Disputed Questions on the Humanity of Man [Hardcover]

Does the philosophy of Martin Heidegger represent the emergence of a secular anthropology that requires religious thought to redefine the religious dimension in human existence? In this critical response, Lacoste confronts the ultimate definition of human nature, the humanity of the human. He explores that definition through an analysis of the absolute as a phenomenological datum.

Lacoste establishes a conception of human nature that opens possibilities for religious experience and religious identity in view of Heideggers profound challenge. He develops a phenomenology of the liturgy, and subjects the categories of experience, place, and human existence to careful examination. Making a strong case for the affective nature of religious experience, he sides with Schleiermacher against Hegel in associating religion with affectivity rather than logic. Such affectivity, he claims, can be more rational than reason as framed in Hegelian logic.

Jean-Yves Lacoste's Experience and the Absolute elaborates what many have wanted for a very long time: a phenomenology of the liturgy. What is it to exist liturgically? Does the place of prayer matter? How does prayer ground ethics? These questions are posed and answered with exemplary rigor. Lacoste's critique of experience in theology and his profound analyses of being face-to-face with God are essential reading. Here is a major work by a theologian of remarkable subtlety and exceptional intellectual force.This is a difficult but worthwhile work on the boundary between phenomenology and theological reflection.