A Philosophical Anthropology of the Cross The Cruciform Self [Hardcover]

What does the cross, both as a historical event and a symbol of religious discourse, tell us about human beings? In this provocative book, Brian Gregor draws together a hermeneutics of the selfthrough Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Taylorand a theology of the crossthrough Luther, Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer, and J?ngelto envision a phenomenology of the cruciform self. The result is a bold and original view of what philosophical anthropology could look like if it took the scandal of the cross seriously instead of reducing it into general philosophical concepts.

Gregor's work is impressive along two important lines. One the one hand, he offers the uniformed or porrly informed philospher a clear and often quite detailed presentation of Bonhoeffer's systematic thought, with attention to its conscious relation not only to Lutheran theology but also to modern philosophy. On the other hand, he also threads that presentation into the contemporary philosophical context by marking important points of contact with work by such convivial thinkers as Ricoeur, Marcel, and Charles Taylor, but also Nietzsche and Heidegger, with whom discussion would be considerably more antagonistic.Sept. 2014

Brian Gregor is a postdoctoral teaching fellow in the Department of Philosophy at Fordham University. He is editor (with Jens Zimmerman) of Bonhoeffer and Continental Thought: Cruciform Philosophy (IUP, 2009) and Being Human, Becoming Human: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Social Thought.

Makes a sustained contribution to the very important debate over the proper space between philosophy and theology. Original, well researched, beautifully written, and provocative.In the end, A Philosophical Anthropology of the Cross represents one of the first major Lutheran engagements with continental philosophy, and an excellent one at that. While the book is certainly not accessible to the layperson, it is accessible to pastors and teachers, and gives a helpful overview of the connections between mal$