Jean-Luc Nancy - Dis-Enclosure: Deconstruction of Christianity [made in istanbul]

This book is a profound and eagerly anticipated investigation into what is left of a monotheistic religious spirit—notably, a minimalist faith that is neither confessional nor credulous. Articulating this faith as works and as an objectless hope, Nancy deconstructs Christianity in search of the historical and reflective conditions that provided its initial energy. Working through Blanchot and Nietzsche, re-reading Heidegger and Derrida, Nancy turns to the Epistle of Saint James rather than those of Saint Paul, discerning in it the primitive essence of Christianity as hope. The “religion that provided the exit from religion,” as he terms Christianity, consists in the announcement of an end. It is the announcement that counts, however, rather than any finality. In this announcement there is a proximity to others and to what was once called parousia. But parousia is no longer presence; it is no longer the return of the Messiah. Rather, it is what is near us and does not cease to open and to close, a presence deferred yet imminent.In a demystified age where we are left with a vision of a self-enclosed world—in which humans are no longer mortals facing an immortal being, but entities whose lives are accompanied by the time of their own decline—parousia stands as a question. Can we venture the risk of a decentered perspective, such that the meaning of the world can be found both inside and outside, within and without our so-immanent world?The deconstruction of Christianity that Nancy proposes is neither a game nor a strategy. It is an invitation to imagine a strange faith that enacts the inadequation of life to itself. Our lives overflow the self-contained boundaries of their biological and sociological interpretations. Out of this excess, wells up a fragile, overlooked meaning that is beyond both confessionalism and humanism.

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read at least "blanchots god"

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Authoritarianism: Puritanism, Democracy, and Society

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Authoritarianism: Puritanism, Democracy, and Society
by Milan Zafirovski

# Hardcover: 337 pages
# Publisher: Springer; 1 edition (May 11, 2007)

This book explores the historical and contemporary relationships of Protestant Puritanism to political and social authoritarianism. It focuses on Puritanisms original, subsequent and modern influences on and legacies in political democracy and civil society within historically Puritan Western societies, with emphasis on Great Britain and particularly America, from the 17th to the 21th century.

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Authoritarianism: Puritanism, Democracy and Society's importance and novelty lie in its original theoretical argument and empirical demonstration that Puritanism constitutes or reproduces political-social authoritarianism rather than liberal-secular political democracy and free civil society, contrary to the conventional wisdom in Puritan societies, especially America. The books methodological approach is thoroughly interdisciplinary by integrating methods, theories and data in sociology with those in other social sciences such as political science, history and economics. In addition, the book uses a comparative-historical method through comparisons of Western (and other) societies at various points of history in terms of the impact of Puritanism on authoritarianism.

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Politics, Theology and History

Politics, Theology and History
(Cambridge Studies in Ideology and Religion)
by Raymond Plant

# Paperback: 396 pages
# Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 1 edition (January 29, 2001)

This major new book by a prominent academic and an active politician ranges widely across the disciplines of theology, political theory and philosophy. Lord Plant focuses on the role of religious belief in argument about public policy in a pluralistic society. He examines the political implications of Christian belief and its application in political debate. The book discusses the place of religious belief in the formation of policy and asks what issues in modern society might be the legitimate objects of a Christian social and political concern.

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Kierkegaard - The Sickness Unto Death

The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition For Upbuilding And Awakening
(Kierkegaard's Writings, Vol 19)
by Soren Kierkegaard

# Paperback: 201 pages
# Publisher: Princeton University Press (November 1, 1983)

olé!