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But Did It Really Happen?: Frei and the Challenges of Critical Realism and Historical Reference

Jason A. Springs

in Toward a Generous Orthodoxy: Prospects for Hans Frei's Postliberal Theology

The first part of chapter 4 addresses several of the most pressing critical challenges to Frei's work leveled by evangelical theologians. The first is that he forgoes all concern for whether or not ... More

The first part of chapter 4 addresses several of the most pressing critical challenges to Frei's work leveled by evangelical theologians. The first is that he forgoes all concern for whether or not the biblical accounts of Jesus do, in fact, truly correspond to actual historical events. The second is that Frei reduces the biblical witness to a self-contained literary world. The second part of chapter 4 reassesses the Barthian dimensions of Frei's work in light of the potentially devastating criticism that Frei's reading of Karl Barth is decidedly undialectical, inordinately stressing the role of analogy therein, and that this deficiency has been transmitted to many of the so-called "American neo-Barthians" (or "postliberals") influenced by Frei. The argument critically retrieves material from Frei's dissertation, his earliest publications, and recently circulated material from his unpublished archival papers in order to make the case that Frei identified a complex interrelation of dialectic and analogy in Barth's theology dating back as far as the second edition of Barth's Romans commentary and reaching forward into the Church Dogmatics.Less

Deconstructing the Mind

Stephen P. Stich

in Deconstructing the Mind

Though many arguments have been offered for eliminativism, they all have a common structure. They begin with the premise that beliefs, desires, and other commonsense mental states are the posits of a ... More

Though many arguments have been offered for eliminativism, they all have a common structure. They begin with the premise that beliefs, desires, and other commonsense mental states are the posits of a widely shared, largely tacit psychological theory – “folk psychology.” The second premise of the argument, defended in many different ways, is that folk psychology is a seriously mistaken theory. From these premises, eliminativists draw the conclusion that commonsense mental states do not exist. However, the premises do not entail the conclusion, so some additional premise is necessary. One way to fill the gap is to appeal to a description theory of reference. But the description theory of reference has been challenged by the causal‐historical theory of reference. So in order to determine whether the eliminativist argument is sound, it appears we must determine which theory of reference is the correct one, and to do this, we must say what a theory of reference is supposed to do – what facts it is supposed to capture. Various accounts of what a theory of reference is supposed to do are considered, but none of them, it is argued, will help determine whether the eliminativist conclusion follows from the premises. Other ways of filling the gap are also considered and rejected; the most promising of these invokes the normative naturalism strategy.Less

The Hermeneutical Bases of Dogmatic Theology

Jason A. Springs

in Toward a Generous Orthodoxy: Prospects for Hans Frei's Postliberal Theology

This chapter sorts through the details of Frei's early project on biblical interpretation published as The Identity of Jesus Christ. It argues that an adequate understanding of that project requires ... More

This chapter sorts through the details of Frei's early project on biblical interpretation published as The Identity of Jesus Christ. It argues that an adequate understanding of that project requires a cautious grasp of its complex integration of hermeneutical, confessional, and ecclesial dimensions. Perhaps more significantly, a detailed grasp of the complex interaction of these dimensions in Identity is required for an accurate conception of the deep continuity running from that work through Frei's thinking of the 1970s and 80s. This chapter concludes by situating Frei's constructive project within the context of his own historicist rearticulation of the evolution of modern biblical hermeneutics that he set forth in The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative.Less

Restlessness: The Return of the Native, Balint, “Colonial Object Relations”

Alicia Mireles Christoff

in Novel Relations: Victorian Fiction and British Psychoanalysis

This chapter focuses on The Return of the Native and Michael and Enid Balint, which both investigate how spaces are never simply themselves but instead are repeatedly figured through metaphor and ... More

This chapter focuses on The Return of the Native and Michael and Enid Balint, which both investigate how spaces are never simply themselves but instead are repeatedly figured through metaphor and allusion and atmospherically charged with feeling, racial politics, and overlapping imperial geographies. The chapter also analyzes restlessness and setting that turns from the ways reading Thomas Hardy's fiction can afford in opportunities for rest and unintegration to the “unrest” that undergirds his picture of life. It shows the geographic restlessness of Hardy's figurative practice. The long lyrical passages in Hardy's prose punctuate the feeling of doom that suffuses his fiction and offer us a respite from his shocking plots. And yet, Hardy's descriptions of place move through allusions, historical references, and “similes and metaphors” at a breathless rate.Less

Skid row? Area profiles

Allison E. Smith

in Ageing in urban neighbourhoods: Place attachment and social exclusion

This chapter describes the deprived inner-city wards used in the research. It draws on a combination of government statistics and reports, historical references, media articles, and photographs and ... More

This chapter describes the deprived inner-city wards used in the research. It draws on a combination of government statistics and reports, historical references, media articles, and photographs and descriptive text from older residents living in some of the research areas. As is shown by the perspectives and dialogue provided by the three participants and the analysis given, photography provides a useful way in which to study and understand older people's environmental perspectives. This supports Wang's statement that images ‘contribute to how we see ourselves, how we define and relate to the world, and what we perceive as significant or different’.Less

Art, Architecture and Catholicism in La Modification

in Signs and Designs: Art and Architecture in the Work of Michel Butor

This chapter examines the selective history of European art which underpins the cultural and romantic pilgrimages of the character of Léon Delmont in Michel Butor's novel La Modification. It analyzes ... More

This chapter examines the selective history of European art which underpins the cultural and romantic pilgrimages of the character of Léon Delmont in Michel Butor's novel La Modification. It analyzes the symbolic, psychological and reflexive functions of the various clusters of art-historical references that constitute the cultural coordinates both in Léon's conscious thought-processes and in the subconscious workings of his dreams. It argues that the references to the visual arts in the novel not only reflect the preoccupations and situation of the central character but also serve to ‘universalise’ those preoccupations and that situation.Less

Melodrama

Pier Maria Pasinetti

in Italian Tales: An Anthology of Contemporary Italian Fiction

This chapter adds an opera stage to our fictional itinerary—Pier Maria Pasinetti's prelude to his 1993 novel, aptly entitled Melodramma. This prelude raises the curtain on a gallery of effervescent ... More

This chapter adds an opera stage to our fictional itinerary—Pier Maria Pasinetti's prelude to his 1993 novel, aptly entitled Melodramma. This prelude raises the curtain on a gallery of effervescent historical cross-references and a perfectly orchestrated choral performance. The mobile narrative stretches between the new and the old continent, between Venice and California, “mutually opposed places and vast, mutually opposed distances [that] can generate sparks of energy that pique our ever-expanding curiosity and ever more active imagination.” According to Gore Vidal, Pasinetti's world is no less complex than those of Proust, Joyce, or Mann, although his passions are as different as Venice is from Paris, Dublin, or Lubeck. Oscillating between the large canvases of history and memory, Pasinetti's virtuoso partitura perfectly embodies at least two of the qualities so praised by Calvino, lightness and quickness.Less