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The Immanence of the Transcendental: Buber, Emerson, and the Divine in a Secular World

Scott, Dylan Joseph
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1492430903565728

Abstract Details

2017, MA, Kent State University, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Philosophy.
I explore certain acute and timely tensions between contemporary, postmodern philosophy and the popular status of religious tradition. Such tensions appear to draw much of their strength from two prominent sources: Nietzsche’s announcement of the death of the transcendent God, and Heidegger’s rejection of absolutist metaphysics. The problem is that if the transcendent God has become superfluous to thought, and the treatment of the absolute metaphysical nature of things has become taboo, then the special status of religious claims as revealed, absolute truths of a transcendent Being, and of the natures of the world and humanity, has been seriously called into question. I will show that a consideration of two particular religious thinkers – Martin Buber and Ralph Waldo Emerson – will equip us with a sophisticated response in the current philosophical environment of postmodernity, and provide us with the resources to construct a nuanced religious narrative of creation, sin, and salvation within the broader contexts of metaphysical immanence, epistemological intertwining, and ethical instrumentalization that has followed in the de-absolutizing path laid by, among others, Nietzsche and Heidegger. Through an examination of the dialogical relations between persons described by Buber, and the relations of discipline between persons and the world described by Emerson, we will be able to resurrect a sense of immanent, non-absolute religious practice in the era of postmodernity, after the death of the transcendent God and the end of absolutist metaphysics.
Frank Ryan (Advisor)
95 p.
Philosophy
postmodernity; religion; death of God; end of metaphysics; Buber; Emerson; Nietzsche; Heidegger; dialogue; discipline; divine; secular

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Scott, D. J. (2017). The Immanence of the Transcendental: Buber, Emerson, and the Divine in a Secular World [Master's thesis, Kent State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1492430903565728

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Scott, Dylan. The Immanence of the Transcendental: Buber, Emerson, and the Divine in a Secular World. 2017. Kent State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1492430903565728.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Scott, Dylan. "The Immanence of the Transcendental: Buber, Emerson, and the Divine in a Secular World." Master's thesis, Kent State University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1492430903565728

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

kent1492430903565728
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© 2017, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Kent State University and OhioLINK.