D. G. Leahy and the Thinking Now Occurring

Description

This book offers a critical introduction to the work of American philosopher D. G. Leahy (1937–2014). Leahy's fundamental thinking can be characterized as an absolute creativity in which all creating is "live"—a happening occurring now that manifests a supersaturated polyontological actuality that is essentially created by the logic that characterizes it. Leahy leaves behind the categorial presuppositions of modern thought, eclipsing both Cartesian and Hegelian subjectivities and introducing instead an essentially new form of thinking founded in a nondual logic of creation. The new thinking delineates the absolute unicity of existence as a creative interactivity beyond all traditional dichotomies (such as one vs. many, unity vs. plurality, identity vs. change): a fully "digitized" actuality that is nothing but newness, which inherently implies nothing but change. Through this new form of thinking, change itself is revealed to be the very essence of reality and mind. Any reader looking for a quantum leap beyond the thrall of modern and postmodern fixations is invited to hear and apprehend this new thinking that refuses to be conditioned by paradigms, categories, species, genera, walls, bridges, boundaries, or abstractions: an essentially free thinking that embodies creative novelty itself.
Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations

Introduction to D. G. Leahy: A Quick Start Guide for the Vexed and Perplexed
Lissa McCullough

Part I: History and Time

1. History and the Thinking Now Occurring
Charles Stein

2. Temporal Diremption and the Novelty of Genuine Repetition
Elliot R. Wolfson

3. A Metaphysics of Enchantment or a Case of Immanentizing the Eschaton?
Graham James McAleer

Part II: Apocalyptic Actuality

4. Apocalypticism in Modern Thinking: Descartes, Hegel, Leahy
Thomas J. J. Altizer

5. The Shape of Catholic Apocalypse
Cyril O'Regan

6. The Act of Omnipotence: Abolition of the Mystical Quest
Michael James Dise

Part III: A Physical Ethics

7. The Ethic of Simplicity
Nathan Tierney

8. The Vanishment of Evil from the World
Todd Carter

9. The Transparency of the Good
Alina N. Feld

Part IV: The Edge Where Creating Begins

10. Concerning the Absolute Edge
Edward S. Casey

11. To Think the Beginning: The Apocalyptic "I"
Sarah Lilly Eaton

12. Life at the Edge: Medicine and the New Thinking
Steven B. Hoath, MD

Glossary of Key Terms in D. G. Leahy
D. G. Leahy Comprehensive Bibliography
D. G. Leahy Biographical Sketch
Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Theology

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438485089
• Langue: English

Extrait

D. G. Leahy and the Thinking Now Occurring
SUNY series in Theology and Continental Thought

Douglas L. Donkel, editor
D. G. Leahy and the Thinking Now Occurring
Edited by
Lissa McCullough and Elliot R. Wolfson
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2021 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: McCullough, Lissa, editor. | Wolfson, Elliot R., editor.
Title: D. G. Leahy and the thinking now occurring / Lissa McCullough and Elliot R. Wolfson, editors.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2021] | Series: SUNY series in Theology and Continental Thought | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: ISBN 9781438485072 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438485089 (ebook)
Further information is available at the Library of Congress.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind …
—Paul, Letter to the Romans 12:2 (RSV)
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction to D. G. Leahy: A Quick Start Guide for the Vexed and Perplexed
Lissa McCullough
Part I. History and Time
Chapter 1
History and the Thinking Now Occurring
Charles Stein
Chapter 2
Temporal Diremption and the Novelty of Genuine Repetition
Elliot R. Wolfson
Chapter 3
A Metaphysics of Enchantment or a Case of Immanentizing the Eschaton?
Graham James McAleer
Part II. Apocalyptic Actuality
Chapter 4
Apocalypticism in Modern Thinking: Descartes, Hegel, Leahy
Thomas J. J. Altizer
Chapter 5
The Shape of Catholic Apocalypse
Cyril O’Regan
Chapter 6
The Act of Omnipotence: Abolition of the Mystical Quest
Michael James Dise
Part III. A Physical Ethics
Chapter 7
The Ethic of Simplicity
Nathan Tierney
Chapter 8
The Vanishment of Evil from the World
Todd Carter
Chapter 9
The Transparency of the Good
Alina N. Feld
Part IV. The Edge Where Creating Begins
Chapter 10
Concerning the Absolute Edge
Edward S. Casey
Chapter 11
To Think the Beginning: The Apocalyptic “I”
Sarah Lilly Eaton
Chapter 12
Life at the Edge: Medicine and the New Thinking
Steven B. Hoath, MD
Glossary of Key Terms in D. G. Leahy
D. G. Leahy Comprehensive Bibliography
D. G. Leahy Biographical Sketch
Contributors
Index
Preface
We hope that this volume engaging D. G. Leahy’s philosophical thinking will serve as a starting point and springboard for expanding awareness of his work worldwide, attracting readers far and near to the immense challenge of this new thinking: a post-modern universal particularism that thinks an absolutely actual creative unity—a unicity—in the form of absolute difference. This volume has come to fruition gradually by fits and starts over something like a dozen years. Initially there was only a handful of souls to tap, not a sufficient quorum of contributors to constitute a full-scale volume. But over time individuals who were actively wrangling with Leahy’s thinking emerged from the woodwork and expressed interest in taking part. The extended period during which this project was incubating sadly saw the deaths of three of its major contributors: Steven B. Hoath, MD (d. January 2017), Thomas J. J. Altizer (d. November 2018), and David Leahy himself (d. August 2014). Per the original plan, Leahy had committed to offer responses to each of the essays, but alas we must do without them, assimilating and adjudging these critical engagements without the benefit of his input.
In a more personal vein, we editors wish to honor the philosophical legacy of our beloved friend. An epochal thinker and outstanding teacher, David was also the keen, inspiring, good-humored, quick-witted, and empathetic friend who brought joy and blessing to our lives. We will never forget his looming presence, the fullness of his voice, that Brooklyn accent, that laugh—the essence of David Leahy qua actually existing person!
Lissa McCullough and Elliot R. Wolfson
March 2021
Acknowledgments
The editors wish to acknowledge the kind permission granted to publish in revised form selected segments from Lissa McCullough, “D. G. Leahy,” in Palgrave Handbook of Radical Theology , ed. Christopher D. Rodkey and Jordan E. Miller (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 269–80, which are incorporated into the introduction; and a revised and retitled version of Thomas J. J. Altizer, “Apocalypticism and Modern Thinking,” Journal for Christian Theological Research [ www.jctr.org ] 2, no. 2 (1997), pars. 1–27, which appears as chapter 4 .
Abbreviations
The following abbreviations are used for the works of D. G. Leahy most frequently cited in the text. Full bibliographic details appear in the comprehensive bibliography at the end of the volume. BS Beyond Sovereignty: A New Global Ethics and Morality F Foundation: Matter the Body Itself FP Faith and Philosophy: The Historical Impact NM Novitas Mundi: Perception of the History of Being, referring to the 1994 reprint by SUNY Press
Leahy was an avid user of italics. All italicizations in the quotations from Leahy’s writings are in the original text unless the contributor indicates otherwise.
Introduction to D. G. Leahy
A Quick Start Guide for the Vexed and Perplexed
LISSA M C CULLOUGH
The philosophical writings of D. G. Leahy are exceedingly demanding. They are highly technical, hard to read, recondite, often bewildering, even crazy sounding—especially at first when a reader comes to them cold. For the moment this is new territory and there are very few interpretive footsteps to walk in. In view of the exceptional difficulty faced by the novice, this “quick start guide” offers orientations to and prehensions of Leahy’s thinking to serve as heuristic footholds where the learning curve is steepest: it is for first-time readers and anyone debating whether or how to begin the effort, as well as intermediate readers seeking to progress further. This guide is especially intended for those who are intrigued but frustrated from the get-go, already finding themselves vexed and perplexed. This guide, supplemented with the “Glossary of Key Terms” in the back of the volume, invites the patient reader to enter in and begin the process of acclimation, reading and rereading (see “Reading Strategies that Work,” below) for the sake of the extraordinary benefits that are to be won by thinking this thinking along with Leahy. The twelve essays of the volume provide a diverse array of expository and critical approaches that readers will find differentially helpful from one time to another.
Quick Start Q A
Q1: Why read Leahy if it’s so difficult? Why bother?
A1: Certain thinkers are so original in their purpose that the critical question is not so much whether the reader stands in accord with the thinking, but whether she or he has genuinely encountered, absorbed, and been transformed by the intellectual and existential challenge that the thinking incites. One need not be wholly convinced or converted to receive the untold benefit of the thinking proposed. Anyone seriously reading the work of Leahy will be provoked out of habituated categories and projected into a “live” new realm of thinking/existing—an achievement most beneficial in our present globalizing era in the new millennium in which fresh, novel, uncanned thinking is more needful than ever. One might be resistant to Leahy’s fundamental outlook and balk at accepting it, but one cannot seriously engage his thinking without being jarred alert, shaken out of intellectual complacency, and provoked to contend with the most fundamental matters on which it is possible to think and act today. Indeed, the deepest project of Leahy’s essentially new logic and ethics is to provoke readers to think/act anew every moment precisely because every moment is a new creation, and because not to think/act absolutely anew is unethical. There exists an ethical imperative to undertake this thinking in positive terms—as an X in which one has no choice but to participate—rather than mainly in terms of what it brings to an end, displaces, and renders a thinking of the past. A reader who does not (seek to) begin with the positive X will not get there—because it is categorically transformative of all earlier ontological and ethical thinking. That is what makes the challenge overwhelming. We embody the metanoia. The metanoia embodies us.
Q2: First, how about a simple overview?
A2: Yes, a functioning intuitive handle is indispensable. The “new world order” delineated in Leahy’s works is characterized as an absolute creativity in which the creating is “live,” a happening occurring now, a now that is an infinitely supersaturated polyontological actuality in which creation begins . The world is indeed created—but only beginning now . The universe is not precreated; its identity is not fixed but essentially new. To begin this thinking, apply your mind to think an absolute exteriority—an otherness than which none more all-inclusive and th