Is anything ever not an interpretation?Does interpretation go all the way down?Is there such a thing as a pure fact that is interpretation-free? If not, how are we supposed to know what to think and do?These tantalizing questions are tackled by renowned American thinker John D Caputo in this wide-reaching exploration of what the traditional term 'hermeneutics' can mean in a postmodern, twenty-first century world. As a contemporary of Derrida's and longstandin...

The author of What Would Jesus Deconstruct? makes "a bold attempt to reconfigure the terms of debate around the topic of divine omnipotence" ( Choice).Applying an ever more radical hermeneutics—including Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenology, Derridian deconstruction, and feminism—John D. Caputo breaks down the name of God in this irrepressible book. Instead of looking at God as merely a name, Caputo views it as an event, or what the name conj...

In the first in a new series of easily digestible, commute-lengthbooks of original philosophy, renowned thinker John D. Caputo explores the many notions of 'truth', and what it really meansRiding to work in the morning has has become commonplace. We ride everywhere. Physicians and public health officials plead with us to get out and walk, to get some exercise. People used to live within walking distance to the fields in which they worked, or they worked in shops attached to their h...

John D. Caputo has a long career as one of the preeminent postmodern philosophers in America. The author of such books as Radical Hermeneutics, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, and The Weakness of God, Caputo now reflects on his spiritual journey from a Catholic altar boy in 1950s Philadelphia to a philosopher after the death of God. Part spiritual autobiography, part homily on what he calls the “nihilism of grace,” Hoping Against Hope calls believers and nonbelievers alike to par...

A brilliant and witty postmodern critique of ethics, framed as a contemporary restaging of Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling.John D. Caputo undertakes a passionate, poetic, and satiric search for the basis of an ethics in the postmodern situation. Restaging Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, Caputo defends the notion of obligation without ethics, of responsibility without the support of ethical foundations. Retelling the story of Abraham and Isaac, h...

The renowned theologian "brings Luther and cosmology into dialogue with radical theological movements that have their point of departure in deconstruction" (George Pattison, author of Eternal God/Saving Time).John D. Caputo stretches his project as a radical theologian to new limits in this groundbreaking book. Mapping out his summative theological position, he identifies with Martin Luther to take on notions of the hidden god, the theology of the cross, c...

Available in a new digital edition with reflowable text suitable for e-readersThe purpose of the present study is to undertake a confrontation of the thought of Martin Heidegger and Thomas Aquinas on the question of Being and the problem of metaphysics. Now, a 'confrontation' which does no more than draw up a catalogue of common traits and points of difference is no more than a curiosity, an idle comparison which bears no fruit.

Religion is making itself unbelievable—scandal-ridden, antiscientific, authoritarian, and reactionary. Can religion be saved? Is it even worth saving? Can religion be saved not just from its critics but from itself?John D. Caputo proposes a radical alternative—what he calls “religion’s last stand”—by turning to theopoetics. In the traditional account, theopoetics calls for approaching God poetically because God transcends human language. Caputo contests this view, arguing that in t...

If you no longer “believe in God,” the Supreme Being of classical theology, or you never did in the first place, is there anything you still ought to believe, anything you should cherish unconditionally, no matter what? In this lively and accessible book, addressed to believers, “recovering” believers, disbelievers, nonbelievers, and “nones” alike—to anyone in search of what they really do believe—the acclaimed philosopher and theologian John D. Caputo seeks out what there is to believe, w...

Soren Kierkegaard is one of the prophets of the contemporary age, a man whose acute observations on life in nineteenth-century Copenhagen might have been written yesterday, whose work anticipated fundamental developments in psychoanalysis, philosophy, theology and the critique of mass culture by over a century. John Caputo offers a compelling account of Kierkegaard as a thinker of particular relevance in our postmodern times, who set off a revolution that numbers Martin Heidegger and Karl ...

These sparkling essays from a seasoned scholar are "a great breath of fresh air in our claustrophobic and catastrophic time" (Cornel West).Capturing a career's worth of thought and erudition, this rich volume treats readers to creative thought, careful argumentation, and sophisticated analysis transmitted through the lucid, accessible prose that has earned the author a wide readership of academics and non-academics alike. In tackling "radical theology," John D. Cap...

John D. Caputo stretches his project as a radical theologian to new limits in this groundbreaking book. Mapping out his summative theological position, he identifies with Martin Luther to take on notions of the hidden god, the theology of the cross, confessional theology, and natural theology. Caputo also confronts the dark side of the cross with its correlation to lynching and racial and sexual discrimination. Caputo is clear that he is not writing as any kind of orthodox Lutheran but is ...