1st Edition

Foucault, Christianity and Interfaith Dialogue

By Henrique Pinto Copyright 2003
    272 Pages
    by Routledge

    272 Pages
    by Routledge

    Foucault, Christianity and Interfaith Dialogue develops a new model for interfaith dialogue using the work of the French historian of ideas, Michel Foucault. The author argues that it is the injustice done to the 'Other' by Roman Catholic, Protestant and other centred and unitary models of religious pluralism that allows the introduction of Foucault's de-centring of transcendence and human reason as an alternative model for understanding religious diversity and the role it ought to play, in the constitution of the self and the making of society. This Foucaultian approach provides a new direction for interfaith dialogue in the modern world and leads to an ethical rather than a nihilistic position while fostering a non-unitary theology of religious pluralism and an open-textured process of self-transformation.
    The author's original and imaginative application and expansion of Foucault's concept of the 'More' from The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969) makes important and original contributions to academic work on Foucault and contemporary theology.

    Foreword -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- The Roman Catholic Church and the other of itself -- The Roman Catholic Church and the other of other faiths -- Alternative approaches to other religions -- A centred theology of religions -- Michel Foucault -- Foucault’s critique of the anthropological sleep of modernity -- Power, truth and critique -- The constitution of self as an ethical subject -- An ethical sensibility to the other -- The human /divine face of existence in the flux of bio-history -- Language, theology and the More

    Biography

    Henrique Pinto is the Founder of the Portuguese Association for Interfaith Dialogue, UNIVERSOS and lectures in the Philosophy of Religions at the Modern University in Lisbon. He is an invited researcher and a member of the scientific counsel of a Centre of Studies (CEPCEP) at the Portuguese Catholic University in Lisbon. He has also contributed to Foucault and Theology edited by James Benhaven and Jeremy Carrette. He is currently working on a study relating to religion and immigration.