{"title":"Conversations with Dostoevsky: On God, Russia, Literature, and Life. By George Pattison. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024. Pp. vi, 307. £30.00","authors":"Greg Peters","doi":"10.1111/heyj.14444","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/heyj.14444","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54105,"journal":{"name":"HEYTHROP JOURNAL","volume":"66 5","pages":"524-525"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2025-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145062658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Knowledge, Faith, and Early Christian Initiation. By Alex Fogleman. Cambridge University Press, 2023. Pp. 272. £85.00 (HB) / £24.99 (PB) / Open access.","authors":"Alexander Bailey","doi":"10.1111/heyj.14437","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/heyj.14437","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54105,"journal":{"name":"HEYTHROP JOURNAL","volume":"66 5","pages":"521-522"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2025-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145062536","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Queens of a Fallen World: The Lost Women of Augustine’s Confessions. By Kate Cooper. Basic Books, 2023. Pp. 304. £20.00 (HB) / £12.99 (PB)","authors":"Alexander Bailey","doi":"10.1111/heyj.14438","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/heyj.14438","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54105,"journal":{"name":"HEYTHROP JOURNAL","volume":"66 6","pages":"643-644"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2025-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145443276","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Technology has led to culture being atomised and broken down, which leads to difficulties in imagining how each decade will be remembered in the future. Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine nostalgic feelings ending. Nostalgia will evolve to be based around the individual (subjectivised) or the group (which may result in reactive nihilism). In the late 1980s Vattimo was prescient in his views about the effects of a society of generalised communication. He thought it would lead to the end of metaphysics and the de-centring and ungrounding of culture. In one way, this could lead to a situation in the near future where there is subjectivised nostalgia. Along with this change being driven by technology, Vattimo would see embracing subjectivised nostalgia as a form of weakening traces of metaphysics. However, another form of nostalgia may arise in response to the multiplicity of worldviews unleashed by technology: reactive nihilism. This form uses both ‘reflective’ and ‘restorative’ nostalgia to create a strong, group-wide reaction to diversity by affirming one viewpoint as ‘right’ and marginalising others as ‘wrong’. Vattimo disapproved of reactive nihilism, but there is little in his philosophy which acts as an effective counter to this approach.
{"title":"Gianni Vattimo, Verwindung, and ‘Reactive Nihilism’: ‘Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be’","authors":"Dr Matthew Edward Harris","doi":"10.1111/heyj.14431","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/heyj.14431","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Technology has led to culture being atomised and broken down, which leads to difficulties in imagining how each decade will be remembered in the future. Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine nostalgic feelings ending. Nostalgia will evolve to be based around the individual (subjectivised) or the group (which may result in reactive nihilism). In the late 1980s Vattimo was prescient in his views about the effects of a society of generalised communication. He thought it would lead to the end of metaphysics and the de-centring and ungrounding of culture. In one way, this could lead to a situation in the near future where there is subjectivised nostalgia. Along with this change being driven by technology, Vattimo would see embracing subjectivised nostalgia as a form of weakening traces of metaphysics. However, another form of nostalgia may arise in response to the multiplicity of worldviews unleashed by technology: reactive nihilism. This form uses both ‘reflective’ and ‘restorative’ nostalgia to create a strong, group-wide reaction to diversity by affirming one viewpoint as ‘right’ and marginalising others as ‘wrong’. Vattimo disapproved of reactive nihilism, but there is little in his philosophy which acts as an effective counter to this approach.</p>","PeriodicalId":54105,"journal":{"name":"HEYTHROP JOURNAL","volume":"66 5","pages":"413-430"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2025-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145062760","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In Nth power lottery, a lottery within a lottery, as envisioned by Deleuze, the frame, the pragmatic circumstances that surround the game (e.g., its rules), are also given to chance. I argue that both the ceremonial, Temple-based, Yom Kippur lottery in the Bible and Talmud, and the subsequent idea of Yom Kippur as a heavenly lot-casting day, as expressed in the Midrash, liturgy, Hasidic thought, and even folklore tales recounting games of chance during Yom Kippur, follow the Nth power paradigm. Reading these texts in light of this paradigm, and analysing this paradigm in light of the phenomenology of mise en abyme—a mimetic double at the heart of the imitatee—reveals a unique process-theology, where the act of repentance is mise en abyme of a radically absent imitatee—the ‘Before God’—and eventually an incarnation of it.
{"title":"Nth Power Lottery and Mimesis of the Future in Yom Kippur's Ceremonial Law, Hasidic Thought, and Early-Modern Folklore","authors":"Iddo Dickmann","doi":"10.1111/heyj.14425","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/heyj.14425","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In Nth power lottery, a lottery within a lottery, as envisioned by Deleuze, the frame, the pragmatic circumstances that surround the game (<i>e.g.,</i> its rules), are also given to chance. I argue that both the ceremonial, Temple-based, Yom Kippur lottery in the Bible and Talmud, and the subsequent idea of Yom Kippur as a heavenly lot-casting day, as expressed in the Midrash, liturgy, Hasidic thought, and even folklore tales recounting games of chance during Yom Kippur, follow the Nth power paradigm. Reading these texts in light of this paradigm, and analysing this paradigm in light of the phenomenology of <i>mise en abyme</i>—a mimetic double at the heart of the imitatee—reveals a unique process-theology, where the act of repentance is <i>mise en abyme</i> of a radically absent imitatee—the ‘Before God’—and eventually an incarnation of it.</p>","PeriodicalId":54105,"journal":{"name":"HEYTHROP JOURNAL","volume":"66 3","pages":"275-298"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2025-05-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144245123","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Christians at Home: John Chrysostom and Domestic Rituals in Fourth-Century Antioch. By Blake Leyerle. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2024. Pp. xii, 152. $99.95.","authors":"Alexander Bailey","doi":"10.1111/heyj.14428","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/heyj.14428","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54105,"journal":{"name":"HEYTHROP JOURNAL","volume":"66 3","pages":"325-326"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2025-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144245136","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Words Made Flesh. The Sacramental Mission of Catholic Education. By R. Jared Staudt. Washington DC: Catholic Education Press, 2024. Pp. xv, 328. PB $29.95.","authors":"John Sullivan","doi":"10.1111/heyj.14429","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/heyj.14429","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54105,"journal":{"name":"HEYTHROP JOURNAL","volume":"66 3","pages":"327-328"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2025-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144244835","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Global Politics of Interreligious Dialogue. By Michael D. Driessen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. Pp. xviii, 250. $83.00.","authors":"Peter Admirand","doi":"10.1111/heyj.14426","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/heyj.14426","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54105,"journal":{"name":"HEYTHROP JOURNAL","volume":"66 3","pages":"317-319"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2025-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144244950","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}