Dante’s Paradiso and the Theological Origins of Modern Thought: Toward a Speculative Philosophy of Self-Reflection

Cover
Half Title
Dedication
Series Information
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of contents
Epigraph
Prologue
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Theological Apotheosis of Lyric in Dante’s Paradiso
	1 Self-Reflexion and Lyricism in the Paradiso
		Lyric Poetics of Presence through Self-Reflection in the Paradiso
		Narcissus and the Reality of Reflection
		Metaphorical Poetics of Invisible Presence
		From Formalist Poetics to the Paradise of Poetic Language
	2 Orientation to Philosophical Logics and Rhetorics of Self-Reflexivity
	3 Self-Reflexive Lyricism and Ineffability
		Self-Reflexivity as an Eminent Way of Theological Transcendence
		Language of the Other as Reflection of Trinitarian and Incarnational Theology
Part I The Paradiso’s Theology of Language and its Lyric Origins
	4 The Self-Reflexive Trinitarian Structure of God and Creation
		The Self-Reflective Structure of Language Made Manifest
		The Abyss of Godhead and the Self-Reflexive Being of Language
	5 Beyond Representation—Origins of Lyric Reflection in Nothing
		Troubadour Origins of Lyric Self-Transcendence in Nothing
		Social Dimension and Sitz-im-Leben of Troubadour Lyric
		Primary Narcissism or the Death Duel of Self with Nothing
	6 The Circularity of Song—and its Mystic Upshot
	7 Self-Reflexive Fulfillment in Lyric Tradition and its Theological Troping by Dante
	8 The Lark Motif and its Echoes
		Ontological Resonances of Self-Reflection
	9 An Otherness Beyond Objective Representation and Reference
	10 The Mother Bird’s Vigil—Canto XXIII and the Lyric Circle
		Lyrical Self-Reflexiveness as Foretaste of Paradise
		Lyric Self-Reflection and the Creation of Time
	11 Ineffability in the Round—and its Breakthrough
		Circles of (Self-)Reflection from the Core of Creation to the Trinitarian Godhead
		The Broken-Open Circle or Chiasmus
	12 The Substance of Creation as Divine Self-Reflection
		Self-Reflexivity as Trinitarian and Incarnational
	13 Eclipse of Trinity and Incarnation as Models of Transcendence through Self-Reflection
	14 Narcissus and his Redemption by Dante
		Divine Narcissus
Part II Self-Reflection on the Threshold between the Middle Ages and Modernity
	15 Self-Reflective Refoundation of Consciousness in Philosophy
		Self-Reflection and the Other
	16 From Postmodern to Premodern Critique of Self-Reflection—Egolology versus Theology
	17 Self-Reflection in the Turning from Medieval to Modern Epistemology
	18 Crisis of Conflicting Worldviews and Duns Scotus
		Duns’s Original Concept—Univocal Being
	19 Toward the Self-Reflexive Formation of Transcendental Concepts
	20 Severance of Theory from Practice, Disentangling of Infinite from Finite, by Transcendental Reflection
	21 Scotus’s Discovery of a New Path for Metaphysics—Intensities of Being
	22 Scotus’s Formal Distinction
	23 The Intensional Object of Onto-theology as Transcendental Science
	24 Phenomenological Reduction and the Univocity of Being
	25 The Epistemological Turn in the Formal Understanding of Being
	26 Signification of the Real and an Autonomous Sphere for Representation
	27 Objective Representation—Beyond Naming and Desiring the Divine
		The Good as Sought through Will without Intellect—Subjectivity
	28 Conceptual Production of “Objective” Being—The Way of Representation
		The Paradigm of Representation and Dante’s Alternative Version
	29 From Logical (Dis)Analogy to Imaginative Conjecture versus the Forgetting of Being
	30 Reflective Repetition Realized in the Supersensible Reality of Willing
	31 Fichte’s Absolutization—and Overcoming—of Self-Reflection
		Fichte’s Reversal of Reflection into Revelation
		From Religious to Poetic Revelation—Novalis, Schlegel, Schelling, Hölderlin, and Hamann
	32 From Analogy to Metaphor
		Henry of Ghent and Analogical Imagination
		Secular and Theological in Dante and Duns
	33 Univocity as Ground of the Autonomy of the Secular
	34 The Fate of Negative Theology in Scotus
	35 Coda on Scotus and Modality
		Possible Worlds and Possibility as Greater than Actuality
	36 Arabic Epistemology of Reflection of Transcendence
Part III The Origin of Language in Reflection and the Breaking of its Circuits
	37 The Tradition of Self-Reflection and Modern Self-Forgetting
		Self-Negating and Self-Transcending Self-Reflection
	38 The Original Event of Language in Modern Lyric Tradition
		The Individual and the Other—A Mirror Relation
	39 The New Rhetoric of Reflexivity in Geoffrey de Vinsauf
	40 Poetic Self-Referentiality as Creative Source—From Paradiso to les Symbolistes
	41 The Paradox of Lyric as Song of the Self—Deflected to the Other
	42 Self and Other between Order and Chance—Ambiguity in Lyric Language
	43 Language beyond Representation—Repetition and Performativity
		From Reference to Repetition—The Production of Presence
		From Modern Philosophies of Repetition to Lyric as Non-Identical Repetition
	44 Quest for the Origin of Language—From De vulgari eloquentia to the Paradiso
	45 Dante’s Recovery of Speculative Metaphysics as Productive
	46 Referentially Empty Signs and Semiotic Plenitude
	47 Sum—Lyric as Self-Manifestation of Language and its Ontological Power of Creation
Part IV Self-Reflection, Speculation, and Revelation
	48 Lacanian Psychoanalytics of Self-love: From the In-fantile to the Divine
	49 Formal Linguistic Approaches to Self-Reflexivity
		Vindicating the Aesthetic Autonomy of the Linguistic Sign
		Social and Theological Perspectives—Language as Fallen and as Resurrected
	50 Formalist Theory of the Poem and Agamben’s “La fine del poema”
	51 Self-Reflexivity and Self-Transcendence—Toward the Unknown
	52 The Ambiguity of Self-Reflection in Contemporary Thought and History
		The Ambiguity of Self-Reflection as Means to Self-Transcendence or as End-in-Itself
		Critical Wisdom versus Technological Framing
		Self-Reflection in the Tension between Science and Mysticism
	53 The Historical Turn of Self-Reflection in Vico’s New Science
		Dialectic and Coincidence of Secular and Sacred
		Reflecting to the Origins of Thinking
		Self-Reflective Imagining of the Unknowable:  From Vico to Dante
		The Unknown and One’s Own Limits
		Cyclical Repetition of Birth to Humanity and Barbarism
	54 Self-Reflexivity in Paradiso and the Secular Destiny of the West
		Gay Science as Immediacy of Self-Reflective Knowing
	55 Language as Speculative Mirroring of the Whole of Being in the Word—Gadamer
	56 From Philosophical Idealism to Linguistic Ontology
	57 Language as Revelation or Revealment
	58 Language as Disclosure in Lyric Time—Heidegger, Heraclitus, and Unconcealment
		Revelation and Re-Veiling—From Purgatorio XXIX–XXXIII to Paradiso
Part V Dante’s Redemption of Narcissus and the Spiritual Vocation of Poetry as an Exercise in Self-Reflection
	59 Lyric Subjectivity and Narcissism—Totalization and Transcendence
		Lyric Poetics and Psychoanalytical Subjectification
		From Lyric Idealization to Epic Spiritual Journey of Self-Perfection
	60 Narcissus Redeemed—Positive Precedents from Plotinus
	61 Lyric Self-Reflection and the Subversion of the Proper
	62 Lyric Language as Spiritual Knowledge in its Sensual Immediacy—Orphic Echoes
	63 The Exaltation of Technique in the Troubadours and in Dante’s Stony Rhymes
	64 Lyric Reflexivity in Panoptic Historical-Philosophical Perspective—Troubadours, Christianity, and Romanticism
	65 Romantic Singularity as a New Universal Reflexivity
	66 Dante’s Narcissus Redeemed—A Perennial Paradigm for Contemporary Thought
	Epilogue: Reflexive Stylistics in the Language of Paradiso
Postscript on Method: From Genealogy to Apophatics
Index