Transforming Vision: Imagination and Will in Kierkegaardian Faith - Hardcover

Ferreira, M. Jamie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198263317 ISBN 13: 9780198263319

Publisher: Clarendon Press, 1991

Synopsis

`This is a work of great originality and high quality. It challenges the simple but all-too-common picture of Kierkegaard's "leap of faith" and replaces it with a subtle, but clear and helpful, account in which imagination plays a central role in ethical and religious transformation. I learned a great deal from it.' C. Stephen Evans, Professor of Philosophy and Curator of the Hong Kierkegaard Library. The metaphor of a `leap of faith' is probably the element most widely recognized as a distinctive characteristic of a `Kierkegaardian' account of the transition to religious faith. Both in popular and scholarly circles this `leap' has usually been understood in terms of an act of `will-power'. Challenging such a volitionalist view (as well as some current alternatives to it which see instead only an ineffable `miracle' of grace), Professor Ferreira argues that Kierkegaard's striking appreciation of a variety of roles of imagination supports a reconceptualization of the `leap' or `decision' in terms of a reorienting shift in perspective, an imaginative revisioning. Exploring the relation between passion and paradox in several of Kierkegaard's accounts of selfhood, and developing an account of transitional choice in which imagination is a constitutive element, Professor Ferreira elaborates an understanding of the faith-transition in terms of such imaginative activities as `suspension', `synthesis', and `engagement'. The analysis of imaginative activity in these ethical and religious transitions has, moreover, implications which go beyond Kierkegaard scholarship, for it bears importantly not only on other `conversion' accounts, but also on the question of transitions to alternative or `incommensurable' conceptual frameworks in general.

About this title

Synopsis

The metaphor of a "leap of faith" is probably the element most widely recognized as a distinctive characteristic of a "Kierkegaardian" account of the transition to religious faith. Both in popular and scholarly circles this "leap" has usually been understood in terms of an act of "will-power". Challenging such a volitionalist view (as well as some current alternatives to it which see instead only an ineffable "miracle" of grace), Professor Ferreira argues that Kierkegaard's appreciation of a variety of roles of imagination supports a reconceptualization of the leap or decision in terms of a reorienting shift in perspective, an imaginative revisioning. Exploring the relation between passion and paradox in several of Kierkegaard's accounts of selfhood, and developing an account of transitional choice in which imagination is a constitutive element, Professor Ferreira elaborates as understanding of the faith-transition in terms of such imaginative activities as "suspension", "synthesis" and "engagement".

The analysis of imaginative activity in these ethical and religious transitions has, moreover, implications which go beyond Kierkegaard scholarship, for it bears importantly not only on other conversion accounts, but also on the question of transitions to alternative or "incommensurable" conceptual frameworks in general.

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarendon Press
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0198263317
• ISBN 13: 9780198263319
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 176