Conversion Works - Softcover

Allen, Jeffrey A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1532688768 ISBN 13: 9781532688768

Publisher: Cascade Books, 2021

Synopsis

In this book, conversion means abandoning a world view and starting over. Using this definition of conversion, the book examines four works: Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions, René Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy, Bernard Lonergan’s Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, and Peter Weir’s The Truman Show. The main argument of this book is that all four works contain and induce conversion. That is, all four works feature an individual who abandons a worldview and starts over, and all four works exhort their engager to do the same. This book also explores the works’ requirement of cognitive imitation, wherein a person replicates the mental activities of the individual who has a conversion in the work, and of private engagement, wherein a person reads or views the work while alone. The book concludes with an argument for the educational value of the four works that appropriates Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death.

About this title

About the Author

Jeffrey A. Allen holds a PhD in Theology. His writing has also appeared in Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies, The Heythrop Journal, and Philosophy & Theology.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1532688768
• ISBN 13: 9781532688768
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 126