David Newheiser: Hope in a Secular Age: Deconstruction, Negative Theology, and the Future of Faith

I valued very much a recently aired conversation with David Newheiser, who is a Research Fellow at Australian Catholic University (ACU) in the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry. The conversation was titled: Politics and the Sacred and featured on the ABC show The Philosophers Zone (here).

His research addresses ethical and political questions in light of classic Christian thought and contemporary continental philosophy. He specializes in apophatic traditions of Christian thought and in Jacques Derrida's relation to religion.

His first book, title above (forthcoming, and I’m not exactly sure when, but maybe Nov. 2020 for the print edition, from Cambridge University Press), defends a hope that acknowledges its vulnerability but presses forward nonetheless. Where critics claim that hope pacifies political resistance by providing false comfort, I argue that it nourishes a restless dissatisfaction with the status quo. Drawing upon premodern negative theology and postmodern philosophy, I show that an uncertain hope is necessary to sustain commitment of any kind: interpersonal, political, or religious.

I’m looking forward to reading a copy of his book when it’s published. Meantime, you can find a list of his journal essays here, downloadable via Academia.