Foundation

Matter the Body Itself

By D. G. Leahy

Subjects: Philosophy Of Religion
Paperback : 9780791420225, 696 pages, November 1995
Hardcover : 9780791420218, 696 pages, November 1995

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Table of contents

Preface

I Critique of Absolute Contingency

Whether the Difference between Fact and Reflection or Appearance and Essence Can, by the Saying, be Overcome—The Question Answered in Light of the Being of the Thing Perceived, at Once the Formal Critique of Historical Materialism

II Critique of Absolute World-Consciousness

1 Thought beyond Nietzsche: Foundation Itself
2 Ex nihilo the Angelic Word Totality Itself
3 Metanomy: The Quality of Being Itself
4 Revolutionary Metanoesis: Foundation of Society Itself

III The Unity of the New World Order

1 The Law of Absolute Unity
2 Six Theorems Concerning the New Logic and Mathematics that Provide the Logical base for the Nothingless Fibonacci Sequence, the Geometric and Arithmetic Series, and Fermat's Last Theorem
3 The Geometry of the Infinitely Flat Structure of the Universe: The Logic of Rigid Structures
4 The Infinite Logical Lattice: The Direct Predictor of Rigidity in Grids
5 Transformation of World Consciousness: The New Atonement
6 Theorem Concerning the Natural Numbers, 1,784, and 82944, Factors of (9!/45)2
7 Theorem Concerning the Sets of Twenty-Two and Eight Natural Numbers whose Integral Products Equal Unit and Multi-Unit Fractions of Themselves the Denominators of which are Primary Digits of the Number System

IV Absolute Perception

1 American Thought and the New World Order
2 The Beginning of the Absolutely Unconditioned Body

V The New Beginning

1 America after Death: The Universality of God's Body
2 To Create the Absolute Edge
3 The New Beginning: Beyond the Post-Modern Nothingness

Appendix: The De Trinitate of Augustine and the Logic

Index

Description

This book presents the ontological and logical foundation of a new form of thinking, the beginning of an “absolute phenomenology.” It does so in the context of the history of thought in Europe and America. It explores the ramifications of a categorically new logic. Thinkers dealt with include Plato, Galileo, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Peirce, James, Dewey, Derrida, McDermott, and Altizer.

D. G. Leahy is Associate Professor of Religion at New York University, and the author of Novitas Mundi: Perception of the History of Being, also published by SUNY Press.

Reviews

"The considerable merit of this book is the utter intensity and seriousness of virtually every page. Leahy is an original thinker and a writer who means what he writes. Although this makes for difficult reading, it is a rare and precious gift. The scholarship is impeccable." — John J. McDermott, Texas A&M University

"If God, Godhead, Trinity, Incarnation, Time and Eternity are significant to and central in Christian theology, this work is central to theology. If the relation between the ideal and the actual, the local and the universal are significant to and central in philosophy, this work is central to philosophy. The author combines rigorous systematic thinking with a remarkable knowledge of the history of ideas: his concepts resituate many of the classical thinkers in both theology and philosophy. Especially stunning, to this reviewer, is Leahy's reconstrual of Aquinas (and medieval thought generally), Hegel, and the uniquely American philosophers.

"Leahy opens another 'high road around modernity,' and thus an appealing alternative to a variety of post-modernisms while retaining their critical force. He restores thinking to centrality in theology, rescuing it from a mindless drift in recent decades. Eschewing any final distinction between theology and philosophy, he sees in the American theology embodied in this thinking the fulfillment of American philosophy's aspiration to (hitherto postponed) perfectly 'exterior' Godhead.

"Reading Leahy is like reading Nietzsche; to the degree that one understands, one is shaken in the foundations—and if not so shaken, one does not understand. (And the comparison is not inapt, since it is in part the modernity shaken by Nietzsche that Leahy aspires to transcend.) In short, every great work must create its readers, and I believe Leahy's work holds just this potential. His writing is as compact and precise as could be imagined, given what he is given to say: as with all conceptual expression not alien to the poetic sense, there is a certain inevitability to it in respect of form." — Ray L. Hart, Boston University

"This book is wild, but extraordinarily competent. It is a truly brilliant work. Here we have a thinker who has used the resources of the Western tradition to think genuinely new and profound thoughts." — Robert C. Neville