Synopsis
"The totalitarian state clearly intends to eliminate all those forms of organic community that rival the absolute loyalty of the individual to the state. This god is a jealous god. . . . Mrowczyński-Van Allen's diagnosis is therefore no less relevant after the fall of the Berlin Wall. And his proposed cure is no less salutary. He appeals to the work of Grossman and other voices from the East to oppose the idolatry of the deified self with the icon, which opens up a distance in which giving and forgiving can occur. Eastern voices are so helpful because they refuse to quarantine theological questions; the borders between theology, politics, and literature are fluid and porous, because they are all a part of an integrated life. The holism of totalitarianism must be opposed by another kind of holism that replaces the idol with the icon. At the same time, the aspiration of secularism to separate politics from theology, and power from love, must be opposed by a politics based on an opening of human persons to God and to each other, the kind of self-donation found in Grossman, and for Christians, on the Cross." --From the Foreword by William T. Cavanaugh
About the Authors
Artur Mrowczynski Van-Allen (Poland, 1968) is director of the Slavic Department at the International Center for the Study of the Christian Orient (ICSCO) in Granada, Spain. He is currently Collaborator Professor at the Instituto de Filosofia "Edith Stein" and the Instituto de Teologia "Lumen Gentium," where he teaches Philosophy of History and Political Philosophy. He also serves as Research Professor of the Faculty of Filosophy at the Pontifical University of John Paul II in KraKow, Poland and as Consulter of the Episcopal Interreligious and Interconfessional Relations Commission of the Spanish Episcopal Conference in Madrid, Spain. He is a member of the Scientific Council of the Centro Studi Vita e Destina, Vasilij Grossman (Turin, Italy), and of the Scientific Council of the Krakow Meetings on Russian Philosophy at the Pontifical University of John Paul II. His essays, articles, and conferences have been published in Spanish, Polish, Russian, English, and Italian. He is author of Between the Icon and the Idol: Man and State in Russian Thought and Literature, (Cascade, 2013); and co-editor of La Idea Rusa. Entre el anticristo y la Iglesia. Una antologia introductoria (2009); Apology of Culture: Religion and Culture in Russian Thought (Pickwick, 2015); and Beyond Modernity: Russian Religious Philosophy and Post-Secularism (Pickwick, 2016).
William T. Cavanaugh is director of the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology and professor of Catholic studies at DePaul University in Chicago. His areas of specialization are political theology, economic ethics, and ecclesiology. His publications include Field Hospital: The Church's Engagement in Markets, Politics, and Conflict; Migrations of the Holy: Theologies of State and Church; and The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
