Philosophy in Word and Name: Myth, Wisdom, Apocalypse

MYTH. WISDOM. APOCALYPSE. Three words of ancient pedigree offering the seeker a promise: to unlock the door of understanding to the highest and best things—the divine things. Three keys, then, for a “Philosophy in Word and Name” that wants, simply, to comprehend whatever makes the meaning of our humanity take on its fullest scope and significance. This text intends to be no more than a “sketchbook” for such a philosophy. Its six Studies include two dedicated to each key, engaging with words and names ancient and modern, eastern and western, and with an approach casting back into traditional intellectual practices long strictured in the modern west. Above all, the defining feature of the modern intelligence—the asphyxiating alienation of philosophy and theology from one another, and both from the mystical—is weighed and found wanting. A turn to modes of thought and styles of writing for which religion is not foreign ground is required if we are to have any chance of fidelity to these things themselves; and should this draw us closer to “premodern,” or even “eastern,” modalities, must we not remain open to these as well?

“This singular book is plurivocal in a challenging and intellectually invigorating way. It allows the voices of myth, philosophy, and theology to sound together and indeed to sing in a kind of companioning togetherness. Warmly recommended.”—WILLIAM DESMOND, Villanova University

“In a multi-faceted series of studies in diverse styles, William Hackett opens to us a vista on the state of Christian thought today. Here is our contemporary Kierkegaard: probing old ideas, launching new ones, prodding us to be ever more vigilant, not only in our thinking about religion but in our practice of it.”—KEVIN HART, University of Virginia

“This philosophical prophecy against today’s all-too-human kingdoms of so-called knowledge culminates in prayerful obedience to divine truth, an apocalypse masterfully and poetically sketched out in these pages.”—FR. BONAVENTURE CHAPMAN, OP, Dominican House of Studies, Washington DC

“This remarkable first book of William Hackett sounds forth with newness, confidence, and truth, and is sure to establish him as one of the most original and energetic voices of contemporary Catholic thought. A must read.”—AARON RICHES, Benedictine College

“Rarely does a genuinely groundbreaking book come along. Even more rare is a book that accomplishes this in the realm of philosophy and religion. This is that book: an intellectual and mystical masterpiece that makes believable a truly universal speculative thinking about ultimate meaning in our own day.”—CONOR SWEENEY, author of Abiding the Long Defeat

“William Chris Hackett leads us on a vast journey rich with reflections on ‘revelation at the end of time’ as the possibility for present humanity to accelerate what it cannot ignore.”—EMMANUEL FALQUE, Institut catholique de Paris

“Hackett has read deeply and broadly and has something to say only he can say. Read his book.”—JEAN-YVES LACOSTE, Clare Hall, Cambridge

WILLIAM C. HACKETT is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at St. Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology. He is the author of Essay on the Apophatics of the Sensible (Notre Dame) and (with Tarek Dika) Quiet Powers of the Possible (Fordham), as well as translator of works from French to English, including Emmanuel Falque, God, the Flesh and the Other (Northwestern), Jean-Yves Lacoste, From Theology to Theological Thinking (University of Virginia), and Miklos Veto, The Expansion of Metaphysics (Cascade).