Appeal and Attitude

"Useful for both professional philosophers and theologians alike, this work would also serve as a valuable resource for any student of philosophical theology.... Recommended." -Choice

"In Worth Doing (CH, Nov'04, 42-1487), Smith (Millsaps College) presented his very original moral philosophy derived from worth thinking. In this subsequent study, he gives an extensive philosophical and theological reformulation of the human encounter with ultimate meaning. After a rich examination of the emergence of religious thought in the Axial Age, Smith traces the development of religious thought from Kant to the present. He claims that Kant began a transformation from the prevailing subject-object paradigm in theological and philosophical thinking about ultimate meaning toward a new twin model of appeal: the recognition of the priority of a being over oneself, and attitude, a person's relation to that appellant in a way that informs all of a person's thought and life practice. Smith then examines both the philosophical articulation and modification of Kant's basic insight in thinkers such as Nietzsche, Rickert, Buber, Heidegger, and Marion, and its theological transformation in theologians such as Schleiermacher, Barth, and Moltmann. The book ends with an examination of how this new thinking opens up for persons a pneumatological orientation toward a flourishing way of life. Useful for both professional philosophers and theologians alike, this work would also serve as a valuable resource for any student of philosophical theology. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty/researchers. -Choice, Nov. 2006" -J. C. Swindal, Duquesne University