Friendship as Sacred Knowing: Overcoming Isolation
Samuel Kimbriel
Abstract
This work addresses itself to the modern experience of isolation. Stories of loneliness amidst the fragmentation of community are familiar in this age, as are tales of alienation provoked by the insistent indifference of the scientific cosmos. This book delves beneath such stories, arguing that the crisis of isolation in the present age betokens a more fundamental incoherence within the modern rational subject. Part I seeks to work through the structure of this crisis by examining both its historical origins and its current difficulties. Its central argument is that the deep habits of modern l ... More
This work addresses itself to the modern experience of isolation. Stories of loneliness amidst the fragmentation of community are familiar in this age, as are tales of alienation provoked by the insistent indifference of the scientific cosmos. This book delves beneath such stories, arguing that the crisis of isolation in the present age betokens a more fundamental incoherence within the modern rational subject. Part I seeks to work through the structure of this crisis by examining both its historical origins and its current difficulties. Its central argument is that the deep habits of modern life were put into place by a series of explicit attempts to carve out a realm of secure internality disengaged from commitments of love or friendship. Whilst the splitting off of reason from intimacy contributed to a sense of invulnerability, it also created the conditions which have served to undermine rational enquiry and intimate relationship alike. Part II of the work then seeks to juxtapose this contemporary tradition over against older, more porous ways of interacting with reality drawn from antique and early Christian philosophical texts. The examination of this older tradition not only enables an understanding of alternative possibilities, but also facilitates a proper assessment of our own habit of loneliness.
Keywords:
friendship,
knowledge,
isolation,
enquiry,
reason,
loneliness,
love,
disengaged
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2014 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199363988 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2014 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199363988.001.0001 |
