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A New Reading of Jacques Ellul

Presence and Communication in the Postmodern World

A New Reading of Jacques Ellul cover

A New Reading of Jacques Ellul

Presence and Communication in the Postmodern World

Description

This book presents an original and dynamic reading of the twentieth-century French sociologist and theological ethicist Jacques Ellul. Adopting Ellul’s use of ‘presence’ as a hermeneutical key to understanding his work, it examines the origins of Ellul’s approach to presence in his readings of Kierkegaard and the biblical book of Ecclesiastes, highlights the central structural role of presence in Ellul’s theological ethics, and elucidates a crucial turning point in Ellul’s theology following a personal crisis in Ellul’s faith and life. Drawing from numerous unpublished and untranslated texts, Jacob Marques Rollison argues that this crisis involves confrontation with a critique of presence manifest in Ellul’s reading of and engagement with Michel Foucault. Marques Rollison distills Ellul’s sociological critiques and theological responses to this crisis, presenting Ellul’s evolving theology against the background of major shifts in French intellectual life. In doing so, the author simultaneously calls for renewed engagement with Ellul’s prophetic thought, critically appraises Ellul’s dialectical theology and Marxist inheritances, and develops a robustly Protestant approach to theological communication ethics for our time.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Questions in Dialogue
Part I: Architecture
Chapter 1: Reason for Being: Ellul's Existential Epistemology of the Present
Chapter 2: Community in the Present: Marx, Institutions, and Language
Part II: Movement
Chapter 3: The Dialogue of Sign and Presence: Presence and Signification in Ellul's Theological Ethics
Chapter 4: Crises in Communication
Chapter 5: A Hopeful, Spoken Incognito: Presence in the Postmodern World
Conclusion: The Mystery of the Word
Appendix 1: Interpretive Summary of Ellul's Article “The Dialogue of Sign and Presence” (1936?)
Appendix 2: Ellul's Honorary Doctorate from the University of Aberdeen
Bibliography
About the Author

Product details

Published Sep 10 2020
Format Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
Edition 1st
Extent 316
ISBN 9781793604354
Imprint Lexington Books
Illustrations 4 tables;
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

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