Cavell, Companionship, and Christian Theology

Abstract

For decades, theologians and philosophers of religion have been engaged in vigorous debate about the status and nature of ecclesiology, hence of community. In that discussion, theologians have found resources in political philosophy, particularly communitarianism and political liberalism. This book turns instead to Stanley Cavell to show how his work illuminates that discussion, in particular, how his understanding of companionship and friendship might usefully complicate the communitarian‐liberal divide. Since the 1960s, Cavell has been the most category‐defying philosopher in North America as well as one of the least understood. In part, this is because philosophers are not sure what to do with Cavell's extensive engagements with literature and film or, stranger yet, Cavell's openness to theological concerns. This book, the first on Cavell and theology, places Cavell in conversation with some of the philosophers most influential in contemporary theology (Alasdair MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum, and John Rawls). It then takes up Cavell's relationship to Christian theology, shows how the figure of Christ appears repeatedly in his work, and illustrates how Cavell's account of skepticism and acknowledgment is a profoundly illuminating and transformative resource for theological discussions, not just of ecclesiology, but of sin, salvation, and the existence of God.