Fran O'Rourke, Ciphers of Transcendence: Essays in Philosophy of Religion in Honour of Patrick Masterson (review)

Abstract

original idea of its founder in one vital respect – the component of apostolic work disappeared. Perhaps the original idea of Leunis might find a place in the synodal Church? Dr Finola Kennedy has been a lecturer in University College Dublin and IPA Ireland. Her Frank Duff: A Life Story was published by Burns & Oates in 2007. Fran O’Rourke (ed.), Ciphers of Transcendence: Essays in Philosophy of Religion in Honour of Patrick Masterson (Newbridge: Irish Academic Press, 2019), 408 pages. This book is a collection of essays devoted to the issue of transcendence. It draws upon and is inspired by the work of former UCD president and internationally renowned philosopher, Patrick Masterson; indeed the book is offered in honour of the man himself. Fran O’Rourke is to be commended for bringing together an impressive list of international scholars including Denys Turner, Philip Pettit, Cyril O’Regan, John Haldane, and Alasdair MacIntyre. The editor begins with a masterly introduction, presenting Masterson’s work and offering an indication of the nature of the forthcoming essays. The subject matter of transcendence is dealt with in one way or another throughout the essays. Philosophically speaking, transcendence finds its classical treatment in the medieval doctrine of the transcendentals. O’Rourke articulates the latter in terms of those features of reality coincident with being, but not immediately disclosed by the term ‘being’ itself. These have been traditionally listed as: unity, truth, goodness. O’Rourke offers an account of beauty as a transcendental, and for those familiar with the literature on the issue, this is somewhat controversial, since the status of beauty as transcendental is disputed. Nevertheless, O’Rourke gives a good account of what beauty would be like, assuming its transcendental status. John Dillon and Andrew Smith work within the Platonic tradition, a tradition noted for its emphasis on transcending the here and now and focussing on what is beyond the sensible; their papers consider the notion of truth, and thereby reality, not conditioned by human subjectivity but to which such subjectivity is responsive. Accordingly, there is something in the reality of things that is revelatory of some conceptual content on the basis Studies • volume 109 • number 435 350 Autumn 2020: Book Reviews of which we transcend the here and now. This is a theme also found in the papers offered by O’Regan on the infinite, Haldane on perceptual experience, and Pettit on ethics. Transcendence not only has a philosophical dimension to it, but also a spiritual one. This is obvious and follows naturally from the philosophical notion of transcendence, since God is the transcendent being from which all things derive. Hence, an approach to God is an approach to the transcendent. But, in contrast to what can seem like an impersonal philosophical transcendence appearing in the papers mentioned above, the notion of spiritual transcendence relates the human to a personal being Who has concern for the individual. The papers which deal with this more spiritual notion of transcendence go to the core of Masterson’s work, given his longstanding interest in matters relating to the intersection of philosophy and religion. The papers by Kearney on epiphany, Moran on Edith Stein and her conversion, Brendan Purcell on suffering and God, and Eileen Brennan on religious symbolism in Paul Ricoeur, all deal with the issue of selftranscendence and the spiritual life. The common theme here is that in the spiritual life we approach a transcendent being Who is a person and Who is the measure of us. In approaching such a being, we go beyond ourselves (and not just beyond the here and now), and in doing so we are touched in our deepest (personal) core. This then leads nicely to the notion of personal transcendence, a theme which can be found in several of the papers in the volume. Personal transcendence is a mixture of going beyond oneself and being changed in such going beyond. But the going beyond need not be the Platonic one of getting away from the here and now, or the spiritual one of approaching God, the transcendent being. Rather, it can be found in one’s relationships with other people. In this regard the papers by Denys Turner on Aquinas...