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Informationen zum Autor Alina N. Feld teaches religious studies, ethics, and Western and Eastern philosophy at Hofstra University and Dowling College in New York. Klappentext This probing study of melancholy invites readers to view "depression" genealogically through the history of its interpretation. It plumbs interior depths where psychology, theology, philosophy, and literary creation intersect. Therapies proposed for the dark mood have included work, prayer, care of the self, and deepening awareness of its indispensable role in the development of consciousness of oneself and God. Reflecting on these historical responses and cures can prompt a personal exploration, making this a practical manual for self-knowing and self-transcending, a philosophical "guide for the depressed." Feld's Melancholy and the Otherness of God wholly recreates melancholy into a comprehensive sickness of our soul by way of a reenactment of our deepest philosophical and theological thinking. Now everything is not only centered upon the sickness unto death but that sickness is drawn forth as our deepest and most ultimate condition, yet a condition that is not simply a negative condition but one making possible renewal and rebirth, and renewal precisely by way of melancholy itself, a melancholy that is an ultimate depression, but a depression open to a profound reversal. -- Thomas J. J. Altizer, , radical theologian, professor emeritus, SUNY Stony Brook Alina Feld's book admirably fills a gap in offering its reader a work covering the wealth of possibilities associated with melancholy. It is a well informed and intelligent study rich with impressive erudition and covering an intellectual and historical field from the ancients to the moderns. It offers us a treasure trove of attitudes and understandings concerning melancholy, deftly engaging the reader from premoderns theories of the humors all the way to postmodern depression. While dealing with the darker moods it is not itself dark but illuminating. It is not devoid of a leavening touch of Dante-like wisdom that reminds us that descent into hell precedes return to the surface of the earth and ascent to the things that are above us. -- William Desmond, Institute of Philosophy, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, David Cook Visiting Chair in Philosophy, Villanova University In this richly detailed, historical analysis of the complex of depression, acedia, and melancholy in different languages and literatures throughout the entire tradition, Alina Feld returns behind the modern views of the subject in Descartes, Kant and their descendants. Her main aims lie in determining if earlier views help us in revising our modern views and, ultimately, to cast light on what it means to be human. The result is an interesting, unusual, and thought-provoking book. -- Tom Rockmore, Duquesne University With an extraordinary breath of learning drawn from philosophy, theology, mythology and medicine, Alina Feld demonstrates how melancholy relates to the big questions of Being, Time and God. She brilliantly argues that melancholic pathos is not reducible to purely social or psychological factors but is a primordial and perduring condition of human existence. In an age when depression has become one of our greatest ills, Feld recommends that we fully assume our melancholic condition in a labor of self-transformation. To face the nothing concealed in the depths of the self and the abyssal otherness of God, is, she claims, a crucial task for human beings - for a world without melancholy is not a human world. To this end both medicine and theology may be conjoined in a wise therapeutics of the dark soul. -- Richard Kearney, Charles Seelig Chair of Philosophy at Boston College and author of Anatheism: Returning to God after God Melancholy and the Otherness of God is a truly exceptional work, without parallel, so far as I know, in philosophy, theology, or comparative literature. The author, Alina Feld, b...
