Research Statement by Steven DeLay
A discussion about philosophy, theology, fiction, and life.
The deepest words are the most prosaic. They are enriched by everybody's voice, and only through ... more The deepest words are the most prosaic. They are enriched by everybody's voice, and only through them are our joys, sufferings, doubts, and choices illuminated and shared. This book's brief meditations lend an ear to ten of them, from breath to wound, from way to abandonment, from attention to peace. The lesson of poets, the wisdom of saints, and the teaching of philosophers with these simple words afford innumerable pathways. To gather ourselves, letting the weight of these essential words sink into us, is to catch our breath silently, rendering its rhythm fuller and stronger. Yet what is the point, were we to stand pat? The price of the highest breath can only be to give itself without reserve, until we lose our breath.
A contribution to the venerable tradition of lectio divina, Ten Meditation's for Catching and Losing One's Breath invites its reader to embark on a contemplative journey led by an author who was one of France's most prolific and profound philosophers in generations.
A conversation at Writers on Film about Terrence Malick.
A reflection about discovering the work of Terrence Malick at the River Oaks Theater in Houston, TX.
What is the connection between literature and philosophy? What sort of truth, if any, is at stake... more What is the connection between literature and philosophy? What sort of truth, if any, is at stake in a literary work? In what ways are reading and writing literature related to philosophical inquiry? This talk addresses these questions, among others, by paying particularly close attention to the traditions of existentialism and phenomenology.
Held online monthly, the Woolf Post-Kantian Philosophy Seminar hosts speakers to share work with ... more Held online monthly, the Woolf Post-Kantian Philosophy Seminar hosts speakers to share work with attendees.
A statement of my work in philosophy
An interview on phenomenology and the theological turn at Tim Hull's TIMELINE: Faith and Philosop... more An interview on phenomenology and the theological turn at Tim Hull's TIMELINE: Faith and Philosophy series.
Editorial introduction for a series at Richard Marshall's 3:16 AM.
Discussion of phenomenology.
An interview at Rev. Tim Hull’s TIMELINE: Faith and Philosophy.
An interview about phenomenology and the philosophy of mind, with particular focus on naturalism,... more An interview about phenomenology and the philosophy of mind, with particular focus on naturalism, scientism, and technology.
Books by Steven DeLay
In the first proof for God's existence in his Third Meditation, Descartes in effect notes that to... more In the first proof for God's existence in his Third Meditation, Descartes in effect notes that to have the idea of God is ipso facto to know there is a God, as only God would be capable of revealing the idea of himself to us. That this very thought should be dismissed as the mark of a childlike understanding, something at which the learned take themselves justifiably to scoff, only further recommends its truth. "You have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to babes." Having grown into adulthood, which really in this respect is a state of blindness, those who deny it admit that they have lost the wisdom of innocence. 2 Eventually, someone says to us that God merely is a consolation. (The implication being that God is thus an illusion.) We are young, and initially this insight appears to be powerful. Some never recover from it-they live the rest of their lives under the thumb of its presumed authority. True maturity-not the blind variety that is all too common, what by the world is considered maturity-is outgrowing this immaturity's spell, and seeing that there was never anything wrong about consolation, to begin with. How immature to pretend that the truth should not be consoling! There is no one who believes anything that one does not to some degree find consoling (even the most supposed bitter and ugly of reputed truths have their own sweetness). 3 Those who criticize belief in God for being a consolation know this better than anyone. To them, acknowledging God would be misery, and so they console themselves with the consoling thought that belief in God is just a consolation. 4 What essential connection, then, lies between illusion and consolation? The one who rejects God on the basis that such belief is thought merely to be a consolation, and so an illusion, only testifies against himself. That something is consoling needn't mean it is false. True, a lie can be consoling. But so, too, can the truth. More to the point, the very same truth can be the source of consolation for one, while for another its recognition would be the cause of the most unspeakable agony or despair. 5 What worse imaginable illusion is there than to reject a truth as an illusion when in the grips of the illusion that it is too consoling to be true? Only a fool, which is to say, only an adult who thinks he knows what mature wisdom involves, could ever have come to be so lost, so enervated, so grotesquely estranged from the simplicity of childhood's wisdom. 6 To say that truth always is a revelation, then, is to say that it reveals who we are just as much as it reveals itself. The truth reveals-what? In virtue of whether we welcome it with gladness, and find it a reason for consolation, or whether instead we reject it as an illusion, because we hate it, and don't want for it to be true, the truth does not thereby reveal just itself-more, it exposes us for who we are, and, above all, reveals our illusions about ourselves to others, sometimes even to us.
Interest in Michel Henry’s thought is growing all the time. More and more papers and books are pu... more Interest in Michel Henry’s thought is growing all the time. More and more papers and books are published about him. But much of the recent discussion about the theological significance of his work from a Christian point of view has to this point been critical. Philosophers of various convictions have critiqued Henry for being less than an orthodox Christian in this or that way. This book takes a different approach, by putting Henry’s thought in dialogue with important figures from across the history of Christian theology. The first work of its kind, this volume is a contribution to Henry studies, historical theology, as well as systematic and constructive theology.
Book manuscript in progress
Elijah Newman thinks he is returning home to his wife from a trip when, like an Ivan Ilyich, he i... more Elijah Newman thinks he is returning home to his wife from a trip when, like an Ivan Ilyich, he instead finds himself unexpectedly thrust before death. Wonder over what might have been, gratitude for all that was, hope for what could perhaps still be, and love of both God and existence--Elijah Newman Died Today is an existentialist novella about one man's thoughts on what matters amid what may be life's final moments.
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Research Statement by Steven DeLay
A contribution to the venerable tradition of lectio divina, Ten Meditation's for Catching and Losing One's Breath invites its reader to embark on a contemplative journey led by an author who was one of France's most prolific and profound philosophers in generations.
Books by Steven DeLay
A contribution to the venerable tradition of lectio divina, Ten Meditation's for Catching and Losing One's Breath invites its reader to embark on a contemplative journey led by an author who was one of France's most prolific and profound philosophers in generations.
Sartre and Camus held that existence is absurd, that consequently meaning is forged through the individual who must create it, a Promethean doctrine of reality which today has come to exercise a grip on us so firmly that we barely notice it, much less ever think to seriously question it. To be sure, the world is absurd. But existence as such? In this debut novel, Christian existentialist Steven DeLay tells the story of a knight of faith’s quest for meaning. In his resulting voyage from the suburbs of Texas to the secret societies of Oxford, he encounters the ineluctable claim of eternity on the everyday. Part fairy tale, noir mystery, psychological thriller, and essay in existential philosophy, Everything’s first volume, Anomie, explores the condition of nihilism in modern culture.
After an introduction setting out the crucial Husserlian and Heideggerian background to French phenomenology, DeLay explores Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics as first philosophy, Henry’s material phenomenology, Marion’s phenomenology of givenness, Lacoste’s phenomenology of liturgical man, Chrétien’s phenomenology of the call, Claude Romano’s evential hermeneutics, and Emmanuel Falque’s phenomenology of the borderlands. Starting with the reception of Husserl and Heidegger in France, DeLay explains how this phenomenological thought challenges boundaries between philosophy and theology. Taking stock of its promise in light of the legacy it has transformed, DeLay concludes with a summary of the field’s relevance to theology and analytic philosophy, and indicates what the future holds for phenomenology.
Phenomenology in France: A Philosophical and Theological Introduction is an excellent resource for all students and scholars of phenomenology and continental philosophy, and will also be useful to those in related disciplines such as theology, literature and French studies.
Drawing upon a wide range of philosophical and theological schools, traditions, and figures, the eleven specially commissioned essays by international scholars enrich the discussion of how to meet the challenge of nihilism. Fundamental problems and topics include: the existence of God, the origins and status of morality, the nature and meaning of history, the relation between reason and faith, the status and role of philosophical knowledge, the place of art and religion in society, the future of modernity, the nature of postmodernity, the perils of technology, the specter of transhumanism, and the history of philosophy from Augustine to Kant and Hegel, Nietzsche to Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky, and Heidegger to Sartre and Camus.
Based on a popular series of online essays published at London artist and philosopher Richard Marshall’s 3:16 AM, Finding Meaning is essential reading for students and scholars of philosophy and theology, and for anyone with a true interest in making sense of what it means to be human in an age of nihilism.
This short but challenging course initiates students into an intellectual tradition that has deeply influenced philosophy, literature, cinema, architecture, and the arts. Phenomenology is one of European philosophy's most enduring, and vital traditions. The course provides a broad overview of phenomenology's two most notable historical figures, and it explores a number of its representative texts. The course is an excellent resource for students intending to learn through tutorials alongside an academic expert in the field.
During the Passion, Christ is mocked by Roman soldiers who “platted a crown of thorns, and put it on his head, and they put on a purple robe, and Said, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ and they smote him a purple robe” (John 19:2-3). This episode, like the other cruel events in which it figures, has suggested to some that Christ was a powerless and pathetic figure. That, for example, is certainly how Nietzsche saw the Crucified One. However, in answer to Pilate’s warning (“knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee?”), Christ’s reply indicates the presence of a paradoxical power: “Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above: therefore he that delivered me unto thee has the greater sin” (John 19:11). This chapter challenges the modern habit of equating power with self-assertion, coercion, and intimidation. What, we must ask, does true power involve if Christ, relinquishing any pretension of assertion, exemplifies it? Following Jean-Yves Lacoste’s analysis of a kenotic existence, this chapter shows how power consists in the humility of self-emptying. Rembrandt’s Christ Before Pilate and the People, Pieter Frasz de Grebber’s Christ at the Column, and Titian’s Ecce Homo serve as illustrations.
The eight chapters in Before God are an effort to awaken the appreciation of what it is to live in the presence of God, to recognize that our most intimate mode of existence is not one of being-in-the-world only. Surmounting received divisions between philosophy and theology, they explore the relation we have to God and others, tracing a path instituted in antiquity and latent still in certain strands of contemporary phenomenology. After two introductory explorations of the ancient conception of philosophy as a way of life that undermine the modern notion of philosophy as methodologically atheist, the third chapter examines our relation to others through an assessment of how, paradoxically, we are together in the world yet ever alone. This theme of our relation to others is deepened with an analysis of forgiveness in its various forms. The theme is continued in the next chapter’s discussion of peace, which is seen to prove so elusive because of the omnipresence of evil in the world, a fact which itself is explored in connection to the varieties of silence we encounter throughout our daily lives. Utilizing these results from the preceding chapters on forgiveness, peace, and silence, the last two chapters set out to inquire into perennial questions as doubt, deception, and hope. Drawing together the previous results, the final one expounds on the view of man which has emerged: we utterly are open to a God who in Jesus Christ calls each of us back to ourselves.
The eight chapters in Before God are an effort to awaken the appreciation of what it is to live in the presence of God, to recognize that our most intimate mode of existence is not one of being-in-the-world only. Surmounting received divisions between philosophy and theology, they explore the relation we have to God and others, tracing a path instituted in antiquity and latent still in certain strands of contemporary phenomenology. After two introductory explorations of the ancient conception of philosophy as a way of life that undermine the modern notion of philosophy as methodologically atheist, the third chapter examines our relation to others through an assessment of how, paradoxically, we are together in the world yet ever alone. This theme of our relation to others is deepened with an analysis of forgiveness in its various forms. The theme is continued in the next chapter’s discussion of peace, which is seen to prove so elusive because of the omnipresence of evil in the world, a fact which itself is explored in connection to the varieties of silence we encounter throughout our daily lives. Utilizing these results from the preceding chapters on forgiveness, peace, and silence, the last two chapters set out to inquire into perennial questions as doubt, deception, and hope. Drawing together the previous results, the final one expounds on the view of man which has emerged: we utterly are open to a God who in Jesus Christ calls each of us back to ourselves.
The eight chapters in Before God are an effort to awaken the appreciation of what it is to live in the presence of God, to recognize that our most intimate mode of existence is not one of being-in-the-world only. Surmounting received divisions between philosophy and theology, they explore the relation we have to God and others, tracing a path instituted in antiquity and latent still in certain strands of contemporary phenomenology. After two introductory explorations of the ancient conception of philosophy as a way of life that undermine the modern notion of philosophy as methodologically atheist, the third chapter examines our relation to others through an assessment of how, paradoxically, we are together in the world yet ever alone. This theme of our relation to others is deepened with an analysis of forgiveness in its various forms. The theme is continued in the next chapter’s discussion of peace, which is seen to prove so elusive because of the omnipresence of evil in the world, a fact which itself is explored in connection to the varieties of silence we encounter throughout our daily lives. Utilizing these results from the preceding chapters on forgiveness, peace, and silence, the last two chapters set out to inquire into perennial questions as doubt, deception, and hope. Drawing together the previous results, the final one expounds on the view of man which has emerged: we utterly are open to a God who in Jesus Christ calls each of us back to ourselves.
The eight chapters in Before God are an effort to awaken the appreciation of what it is to live in the presence of God, to recognize that our most intimate mode of existence is not one of being-in-the-world only. Surmounting received divisions between philosophy and theology, they explore the relation we have to God and others, tracing a path instituted in antiquity and latent still in certain strands of contemporary phenomenology. After two introductory explorations of the ancient conception of philosophy as a way of life that undermine the modern notion of philosophy as methodologically atheist, the third chapter examines our relation to others through an assessment of how, paradoxically, we are together in the world yet ever alone. This theme of our relation to others is deepened with an analysis of forgiveness in its various forms. The theme is continued in the next chapter’s discussion of peace, which is seen to prove so elusive because of the omnipresence of evil in the world, a fact which itself is explored in connection to the varieties of silence we encounter throughout our daily lives. Utilizing these results from the preceding chapters on forgiveness, peace, and silence, the last two chapters set out to inquire into perennial questions as doubt, deception, and hope. Drawing together the previous results, the final one expounds on the view of man which has emerged: we utterly are open to a God who in Jesus Christ calls each of us back to ourselves.
The eight chapters in Before God are an effort to awaken the appreciation of what it is to live in the presence of God, to recognize that our most intimate mode of existence is not one of being-in-the-world only. Surmounting received divisions between philosophy and theology, they explore the relation we have to God and others, tracing a path instituted in antiquity and latent still in certain strands of contemporary phenomenology. After two introductory explorations of the ancient conception of philosophy as a way of life that undermine the modern notion of philosophy as methodologically atheist, the third chapter examines our relation to others through an assessment of how, paradoxically, we are together in the world yet ever alone. This theme of our relation to others is deepened with an analysis of forgiveness in its various forms. The theme is continued in the next chapter’s discussion of peace, which is seen to prove so elusive because of the omnipresence of evil in the world, a fact which itself is explored in connection to the varieties of silence we encounter throughout our daily lives. Utilizing these results from the preceding chapters on forgiveness, peace, and silence, the last two chapters set out to inquire into perennial questions as doubt, deception, and hope. Drawing together the previous results, the final one expounds on the view of man which has emerged: we utterly are open to a God who in Jesus Christ calls each of us back to ourselves.
The eight chapters in Before God are an effort to awaken the appreciation of what it is to live in the presence of God, to recognize that our most intimate mode of existence is not one of being-in-the-world only. Surmounting received divisions between philosophy and theology, they explore the relation we have to God and others, tracing a path instituted in antiquity and latent still in certain strands of contemporary phenomenology. After two introductory explorations of the ancient conception of philosophy as a way of life that undermine the modern notion of philosophy as methodologically atheist, the third chapter examines our relation to others through an assessment of how, paradoxically, we are together in the world yet ever alone. This theme of our relation to others is deepened with an analysis of forgiveness in its various forms. The theme is continued in the next chapter’s discussion of peace, which is seen to prove so elusive because of the omnipresence of evil in the world, a fact which itself is explored in connection to the varieties of silence we encounter throughout our daily lives. Utilizing these results from the preceding chapters on forgiveness, peace, and silence, the last two chapters set out to inquire into perennial questions as doubt, deception, and hope. Drawing together the previous results, the final one expounds on the view of man which has emerged: we utterly are open to a God who in Jesus Christ calls each of us back to ourselves.
The eight chapters in Before God are an effort to awaken the appreciation of what it is to live in the presence of God, to recognize that our most intimate mode of existence is not one of being-in-the-world only. Surmounting received divisions between philosophy and theology, they explore the relation we have to God and others, tracing a path instituted in antiquity and latent still in certain strands of contemporary phenomenology. After two introductory explorations of the ancient conception of philosophy as a way of life that undermine the modern notion of philosophy as methodologically atheist, the third chapter examines our relation to others through an assessment of how, paradoxically, we are together in the world yet ever alone. This theme of our relation to others is deepened with an analysis of forgiveness in its various forms. The theme is continued in the next chapter’s discussion of peace, which is seen to prove so elusive because of the omnipresence of evil in the world, a fact which itself is explored in connection to the varieties of silence we encounter throughout our daily lives. Utilizing these results from the preceding chapters on forgiveness, peace, and silence, the last two chapters set out to inquire into perennial questions as doubt, deception, and hope. Drawing together the previous results, the final one expounds on the view of man which has emerged: we utterly are open to a God who in Jesus Christ calls each of us back to ourselves.
The eight chapters in Before God are an effort to awaken the appreciation of what it is to live in the presence of God, to recognize that our most intimate mode of existence is not one of being-in-the-world only. Surmounting received divisions between philosophy and theology, they explore the relation we have to God and others, tracing a path instituted in antiquity and latent still in certain strands of contemporary phenomenology. After two introductory explorations of the ancient conception of philosophy as a way of life that undermine the modern notion of philosophy as methodologically atheist, the third chapter examines our relation to others through an assessment of how, paradoxically, we are together in the world yet ever alone. This theme of our relation to others is deepened with an analysis of forgiveness in its various forms. The theme is continued in the next chapter’s discussion of peace, which is seen to prove so elusive because of the omnipresence of evil in the world, a fact which itself is explored in connection to the varieties of silence we encounter throughout our daily lives. Utilizing these results from the preceding chapters on forgiveness, peace, and silence, the last two chapters set out to inquire into perennial questions as doubt, deception, and hope. Drawing together the previous results, the final one expounds on the view of man which has emerged: we utterly are open to a God who in Jesus Christ calls each of us back to ourselves.