Volume 43, Issue 2, July 2017
Thomas Pfau
Pages 4-20
The Failure of Charity and the Loss of Personhood
Beyond the Enlightenment Impasse
Pfau elaborates the arguments he develops in Minding the Modern, and devotes particular attention to the question of the incommensurability of premodern and modern accounts of personhood and agency. He highlights the distinct nature of humanistic forms of inquiry (including history and theology) and examines their hermeneutic character, noting the priority of meaning over method. He emphasizes the interdependence of affection, volition, and cognition, and also analyzes varying descriptions of relationality. The article closes with a meditation on a section of T.S. Eliot’s Waste Land and the insights it provides to the themes mentioned in the essay.