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William Franke's ON WHAT CANNOT BE SAID reviewed in Religion and Literature

Thursday, July 23, 2009

  • “These two volumes successfully realize a massive project: to propose and delineate a new field of discourse that provides a fresh approach to Western thought as a whole. In short, William Franke demonstrates the centrality of apophaticism, ‘what cannot be said,’ to the Western tradition, from Plato (and before) to Derrida (and beyond). … The first volume covers the first ‘cycles’ of apophasis, as the Western tradition evolves, stretching from the commentary tradition of Plato’s Parmenides to Eckhart and his progenitor.VOLUME 1 … The second volume, stretching from Holderlin to Jean-Luc Marion, provides readings from sources as diverse as Schelling, Dickenson, Kafka, Wittgenstein, John Cage, and Maurice Blanchot. … Franke observes that these modern and contemporary apophatic currents, as radical as they truly are, are nevertheless thoroughly indebted to the ‘ancient theological matrices’ out of which they indirectly (or not so indirectly) spring .VOLUME 2. … Franke’s work is nothing short of brilliant.” —Religion and Literature, vol. 40.3, Autumn 2008

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