The widespread view is that prayer is the center of religious existence and that understanding the meaning of prayer requires that we assume God is its sole destination. This book challenges this assumption and, through a phenomenological analysis of the meaning of prayer in modern Hebrew literature, shows that prayer does not depend at all on the addressee—humans are praying beings. Prayer is, above all, the recognition that we are free to transcend the facts of our life and an expression of the hope that we can override the weight of our past and present circumstances.
Cuprins
Introduction
Chapter 1: Prayer and Hebrew Literature
Chapter 2: “The Death of God” and the Possibility of Prayer
Chapter 3: Prayer as a Primary Datum
Chapter 4: Between Self-Reflection and Ontological Event
Chapter 5: Grappling with the Addressee Problem
Chapter 6: Reconstructing the “Death of God” Moment
Chapter 7: Humans as Praying Beings: A Phenomenological Profile Bibliography
Index
Despre autor
Avi Sagi is Professor of Philosophy and founder of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Hermeneutics and Cultural Studies at Bar-Ilan University as well as a faculty member at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. He has written and edited many books and articles in philosophy and Jewish thought, among them Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd, Jewish Religion after Theology, and Tradition vs. Traditionalism.