Craig Burrell at All Manner of Thing has an excellent review of a book I've long wanted to read, The Drama of Atheist Humanism by Henri de Lubac, S.J., which apparently makes a point similar to mine about Nietzsche and Dostoevsky. That's only part of the interest in the review, though–by all means read it all, here.
Lubac’s book is definitely worth a read if you’re interested in such things. Also very much worth tracking down is Copleston’s lecture “St Thomas and Nietzsche,” which was published as a chapbook in the 40s and reprinted in the 50s. It’s out of print but easily obtainable by interlibrary loan if your local lib. system doesn’t have a copy.
An excellent recent study of D’s work is Rowan Williams’ Dostoevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction.
It’s even possible I have a copy of the de Lubac book. If I do, though, it was bought 30 years ago. Somehow I’m very aware of it yet have not read it.
Always a bit hard for me to take Rowan Williams very seriously, though I know he’s a serious thinker. I guess not being taken seriously comes with the territory of being Archbishop of Canterbury now. 😉
Oddly enough, Williams knows Eastern Orthodox thought very well, which gives him some advantage in his reading of Dostoevsky. Before I read this book I had no idea — I think Ralph Wood had a review somewhere that drew my attention to it. Touchstone, perhaps?
Looks interesting. I vaguely remember seeing it when it came out, now that you nudge my memory. I’ll (re)read it later.
Thanks, Mac. I noticed the nice coincidence of your Dostoyevsky-Nietzsche comments.
If I remember rightly, Grumpy impersonated de Lubac at a theology conference a year or two ago, and she could no doubt teach us a thing or two about him. But I think she is offline for Lent.
Yes, she is. Do you mean literally impersonated? Or represented his views?
I think she impersonated him, in the sense of delivering an address “in the first person”, as though she were he. I wasn’t there, but I remember reading something about it.
That was probably fun for all.
Since I wrote my dissertation on de Lubac, I suppose I ought to have something to say about this, but I don’t. I have Drama on my bookshelf, but I don’t think I’ve ever read more than just snippets.
What aspect of his thought did you write about? I don’t actually know very much about him. He was sort of progressively orthodox in the sense that Benedict and John Paul are/were, I think. And I read The Splendor of the Church a long time ago, but don’t remember much about it.
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