William Franke and the Unfinished Philosophical Revolution of the West

Abstract

Contemporary thinking in the Continental tradition is marked in particular by a major revision in the division of labor between the disciplines of theology and philosophy. A central characteristic of this revision is a critique of reason that rediscovers the conditions of possibility of rational reflection in the mythic or narrative horizon. This perspective, a truly Copernican turn from within the Kantian legacy, is exemplified in the recent work of William Franke, A Philosophy of the Unsayable. Perhaps the crucial determining question of this contemporary turn is the status of divine revelation within it. This chapter attempts to situate Franke within the tradition of Western thought, understood as a theoretical penetration of reason’s own “apophatic milieu,” in order to raise the question of revelation in light of his thinking.