Living Forms of the Imagination

Douglas Hedley is Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at the University of Cambridge, UK. A past President of the European Society for the Philosophy of Religion, he has been visiting Professor at the Sorbonne and holder of the Alan Richardson lectureship at Durham University. He delivered the Teape Lectures in India in 2007. His former publications include Coleridge, Philosophy and Religion (Cambridge University Press).

• AcknowledgementsPrologue1. Religion, Romanticism and Imagining Modernity2. The Creative Imagination3. The Experience of God: Poetry, Enchantment and the Mood of Ecstatic Imagination4. Religion: Fantasy, or Legitimate Longing?5. The Problem of Metaphysics6. Myths, Dreams and Other Stories7. Inspired Images, Angels and the Imaginal World8. Social ImaginaryEpilogueBibliographyIndex of SubjectsIndex of Names

This is an impressively learned book. Imagination is a central component of humanity's encounter with the world. Imagination can lea to conversion of heart and empowerment for action. While the author's retrieval of Platonism and Romanticism may not answer fundamental contemporary issues in belief, it is very suggestive of new avenues of how to deal with the crisis of belief and unbelief.