Preface

Introduction

1
The Absence of the Essential

1.1 An Essenceless World

The Reversal of Positions
The Dominion of Wealth
Comedy and Cynicism

1.2 The Protest of Faith

Faith as Flight
The Essencelessness of Faith

1.3 The "Retrieval" of the Essential. The Struggle of the Enlightenment

God's Disappearance
The Unsatisfied Enlightenment

1.4 A One-Dimensional World and a Distant God

2
Ways of Thinking toward God

2.1 Faith and Thought

Faith
The Experience of Thought

2.2 Enigmatic Contingency

Why Something at All . . . ?
An Informational Intermezzo: Concerning Proofs of God
An Example: Thomas Aquinas
A Necessary Ground for All That Is
The Decisive Presupposition

2.3 The Actuality of Thought

Intermezzo
Anselm. Thought and Being
Descartes. Subjectivity and Infinitude
God as Ground and Measure

2.4 The Experience of Limits and Openness

3
An Abyss for Thought

3.1 The Limits of Thought

The Decisive Point: Thought and Being
Contingency
The Well-Ordered Cosmos

3.2 The Scope of the Critique

It Concerns the Entirety of Philosophy
The Ideal of Pure Reason
The Positive Turn

3.3 Kant's Way: The Absoluteness of the Ought

The Indisputable Moral "Fact"
The Postulate of God's Existence

3.4 The Limits of the Limits

Critique of the Critique
The Metaphysical Élan

4
Auschwitz: The End of an Illusion?

4.1 The Mystery of Evil

Beyond Any Concept?
The Sting of Moral Evil

4.2 The Mystery of Freedom

The Refusal of Adorno
Kant: Evil and Freedom

4.3 The Rose and the Cross

God and Evil
Evil Is Not Absolute

5
Human Finitude and the Presence of God

5.1 Finitude as Boundary

Heidegger: The Desacralisation of the World
The Metaphysics of Subjectivity
Thinking Does Not Merely "Happen" to Us

5.2 The Mystery of God's Presence

The Death of God
Nietzsche as Child of His Time
Hegel: The Absolute Is Present
Finite Transcendence?
Philosophy's Claim to Truth

Notes

Cited Literature

About the Author

Index