This book expounds and analyses notions of transcendence, creation and incarnation reflectively and personally, combining both philosophical and religious insights. Preferring tender-minded approaches to reductively materialistic ones, it shows some ways in which reductive approaches to human affairs can distort the appreication of our lives and activities.

In the book’s first half it examines a number of aspects of human life and experience in the thought of Darwin, Ruskin, and Scruton with a view to exploring the extent to which there could be intimations of transcendence. The second half is then devoted to outlining an account of divine creation and incarnation, deriving initially, though not uncritically, from the thought of Simone Weil. The text concludes by examining the extent to which grace is needed to engage in religious practice and belief.

Taking in art, literature, music and classical Greek writings, this is a multifaceted thesis on transcendence. It will, therefore, will be of keen interest to any scholar of Philosophy of Religion, Theology, Aesthetics and Metaphysics.

Anthony O’Hear is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Buckingham, UK. From 1994-2019 he was Director of the Royal Institute of Philosophy and Editor of Philosophy, its academic journal. He is the author of many books and articles on philosophy, including Karl Popper (1980), What Philosophy Is (1984), The Element of Fire (1988), Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (1989), Beyond Evolution (1997), Philosophy in the New Century (2001) and The Landscape of Humanity (2008). Picturing the Apocalypse (2015), co-authored with Natasha O’Hear, won the ACE/Mercers prize in 2017 as the best book internationally on art and religion. Anthony O’Hear was appointed OBE in 2018.