Redemption in Poetry and Philosophy

Explores how the need for redemption is realized in the post-Christian poetics of William Wordsworth and philosophical imagination of Immanuel Kant. Simon Haines critiques the secular modes of salvation articulated by each figure to illustrate the shortcomings of modern, post-Christian imagination.

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A biblical understanding of redemption requires the sacrificial death of Jesus. In the post-Christian world envisioned by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his Enlightenment contemporaries, the Christ-centric source of redemption disappears, though the human need for salvation remains. Redemption in Poetry and Philosophy explores how this need for redemption is realized in the post-Christian poetics of William Wordsworth and philosophical imagination of Immanuel Kant. Simon Haines critiques the secular modes of salvation articulated by each figure to illustrate the shortcomings of modern, post-Christian imagination. Redemption in Poetry and Philosophy highlights the ways in which prose allegedly serves as a redemptive agent for nonbelievers in the modern age, but also engenders dangerous notions of self-redemption in contemporary Christians.