Peter Sloterdijk is Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics at the Karlsruhe School of Design. Robert Hughes, the translator, is associate professor of English at Ohio State University.

Acknowledgements

Preface

I Deus ex machina, Deus ex cathedra

1 The gods in the theater

2 Plato's contestation

3 Of the true religion

4 Representing God, being God: an Egyptian solution

5 On the best of all possible heaven dwellers

6 Poetries of power

7 Dwelling in plausibilities

8 The theopoetical difference

9 Revelation whence?

10 The death of the gods

11 'Religion is unbelief': Karl Barth's intervention

12 In the garden of infallibility: Denzinger's world

II Under the high heavens

13 Fictive belonging together

14 Twilight of the gods and sociophany

15 Glory: poems of praise

16 Poetry of patience

17 Poetry of exaggeration: religious virtuosos and their excesses

18 Kerygma, propaganda, supply-side offense, or, When fiction is not to be trifled with

19 On the prose and poetry of the search

20 Religious freedom

In lieu of an afterword

Notes

Index

"Religion is poetry, poetry is religion, and both are concerned with the 'overarching' that is at once cosmic and political. The avatars of this triple connectivity, and what happens to it when the overarching becomes paradoxically contested, are brilliantly explored in this new book. Agree with Peter Sloterdijk or not, he will assist you to think further about what is truly fundamental to our human existence and its future."
--John Milbank, University of Nottingham