Following Credit and Faith and Economic Theology, this third volume in the series develops a metaphysics which is missing when trust is ordered around economic theories and institutions. Human existence may be conceived according to its temporal dimensions of appropriation, participation, and offering. Engaging with the Western philosophical tradition from the Neo-Pythagoreans and Plato to Heidegger and Arendt, drawing especially from Augustine and Weil, Goodchild offers striking reconstructions of the meanings of economic, political and religious dimensions of life. The outcome is an elaboration of conceptions of wealth, power, contingency, necessity and grace which give a new orientation to human life and endeavour. Goodchild situates this discussion within the current historical era of the breakdown of global financial capitalism. He draws from the Financial Revolution in England as a time of crisis which illuminates our own. Faced with a range of global crises, Goodchild proposes an alternative between strategies for survival: either submission before a Great Machine of Credit as an autonomous, unthinking system for regulating human behaviour or accession to the necessity of grace as a way of empowering the pursuit of wealth, justice and thought.
Philip Goodchild is professor of religion and philosophy at the University of Nottingham.
Preface:A discourteous welcome Part One:Introducing the Metaphysics of Trust First Parable:A failed escape Chapter One:Trust and orientation Chapter Two:The metaphysics of everyday life Chapter Three: Finitude and trust Chapter Four:A Recapitulation Part Two:Wealth and Appropriation: Metaphysics of Credit Second Parable: The usurper Chapter Five:Land, human power, and capital Chapter Six:The wealth of significance Chapter Seven: More or less real Chapter Eight: Dwelling within limits Chapter Nine:Varieties of appropriation Chapter Ten:Living economically Part Three:Power and Participation: Politics of Credit Third Parable:The city of justice Chapter Eleven: Religion, reason and will Chapter Twelve: State power Chapter Thirteen: Individual power Chapter Fourteen: Respect and participation Chapter Fifteen: Justice and metaphysics Chapter Sixteen: Politics of faith Part Four: Necessity and Grace: Theology of Credit Fourth Parable: The Great Machine of Credit Chapter Fifteen: The birth of the modern age Chapter Sixteen: The end of global capitalism Chapter Seventeen: The miracle of redemption Chapter Eighteen: The potency of ideas Chapter Nineteen: Trust and grace Conclusion: Repetition
