Background
Mackey, Louis Henry was born on September 24, 1926 in Sidney, Ohio, United States. Son of Louis Henry and Clara Emma (Maurer) Mackey.
(Gilbert Sorrentino is the most innovative and experimenta...)
Gilbert Sorrentino is the most innovative and experimental writer now working in America. In a long and still continuing series of novels he has broken down the barriers of fictional realism in ways which undercut the traditional boundaries between fact and fiction, exposing the problematical character of representation. However, although his position in contemporary American fiction is assured, he has not yet received the serious critical attention his work deserves. This volume is the first full length treatment of his work in depth and detail; it examines four novels published by Sorrentino in the 1980s (Crystal Vision, Odd Number, Rose Theatre and Misterioso), aiming to identify the critical and philosophical problems raised in his work and assessing his achievements in dealing with them.
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(Kierkegaard has been attacked, explained in dozens of way...)
Kierkegaard has been attacked, explained in dozens of ways, trivialized, mindlessly admixed, quoted without being understood, and even psychoanalyzed a distans. Now comes Louis Mackey with an interpretation tam antiqua quam nova of Kierkegaard as a poet
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( One of the besetting problems of the present age is the...)
One of the besetting problems of the present age is the conflict between criticism and commitment. Those who hold strong convictions fear that rational criticism may corrode the moral and religious foundations of society. Advocates of rational critique tend to perceive people with strong convictions as fanatics. The Middles Ages was likewise a time when people were both deeply committed and relentlessly rational. In Peregrinations of the Word, Louis Mackey examines the way important medieval thinkers dealt with the relation of faith and reason, in the hope that their example may assist contemporary society in harmonizing belief and critical vigilance. Peregrinations of the Word consists of essays on five medieval philosophers: Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus. An essay on the tension between autobiography and theology in Augustine's Confessions is followed by a commentary on the dialogue of faith and reason in his On the Teacher. A third essay shows how Anselm's Proslogion both constructs and deconstructs the ontological proof of God's existence. There is a discussion of Bonaventure's staging of the opposition between Aristotle and the scriptures in terms of the respective languages. Finally there is an examination of the ways Duns Scotus's distinctive positions on the Incarnation, the Immaculate Conception, and the Eucharist shape his philosophical views. Though each of these essays is an independent study, they have as a common theme the relation between faith and reason as understood in the Middle Ages; e.g., the conflict between the hermeneutic of reason and that of revelation in the construction of self; the dialectic of philosophical demonstration and devotional submission required of all discourse about God; and the resources available to medieval theology for resolving the conflict of nominalism and realism. Mackey maintains that medieval philosophy can only be understood in its theological and scriptural milieu. He has argued this point by showing how that milieu enabled these five thinkers to deal with a variety of philosophical issues. He concludes persuasively that religious beliefs and exegetical concerns did not shackle the medieval mind but rather liberated it and empowered it. Louis Mackey is Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin.
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(In An Ancient Quarrel Continued, Louis Mackey argues that...)
In An Ancient Quarrel Continued, Louis Mackey argues that the relationship of philosophy with the literary arts is more intimate, more problematic, and more interesting than its relationship with the sciences. Employing the methods of philosophical analysis, as well as critical reading, traversing the realms of literary theory and philosophical fiction, Mackey characterizes a philosophy more acutely conscious of its own textuality and of its reliance on literary forms it ordinarily regards as merely decorative. Mackey shows that the real philosophical interest of literature lies not in what it says, but in the way it creatively molds and modifies the topics of discourse common to philosophy and the other verbal arts.
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Mackey, Louis Henry was born on September 24, 1926 in Sidney, Ohio, United States. Son of Louis Henry and Clara Emma (Maurer) Mackey.
After earning a Bachelor of Arts at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio he pursued graduate studies in philosophy, first at Duke University, and then Yale, from which he received his Doctor of Philosophy in 1954.
His dissertation was titled "The Nature and the End of the Ethical Life according to Kierkegaard."
Teaching and research
Mackey was an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at Yale before moving to Rice University in 1959. He then moved to the University of Texas at Austin in 1967 where he remained for 35 years until his retirement for health reasons. He had a reputation at each institution as an engaging teacher.
He also wrote and lectured on Saint Augustine and Medieval Philosophy.
His published work also included literary criticism, literary theory, and inquiries into the relationship of philosophy to literature, and in particular applying the tools of literary criticism to philosophical texts (early in his career using the tools of the New Critics, and then later with an emphasis on Jacques Derrida and Deconstruction). He was especially interested in the fictional works of Gilbert Sorrentino and Thomas Pynchon.
Other activities
However, he was also on record as a defender of popular music claiming that The Beatles and The Rolling Stones "display a phenomenal melodic inventiveness and a harmonic and contrapuntal imagination that even us squares can dig." He was also an occasional actor and appeared in two Richard Linklater films, Slacker (1991) and Waking Life (2001).
(In An Ancient Quarrel Continued, Louis Mackey argues that...)
(Kierkegaard has been attacked, explained in dozens of way...)
( One of the besetting problems of the present age is the...)
(Gilbert Sorrentino is the most innovative and experimenta...)
Children: Stephen Louis, Thomas Adam, Jacob Louis, Eva Maria.