John Henry Newman and the Self

In today's problematic context, John Henry Newman's (1801-1890) idea of the person is the best candidate to respond to the dissolution of the self and contemporary individualism. This book shows how, in a close dialectic within consciousness, the self recognises itself as a person, the "other" in front of itself, and the "Other" that dwells within itself. In this "grammar of recognition", Newman is a natural interlocutor, not only of Locke, Hume and Smith, but also of Husserl's and Edith Stein's phenomenology, and Gadamer's and Ricoeur's hermeneutic philosophy. His thought is rooted in their same humus, the empiricist reflection and the romantic emphasis on lived experience. The author's approach highlights that at the same time Newman surpasses both in his ability to denounce the limits of anthropocentric invulnerability and in his effort to go beyond the human beings' loss of meaning, opening up the perspective of God's transcendence.

As one of the most renowned experts on Newman's philosophy, Michele Marchetto (Iusve, Venice, Italy, linked to Università Pontificia Salesiana, Rome, Italy) edited Newman's Scritti filosofici (2005, 2014), and Scritti sull'Università (2008), both volumes introduced by long monographs. Among more than thirty writings on Newman, he contributed with The Understanding of "Selfhood" in Newman's Thought and in Contemporary Western Philosophical Culture to the volume The Relevance of Newman in a "Post-Christian" World (Cambridge Scholars, 2021), in addition to Religious Education and John Henry Newman's Idea of a University (2015), and The Philosophical Relevance of John Henry Newman (2011). His last works on Newman are John Henry Newman. Identità, alterità, persona (2016), and Newman. Il primato di Dio e la formazione dell'uomo (2019), partially translated here.