Creating a Human World: A New Psychological and Religious Anthropology In Dialogue With Freud, Heidegger, and Kierke-Gaard. By Ernest Daniel Carrere. 281 pp. Scranton: University of Scranton Press, 2006, $30

Excerpt

Ernest Daniel Carrere’s Creating a Human World is a remarkable study—both for its strong scholarly foundations and its accessibility to a broad reading public. Widely reminiscent of Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death, this work continues the questions begun therein: the conundrum of how a person or group moves from a closed, defensive existence to a life that is open and sharing, not only tolerating otherness but celebrating others. “What makes possible,” asks Carrere, “a shared and human world?” Weaving together a narrative that is integrally philosophical, psychological and religious, Carrere—a Trappist monk with a Ph.D. in psychological and religious anthropology—determines that the answer to this question is ultimately revealed, vis-à-vis Heidegger, through resolute acceptance of our own mortality, through embracing the vulnerabilities and contingencies of finite, embodied life. But these answers themselves, comprising the vital heart of religious-existential theory, and the topic of many a dissertation, are not nearly as interesting or insightful as is the careful journey that Carrere takes us on to get there, and it is in the journey itself that the great strength of this work is found. …