Die Emergenz des Namens

In contemporary theology, it is apparent that the issue is no longer the word »God« but rather the name of God. Günter Bader focuses on this from the standpoint of the emergence of the name. In the first chapter, the author deals with disorders of the memory for names. He studies traditional theological texts which deal explicitly with the divine name or names: Thomas Aquinas, Dionysius the Areopagite, Plato. The second chapter is based on the loss of language. The author describes two paradigms: Goldstein's and Cassirer's theory of single aphasia and Jakobson's theory of double aphasia. How are name and language related? The author sees two trends: the theories of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, which are closely related to the Kabbalah, and those of Levinas and Derrida.