Original upload date: Thu, 09 Aug 2018 00:00:00 GMT
Archive date: Mon, 06 Dec 2021 00:14:50 GMT
William Blake (1757–1827) was an English poet, painter, printmaker, and visionary. Largely unrecognized during his lifetime, Blake is now regarded as a seminal figure in the poetry and visual arts of
...
the Romantic Age. Blake lived and worked in London at a time of social-political ferment that profoundly influenced his writing. The storm wave begun with the American Revolution in 1775 and the French Revolution in 1789 fundamentally changed the way people regarded the state and the established church. As the storming of the Bastille and the French Revolution sent shock waves through England, some hoped for a corresponding outbreak of liberty in England, while others feared a breakdown of the social order. Blake's writings support revolution as against monarchy. Blake was familiar with some of the leading radical thinkers of his day such as William Godwin, Joseph Priestly, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Thomas Paine.
Thomas J. J. Altizer (1927-2018) was a radical theologian whose systematic theology built on the "death of God" thinking of diverse modern figures — in addition to Blake — such as G. W. F. Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche. He emerged as a leading protagonist of the "death of God" controversy in the late 1960s, and after the media phenomenon subsided he authored some fifteen books of radical theology. His early study of Blake is entitled The New Apocalypse (1967). Other major works are History as Apocalypse (1985), Genesis and Apocalypse (1990), and The Genesis of God (1993). More accessible books are Total Presence (1980), The Contemporary Jesus (1996), and his memoir Living the Death of God (2006). This video was recorded in June 2018, a few months before his death.
