Samuel Kimbriel advocates a return to an antique and particularly Christian philosophical habit--"the befriending of wisdom"--in which knowledge is taken to be a kind of communion with God.

• Acknowledgements


• Abbreviations


• Introduction


• Part I - Friendship and disengagement


• 1: Friendship and isolation


• 2: Friendship, virtue and contemplation


• Part II - Friendship and enquiry: Beyond disengagement


• 3: Sacred knowing and indwelling love


• 4: The porous enquirer


• 5: The veiled path: Enquiry, agency and desire


• 6: Human finitude and the paradox of enquiry


• 7: Friendship and deification


• Conclusion


• Bibliography


• Primary texts


• Secondary texts


• Index

Samuel Kimbriel is a teaching fellow in philosophical theology at the University of Nottingham. His research focuses on questions of metaphysical realism, with a particular interest in perception and intellection. He holds an MPhil and PhD from the University of Cambridge.