Bob Dylan

Abstract One of the first book-length works on Bob Dylan from a philosophical perspective, Bob Dylan: Prophet Without God defends the idea of Dylan as a modern-day prophet, albeit one of an unusual, almost unprecedented type. Dylan speaks to the ideals that have animated earlier prophets—social justice, individual freedom, and adherence to God—but breaks from tradition in continually insisting on the conflicts between these ideals, leading him to make novel and important contributions to the meaning of self-reliance, the quest for rapprochement between the religious and non-religious, and the question of how ordinary people might operate in a fallen political world. The book aspires to an overarching account of why Dylan fascinates, even as it also explains why he will remain mysterious and elusive. Bob Dylan: Prophet Without God places Dylan into conversation with a wide array of historical and contemporary intellectual figures to highlight the originality and significance of Dylan’s political, religious, and ethical ideas.