Varieties of Transcendence and Their Consequences for Political Philosophy

Abstract

In this essay I argue that the notion of religious transcendence was a latecomer in human evolution. It did not appear before the Axial Age, and in its extreme form as a realm of ultimate meanings beyond human reach it had only a locally and temporally bounded existence. Once it appeared, however, the idea of religious transcendence set an evolutionary dynamic in motion, which soon led to various forms of “immanent transcendence,” starting from the “Papal Revolution” and continuing with the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Kantian notion of the transcendental and its Hegelian and Habermasian modifications. In my conclusion I briefly discuss two alternative versions of modern immanent transcendence—cognitive and exemplary—and their consequences for political philosophy.     

Capitalism,Christianity, America: Rethinking the Issues

Abstract

Appreciative of the points made by all four commentators, William Connolly seeks to clarify some issues and modify a few positions taken in his book Capitalism and Christianity, American Style (2008). Philip Goodchild's account of "resonance" is superb, but I hesitate over his tendency to argue that the demise of capitalism is inevitable. Catherine Keller deepens the theological issues pursued in my book, as she shows additional ways to open "theopoetic" connections between those who pursue deep, multidimensional pluralism. David Howarth makes important links between my position and that of Ernesto Laclau, and he joins me in resisting those who eschew engagement with the state as they fight off the neoliberal/evangelical machine. I use the occasion of this dialogue to explore further the relations between conceptions of immanence and those of transcendence. Kathy Ferguson admirably shows how the experience of grief by evangelical women opens a possible door to engagements of agonistic respect. In each engagement I try to follow some of the suggestions and to add a couple of my own.     

Ideology and the Retreat From Personhood

Abstract

In this paper I make two primary arguments. First, I argue that what makes totalitarian regimes distinctive and leads to their hyper-repressive atmosphere is ideology. Such regimes are totalitarian precisely because they are ideological. These regimes are thus better termed and understood as “ideocracies.” Second, I attempt to depict in precise terms how ideological regimes attack the human person to disable agency and responsibility. Numerous authors such as Václav Havel and Czeslaw Milosz have argued that living in an atmosphere saturated by ideological lies has a very profound effect on the human person. Very few authors, however, have even attempted to delineate how ideology does this work. First, I examine one such attempt by Hannah Arendt. Then I use the resources of phenomenology and the work of Robert Sokolowski to give my own account of how ideological thinking and ideological language attack human agency.     

Transcendence and Apocalyptic: A Reply to Barber

Abstract

This essay takes up Dan Barber's challenge to think Christian theology non-analogically. It does so by re-affirming and re-conceiving transcendence according to a kind of apocalyptic exigence. Apocalyptic transcendence, it is argued, occurs according to a mode of action that is irreducible either to the univocal production of pure immanence, or to the analogical mediation of transcendence within immanence. Rather, apocalyptic transcendence is operative as a mode of action by which immanence is suspended and the territorial conceptions of this-worldly sovereignty are denied. Through engagement with the work of John Howard Yoder, it is argued that apocalyptic thus gives way to doxology as that mode of engaged and embodied action that alone exceeds the presumed need for effective ontological production.     

Building Community Self-Esteem: Advocating for Culture

Abstract

This published version of the 2019 David Buchan Lecture draws on personal lived experiences and public folklore work to explore the folklorist’s role in creating the conditions for cultures to thrive. Understanding those conditions to include community self-esteem nurtured by a sense of belonging, I ask what is our responsibility when we witness disruptions and inequities? Can we create change when we amplify the voices of a community? Reflecting on my work with refugee and immigrant women over four decades, this article offers a glimpse into the collaborative work of a folklorist who found her bearings in the opportunity, even the responsibility, to advocate for cultural equity in her community.     

The Transcendence of State-Sanctioned Violence and Christian Solidarity

Abstract

This essay is concerned with the nature of the human experiences of transcendence and solidarity with particular reference to state-sanctioned violence and the non-violent resistance inspired by Christian faith. With research undertaken in East Timor, the essay identifies two different forms of transcendence—one marked by mob violence; and the other by ecclesial solidarity. It explores these forms of transcendence in the context of the statesanctioned executions in East Timor that occurred in 1999 after the populace voted for independence from Indonesia, which had brutally occupied the territory from 1975 to 1999. Through the story of a group that was to be executed, the essay explores the nature of state-sanctioned violence as structured by violent transcendence; and the Christian solidarity informed by a pacific transcendence located in the victimhood of Christ. The essay claims that the anthropological insights of René Girard provide an important lens to understanding the East Timorese experience, in which I argue that statesanctioned violence was resisted through the pacific transcendence located in Christ that awakened a consciousness of the victim.     

Philosophy and Esotericism

Abstract

Arthur Melzer's Philosophy Between the Lines establishes the historical reality of esotericism, or at least the reputation for it, throughout Western and Islamic philosophy until late modernity. But Melzer wants to do much more than that: to establish that there is a whole new world of philosophy to uncover and explore, thus to promote the recovery of “a long lost art of philosophical literacy.” I argue that he fails in this task. Most of the evidence he has for esotericism concerns religious beliefs, and it does not show that a significant portion of the work of important philosophers is to be read esoterically. I offer a detailed analysis of his account of Aristotle's alleged esotericism to give some indication of the weakness of his evidence. I also argue against the Straussian assumption (regarding the dualism of human nature between theory and practice) that stands behind so much of his account of esotericism. I end with a discussion of pedagogical esotericism, contrasting Melzer's Straussian account with my Nietzschean account of what esotericism can contribute to philosophical education.     

Reading Caliban and the Witch politically

Abstract

What I’d like to do here is to offer some cursory reflections on Silvia Federici’s contribution to anti-capitalist thought and practice. I do this through my engagement with her work on the Great Witch-Hunt.     

Atavistic Novelty: Questioning Hannah Arendt’s Understanding of Totalitarianism

ABSTRACT

This article offers a critique of Hannah Arendt’s interpretation of totalitarianism as formulated in her magnum opus—The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). It argues that, to comprehend totalitarianism, Arendt forged a heterodox method of historical analysis. Employing that method, she conceived totalitarianism as a form of transcendence of historical context. In doing so, however, she ignored crucial historical contexts that were in fact related to the history of totalitarianism. Subverting her interpretation of totalitarianism as transcendence, these elided contexts erupted inadvertently and repeatedly into her analysis—revealing that totalitarianism was solidly embedded in them. The Origins of Totalitarianism thus exhibits a conceptual contradiction that confuses its attempt to understand totalitarianism.     

Jacob Vernet and ‘The Religious Enlightenment’: ‘Rational Calvinism’, the Pastors of Geneva and the French philosophes

Summary

In this article I react to dismissive remarks made about my Jacob Vernet, Geneva and the philosophes (1994) in a recent book by David Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment (2008). Vernet, a distinguished Genevan pastor and theologian, who fell foul of d'Alembert, Voltaire and Rousseau, is one of six figures studied by Sorkin, who claims that the religious dimension of the Enlightenment has been much underestimated and that the philosophes were considerably less significant than has usually been thought. Reacting to the accusation that my treatment of Vernet's theology was superficial and unreliable, I reconsider the latter's major theological works (including his Traité de la vérité de la religion chrétienne, Instruction chrétienne, and Pièces fugitives sur l'eucharistie) in an attempt to validate my previous interpretation, and illustrate that Vernet refused to acknowledge ideas that he had actually published. The second part of the article draws more general conclusions, pointing out spectacular errors in Sorkin's depiction of eighteenth-century Geneva and arguing that he has a clear agenda, which, in my opinion, is wrong-headed, easy to refute and—above all—often based on gratuitous accusations and statements lacking any evidence.     

Eric Voegelin as a Teacher's Teacher

ABSTRACT

Eric Voegelin was never interested in forming a school—his quest for truth was so Socratic that the last thing he wanted was people simply commenting on his own work. At the same time, his approach to the key texts of Western experience—and in his later years, of Eastern and archaic Neolithic and Paleolithic—blazed the way for his readers to get out there into that wide field of the human quest for transcendence and expand on his work in their own way. What this essay attempts, however sketchily, is to record his impact on my own teaching, with five samples of Voegelin-inspired courses I've developed. I begin with headlines from a philosophical effort at articulating an Irish Neolithic experience at Newgrange (3200 BC)—elsewhere, and following Voegelin, I've pushed that work back through Lascaux to Chauvet (32,000 BC). Then a brief mention of a Voegelinian reading of the beautiful Hindu Bhagavad Gita, followed by interpretations of Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn, and finally, a critique of Richard Dawkins' God Delusion. While, over the years, my classes also expanded on The World of the Polis and Plato and Aristotle, what Voegelin always seemed to demand was for us to engage in what he calls ‘the quest of the quest,' rather than simply repeat him. That's why I see him as the teacher's teacher: he wanted you, as a philosophy lecturer, to get on with your own search, and to awaken in your students what he called ‘the Question as a constant structure in the experience of reality.’     

Miloš Obrenović and the deposition of a Constantinopolitan Patriarch

Abstract

In my limited study of the Greek and Serbian Churches in the nineteenth century, I had found numerous cases of Greek meddling in Serbian affairs, but never a reverse case. Then I came across a passing reference in Gavrilovic´s fine biography of Prince Milo? Obrenovi? of Serbia (who ruled from 1815 to 1839) to Milo?’ playing a major part in ousting a Patriarch of Constantinople. Following up Gavrilovi?'s citation led me to the following letter written by Prince Milo? during his triumphal visit to Constantinople in 1835. It was written (and it should be noted this means dictated since Milo? was illiterate) to his wife Ljubica on 28 September 1835. Since I have never come across any reference to the events Milos describes in any work I have made use of on the patriarchate in the 19th century, I have taken the liberty of translating the letter from Milo?’ Serbian both to call attention to it and to make the text available to a wider range of scholars. The original text is to be found in Mita Petrovi?, Financije i Ustanove obnovljene Srbije do 1842, Beograd, 1901, pp.336–37.     

The Significance of the Christian-Jewish Dialogue and Holocaust Studies for Catholic Ethics

Abstract

When I survey the vast field of literature on social ethics, including that from progressive Christian scholars, I find little, if any, recognition that the positive development in the understanding of the Christian-Jewish relationship these past forty years have any relevance for shaping Christian perspectives on social ethics today. In this presentation I share some reflections on various areas of study within the context of the Christian-Jewish dialogue, especially the experience of the Holocaust, which in my judgment do make an important difference in the way we present Christian thinking on social ethical questions. The positive impact of the Hebrew Scriptures is one important area as is the enhanced understanding of law in the Hebrew Scriptures and in Judaism generally. Also of significance is the growing body of literature linking Jesus positively to the Jewish tradition of his time, including in terms of his moral teaching. The same holds true for new studies on Paul's positive relationship to Judaism. Finally the Holocaust provides us with important links to contemporary moral issues such as genocide and human rights.     

Defending Political Augustinianism: Brague and Taubes on the “Divine” as a Common Conceptual Space

Augustine holds that each society needs to be oriented to “God and the good.” He invidiously compares the earthly city as receptive to the true God with the earthly city as opposed to the true God, and he resolutely holds that only an earthly city oriented to the true God can be genuinely described as just and legitimate. At first glance this “political Augustinianism” hardly seems very attractive to non-believers or defensible in the eyes of modern secular liberals, and yet in this article I wish to defend it and commend it universally, that is, to promote its benefits and critical insights beyond religious circles. I commend an emphasis on “the divine” (to theion), rather than on God (ho theos), as a bridge to God for believers but also, and more importantly in the West's present liberal pluralist context, as a common halting place where believers and non-believers alike can sense “the beyond” (Augustine's “God and the good”) in their midst. I develop my argument that the “divine,” thus understood, can provide us with a common conceptual space where we can abide, converse, and even agree: (i) by engaging with Jacob Taubes who powerfully criticises such an emphasis on the “divine,” (ii) by considering “divine” natural law as a bridge and halting place between immanence and transcendence, and (iii) by reflecting upon the work of Rémi Brague who has recently given powerful support to the importance and utility in the present intellectual climate of the divine (to theion) as a bridge to God (ho theos).     

Improvisation and Hybrid Genres: Reading Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

ABSTRACT

In the first section I ask two questions: what sort of a poem is Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, and what is the immediate experience of reading it in sequence? These two questions are the practical equivalents of the main terms of my title. I try to answer them by reconstructing a first reading of the poem in the light of my own experience and the imagined one of the first readers of the poem. I suggest that two terms—accretion and elimination—are helpful here and that, in some ways, the structure and sequential experiencing of the poem resemble the structures of extended nineteenth-century musical forms. In the second section, I reverse perspective and take a position at the end of the poem. From such a point, it is easier to find what the poem has included and eliminated and this, in turn, suggests the kind of poem that it is. In the third section I tackle the terms “improvisation” and “hybrid genres” directly, link them with my earlier arguments, and engage with some theorists, especially Bakhtin. In particular, I argue against the view that Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage dissolves genre but argue that genres are nevertheless “open categories.” My conclusion is less definite. I confess to difficulties that still bother me.     

The septuagint-version of the book of Joshua

Abstract

After I published a book on the Covenant Code (A Law Book for the Diaspora, 2003), in which I challenged the early dating of CC in comparison with the Deuteronomic Code and the Holiness Code, three leading scholars of biblical law (Bernard Jackson, Bernard Levinson and Eckart Otto) wrote lengthy reviews in which they attacked my views in defense of the status quo, namely, the priority in dating of CC before D and HC. Each from his own perspective and methodology has brought forward his strongest arguments against my “revolutionary” views, so that this response to my critics should represent a fair test as to my views on the Covenant Code and provide biblical scholarship with a means by which to judge the merits of the case.     

Inscribing nature: Archaeological metaphors and the formation of new sciences

Abstract

Ghanaian authorities restored Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castle as memorials to the transatlantic slave trade in order to draw African Americans to Ghana. While this was a positive development for a travel industry that rarely caters to diaspora African needs, the Ghanaian initiative has evoked strong criticisms from concerned African Americans who feel that the restoration has erased the monuments' associated images of slavery and has removed the desired experiential effect. I focus on the complex interplay of these concerns, African Americans' previous attempts to preserve some of these monuments and the history of structural changes to the monuments. These complex issues require several layers of analysis. I situate my discussion within the debate of whether there is any such thing as original monuments and whether there is a necessary correlation between monuments per se and the experience of historical reality. For African Americans, such a strong relationship can be established. The preservation of these monuments, of global significance, calls for an international dialogue based on respect, tolerance and sensitivity.     

The Date of the Studius Basilica at Istanbul

Abstract

It was at Istanbul, more than thirty years ago, that I first had the privilege of meeting Sir Steven. It seems appropriate, therefore, that in honouring him on his approaching 75th birthday I should take as my subject a monument of that city.