Between orthodoxy and heterodoxy: the troubled relationships between heritage studies and heritage law

This article discusses the relationships between heritage law (HL) and heritage studies (HS) from the perspective of international law. More specifically, it focuses on the ways in which HL scholars have integrated (or failed to integrate) HS considerations into their work, and vice versa. The paper shows that the relationship between HL and HS is better resolved with respect to orthodox approaches to both law and heritage. More specifically, orthodox HS and HL take each other into account only lightly, a strategy that, while unsatisfactory on many grounds, is balanced on both sides. However, when it comes to heterodox (critical) analyses in these fields, the relationship is far more fragile and unbalanced, from the point of view of heterodox HS, the law tends to be neglected or even sometimes rejected; whereas from the point of view of HL, there is a more conscious effort to fully engage with HS, which is made difficult by heterodox HS’s push against the law. This dissonance can lead to severe difficulties in understanding heritage work and even the field itself.     

五德终始说与汉代史学的正统观念

中国古代的五德终始说,包括土木金火水五行相胜与木火土金水五行相生两个系统.作为一种解释王朝更替和历史变易的学说,五德终始说对于秦汉时期的政治有着重要的影响.同时,五德终始说提出的古史系统和内蕴的经世意识与正统观念,则对于以司马迁和班固为代表的汉代史学的历史撰述与史学思想都产生了深刻的影响.汉代史学构建的古史系统所蕴含的正统观念,以及以《汉书》为代表的中国正统史学的出现,与五德终始历史学说的影响是分不开的.     

学统观念与清初经学的转向

清代经学主流如何从理学转向汉学,仍然是需要探究的问题,其中道统和学统观念的消长无疑是值得注意的。当理学官员囿于道统、道学来诠释学统时,一些民间学者则重释理学,推动以经学取代理学,并逐渐自觉地皈依汉学。朝野学统观念相互影响,复杂递进,成为清初儒学的"内在超越之路",将独尊理学导向汉学复兴。     

Capital Shares: The Way Back into the With of Christianity

Abstract

In the ten years since the publication of Michael Hardt's and Antonio Negri's Empire, the relationship between Christianity and global capital has received increasing theological attention among the adherents, critics, sympathizersssa, and apostates of Radical Orthodoxy. At stake in this conversation is the possibility that Christianity might provide a universal ontology sufficient to ground a counter-hegemonic, specifically socialist, praxis. One question that many of these authors rarely address, however, is the extent to which Christian universalism has been responsible for the emergence of global capital in the first place. This article will address this profound split at the heart of a tradition; that is, Christianity's culpability for and resistance to global capital. To this end, "Capital Shares" sketches the aporia of Christianity's relation to Empire and then appeals to Jean-Luc Nancy's "deconstruction of Christianity"; in particular, his attempt to find "a source of Christianity, more original than Christianity itself, that might provoke another possibility to arise."     

Approaching the Approaches

Abstract

Students of political theology need a broad introduction to, and some understanding of how to distinguish between, varying approaches to the discipline. This article argues that differing approaches should be introduced in ways which emphasize the historical, theological, geographical, and ecclesial situatedness of their practitioners. Such introduction to the situatedness of various approaches should not pretend to be objective, but should be sympathetic. Those teaching political theology should also carefully incorporate their own situatedness, showing students how they are working within particular approaches themselves without reducing their teaching to advocacy for their own approaches. The proposal for teaching political theology argued here focuses on inviting students to become active practitioners of political theology, instead of mere consumers of information about the discipline.     

The Struggle for Identity: A Personal Reflection

This article explores Agamben's revisionist presentation of the anarchy of the Son and the void of power in the Trinity in his genealogy of economy and government in the West. It argues for a reading that sustains the actual self-depiction of orthodox theology on these points of doctrine in order to evaluate and critique orthodoxy's impact on politics in the West. Only after a thorough assessment of orthodoxy's doctrinal self-understanding can Agamben's reading of potential or suppressed meaning in orthodoxy be appreciated and possibly applied.     

Speculative Realism and Public Theology: Explorations

Abstract

The paper argues that ideas emanating from the speculative realists can inform a new approach to public theology, one that is broadly consistent with Christian realism and opposed to that of radical orthodoxy. Linking the two disciplines through an exploration of the ethical consequences of speculative realism, it takes in particular the work of Latour, his concept of the "gathering," his distinction between matters of fact and matters of concern, and his questioning of the fact-value distinction, and through a lived example shows how the language of human and non-human offers a critique of reductionist approaches to the political.     

Impatience: On Derrida,Milbank and the Decision

Abstract

Derrida has long served as a foil, in the work of John Milbank, and represented the neo-pagan nature of much contemporary philosophy. He appeared in Theology and Social Theory as one of the heirs of Nietzsche, politically justifying and ritualizing violence. In the Vico books, Derrida appears again, contrasted with Vico's ability to imbue language not only with constituting power, but with a teleologically oriented realism. This theme is expanded in subsequent works, where Milbank makes Christological and Trinitarian studies of linguistic difference, and accuses Derrida's thought of degenerating into nihilism. Nonetheless, Milbank and Derrida are disturbed by a similar problem. There is, for both, an irrational moment at the foundations of political life that calls out for a decision. For Derrida this decision institutes the whole order of meaning, undergirded by the quasi-transcendental structure of writing. According to Milbank, this renders all content arbitrary, leaving Derrida unable to imagine a genuinely meaningful world. Milbank argues, instead, that the important decision is whether or not one will see the content of experience as meaningful or meaningless. Derrida's denial of meaning, which is also a denial of God, is ungrounded. One ought, instead, see the world as the image of God.     

由“周孔”而“孔孟”:儒家话语体系建构中的“圣人之道”

在中国学术思想史上,"孔孟"取"周孔"而代之,"周孔之道"演化为"孔孟之道",是儒家基于特定历史语境建构话语体系的产物。随着周、孔形象渐趋圣化,汉唐时人多以周、孔并举,包含政治教化与人伦道德两方面内涵的"周孔之道"得以生成。继韩愈"道统论"之后,宋儒建构"性与天道"理论和道统谱系,"孔孟之道"逐渐成为儒学的代名词。统治者藉由教育、祭祀等参与此过程,也彰显出道统与治统的复杂关联。     

The Realization of Harmony in a Broken World: Reconsidering the Role of Ethics in Milbank's Ontology of Peace

Milbank's Christian ontology of peace indicates a way out of the contemporary crisis of Western democracies. Milbank argues that politics should have a positive and communitarian goal, and that contemporary liberalism fails insofar as it is preoccupied with the limitation of evil, and insofar as it presupposes a fundamentally egoistic anthropology. Milbank's alternative harmonizing vision of reality and humankind has been criticized for preempting all too quickly a harmony which has not yet been realized, and for thereby undermining the crucial role of reactive ethical laws and human work for the realization of true harmony in a world marred by a tragic dimension. Contrary to this criticism, this article advances the claim that Milbank pays too little attention to the ways in which real harmony is already being realized in the world, which is why he presents his ontology as an ideal toward which an entire society should work, under the guidance of ethical laws. A reading of Schillebeeckx's more positive reception of liberalism will serve to illustrate the political consequences of a position that focuses more on the already realized harmony in this world than on an ideal harmony.