Category Archives: Philosophy

Aug 02 0 comments
Irony, Kierkegaard, Philosophy, Socrates, Theology

Kierkegaard and Deception

On the heels of this discussion, I was reminded of this great passage from Kierkegaard’s The Point of View for my Work as an Author:

What, then, does it mean “to deceive”? It means that one does not begin directly with what one wishes to communicate but begins by taking the other’s delusion at face value. Thus one does not begin (to hold to what essentially is the theme of this book) in this way: I am Christian, you are not a Christian–but this way: You are a Christian, I am not Christian. Or one does not begin in this way: It is Christianity that I am proclaiming, and you are living in purely esthetic categories. No, one begins this way: Let us talk about the esthetic. The deception consists in one’s speaking this way precisely in order to arrive at the religious. But according to the assumption the other person is in fact under the delusion that the esthetic is the essentially Christian, since he thinks he is a Christian and yet he is living in esthetic categories.

Even if ever so many pastors will find it indefensible, even if equally as many will be incapable of getting it into their heads—although all of them otherwise, according to their own statements, are accustomed to using the Socratic method—in this respect I calmly stick to Socrates. True, he was not Christian, that I know, although I also definitely remain convinced that he has become one. But he was a dialectician and understood everything in reflection. And the quesiton here is purely dialectical—it is the question of the use of reflection in Christendom. Qualitatively two altogether different magnitudes are involved here, but formally I can very well call Socrates my teacher—whereas I have believed and believe in only one, the Lord Jesus Christ (Søren Kierkegaard, The Point of View, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998], pp. 54-5).

Kierkegaard here is relating this maeutic form of instruction to the way his own writing has unfolded.  It’s also entirely similar to the way that Hamann’s own authorship came into being, although Kierkegaard is leaps and bounds easier to understand.

I think it’s interesting that here Kierkegaard lines up somewhat with the tradition of putting Socrates “within” the Judeo-Christian tradition in a sense.  Justin Martyr says directly that Socrates was a Christian, and Hamann counts Socrates among the “prophets” in his Socratic Memorabilia, yet here Kierkegaard takes a slightly different route and says that Socrates has become a Christian.

Jul 24 0 comments
Books, Kierkegaard, Links, Philosophy, Socrates, Theology

A Couple of Items

A new book symposium has begun on the Church and Postmodern Culture blog on Daniel A. Siedell’s God in the Gallery: A Christian Embrace of Modern Art.  Two posts are up already, one by Jamie Smith and the other by Matthew Milliner (who blogs at millinerd.com)  This Monday an engagement with the third chapter will be from Bruce Ellis Benson. The remainder of the schedule can be found here.

Second, I have begun a series of posts on Kierkegaard and Socrates over on Cynthia Nielsen’s Per Caritatem blog. The first post highlights Socrates’ importance for Kierkegaard at the end of his life, and the second post delves a bit into Kierkegaard’s “Sophistical” situation vis-à-vis the Danish Hegelian Christians of Copenhagen. I should have a third post up soon.

May 05 4 comments
Deleuze, Kierkegaard, Paradox, Philosophy, Theology

Kierkegaard, Levinas, and an Inwardness Higher Than Itself

One cannot (probably) have too much Kierkegaard on his birthday. This is a great bit from Mary-Jane Rubenstein on Kierkegaard that wraps up all sorts of Kierkegaardian themes as they work themselves out in response to a critique by Levinas:

illustrator © Archipictor Ossi Hiekkala

illustrator © Archipictor Ossi Hiekkala

Emmanuel Levinas claims that the Kierkegaardian subject, as radically inward, is egocentric: “Kierkegaard very powerfully rehabilitated the topics of subjectivity, uniqueness, and individuality.  He objected to the absorption of subjectivity into Hegelian universality, but he replaced it with subjectivity that was shamelessly exhibitionistic.” In order to demonstrate this self-important selfhood, Levinas refers to the Abraham of Fear and Trembling, the most offensive instance of “a subjectivity raising itself above the ethical to the level of the religious.”103 Yet Levinas makes such subjectivity far too easy.  The self thus constituted by repetition does not precede repetition itself, but emerges through it, and is thoroughly infused with the God-relationship. This subjectivity, then, is relational rather than identical and, insofar as the religious subject is constantly in a state of becoming, thanks to what Gillian Rose calls “the eminence of futurity at the intersection of eternity and time,”104 dynamic rather than static.  Repetition, as Deleuze reminds us, is always a gift and, as such, a scandal; the subject cannot merely summon repetition and constitute himself qua subject.  Kierkegaardian subjectivity, I would argue contra Levinas, does not raise itself above the ethical; rather, it is raised above the ethical. Between the two there is an absolute difference. And the subject that emerges through the madness of repetition is not a self-identical individual, alone in inwardness; it is rather a subject related at every turn to the eternal.  The highest form of this selfhood is only selfhood insofar as it exists in the God-relationship—inwardness, in other words, gives rise to something infinitely higher than inwardness (Mary-Jane Rubenstein, “Kierkegaard’s Socrates: A Venture in Evolutionary Theory,” Modern Theology 17, no. 4 (2001), p. 467).

Emphasizing the paradoxical nature of such an inwardness, Rubenstein says, “The very locus of the subject’s self is beyond him. In other words, this subjectivity, which cannot be considered by itself but only repeated, is profoundly ecstatic” (ibid).

103. Emmanuel Levinas, “Existence and Ethics” in Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader, Jonathan Rée and Jane Chamberlain, eds (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), pp. 26-38; p. 34.
104. Gillian Rose, The Broken Middle: Out of Our Ancient Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p. 99.

Mar 13 7 comments
Evolution, News, Philosophy, Theology

BBC2 Documentary: “Did Darwin Kill God?”

Hey mate, were not in Ulster anymore!

My superviser Conor Cunningham has written a BBC2 documentary entitled “Did Darwin Kill God?” This will air 31 March 2009 at 7pm (GMT).  The idea of Conor’s documentary is that, from a theological perspective, he hopes to both provide a sharp critique of ultra-Darwinism on the one hand, while also offering a major critique to the Intelligent Design camp on the other.

Conor also has a book on evolution in the INTERVENTIONS series that goes into much more detail.  This is slated to come out this Fall.

UPDATE: There is now a podcast on the University of Nottingham podcast site that is an interview with Conor Cunningham about his forthcoming documentary: “A plague on both houses” (mp3 Friday 13 March 2009; 32.1MB, 34.41mins).

Mar 05 6 comments
Books, Kierkegaard, Philosophy, Theology

Kierkegaard’s Hardcover-only Writings Soon in Paperback

It was recently pointed out to me by Chris Simpson that the pseudonymous authorship of Kierkegaard only consists of roughly 45% of his total writings, whereas the other 55% were signed/”religious”. With that said, it is exciting to discover that some of the harder-to-find Princeton editions of Kierkegaard’s work consisting of this signed authorship–previously only available in hardcover and therefore cost-prohibitavely expensive–are soon coming out in paperback! These volumes tend to be ignored in the popular scholarship on Kierkegaard, but these works, along with his Journals and Papers, are essential for any Kierkegaard scholar.

Looking at the paperback column below, these are clearly more affordably priced, although some are still a bit pricey. Those ones tend to be the larger volumes over 500-700 pages or so (e.g. The Moment and Later Writings), but there may be exceptions.

Here’s a breakdown with a price comparison chart where the paperback prices listed are the pre-order prices from Amazon. Hopefully it’s not too confusing. That being said, those viewing this post in an RSS reader like Google Reader, Netvibes, etc., may way to view this post on the blog itself because the styles may get munged.

Cover Vol# Title Hardback Price $/£ Paperback List $/£ Paperback Price $/£ Release Date
I Early Polemical Writings 134.95* / £138.46
 $35.00 / £19.95 $29.33 / £18.95
 July 09 /
June 21, 09†
IX Prefaces/Writing Sampler $56.24 / $40.00‡ / £33.00
 $29.95 / £17.95 $29.95 / £17.05 July 09 /
June 4, 09
X Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions $177.50* / £47.50
 $24.95 / £14.95 $24.95 / £14.20 July 09 /
June 4, 09
XIII The Corsair Affair, and Articles Related to the Writings $500.00* / £unavail.
 $29.95 / £17.95 $29.95 / £17.05 August 09 /
July 5, 09
XIV Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age, A Literary Review $67.50 / $45.50 / £32.01
 $24.95 / £14.95 $24.95 / £14.20 August 09 /
July 5, 09
XV Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits $199.99* / £unavai. $35.00 / £19.95 $29.33 / £18.95 July 09 /
June 21, 09
XVII Christian Discourses: The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress $57.00 / £64.60 $45.00 / £26.95 $37.42 / £25.60 July 09 /
June 21, 09
XVIII Without Authority $80.00 / $42.38 / £37.95 $35.00 / £19.95 $29.33 / £18.95 July 09 /
June 4, 09
XXII The Point of View $75.96 / $70.00 / £64.60 $35.00 / £19.95 $29.33 / £18.95 July 09 /
June 4, 09
XXIII The Moment and Late Writings $83.84 / £58.90 $60.00 / £35.00 $49.55 / £33.25 July 09 /
June 21, 09
XXIV The Book on Adler $95.00 / $50.00 / £44.88 $40.00 / £23.95 $33.38 / £22.75 August 09 /
July 5, 09
XXV Letters and Documents $125.00 / $85.00 / £99.14 $65.00 / £38.95 $53.59 / £37.00 August 09 /
July 5, 09
XXVI Cumulative Index to Kierkegaard’s Writings $99.50 / $90.00 / £59.95 $65.00 / £38.95 $53.59 / £37.00 July 09 /
June 21, 09

* Items designated with an asterisk mean that Amazon only has them “used and new from [x price]“, indicating that they don’t have any in stock and used bookstores or individual resellers are trying to scalp them at usually batshit crazy insane prices (e.g. The Corsair Affair).

† The Princeton site for Kierkegaard’s works only lists a release date in “Month Year” format whereas Amazon has more specific dates that don’t always align with these dates. The format will be “[Princeton Date] / [Amazon Date]“. We all know that Amazon’s release dates don’t really signify anything real, so take these with a grain of salt.

‡ Hardcover prices with two prices listed are for the “[New Price] / [Used Price]” where the used price is the best price available in the Amazon Marketplace.

Feb 02 0 comments
Evolution, Links, Philosophy, Theology

My Adviser on BBC Radio

charlesdarwinFast-forward to 1 hour, 14 minute mark and you can hear my adviser Conor Cunningham, along with others, talking for about 15 about faith and evolution in light of the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species:

BBC Radio Ulster: Sunday Sequence with William Crawley

[Note: There's a chance that the BBC iPlayer may not work outside the UK, my apologies, although if you Google around a bit, there may be ways around this.]

Jan 14 1 comments
Books, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Paradox, Philosophy, Theology

Symposium on Christ, History and Apocalyptic

A series of posts has begun around Nate Kerr’s book Christ, History and Apocalyptic: The Politics of Christian Mission over on the Church and Postmodern Culture blog.  First up is Joshua Davis on the introductory chapter 1, who has just posted his engagement on Monday.  The conversation is already picking up nicely.

Here is the rest of the schedule:

  • 19 January – Chapter 2: “Ernst Troeltsch: The Triumph of Ideology and the Eclipse of Apocalyptic”, response by David Congdon
  • 26 January – Chapter 3: “Karl Barth: Foundations for an Apocalyptic Christology”, response by John McDowell
  • 2 February – Chapter 4: “Stanley Hauerwas: Apocalyptic, Narrative Ecclesiology, and ‘the Limits of Anti-Constantinianism’ “, response by John W. Wright
  • 9 February – Chapter 5: “John Howard Yoder: The Singularity of Jesus and the Apocalypticization of History”, response by Douglas Harink
  • 16 February – Chapter 6: “Towards an Apocalyptic Politics of Mission”, response by James K. A. Smith
  • 23 February – Concluding response by Nathan R. Kerr (although he has already been providing helpful clarifying comments already)

Also, Nate informs me that Cascade Books is still offering a 40% off discount if the book purchased through their site using the discount code “KERR40″, bringing the book down to $16.80 (significantly cheaper than Amazon).

Dave Belcher informs us that there will be a panel at this year’s Wesleyan Theological Society conference on Nate’s book as well.  Panelists include Scott Daniels, John Wright, Sam Powell, and Michael Cartwright, with Nate responding, and Dave Belcher at the moderating helm.

Jan 09 2 comments
Hegel, Irony, Kierkegaard, Paradox, Philosophy, Reflections, Theology

Brief Thoughts on Irony

fly_spray

It is often said by the British that Americans do not understand irony. I think this is true depending upon which swath of Americans are being referred to, but by no means is it true in my circles of friends on the West coast. If I remember correctly, though, the place I heard this generalisation uttered was referring more to American pop culture: whereas American pop culture is more defined by glitz, glorification of celebrity, explosions and violence on television on movies, British pop culture, from what I can tell thus far, seems to be more defined by–yes–irony, wittiness (or attempts thereof), and sly humour.

Having now lived in England for a short period of about six months, I’m not so sure if irony is as ‘essential’ to the culture (if there can be such a thing) as just the fact of societal indirectness. When it comes to humour, this is great. But when it comes to relationships it seems like at its worst, such indirectness can quickly become passive aggressive writ large. Although, perhaps Americans are just too direct, too aggressive.

Now, on one level, as long as it moves beyond it’s stylistic embodiments in culture, irony is perfectly fine. Heck, I even wrote an MA thesis partly on irony (“Contradiction, Paradox, and Irony: Theological and Philosophical Stances of Hegel and Kierkegaard”). Søren Kierkegaard, in more ways than one, was an ironic figure, and even extoled the virtues (so to speak) of indirectness and indirect communication. In so many ways, especially within his context of Christendom, Kierkegaard’s approach seems to me the right one — and are we not in the same context?

Yet, I am not always so sure about this. Because of it’s tendencies toward sarcasm (of the biting kind), and because real relationships don’t really seem to work very well if one person thinks they can really be a gadfly, I am reminded of when Jesus said that we should let our “yes be yes” and our “no be no” (Matthew 5:37Open Link in New Window; James 5:12Open Link in New Window). Quintilian’s definition of irony is that the “phenomenon is different from the essence”; in other words, that when one speaks, they do not mean what they say. This is the famous definition of Socratic irony.

I am not entirely sure what to make of this yet… I went to sleep last night thinking of this for some reason. Clearly, I am not going to make some banal claim such that “see, Socrates isn’t Christian” or other obviously anachronistic idiocies. Kierkegaard/Anti-Climacus is correct when he talks about the indirect communication of the God-man in Practice in Christianity, which is something quite different from one’s communication. It’s like the indirectness of the God-man was more an existential one of stance or ‘comportment’. But then, I am reminded that Jesus Christ is the Father’s communication as the Word, so then I get confused again. I’m just thinking aloud.

Dec 15 1 comments
Books, Links, Naturalism, Philosophy, Theology

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

These are slightly old now (in internet time), but here are a couple of noteworthy reviews in NDPR:

Paul Draper has a very good and critical review of Naturalism, which is written by Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro (Interventions series).  The final paragraph:

Although [Goetz and Taliaferro]’s assessment of naturalism is, in my opinion, far from complete, I would highly recommend the book to philosophy students at all levels. It would be an ideal text for a course in metaphysics or philosophy of mind or even philosophy of religion. For not only is it a very short book, which increases the likelihood that students would actually read it, but it is full of arguments that are rigorous, clear, and free of technical jargon. In addition to being accessible, these arguments provide excellent models for students to imitate in their own philosophical writing. I would also strongly recommend the book to professional philosophers, especially to naturalists. For the book is an excellent reminder that, while naturalism is unquestioned by most philosophers, there remains serious and all too often unanswered opposition to it, and the problems it faces are deep and difficult.

Not a bad book cover, either, eh?

David Burrell has a review of Michael Allen Gillespie’s newest book entitled The Theological Origins of Modernity.  The book sounds rather disappointing on Burrell’s take.  Which reminds me: I still need to finish Gillespie’s earlier work, which I’ve been told by people who have read both, is quite a bit better.  Oh here I go, getting all ‘indie’ on genealogical takes on philosophy and theology, oy.

In other news, it’s 4:30pm and the sun set about an hour ago.  I’m definitely not anywhere used to that.

Nov 07 6 comments
Captions, CoTP, Events, Philosophy

Milbank and Agamben: Add your own caption

Today I was in the video editing studio capturing and editing some of the footage from the Grandeur of Reason onference.  By somewhat of a happy accident, when I was scrubbing through the Agamben footage, I landed on this frame — and had to take a screenshot:

So I will leave it up to you to provide a caption!

[And just to provide a brief update, we may have 4 or 5 of the sessions posted in a week or two online.  Video editing and rendering takes way longer than I thought.  Apparently all the capturing has to be done in real time so I have to watch through all of these sessions again.  I guess there's no fast-forward button on that part.  I spent 8 hours in the studio today just to get 4 videos done, dang.]

Nov 05 3 comments
Books, Philosophy, Theology

After Enlightenment

John Betz’s new and important book on Hamann is just out: After Enlightenment: The Post-Secular Vision of J. G. Hamaan (Illuminations series, more details here).  Our library doesn’t have it yet, and it is outrageously expensive — and I heard it may only be published in hardback — so I may not be able to borrow it from these parts for another few weeks.

Meanwhile, Peter Leithart has begun blogging the book:

Hopefully there will be more to come; it’s a rather large book, and in the newer, weird, large-and-bulky Blackwell format (e.g., the 2nd edition of Theology and Social Theory and William Desmond’s God and the Between).

Oct 20 4 comments
CoTP, Links, News, Paradox, Philosophy, Theology

Rome videos update

Just wanted to make a brief note (as a good handful of people have been asking me) that unfortunately, it looks like I won’t get any studio time until November to edit the videos I took from the Grandeur of Reason conference in Rome.  Turns out the studio all of a sudden had an influx of busy-ness or something.  Sorry.  I’m eager to see them too.

Meanwhile, this book is up on the MIT Press website now: The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?  It’s a conversation between Slavoj Žižek and John Milbank (ed. Creston Davis).  [via]

Sep 15 0 comments
Events, Philosophy, Reflections, Theology

Grandeur of Reason round-up

Some excellent reports and reflections:

Sep 08 8 comments
Events, Philosophy, Reflections, Theology

Reflections and a report on the Grandeur of Reason conference

Grandeur of ReasonLast Thursday was the last day of the four-day Grandeur of Reason conference.  [Immediately after returning from the conference my wife and I took a bus down to London to visit a very good friend and I'll have a separate post on that with pictures later...all of which is why I am only now blogging this.]  I attended with many of the University of Nottingham crew along with a total of over 250 attendees–180 of whom also presented papers.  It was a very, very full conference, and I was definitely put to work.  Unfortunately, there were some papers I was not able to attend that I really wanted to see, but that is what happens in a large conference such as this I suppose.  I’ll attempt to go over some anecdotal highlights of the trip for myself.  I’m looking forward to other blog reports from other perspectives!

I met the rest of the students from the University of Nottingham, including Andrew Thomas (lives in Norway) and Chris Hackett who is now studying at the University of Virginia, not to mention Philip Gorski and Thomas Lynch who is finishing up his MA.

Also, I had the pleasure of meeting Paul Tyson whose PhD adviser wrote a bookback in 1994 which is basically very similar to my own proposed research thesis.  Thing is, I didn’t know about this similarity until a few months after I had already been accepted to the University of Nottingham. I had seen a footnote that Paul gave to his adviser’s book in the recently-released Belief and Metaphysics volume (see p. 412).  Paul had some very encouraging words to say regarding that, and he was a great conversation partner.  I hope to talk to him more and read more of his work.

I had this conversation with Paul on the way to St. Peter’s cathedral on the Sunday before the conference started.  I don’t think I quite realized where we were going because within 90 minutes of arriving in Rome I was standing in front of an amazing sight:

We didn’t have a chance to walk around inside the cathedral because we had to head off to a late lunch and head back to the conference hotel to finish up putting together the packets of information for each delegate.

When the panels started the next morning at 9:00am, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the papers at this conference were top-notch.  Rarely did I hear a paper that disappointed, and most also invited good discussion. The first plenary on Monday evening consisted of a session arranged by Conor of three of his former professors: James Williams, Cyril O’Regan, and Graham Ward.  Of the three, I was really only familiar with the topic of Graham’s paper on ‘Hegel and  the Messianic’ considering my MA thesis was half on Hegel.  I want to be sure and follow up with him about as I am curious to see where his paper was intending to go–he was not able to finish the full implications of the direction of his thought due to time restraints.

The next morning I heard a very interesting panel which consisted of a paper entitled ‘If’ by Darrell Lackey (the only other former resident of central California in addition to myself at the conference); a paper on ‘A NonMisologist Platonism’ and the director Pasolini by Jones Irwin; and a paper by Cornelius Simut on the thought of Edward Schillebeeckx.  It was a surprisingl good panel.  Darrell had never presented a paper at a conference like this before and I would say he performed rather well, and his pastoral perspective was especially welcome.  Jones Irwin’s paper was extremely intriguing regarding the work of Pasolini, and moreover, it was a surprisingly hospitable paper in regards to the conference topic (Tony Baker–the chair of that panel–and I were talking afterwards and definitely wanted to find out more about Pasolini).  Cornelius Simut’s paper on Schillebeeckx was, for me, a helpful and bizarre introduction to the thought of Schillebeeckx.  It was helpful because Simut’s paper was focused on little-known interviews with Schillebeeckx and it was bizarre primarily because of what Schillebeeckx actually believes.  I’m probably the last to know this, but basically, Simut made the comment a couple of times that he was suprised that Hans Kung got censored (or whatever the official word is) but that Schillebeeckx did not, especially considering that Kung is far less radical than Schillebeeckx.

After lunch I was to present a paper with probably a few too many “and”’s in the title: “The Grandeur and Disenchantment of Reason: Universalism and Irony in Hegel and Kierkegaard.”  The other students in the panel in which I was a part during the Tuesday afternoon student session were of high quality and the question and answer sessions after each were well-informed and lively.  I would have liked to have attended the other Nottingham student papers, but they were all scheduled during the same time slot. After my paper people asked me how it went and all I could really say was, “people tell me it went well.”  I got good questions and people complimented my paper but I honestly still feel like I can’t produce a real opinion on my performance just yet.  So I think it went okay!?

Later that evening was the second plenary with François Laruelle, Michele Lenoci, and Dustin McWherter.  Quentin Meillassoux was actually supposed to be presenting on that panel as well but just a few days before the conference–and after the programmes were printed–his father-in-law passed away and so he could not attend.  I confess a nearly complete ignorance with the thought of these thinkers, so I will just post one picture for now of Laruelle (more later, probably in a post here).

The next morning began with a visit to the Vatican.  Here is Graham Ward (back of his head), John Milbank, and Stanley Hauerwas standing in line:

We were standing in line to see Pope Benedict XVI give an address.  And here he is:

I forget how large the audience was here, but I think it was something slightly below 10,000 people.  Groups from around the world were introduced (“pilgrims from Nigeria…”, etc.), greeting Benedict with songs, flag-waving, cheers, and even brief musical numbers.  And, despite the silly outfits of the Swiss guards (see above), it was a celebratory occasion: the catholicity in the room was apparent.  The pope spoke in maybe 6 different languages, greeting different peoples and giving a brief homily of sorts.  Afterwards, Stanley Hauerwas and John Milbank personally greeted the pope and gave him a painting painted by Conor Cunningham’s sister, Sara Cunningham-Bell.

The remainder of Wednesday and Thursday consisted of non-stop panels.  The first one after the Vatican visit was a plenary session with Oliver O’Donovan, Stanley Hauerwas, and John Milbank (chair: Graham Ward).  As was to be expected, it was a varied and lively session:

As well as a session with Daniel M. Bell, Stephen Long, and Michael Budde (chair: Hauerwas…and apologies for the bad white balance on this one):

Thursday was jam-packed with sessions including a session on the three recently-released books in the INTERVENTIONS series of books published by Eerdmans.  The volumes on Naturalism, Žižek, and Heidegger were represented by Charles Taliaferro and Stewart Goetz (pictured far left), Marcus Pound (pictured 3rd from left), and Sean McGrath (pictured far right), respectively, with Pete Candler and Conor Cunningham (pictured 4th and 5th from left) both chairing the session as well as representing themselves as the editors of the series:

The final plenary session was with Giorgio Agamben who spoke on the topics of his recent research on oikonomia and glory in Il Regno e la Gloria (helpful chapter-by-chapter notes can be found here on this work still not translated into English):

I’m still pretty tired from the conference, and there was a frickin’ ton of papers, so much of the sessions are a bit of a blur.  But, despite all the lack of sleep, and despite the fact that it would have been better if all of the attendees could have stayed in one place instead of scattered throughout different hotels/seminaries–I would say it was overall a good conference.  It was especially nice to see friends that I do not see very often such as Craig Keen and many of his former students, as well as the friends I have continued to stay in touch with since Granada in 2006 and the AAR in San Diego last year.  It was also a pleasure to finally meet both the Archbishop of Granada whom I had not met when we were in Granada back then, as well as Dave Belcher–whose paper was quite beautiful (and who I somehow missed meeting at a conference that my pastor organized back in January 2007).

Every night we were up late till 3 or 4am and up again by 9am for the sessions, so while I am sleeping until term starts for me on the 22nd of this month, I look forward to hearing reflections from others who have blogs or who would care to add anything in the comments section below (and unfortunately I just read that Ben Myers got sick, so I am not sure how much of the conference he was able to attend).

As a final note, we plan on posting more pictures (in full resolution), videos of the plenaries + Q&A sessions for each, etc. online sometime soon, so stay tuned here or here for that.

Aug 28 4 comments
CoTP, Events, Philosophy, Theology

Programmes

The programmes for the Grandeur of Reason conference have been printed as of yesterday.  I have to continue writing my paper so that page 10 won’t be tellin’ lies.  More later!

Jul 17 0 comments
Comics, Film, Philosophy, Rad things

Watchmen Trailer

UPDATE: The Watchmen Trailer in HD! (via)

I’ve read very little comics in my life, but one of them that I highly recommend is Watchmen, written back in 1986 by Alan Moore (who was also writing the V for Vendetta series at that time). Watchmen is an extremely well-written and profound story. Go to any bookstore with a comic books section or any comic book store and they will be sure to have it.

I do not know if it will be forced to be pulled down, but above is the leaked trailer for the Watchmen movie (via Kevin Rose). I am incredibly excited about this movie. My only huge hesitation is that, well, the director of this movie–Zack Snyder–also did a movie called 300 which I completely hated. It’s one of the few movies I’ve seen where I really think I wasted my time. I’m not entirely sure how to voice my hesitation. I guess I’ve heard he did okay with the source material to Frank Miller’s 300 comic (which I never read), but I just hated the 300 movie so much I hope he doesn’t make the Watchmen movie completely stupid. [If you want to know why I hated 300, read this older post of Charlie's and my thoughts in the comments.]

That being said, from what I see in the trailer it looks freakin’ awesome.

Jul 11 2 comments
Kierkegaard, Links, Philosophy, Rad things, Random, Theology

Friday’s Bulleted List

In no particular order!

Jun 18 3 comments
Books, CoTP, Events, Philosophy, Rad things, Theology

The Return of Metaphysics

If you attended the Radical Orthodoxy and Process Theology panel at the 2007 AAR in San Diego, one of the interesting commonalities between the two sensibilities was an embrace of a return to metaphysics.  In 2006, the Centre of Theology and Philosophy hosted a conference called ‘Belief and Metaphysics’ (CoTP report here) around this issue (although not related to process) and subsequently published a collection of essays from the conference by the same title.

At this year’s AAR in Chicago, Nate Kerr is moderating a panel on the recently-released Belief and Metaphysics volume in the Veritas series entitled “The Return of Metaphysics: A dialogue on the occasion of the publication of Belief and Metaphysics.”  The panel is graciously sponsored by SCM Press‘ Veritas Series and The Centre of Theology and Philosophy.  Click on the poster above to see the larger version which lists all the details for the event, including the list of panelists.  If you received your AAR book in the mail this past week, you will also find these details listed on page 151. It looks to be a pretty exciting panel!

Regrettably, chances are very likely that I will not be able to attend the AAR this year because of our upcoming move to Nottingham in the fall.  We have a bit too much going on and not enough money to fly everywhere and attend everything.  However, I will be going to and presenting at this, which will be much easier to get to from Nottingham.  Still, if you can make it to the AAR, I highly encourage attendance at this this panel.  It looks to be quite interesting and a lot of fun with a good diverse response to the book.  The book itself is very diverse so we’ll see what happens!

Apr 27 8 comments
Kierkegaard, Paradox, Philosophy, Theology

Absolute and the Divine

The absolute paradox would be if the Son of God became man, came to the world, went around in such a manner that absolutely no one recognized him; if he became an individual human being in the strictest sense of the world, a person who had a trade, got married, etc. . . . In that case God would not have been God and Father of mankind, but the greatest ironist. . . . The divine paradox is that he becomes noticed, if in no other fashion, then by being crucified, by performing miracles, etc., which means that he is recognizable, after all, by his divine authority, even if faith is required in order to solve its paradox.[1]

[1] From Kierkegaard’s journals as quoted in Garff, Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography, p. 265, emphasis mine.  C.f. Kierkegaard, Point of View, p. 16.

When I first read this, I missed the difference between absolute and divine. Wow. If this is a real difference, and I think it is, this is an extremely illuminating passage from Kierkegaard’s journals. I only wish that there were better citations in Garff’s biography so that I could find this passage easier for the full context. Although journals are often fragmentary, so maybe there is not much more (?).  Those are Garff’s ellipses above though, not mine, so I dunno.

Apr 18 5 comments
Aesthetics, Irony, Kierkegaard, Philosophy, Theology

“Kierkegaard” and the collapsing of ironic distance?

In an article, Kierkegaard says that if the second edition of Practice in Christianity were being published for the first time, it would not

have been by a pseudonym, but by myself . . . Earlier, my idea had been that if the established order could be defended, this was the only way of doing so: by poetically (therefore, by a pseudonym) passing judgment upon it. . . . Now, on the other hand, I am completely convinced of two things: both that, from a Christian point of view, the established order is untenable and that every day it exists is, from the Christian point of view, a crime; and that one may not call upon grace in this manner.  Therefore, take the pseudonymity away; take away the thrice-repeated preface and the ‘Moral’ to the first section—then, from a Christian point of view, Practice in Christianity is an attack on the established order (As quoted in Joakim Garff, Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography, trans. Bruce H. Kirmmse [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005], p. 751, emphasis mine).

Nonetheless, prior to this, Kierkegaard appended an unpaginated “A First and Last Declaration” to the end of Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments–where he ‘outs’ himself as the author behind the pseudonyms–which contains the request, “If it should occur to anyone to want to quote a particular passage from the [pseudonymous] books, it is my wish, my prayer, that he will do me the kindness of citing the respective pseudonymous author’s name, not mine.”

However, as Garff points out, when Practice in Christianity was originally sent to press, it was veronymously written by Kierkegaard.  It was only at the last minute that Kierkegaard changed the authorship to Anti-Climacus, “because Kierkegaard’s own ‘existence’ did not live up to the radical Christian requirements in the work” (p. 630-2).  As Garff points out, this change was fueled more but personal concerns regarding Kierkegaard and not maieutic considerations concerning the reader.

Even if Kierkegaard wants us to now read Practice in Christianity with the pseudonymity ‘taken away’, ultimately, Anti-Climacus’ point remains concerning indirect communication in the section on the “Categories of Offense.”  If we take Anti-Climacus off the title page and replace it with the original “S. Kierkegaard,” the case holds that we are still receiving a communication from an indirect communicator—the God-man.  Kierkegaard had exhausted—in fact literally and ironically emptied—the tool of pseudonymity of its usefulness.  Garff also states that toward the end, “Kierkegaard continually adjusted his [pseudonymous] writings so that they corresponded as precisely as possible to his own position.”  As Kierkegaard stated in the conclusion to his dissertation, “Irony as the negative is the way; it is not the truth but the way.”

[This has been adapted from part of my in-progress MA thesis.]