Although Hannah Arendt is not usually read as a philosopher of religion, her political philosophy is noticeably filled with references to religious figures and thinkers, including Jesus of Nazareth, Augustine and Duns Scotus. Also notable is the implicit centrality in her thought of amor mundi, or love of the world. The difficulty is that although she spoke to her students about it, she rarely wrote about amor mundi. In this article, I seek to provide a plausible explanation of the meaning (...) of amor mundi in Arendt’s thought, drawing in particular upon the influence of Augustine on Arendt’s unique development of the ethical and political principle of love for the world. Specifically, through a close reading of Arendt’s doctoral dissertation, Love and Saint Augustine, I identify the relationship between Augustine’s conception of cupiditas and Arendt’s conception of amor mundi. (shrink)

Philosophy, theology and engineering are each characterised by striking, yet similar, low participation rates by female academics. While these disciplines seem very different, and so the diagnosis of the causes of this under-representation might likewise be expected to differ, we show a commonality of analysis in the diagnoses of, and responses to, women's under-representation. In each, we find a shared argument that concepts and methodologies central to that discipline are gendered male. We also find a shared response which urges engagement (...) in projects of critical re-imagination. We conclude with a case study of critical re-imagination in philosophy and draw some lessons from its successes and failures for the potential of gendered innovations to transform male dominated disciplines. While critical re-imagination of key concepts, presuppositions, and methodologies in these disciplines may be a necessary condition for improving participation rates by women, it is by no means sufficient. (shrink)

Abrasive, harsh, uncompromising, blunt, uncomfortable. Lyrical, haunting, evocative, pleasure-full, drenching, soaring. All of this, all at once, now, not later. No postponing, no deferring to an endlessly deferred not yet, not yet, not yet.

Upon which Christian theological metaphors and models is Donna Haraway's understanding of `cyborg' ontologically dependent, and how and why might it matter? This article explores the possibility that Haraway's cyborg is a saviour-figure, made partially in the image of a transcendent God. It suggests that cyborgs do have an origin story, and that their story is inseparably linked to the theological development of Heilsgeschichte, or salvation history, which is itself linked, arguably, to the technological developments of the Industrial Revolution. Taking (...) Haraway at her word, or at least her Christian theological words, reveals a disturbingly indifferent cyborg-God, one perfectly at ease with apocalyptic imagery and feats, but one who does not comprehend that apocalyptic rhetoric was never meant to be taken literally. (shrink)

A phenomenological account of an extended encounter with feminist theory in translation, the entirety of ‘Subjects through translation’ is best condensed in these three lines from the poet Adrienne Rich: it will be short, it will not be simple // You are coming into us who cannot withstand you // you are taking parts of us into places never planned. What is it like to read text after text in translation? How do familiar words become so strange? How to express (...) the dizziness, the blurring, the sharp and sometimes painful dislocations of meaning, sense? Thoughts dislodged from their usual paths begin to wander, to wonder anew. Subjects are changed. (shrink)

This essay contains a brief analysis of five ways the terms 'essentialism' and 'essentialist' have been used and defined both traditionally and in recent Western European and North American feminist Christian theological texts. Given these possible meanings, several of which contradict each other, the author also explores the political and epistemological consequences of using the terms. She suggests that rather than indicating a theologian's metaphysical assumptions, they seem to function to discredit the epistemic competence of any theologian so characterised. She (...) also asks why it is the case that only some feminist Christian theologians are so characterised, when, given the multiple meanings of 'essentialism', everyone is vulnerable to being named an essentialist. (shrink)