Groundless Gods: The Theological Prospects of Post-Metaphysical Thought deals with possible interpretations of an emerging interest in contemporary theology: postmetaphysical theology. This book attempts to openly come to grips, not only with what metaphysics and postmetaphysics imply, but also with what it could mean to do or not do theology from the standpoint of the nonmetaphysician. The book asks, for instance, whether this world has any singular definition, and whether God is some being standing apart (...) from the world or an experience within the world. (shrink)

This article provides an overview of Richard Kearney’s attempt at re-imagining God post-metaphysically. In the context of a continental dialogue on the topic, Kearney has responded to onto-theology with a hermeneutic and phenomenologically informed attempt to rethink God post-metaphysically. This eschatological understanding of God is expounded in the article and is placed in relation to Kearney’s more recent concept of Anatheism. The article closes with a few remarks on what may be gained by Kearney’s work, as well (...) as outlining a few critical questions. (shrink)

It is sometimes said that changes in academic philosophy in the twentieth century reflected a process in which a discipline that had been earlier closely tied to institutional religion became increasingly laicized and secularized.1 In line with this idea, the idealist philosophy that had flowered within British philosophy at the end of the nineteenth century can look like the last and ill-fated attempt of a Victorian religious sensibility to guard itself against a post-Darwinian God-less view of the world and (...) ourselves.2 Such a view generally represents, I believe, the attitudes of many contemporary philosophers to British philosophy prior to the transforming work of Russell and Moore of about one hundred years ago. Against the luxuriant and mystical metaphysics of the idealists, fuelled by religious longing, the “new philosophy”, it is thought, affirmed the brute materiality of the world and its independence from mind, be it divine or human. A similar development is commonly understood as carrying from Hegel through the “young Hegelians” to the mature Marx. Thus for Feuerbach, for example, Hegel’s idealist doctrine that “nature or reality is posited by the idea” was “merely the rational expression of the theological doctrine that nature is created by God”.3 Hegel’s philosophy had thus provided a “last place of refuge and ... rational support of theology”, and escaping from this condition (more prison than refuge) required rejecting idealism and confronting the fact that “the true relation of thinking and being is simply this. Being is subject and thinking a predicate but a predicate such as... (shrink)

Proposing a radical critique of the method and dualistic onto-epistemology of the catholic tradition, Steven Nemes draws from the thought of Michel Henry and Huldrych Zwingli in the pursuit of developing a post-catholic Protestant restatement of the Christian faith as a theology of the manifest.

In this article, I draw upon the ‘post-Kantian’ reading of Hegel to examine the consequences Hegel’s idea of God has on his metaphysics. In particular, I apply Hegel’s ‘recognition-theoretic’ approach to his theology. Within the context of this analysis, I focus especially on the incarnation and sacrifice of Christ. First, I argue that Hegel’s philosophy of religion employs a distinctive notion of sacrifice (kenotic sacrifice). Here, sacrifice is conceived as a giving up something of oneself to ‘make room’ (...) for the other. Second, I argue that the idea of kenotic sacrifice plays a fundamental role in Hegel’s account of Christ. Third, I conclude by sketching some of the consequences of Hegel’s idea of a God who renounces his own divinity for an idealistically conceived metaphysics. My main thesis is that the notion of incarnation is conceived by Hegel as the expression of a spirit that advances only insofar as it is willing to withdraw and make room for the other. A kenotic reading of the Hegelian notion of the incarnation is also useful in terms of a clarification of the dispute between ‘left Hegelians’ and ‘right Hegelians’ concerning the status of the idea of God in Hegel’s philosophy. (shrink)

This chapter argues that Levinas's positive relation to the Western philosophical tradition is far more complex than his interpreters have allowed. At the same time, Levinas's relation to Judaism is far more complex than Levinas and his interpreters suggest. Analyzing Levinas's messianic claims for philosophy in the context of the historically religious roots and aspirations of modern German philosophy, the chapter considers some broad affinities between Levinas's philosophy and Christian theology, in terms of both form and content. Drawing on (...) the recent work of intellectual historians Ian Hunter and Walter Sparn, it argues that the development of modern metaphysics historically transformed what had been the social function of Christian theology. In this sense, Levinas's positive use of the term metaphysics is akin to the historical function of Christian theology, as well as to the historical function of what became post-Christian metaphysics. To make this argument, the chapter reconsiders Levinas's interpretation of Rosenzweig to shed light on Levinas's conceptions of “philosophy” generally, and his conception of “incarnation” in particular. (shrink)

The Heideggerian critique of onto-theology has attained a semi-canonical status for continental philosophy of religion. But is the critique itself sound, and does it actually result in a richer philosophical and theological discourse concerning God? In this paper, I argue that Heidegger’s onto-theological critique suffers from serious difficulties. First I examine the critique, summarizing and condensing the critique in its essentials. I use Westphal’s fourfold criteria as a way of giving it some precision, while presenting it in relative independence (...) from Heidegger’s own account of Being. In section III, I examine the results of non-onto-theological discourse on God post-Heidegger, suggesting, using the examples of John Caputo and Richard Kearney, that Heidegger’s onto-theological critique has not inspired a less problematic religious discourse. In the fourth and final section, I question the legitimacy of the critique itself. While Heidegger’s critique of onto-theology has the seemingly admirable goal of rendering our discourse about God less instrumental and idolatrous, a careful analysis of the criteria themselves reveals that onto-theology either misinterprets natural theological discourse on God or subjects it to impossible requirements. (shrink)

From a post-structuralist position, it is problematic and seemingly impossible to refer to God as the Trinity. This article describes possibilities for thinking about the Trinity (religion and God) within a post-structuralist context. As an example of such thinking, the 2015 culture-critique film, The Brand New Testament, will be analysed. It is a creative retelling of the Christian story and of the Trinity in a secular and post-metaphysical vein. This ‘Brand New Testament’ reveals God as ‘one’ (...) – as the encompassing love, hope and life which we may experience in this life. The life-giving characteristics of this ‘god’ are surprisingly close to the biblical understanding of the Trinity. In the ‘Brand New Testament’, however, the Trinity is portrayed radically differently than in the Christian tradition. The personae of father, son and spirit are deconstructed in the film, in that a daughter and a mother also form part of the godhead. This deconstruction of the Trinity, which should not be confused with blasphemy, opens up a possible post-structuralist imagining of God. It playfully reveals a powerless god who shares some fundamental characteristics with the Trinity – such as love, joy and life. It allows for the ‘oneness of god’ to include more, and less, than the ‘Holy Trinity’. (shrink)

The European post-Marxist work Empire by Hardt and Negri points to the theological/metaphysical underpinnings of modernity and global capitalism in the medieval shift from Trinitarian orthodoxy to nominalism. Though Hardt and Negri reject religious or transcendental approaches to the social, their work shows remarkable resemblances with the ontological critique of modernity and economism mounted by John Milbank and Stephen Long among others. By contrast the considerable oeuvre of Ronald Preston on capitalism lacks a deep ontological critique. The return (...) of ontology to theological economics in recent contributions from Gorringe, Long, Milbank and Northcott marks a significant recovery of a more theological orthodoxy, but also a more thoroughgoing critique of economism whether in capitalist or socialist guise. It is moreover a critique which highlights the significance of the economic actions of churches and Christians. (shrink)

Saitya Brata Das rigorously examines Schelling's theologico-political works and sets his thought against his more dominant contemporary, Hegel. Das argues that Schelling inaugurates a new thinking outside of Occidental metaphysics, by a paradoxical manner of exit, which prepares for the post-metaphysical philosophy of Martin Heidegger, Franz Rosenzweig and Jacques Derrida. This new reflection, outside of the Universal world-historical politics of modernity, is achieved by re-thinking religion as eschatology. Intervening in contemporary debates on post-secularism and the return to (...) religion, Das shows that religion, in an essential sense, always opens up infinitude from the heart of finitude, to an irreducible outside of the profane order of worldly hegemonies. Religion here assumes a negative political theology of exception without sovereign power. (shrink)

Scholars, theologians and lay people are in the midst of a wave of vital conversations about the nature of Christian supersessionism and the possibility of a post-supersessionist theology. This paper seeks to contribute to these conversations by drawing out the presuppositions about evental relationship that underly supersessionistic habits of thought and their alternatives. This effort will proceed primarily through a critique of Alain Badiou’s supersessionistic reading of the Jewish/Christian evental relationship while attempting to salvage his formal concept of (...) evental recurrence as a potential resource for post-supersessionist theology. The bulk of the paper is dedicated to this critique and salvage project. However, it will close with a series of brief reflections on how a non-teleogical metaphysics of evental recurrence might displace some of the teleological thought patterns that drive the dilemmas of supersessionism. (shrink)

This article is part of a research project, Conversations after God. The focus of this article is to reflect on the theory and methodology of practical theology in a post-metaphysical context. It will be suggested that practical theology can redefine itself as public theology, but specifically as Christology by engaging the public texts within their contexts, but from a Christ-science hermeneutical approach. The proposed approach is a hermeneutical approach where the Christ-Ereignis guides the inner- and (...) inter-textual reading of texts within contexts. This Christ-Ereignis cannot be translated into a science or even a definable philosophy and therefore the logos is crossed out. Christology, as public theology is done from the margins of the dominant discourses and therefore it could be seen as a Christology from the margins of the market to create spaces of kingdom life: life in fullness. (shrink)

Over the last thirty years, once staunchly film history scholars such as Thomas Elsaesser, Jane Gaines, Siegfried Zielinski, André Gaudreault and Benoît Turquety (to name just a few) have abandoned history for historiography and film studies for media archaeology. Considering the heightened attention given to kulturtechnik (Siegert), the database as a dominant symbolic metaphor,1 and the decentered networked tenants of the postmodern global present, cinema is taking on the characteristics of new media, existing in increasingly intertextual space. Thus, the term (...) “post-cinema” has been co-opted as a viable intermediary that accounts for new media conditions, as cinema is no longer emblematic of our cultural climate. It was once presaged in 1992 that “[t]he end of the cinema truly sounds the death knell of the ultimate metaphysical adventure of Dasein. In the twilight of post-cinema, of which we are seeing the beginning, human quasi-existence, now stripped of any metaphysical hypostasis and deprived of any theological model, will have to seek its proper generic consistency elsewhere.” Accordingly, we are no longer “moviegoing animals” who seek images of ourselves among a collective in the dark but, rather, users interfacing within a network of moving images. By locating post-cinema within the semblance of social media, we are allocated a newfound series of theoretical interventions, the most marked of which is that of media archeology vis-à-vis dialectical materialism. This is a lens through which Brian Winston has recently deftly decried Virtual Reality’s “empathy machine” utopic illusionism, bolstered by Chris Milk and a slew of neurohumanities researchers, steadily maintaining that the fundamental myth of “technologies of seeing” is in disguising “their artifice, their cultural formation and their ideological import.” However, this approach, which illuminates the bifurcation between Max Horkheimer/Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, neglects what Benjamin identified as occurring to the work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility—a shift from a technology’s “cult value,” associated with the unique work, to its “exhibition value,” associated with the social act of viewing as part of a mass. Speaking to this divarication, Benjamin Barber, in Strong Democracy, foresaw new media’s two-fold potential—as they are organized and networked, new media and communications technologies possess the possibility to both energize citizen information and political participation but, simultaneously, to supplement the deterioration of public debate. As evinced by Mark Adrejevic’s concept of Infoglut, this two-pronged possibility has only been exacerbated by the interlocking relationship between the advent of a “glut” of information, post-truth politics, the demise of symbolic efficiency, and a renewed focus on the role of affect and emotion as “alternative modalities for thinking about the role of communication in a post-referential era.” Manuel Castells qualifies Barber’s pessimism, noting that the Internet can “be an appropriate platform for informed, interactive politics, stimulating political participation.. […] beyond the closed doors of political institutions,” but that the Internet, like any technology, “is shaped by its uses and users.” Thus, if there exists a positive correlation between exposure to post-cinema media artifacts and political participation, then I seek to explore the revelatory political possibilities of “exhibition value” by way of a particular “post-cinema” case study: the Marxist-Leninist Turkish hacktivist group Redhack’s YouTube-circulated documentary RED! (2013), a project that demanded—by way of the moving-image—to galvanize cyberprotest and democratize a “hacktivist commons. (shrink)

This is the first monograph devoted to the theology of the Epinomis. It argues that the work offers a revised Platonic conception of the divine better suited to the political imperatives of the post-Classical age. The Epinomis is an 'appendix' to Plato's Laws written by Plato's student, Philip of Opus. Through a comprehensive analysis of the Epinomis' lexicon, and comparisons with the Corpus Platonicum, Vera Calchi offers readers an insight into the Epinomis' philosophical and historical context, purpose, and (...) legacy. Calchi argues that Philip effectively reshapes Plato's metaphysical language into a theology premised on the immanence of God in the heavens. The resulting account of God's providential activity in the cosmos, which offers a new way of thinking about morality and political order, can be regarded as a major step towards the cosmic theology of the Hellenistic period. The Theology of the Epinomis is suitable for students and scholars of ancient philosophy, particularly those working on the Epinomis and Platonic philosophy. It will also be of interest to those studying the history of religion and theology in antiquity. (shrink)

Karl Barth and Martin Heidegger are doubtless two of the most important and influential thinkers of the 20th century. In this groundbreaking book Timothy Stanley investigates how the question of being developed through their respective accounts of protestant theology. Whereas Heidegger suggested a post-onto-theological pathway, Barth inverted the question of being in a thoroughgoing theological ontology. In the end, both reconfigured the relationship between philosophy and theology in ways that continue to shape contemporary debate.

O artigo procura fornecer elementos para uma leitura positiva do atual fenômeno de folclorização do religioso. A folclorização evocaria uma dupla laicidade, que se coloca dialeticamente quanto à institucionalidade religiosa e independente no tocante à verticalidade dos saberes especializados e seus procedimentos metodológicos, numa perspectiva que se pretende pós-metafísica e democrática. Faz-se, de início, uma síntese atual sobre a relação entre secularização e religiosidade para ilustrá-la com o relato de experiências religiosas específicas, todas anglicanas e localizadas na sociedade estadunidense; além (...) de um estudo sobre a recepção estadunidense ao filme "A Última Tentação de Cristo". Depois, a partir de algumas observações de Althaus-Reid sobre a Teologia da Libertação, o artigo analisa o conceito de "inculturação". Graças à sua volatilidade, o conceito antropológico de "folclorização", enfim, é proposto como uma maneira ampla e flexível de se abordar o pluralismo religioso em contexto (pós) secular ante uma crescente e inexorável influência da "indústria cultural". Palavras-chave : Folclorização; Pós-metafísica; Democracia; (Pós) secularização; Pluralismo ReligiosoThe attempts searched to provide elements for a positive reading of the current phenomenon of religious folklorization. Folklorization would suggest a double laity, which arises dialectically by religious institutionalism and independent from verticality of specialized knowledge and its methodological procedures, which would be a post-metaphysics and democratic perspective. First of all, it creates a synthesis upon the relationship between secularization and religion to illustrate it with a retake of specific religious experiences, every one Episcopalian and located in American society, including a study of the U. S. reception of the film, "The Last Temptation of Christ". Next, from some observations by Althaus-Reid on Liberation Theology, the paper analyzes the concept of "inculturation". Because of its volatility, the anthropological concept of "folklorization", finally, is proposed as an extended and flexible way to focus religious plurality in a (post)secular context in an increasing and inexorable influence of "cultural industries". Key words : Folklorization; Post-metaphysics; Democracy, (Post) secularization; Religious Pluralism. (shrink)

Out of the ashes of the post-modern critique of metaphysics comes a series of important essays which re-think the place of metaphysics in theological and philosophical inquiry. This book ranges across a variety of philosophical and theological traditions, charting new directions for theological reflection.

After two centuries of Kant interpretation there is still no general agreement over the nature of Kant’s most basic philosophical commitments. One issue in particular about which it is difficult to find consensus is his metaphilosophical attitude towards the very project of metaphysics itself. Recently, a type of deflationist reading of Kant has been appealed to in order to address the problems inherent in his more traditional construal as a metaphysical skeptic who denies us the capacity to have any (...) knowledge of “things in themselves”, but who nevertheless seems to centrally rely on the existence of just such things.1 But how is either deflationism or skepticism consistent with Kant’s avowed intention in the Critique of Pure Reason to put metaphysics on the path of science,2 or with his signaled but unfulfilled intention to write a “Metaphysics of Nature”? (shrink)

This article proposes that the foundations of Hegel’s contribution to social criticism are compatible with, and enriched by, his meta-theology. His social critique is grounded in his belief that normative ideas – and especially the idea of freedom – are necessarily experiential and historical. Often regarded as a recipe for an authoritarian reconciliation with the status quo, Hegel’s philosophy has been dismissed by some unsympathetic commentators from the left as inimical to the task of social criticism. Much of the (...) reason for this has been the opinion that his systematic approach to philosophy is one underpinned by either a highly unorthodox theism or, more commonly, pantheism. Even scholars who wish to defend Hegel as a social critic have tended to abandon or at least massively downplay his meta-theology. In this article, I argue that it is precisely the emphasis on his original theo-metaphysics that offers a powerful and relevant contribution to social criticism. Hegel then becomes an important contributor, from the tradition of social criticism, to the growing trend in academia and wider society of rethinking the relationship between the religious and the secular, known as post-secularism. The proposition at the centre of his system – that human history and society are necessary moments in the process of divine self-understanding – is not new. But the specifics of Hegel’s concept of God that I am proposing – and, moreover, their implications for his political thought – are new. I propose that Hegel was neither a theist nor a pantheist but, rather, a dialectical panentheist. According to panentheism, God is neither straightforwardly transcendent to nature and history nor immanently identifiable with nature and history, but rather is dynamically and dialectically immanent in the ongoing processes of self-transcendence that are nature and history. If such an interpretation of Hegel’s system is valid then the proposition that his political thought is an exercise in dialectical panentheistic theology is one that is worth making and defending because it has important things to say about his social critique. (shrink)

What, if anything remains of religion after the demise of traditional theism and the theologies based upon it? What are the consequences of so-called Post-theism for the modern scholarly study of religion (in Religionswissenschaft and philosophical theology or church dogmatics, in the philosophy of religion as well as in the more recent phenomenon of comparitive religious studies)? This volume collects some thirty articles written in honor of Professor Hendrik Johan Adriaanse whose intellectual trajectory, recounted here in extensive personal (...) reflections, has lead to an incisive inquiry into the possibilities of thinking and experiencing "After Theism" (the title of a fundamental article reprinted here). Post-theism : Refraiming the Judeo-Christian Tradition raises this question from three different perspectives : first, by spelling out the historical and intellectual backgrounds that have led to the supposed end of theism as it had been known through the ages; secondly, by discussing the systematic relationship between the disciplines of theology and competing concepts of rationality; and, thirdly, by sketching out the contours of a philosophical thought that ventures beyond the most tenacious classical and modern presuppositions of theism. Along the way, the contributors explore a variety of ways in which the concepts and arguments, imagery and rhetoric of the Judeo-Christian traditions are in need and in the process of being constantly displaced. Henri Krop, Arie L. Molendijk and Hent de Vries teach Philosophy, the history of Christianity, and Metaphysics, respectively, at the Erasmus University, The University of Groningen, and the University of Amsterdam. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to explore the contemporary postmodern appropriation and reinvention of the practice of “crazy holiness” in Russian Orthodoxy and Tibetan Buddhism, highlighting points of contact and discontinuities between the traditions. The first section of the essay will discuss the Russian phenomenon of yurodstvo, a term used to indicate radical ascetics known for their idiosyncratic behavior and their outspoken criticism of religious and political authorities. The recent phenomenon of the punk group Pussy Riot will then be (...) presented as a contemporary rendition of yurodstvo, in a post-theological context where religious rituals and practices are devoid of their metaphysical import. The second section of the essay will introduce the Tibetan phenomenon of the smyon pa, crazy yogins known for their erratic speech and behavior, but also for their readiness to criticize institutional hypocrisy and corruption. The figure of Chögyam Trungpa, a former Tibetan monastic who started the Shambala tradition of Buddhism, is then presented as a contemporary version of smyon pa; his behavior—despite unfortunate and unjustifiable instances of abuse—similarly enabled practitioners to access the truth of the dharma. This paper presents Pussy Riot and Chögyam Trungpa as postmodern instantiations of crazy holiness—for a post-metaphysical and post-religious world where the divine no longer indwells traditional practices but can be still accessed and displayed through performative subversion. (shrink)

Dante's metaphysics--his understanding of reality--is very different from our own. To present Dante's ideas about the cosmos, or God, or salvation, or history, or poetry within the context of post-Enlightenment presuppositions, as is usually done, is thus to capture only imperfectly the essence of those ideas. The recovery of Dante's metaphysics is essential, argues Christian Moevs, if we are to resolve what has been called "the central problem in the interpretation of the Comedy." That problem is what to make (...) of the Comedy 's claim to the "status of revelation, vision, or experiential record--as something more than imaginative literature." In this book Moevs offers the first sustained treatment of the metaphysical picture that grounds and motivates the Comedy, and of the relation between those metaphysics and Dante's poetics. He carries this out through a detailed examination of three notoriously complex cantos of the Paradiso, read against the background of the Neoplatonic and Aristotelian tradition from which they arise. Moevs finds the key to the Comedy 's metaphysics and poetics in the concept of creation, which implies three fundamental insights into the nature of reality: 1) The world is radically contingent, dependent at every instant on what gives it being. 2) The relation between the world and the ground of its being is non-dualistic. 3) Human beings are radically free, unbound by the limits of nature, and thus can find all of time and space within themselves. These insights are the foundation of the pilgrim Dante's journey from the center of the world to the Empyrean which contains it. For Dante, in sum, what we perceive as reality, the spatio-temporal world, is a creation or projection of conscious being, which can only be known as oneself. Moevs argues that self-knowledge is in fact the keystone of the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic philosophical tradition, and the essence of the Christian revelation in which that tradition culminates. Armed with this new understanding, Moevs is able to shed light on a series of perennial issues in the interpretation of the Comedy. In particular, it becomes clear that poetry coincides with theology and philosophy in the poem: Dante poeta cannot be distinguished from Dante theologus. (shrink)

Most streams of Christianity have emphasized the unknowability of God, but they have also asserted that Christ is the criterion through whom we may have limited access to the depths of God, and through whose life and death we can formulate the doctrine of God as Triune. This standpoint, however, leads to certain complications regarding ‘translating’ the Christian message to adherents of other religious traditions, and in particular the question, ‘Why do you accept Christ as the criterion?’, is one that (...) Christian thinkers have attempted to answer in different ways. There are two influential responses to this query in recent Christian thought: an ‘evidentialist’ approach which gradually moves from a theistic metaphysics to a Christ-centred soteriology, and an ‘unapologetic’ standpoint which takes God's self-disclosure in Christ as the perspectival lens through which to view the world. The opposition between these two groups is primarily over the status of ‘natural theology’, that is, whether we may speak of a ‘natural’ reason, which human beings possess even outside the circle of the Christian revelation, and through which they may arrive at some minimalist understanding of the divine reality. I outline the status of ‘natural theology’ in these strands of contemporary Christian thought, from Barthian ‘Christomonism’ to post-liberal theology to Reformed epistemology, and suggest certain problems within these standpoints which indicate the need for an appropriately qualified ‘natural theology’. Most of the criticisms leveled against ‘natural theology’, whether from secular philosophers or from Christian theologians themselves, can be put in two groups: first, the arguments for God's existence are logically flawed, and, second, even if they succeed they do not point to the Triune God that Christians worship. In contrast to such an old-fashioned ‘natural theology’ which allegedly starts from premises self-evidently true for all rational agents and leads through an inexorable logic to God, the qualified version is an attempt to spell out the doctrinal beliefs of Christianity such as the existence of a personal God who interacts with human beings in different ways, and outline the reasons offered in defence of such statements. In other words, without denying that Christian doctrines operate at one level as the grammatical rules which structure the Christian discourse, such a natural theology insists on the importance of the question of whether these utterances are true, in the sense that they refer to an objective reality which is independent of the Christian life-world. Such a ‘natural theology’, as the discussion will emphasize, is not an optional extra but follows in fact from the internal logic of the Christian position on the universality of God's salvific reach. (shrink)

This paper engages critically with Dimitri Gutas’ recent characterization of post-classical Islamic philosophy and theology as a form of paraphilosophy or intellectual activity that merely simulates philosophy. I argue that this view arises from a misguided understanding of the concept of philosophy that should provide the standard for its historiography. In order to avoid a number of problematic consequences, such as gaps in historical continuity or a disconnection from what we understand by philosophy today, we must take our (...) cue from a sufficiently uncontroversial contemporary concept of philosophy instead of any particular historical concept, such as the Peripatetic amalgam of metaphysics, theory of science, and the empirical sciences. Such a strategy provides a sound basis for the inclusion of post-classical thinkers, as well as many classical thinkers who are not falāsifa, in the history of Islamic philosophy without vicious circularity or loss of a normative concept of philosophy. (shrink)

This paper engages critically with Dimitri Gutas’ recent characterization of post-classical Islamic philosophy and theology as a form of paraphilosophy or intellectual activity that merely simulates philosophy. I argue that this view arises from a misguided understanding of the concept of philosophy that should provide the standard for its historiography. In order to avoid a number of problematic consequences, such as gaps in historical continuity or a disconnection from what we understand by philosophy today, we must take our (...) cue from a sufficiently uncontroversial contemporary concept of philosophy instead of any particular historical concept, such as the Peripatetic amalgam of metaphysics, theory of science, and the empirical sciences. Such a strategy provides a sound basis for the inclusion of post-classical thinkers, as well as many classical thinkers who are not falāsifa, in the history of Islamic philosophy without vicious circularity or loss of a normative concept of philosophy. (shrink)

In current theology the possibility of conclusive arguments for the existence of God is largely rejected by reference to Hume or Kant. Purportedly post-metaphysical surrogates are put in place of a metaphysically founded theology, where either the existence of God may be believed in only as a rational possibility, or else a radical constructivism about the existence of God is fallen into. Nevertheless, in the following, a conclusive metaphysical argument for the existence of God in (...) the tradition of scholastic metaphysics is formulated. It is shown that theological talk of creatio ex nihilo is only the other side of this metaphysical argument: Whoever accepts creatio ex nihilo cannot consistently deny the soundness of the argument. (shrink)

Rorty regards himself as furthering the project of the Enlightenment by separating Enlightenment liberalism from Enlightenment rationalism. To do so, he rejects the very need for explicit metaphysical theorizing. Yet his commitments to naturalism, nominalism, and the irreducibility of the normative come from the metaphysics of Wilfrid Sellars. Rorty's debt to Sellars is concealed by his use of Davidsonian arguments against the scheme/content distinction and the nonsemantic concept of truth. The Davidsonian arguments are used for Deweyan ends: to advance (...) secularization and anti-authoritarianism. However, Rorty's conflation of theology and metaphysics conceals the possibility of post-theological metaphysics. The key distinction lies between “metaphysics” and “Metaphysics.” The former provisionally models the relations between different vocabularies; the latter continues theology by other means. Sellars shows how to do metaphysics without Metaphysics. This approach complements Rorty's prioritization of cultural politics over ontology and his vision of Enlightenment liberalism without Enlightenment rationalism. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt, in a sense the initiator of Political Theology, proposed that all important political concepts are reinterpretations of or parallels to theological concepts. This insight is in this contribution described and applied to current political thought, for which it is valuable as modern democracies emerge from the secularism of modernism to a more fully self-aware post-secularism.

Eric Nelson claims that political liberals following in John Rawls's footsteps are unwittingly participating in the theodicy debate. Luck egalitarians, institutional egalitarians, and left libertarians all fail to offer convincing arguments for egalitarianism, in part due to the theological premises that are basic to—though unrecognized in—their arguments. Calls for egalitarian redistribution from political liberals are actually veiled Pelagian arguments. With Nelson's fascinating book we appear to be in a post-Rawlsian moment.Nelson defines a Pelagian as a rationalist who so prizes (...) human "metaphysical freedom" that it vindicates... (shrink)

Julian of Norwich (1342–ca.1416) as a post-scholastic theologian. This article positions the ‘first female English writer from the Middle Ages’, Julian of Norwich (1342–ca.1416), within the context of ‘post-scholasticism’, the very last period in late Medieval Philosophy, of which one feature was the final separation of theology and philosophy in the late Medieval index. Julian should in terms of this placing be engaged as a theologian proper, distinguished from the six other prominent female thinkers from the Medieval (...) Latin West (Héloïse, Hildegard, Mechtild, Hadewijch, Marguerite and Catherine), who were all philosopher-theologians. However, Julian’s epistemology and metaphysics were intertwined with her theology, as presented in her Book of Showings, to such an extent that it is impossible to isolate it from her theological output. She is within the socio-historical context of the third wave of the Black Plague in Norwich in 1369 henceforth profiled as a ‘post-scholastic theologian’ and presented on the basis of prominent theological features in Showings, including its immanent-mystical character (being a presentation of convent theology rather than scholastic theology), its vernacular (Middle English) originality and profound pastoral appeal, its maternal-Christological imagery (Moder Jhesu), its Trinitarian orientation (for the trinitie is god, god is the trinitie) and its deeply eschatological, open-ended engagement with a world devastated by the Plague (alle shalle be wele). Contribution: As a millennium-long discourse, Medieval philosophy functions in a Venn diagrammatical relationship with Medieval history, Church history, patristics and philosophy of religion. Whenever ‘mainstream’ or ‘canonised’ Medieval philosophy is impacted from specialist research, it may well have implications that these closely related disciplines could take note of. Such is the case in this reappraisal of Julian of Norwich’ theological and pastoral legacy from its original context of the Black Plague in the 14th century – and indeed within the context of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. (shrink)

Jean Grondin completes the first history of metaphysics and respects both the analytical and the Continental schools while transcending the theoretical limitations of each. He reviews seminal texts by Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Augustine. He follows the theological turn in the metaphysical thought of Avicenna, Anselm, Aquinas, and Duns Scotus, and he revisits Descartes and the cogito; Spinoza and Leibniz's rationalist approaches; Kant's reclaiming of the metaphysical tradition; and post-Kantian practice up to Hegel. He engages with (...) twentieth century innovations that upended the discipline, particularly Heidegger's revival of the question of Being and the rediscovery of the metaphysics of existence by Sartre and the Existentialists, language by Gadamer and Derrida, and transcendence by Levinas. Metaphysics is often dismissed as a form or epoch of philosophy that must be overcome, yet by promoting a full understanding of its platform and processes, Grondin reveals its cogent approach to reality and foundational influence on modern philosophy and science. By restoring the value of metaphysics for contemporary audiences, Grondin showcases the rich currents and countercurrents of metaphysical thought and its future possibilities. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Liberation Theology Philosophy of Liberation Pedagogy of the Oppressed Conclusion References Further Reading.

In this article, I speak self-consciously as a man of faith addressing both believers and non-believers, but with the latter especially in mind. I suggest that we are currently witnessing (i) a highly significant departure from the ‘old’ model of liberal society that championed a sacred-secular divide, where the state was (only) a neutral umpire with a deliberately cultivated attitude of ‘studied public indifference’ to the ‘inner life’ of the vast host of (private) associations that itwas obliged to impartially regulate, (...) and (ii) a transition to a ‘new’ post-secular model of liberal society that champions and promotes a sacred-secular distinction (a complementary unity of distinct aspects), where the state is obliged to rethink itself and become (also) the state of its society. In this respect, it resembles the state in the era of Christendom. I hold that Rawls and Habermas are handicapped in their efforts to theorise post-secular society as a result of their strong anti-metaphysical posture. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Patricia Kelly, Ressourcement Theology:A Review EssayMatthew K. MinerdIntroductionAlthough now over seventy years in the past, the theological and ecclesiastical events of the 1940s, most often styled under some banner akin to "the crisis over the nouvelle théologie," leading up to the promulgation of the encyclical Humani Generis, retain a currency and interest to this very day. No doubt, the later influence of many of the so-called nouveaux théologiens (...) leading up to, during, and following the Second Vatican Council has contributed to the continued currency of their thought and the debates connected to it. Numerous monographs continue to be written concerning themes of "ressourcement," theological reform, and engagement with the world, all of which were dear to many of those who were embroiled in the philosophical and theological controversies of the 1930s and 1940s. Moreover, increased interest in certain long-buried conservative Thomist thinkers from this same era has led to renewed consideration regarding the concerns that they expressed at the time. In fact, it would seem that today, in 2022, the evaluation expressed in Nineteenth Century Scholasticism: The Search for a Unitary Method by Fr. Gerald McCool (from a perspective rather different from my own) remains true, as the Church continues to live in the midst of an ongoing crisis of modernity that places us in tight continuity with so much of the past several centuries of European Christian intellectual history:In contemporary Catholic theology, the relationship between apologetics, or fundamental theology, and speculative theology is as much [End Page 353] an issue as it was in the nineteenth century.... And in contemporary Catholic theology, the relation between positive theology and speculative theology still remains a problem whose solution demands the use of a coherent system of epistemology and metaphysics.... The contemporary debate over theological method is simply another phase in the dialectical movement of Catholic theology's response to post-Enlightenment thought from the beginning of the nineteenth century through Vatican I, Aeterni Patris, the modernist crisis, between-the-wars Thomism, the New Theology controversy, and Vatican II up to the present.1The great crisis of the 1940s—whether we name it nouvelle théologie, after the reform-advocates of the era, or dialogue theologique, in honor of the Toulouse Dominicans' attempt to present a Scholastic position between, on the one hand, Fr. Chenu's and Congar's view of what the Saulchoir should be, and, on the other hand, the more-conservative Thomism of Frs. Garrigou-Lagrange, Gagnebet, and Gillon in Rome2—was and remains, in the words of Etienne Fouilloux, "the only theological debate of real [quelque] importance, at least in France, from the condemnation of Modernism to the time of the Second Vatican Council."3 And like any truly great event or crisis in intellectual-spiritual culture, it remains with us today in its fruits, both resolved and unresolved.Thus, when a new work is published dedicated to these events and the figures involved therein, the Catholic intellectual world should take heed, for our own self-understanding—whatever sui iuris Church in which we are ascribed—is at stake. Hence, the arrival of the collection of translations by Dr. Patricia Kelly of the University of St. Andrews is an event to be welcomed, even if elements of its publication also give rise to concern. This volume, Ressourcement Theology: A Sourcebook,4 gathering together essays by various parties involved on both sides of the specifically Francophone debates over theological method and truth that came to a head in the 1940s, provides the reading public with a dual "service": it presents in English a [End Page 354] number of texts not heretofore available, while also, unfortunately, bearing witness to the academic prejudices lingering against the authors writing from Rome and Toulouse concerning certain veins of thought in theological methodology during the inter-war and immediate post-war era. Although my review will be somewhat negative on certain points—both for technical textual reasons and because of the slanted narrative presented by Dr. Kelly—I wish only the best to her and her work, hoping that the concerns that I voice can serve as a springboard to dialogue, not retrenchment... (shrink)

The work aims to demonstrate that at the heart of Eriugena’s approach to Christian theology there lies a profoundly philosophical interest in the necessity of a cardinal shift in the paradigms of thinking – namely, that from the metaphysical to the dialectical one, which wins him a reputation of the ‘Hegel of the ninth century,’ as scholars in Post-Hegelian Germany called him. The prime concern of Eriugena’s discourse is to prove that the actual adoption of the salvific (...) truth of Christ’s revelation about all humans’ Sonship to God directly depends on the way the truth of God’s Oneness is consistently thought of. It is exactly the dialectic of the universal and particular which allows Eriugena both to tackle the dichotomy between being and non-being and to proceed towards raising a question how the totality of God’s being can be approached so as to let him radically reconsider a predominantly metaphysical view of creation the theological reflection traditionally relies on. According to the dialectical understanding of unity that Eriugena does adhere to, the reality of creation cannot be thought of, and therefore known, otherwise than in the way of being inseparable from the universal Principle of all. This is the Principle abandoned by nothing, unless the mind corrupted by the senses thinks otherwise and, following the metaphysical pattern of dichotomy, improperly sets the creation and its Principle apart. Restoration of the mind to the proper rational motion of recta ratio freed, as Eriugena argues, from the dictates of senses therefore becomes the way of both the epistemological breakthrough to the infinite whole and practical return from the world of finite things to living in the divine reality of creation. The work’s argument is based on the assumption of close affinity between Eriugena’s discourse and that of his Islamic contemporaries, who developed their dialectical ideas within the Mu’tazilah tradition of a philosophically disciplined approach to the truth of God’s Oneness. In particular, al-Nazzam’s engagement with Parmenides’ Periphyseon and his resistance to the danger of a dualistic interpretation of its ontology seem to provoke Eriugena’s innovative approach to Christian theology with a view to suggesting a mode of overcoming dualism as the main obstacle on the way to the Truth revealed. This vision of the meaning of Eriugena’s undertaking allows us not only to better understand the novelty of his approach to Christian theology, but also reconsider some of the key points of his discourse that seem to have become a sort of commonplace in Eriugenian studies: 1. Unlike the prevalent opinion, not the forms of the division of Nature but the modes of interpreting being and non-being are to be understood to constitute the genuine subject-matter of each book of the Periphyseon and, hence, of the five parts of his system. 2. The fourfold division of Nature is to be interpreted not as a basic structure of the system offered by Eriugena, but as a means of introducing dialectic to the body of theology by refuting Augustine’s metaphysical vision of a hierarchical model of the universe and indicating the way of resolution of the cardinally theological contradiction – God does and does not create at the same time. 3. All this gives reason to disagree with a general tendency of associating Eriugena’s work with exploration of the division of God’s Nature and to reinterpret it as an immense anti-division project to be understood as an important turn in the history of Christian thought entirely focused on the truth of God’s Oneness and human life in conformity to it. *** I affirm that this thesis is entirely my own work and has not been submitted for examination in any form elsewhere. (shrink)

Jean Grondin completes the first history of metaphysics and respects both the analytical and the Continental schools while transcending the theoretical limitations of each. He reviews seminal texts by Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Augustine. He follows the theological turn in the metaphysical thought of Avicenna, Anselm, Aquinas, and Duns Scotus, and he revisits Descartes and the cogito; Spinoza and Leibniz's rationalist approaches; Kant's reclaiming of the metaphysical tradition; and post-Kantian practice up to Hegel. He engages with (...) twentieth century innovations that upended the discipline, particularly Heidegger's revival of the question of Being and the rediscovery of the metaphysics of existence by Sartre and the Existentialists, language by Gadamer and Derrida, and transcendence by Levinas. Metaphysics is often dismissed as a form or epoch of philosophy that must be overcome, yet by promoting a full understanding of its platform and processes, Grondin reveals its cogent approach to reality and foundational influence on modern philosophy and science. By restoring the value of metaphysics for contemporary audiences, Grondin showcases the rich currents and countercurrents of metaphysical thought and its future possibilities. (shrink)

In this book, Mark P. Fusco offers a historical, philosophical and theological review and appraisal of current research into quantum, post-modern, atheistic, mathematical, and philosophical theories that engage our interpretation of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Ferdinand Ulrich’s accounts of Ur-Kenosis. This cross-disciplinary approach inspires a new speculative metaphysical theory based on the representation of being as a holo-somatic ontology. Holocryptic metaphysics gives us a novel interpretation of transubstantiation as it is founded on the findings of quantum mechanical (...) theory. The quantum object and black hole’s properties present a new way to explain physical matter based on its holographic identity. This scientific theory for representing physical matter’s identity is recognized, for example, in the symmetry existing between a subatomic particle and its orbital shell, a single particle’s identity in relationship to its thermodynamic system, Hawking radiation, and black hole entropy. Further, the properties of quantum non-locality and teleportation signpost a new way to understand the Eternal Logos’ relationship to Jesus Christ and the Eucharist. (shrink)

In Intellectual Life in the Ḥijāz before Wahhabism, Naser Dumairieh argues that, as a result of changing global conditions facilitating the movement of scholars and texts, the seventeenth-century Ḥijāz was one of the most important intellectual centers of the Islamic world, acting as a hub between its different parts. Positioning Ibrāhīm al-Kūrānī (d. 1101/1690) as representative of the intellectual activities of the pre-Wahhabism Ḥijāz, Dumairieh argues that his coherent philosophical system represents a synthesis of several major post-classical traditions of (...) Islamic thought, namely kalām and Akbarian appropriations of Avicennian metaphysics. Al-Kūrānī's work is the culmination of the philosophized Akbarian tradition; with his reconciliation of Ibn ʻArabī's ideas with Ashʻarī theology, Ibn ʻArabī's ideas became Islamic theology. (shrink)

Alain Badiou is described as a post-continental philosopher to distinguish his work from that of thinkers such as Derrida and Foucault. Indeed he is critical of key strategies characteristic of genealogical and deconstructive critiques, since he wishes to reconnect with fundamental metaphysical and ethical preoccupations of the western philosophical tradition. In Badiou’s work metaphysical, ethical and socio-political concerns are interwoven. In this article Ioffer a critical evaluation of Badiou’s philosophy, moving from an examination of his writing on (...) ethics to the ontological positions which underlie his ethics and socio-political critique. In my critical evaluation I draw attention to the new work going on in metaphysics in analytical philosophy, but, more fundamentally, I draw upon Bernard Lonergan’s critical realist thought. (shrink)