Here’s a summary of part of Milbank’s critique of Derrida (from Theology and Social Theory , pp. 307-311). Derrida attacks Western metaphysics by focusing on the attempt to separate a “meaning” out from the “play of signs.” In most Western systems, this meaning . . . . Continue Reading »
A note against empiricism: Derrida quotes Scheler (in his essay on Levinas, “Violence and Metaphysics”) to this effect: “I see not only the eye of an other, I see also that he looks at me.” That is, what is seen is not only a thing, a dead object, but also a responding . . . . Continue Reading »
Levinas claims that an absolute other must necessarily be invisible. If the other is visible, I can at least “capture” and “grasp” and “encompass” him in my gaze, which is the first moment in a sequence that could lead to capturing, grasping, and encompassing and . . . . Continue Reading »
In his history of the ancient concept of progress, E. R. Dodds says that one <blockquote>fundamental limitation on the idea of progress was imposed by the theory of Forms, both in Platonic and in the Aristotelian version. For Plato all progress consists in approximation to a pre-existing . . . . Continue Reading »
In an introduction to a volume called The Portable Greek Reader , W. H. Auden made these comments about Greek philosophy: The great difference between the Greek conception of Nature and later ones is that the Greeks thought of the universe as analogous to a city-state, so that for them natural . . . . Continue Reading »
Bruce Ellis Benson’s Graven Ideologies , a study of Nietzsche, Derrida, and Marion, confirms something I’ve suspected from my sketchy reading of Derrida. Benson says that Derrida emphasizes that all thought is set in a structure of “not yet but still to come.” This is . . . . Continue Reading »
Chesterton was wrong, for that other vision stood in the wings. But, writing in 1908, how could he have predicted that parents would one day pay minds so modest as these for the opportunity to teach their children that they might not exist, that the answer to the question “Are we?” is not . . . . Continue Reading »
It is has become commonplace to regard Ivan Karamazov’s “Legend of the Grand Inquisitor” as a prescient parable glorifying human freedom and defending it against the kind of totalitarian threats it would face in the twentieth century. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s angry atheist delivers an uncanny . . . . Continue Reading »
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