At the beginning of her new Repetition and Identity: The Literary Agenda , Catherine Pickstock lays out her Kierkegaardian agenda: “To say that every thing, every res, only exists when it has already been (nonidentically) repeated is to say that all beings flow unpredictably forwards in . . . . Continue Reading »
In the Fall 2013 issue of Comment magazine, editor James KA Smith argues that we need to defend marriage precisely to protect the most vulnerable in our society. The negative effects of no-fault divorce and other legal changes hurt “the poor most of all.” Drawing on the argument of . . . . Continue Reading »
Bringing a long history to its culmination, Kant put duty at the center of ethics, even speaking of a “duty of virtue.” For Agamben ( Opus Dei: An Archaeology of Duty ), this is a development from Christian conceptions of liturgical action, but with a decisive difference: “If in . . . . Continue Reading »
Habit (Gr. hexis ) is typically understood as a part of a theory of action, or a concept in ethics, but Agamben claims ( Opus Dei: An Archaeology of Duty ) that we cannot understand how the concept works in Aristotle unless we recognize that it’s fundamentally a metaphysical concept: . . . . Continue Reading »
We think that humility means minimizing achievement and talent. “It’s nothing. I’m nothing” sounds humble to our ears. It’s not. Better to be thorough Pauline. Paul doesn’t exactly maximize achievement, but he comes close: “I speak in tongues more than . . . . Continue Reading »
Rosenstock-Huessy knew Barth personally, but Rosenstock wasn’t a Barthian. He anticipated the Romerbrief , only to be disappointed when he read it. For Rosenstock-Huessy, Barth was just another Platonist using Christian symbols. The reaction was visceral: “The more I read Barth, the . . . . Continue Reading »
Kevin Hector offers this clarification in response to my summary of his Theology Without Metaphysics: God, Language and the Spirit of Recognition: “A crucial component of what I call ‘essentialist-correspondentist metaphysics’ is that it fits objects into predetermined categories or a . . . . Continue Reading »
Rosenstock-Huessy talks about the necessity of enemies as much as Carl Schmitt. Enemies keep us awake: “Thanks to Mr. Stalin, we have kept awake. It’s wonderful. Just, you see, have a good enemy, and you are taken care of. But your friends, beware of them. They put you to sleep. Do you . . . . Continue Reading »
In his excellent Religion, Redemption and Revolution: The New Speech Thinking Revolution of Franz Rozenzweig and Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy , Wayne Cristaudo explains the difference between Platonic dialogue and the dialogic thinking of Rosenzweig and Rosenstock-Huessy. Socrates dialogs, but he . . . . Continue Reading »
The title of Mark Edwards’s Origen Against Plato bluntly gives the gist of the book. Contrary to the popular wisdom, Origen was not a Platonist, denying all of the premises of the Platonism of his time - that objects are defined because they participate in forms that dwell in an incorporeal . . . . Continue Reading »
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