John D. Caputo CURRICULUM VITAE
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Dialectics, Difference, Weak Thought
1 Dialectics, Difference, Weak Thought GIANNI VATTIMO In this essay I will try to sketch the main tenets of weak thought, il pensiero debole, and how it is related to dialectics and difference. This connection is not to be understood mainly or solely as an “overcoming” but, rather, it is to be defined primarily in terms of the Heideggerian notion ofVerwindung , a term whose sense also must be understood within the horizon of a “weak” notion of what it means to think. We cannot in any case read the relationship between these three terms as if we were talking of a passage from one to the other. Weak thought has not entirely left dialectics and difference behind; rather, they constitute for it a past in the Heideggerian sense of Gewesenes, which has to do with the idea of sending [invio] and destiny. With these premises, however, I am not saying that to take dialectics and difference as a point of departure requires I take a theoretical stance which would need to be radically justified, assuming that it could. In the present context, these two terms are “givens” of destiny understood as trans- mission: they are points of reference we encounter each and every time we engage in thinking, here and now. It is probably only “strong” thought, that of deductive cogency, which fears letting the initial move escape, the move after which everything falls into place. And yet the question of beginnings cannot be avoided even from the standpoint of a weak notion of thinking. Weak thought presupposes that, contrary to the heavily metaphysical frame- work beneath the problem of beginnings (starting from the first principles of Being), and contrary moreover to a historicist metaphysics (in Hegel’s sense, in which Being has no first principles but is rather a providential process: to think means to be up on the times), a third way may be possible. -
1 the Post-Secular Debate
The Post-Secular Debate: Introductory Remarks Camil Ungureanu and Lasse Thomassen* Some scholars have recently expressed their doubts about the popular use of the term “post-secularism” and suggested that it is merely a short-lived fashion in social theory and philosophy, all too often used to gain access to research grants.1 Veit Bader may be perfectly right about the term itself, for in time it may indeed fall into disregard and disappear from use. Skepticism about its inflationary use is, we think, warranted. However, we also submit that, if severed from the temptation of proposing a new grand narrative, “post-secularism” can be useful for designating a socio-cultural phenomenon that will not wither away any time soon. Let us first consider the inflationary reading according to which the “return” of religion is interpreted as the shift to a new age or to a new type of society coming after the secular one. According to this influential reading, advanced by philosophers as different as Jürgen Habermas, John D. Caputo, and Gianni Vattimo, in this new age a transformed religion may play a fundamental role in the socio-political sphere and enable individuals to overcome unhelpful divisions between faith and reason. Habermas, for one, speaks of a new “post-secular society” in which religious and non- * Department of Social and Political Science, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain. Email: camil.ungureanu@ upf.edu. School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary, University of London. Email: [email protected] 1 religious citizens engage, predominantly in the social-public sphere, in a process of mutual learning and reconciliation through dialogue and the exchange of reasons.2 For Habermas, religious and non-religious citizens can attain agreements and enrich public discourse by means of a rational dialogue, understood, in large part, as leading to the translation of sacred language into secular language. -
(Narrative) Introduction to Richard Kearney's
HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies ISSN: (Online) 2072-8050, (Print) 0259-9422 Page 1 of 9 Original Research Reading ‘blackface’: A (narrative) introduction to Richard Kearney’s notion of carnal hermeneutics Author: Prominent Irish philosopher Richard Kearney’s notion of ‘carnal hermeneutics’ is introduced 1,2 Helgard Pretorius by applying it to a case study of a recent event that took place at one of South Africa’s university Affiliations: campuses. The narrative assists in illuminating some of the core principles of carnal 1Faculty of Theology, Vrije hermeneutics and illustrates the applicability of carnal hermeneutics as a ‘diagnostic caring for Universiteit, the Netherlands lived existence’. In the process, an analysis is also given of the event in question, which is connected to what has widely been labelled as ‘blackface’. In conclusion, the contextual, 2 Faculty of Theology, philosophical, ethical, and theological implications of carnal hermeneutics are explored with Stellenbosch University, South Africa an eye on theological praxes in South Africa today. Corresponding author: Helgard Pretorius, Introduction [email protected] How do we sense, figure, and discern the other in our midst? Dates: Received: 21 July 2015 It is in response to this enigmatic challenge that I would like to facilitate a dialogue with Accepted: 28 Oct. 2015 Richard Kearney’s1 notion of ‘carnal hermeneutics’.2 The question of otherness and the : Published 31 May 2016 stranger has occupied Western thought and culture from its earliest beginnings. Yet it has How to cite this article: most often been dealt with from a perspective that holds reason as superior, even divorced Pretorius, H., 2016, ‘Reading from bodily existence. -
The Communicator 1
February, 2017 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS The Communicator 1. Search for New February, 2017 Lead 2. a. New Lead Spirit-Guided Search for the New Lead cont’d. Minister b. February By Rev. Nayiri Karjian, Interim Lead Minister Worship [email protected] c. Shrove Tuesday “How long will you be here?” “How long will the search last?” These are some of the questions 3. a. Organist I am asked as many of you wonder about the search process. I am glad to share how the process b. Soup Fundraiser usually unfolds. c. Peanut Butter The Search Committee currently is gathering information from you, the congregation, to compile 4. Youth & Adult the Church Profile, a 20 page document that introduces our congregation to an interested Ministry candidate. Their goal is to complete the profile by the end of February. 5. The Forum The next step is to activate the listing in the UCC Ministry Opportunities 6. KC Worship http://www.ucc.org/ucc_ministry_opportunities 7. Financial Ministry or exact page http://oppsearch.ucc.org/web/searchresult.aspx?q=jobposition&v=Senior_Pastor 8. JWW Lectureship Once the listing is activated, interested candidates will send their profile/professional resume to our Search Committee via the Rocky Mountain Conference UCC. 9. Mission Giving & Outreach The Search Committee reads the profiles and responds to the candidates. They check candidates’ 10. A Peek in the Past online presence, listening to sermons or reading them, checking Facebook, and so on. They also send candidates information about our church. All communication is usually done electronically. 11. Congregational Life The committee discerns the candidates who are a good match and contacts them for interviews, usually set up via skype. -
A Feminist Analysis of the Emerging Church: Toward Radical Participation in the Organic, Relational, and Inclusive Body of Christ
CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Boston University Institutional Repository (OpenBU) Boston University OpenBU http://open.bu.edu Theses & Dissertations Boston University Theses & Dissertations 2015 A feminist analysis of the Emerging Church: toward radical participation in the organic, relational, and inclusive body of Christ https://hdl.handle.net/2144/16295 Boston University BOSTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY Dissertation A FEMINIST ANALYSIS OF THE EMERGING CHURCH: TOWARD RADICAL PARTICIPATION IN THE ORGANIC, RELATIONAL, AND INCLUSIVE BODY OF CHRIST by XOCHITL ALVIZO B.A., University of Southern California, 2001 M.Div., Boston University School of Theology, 2007 Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2015 © 2015 XOCHITL ALVIZO All rights reserved Approved by First Reader _________________________________________________________ Bryan Stone, Ph.D. Associate Dean for Academic Affairs; E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism Second Reader _________________________________________________________ Shelly Rambo, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Theology Now when along the way, I paused nostalgically before a large, closed-to-women door of patriarchal religion with its unexamined symbols, something deep within me rises to cry out: “Keep traveling, Sister! Keep traveling! The road is far from finished.” There is no road ahead. We make the road as we go… – Nelle Morton DEDICATION To my Goddess babies – long may you Rage! v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation has always been a work carried out en conjunto. I am most grateful to Bryan Stone who has been a mentor and a friend long before this dissertation was ever imagined. His encouragement and support have made all the difference to me. -
Post-Continental Philosophy: Its Definition, Contours, and Fundamental Sources
Post-continental Philosophy: Its Definition, Contours, and Fundamental Sources NELSON MALDONADO-TORRES It is no accident that the global geographical framework in use today is essentially a cartographic celebration of European power. After centuries of imperialism, the presumptions of a worldview of a once-dominant metropole has become part of the intellectual furniture of the world…. Metageography matters, and the attempt to engage it critically has only begun. Martin W. Lewis and Kären W. Wigen, The Myth of Continents.1 or several decades now the contours of legitimate philosophy have been drawn by advocates of F so-called analytic and continental philosophies. Analytic philosophy is often referred to as a style of thinking centered on the question of whether something is true, rather than, as continental philosophy, on the multiple factors that constitute meaning.2 Analytic philosophy is also said to be closer to the sciences, while continental philosophy has more affinity with the humanities.3 One of the reasons for this lies in that while analytic philosophy tends to dismiss history from its reflections, continental philosophy typically emphasizes the relevance of time, tradition, lived experience, and/or social context. Fortunately, this situation is slowly but gradually changing today. A variety of intellectuals are defying the rigid boundaries of these fields. Some of the most notable are Afro- American, Afro-Caribbean, and Latina/o scholars using the arsenal of these bodies of thought to analyze and interpret problems related to colonialism, racism, and sexism in the contemporary world.4 These challenges demand a critical analysis of the possibilities and limits of change within the main coordinates of these different styles or forms of philosophizing. -
Nihilism & Emancipation: Ethics, Politics, & Law Gianni Vattimo
Nihilism & Emancipation: Ethics, Politics, & Law Gianni Vattimo Foreword by Richard Rorty [ix] Gianni Vattimo is a prominent social democratic politician, a widely read newspaper columnist, and a distinguished philosopher. He was elected in 1999 to the European Parliament, where he has been very active in promoting progressive social legislation and in furthering European unification. For decades, his comments on the political scene in Italy and Europe have appeared in La stampa and other leading Italian newspapers and magazines; he is currently using those media to unleash fierce criticisms of the Berlusconi regime. His philosophical writings, of which this volume provides a rich sample, are among the most imaginative contributions to the tradition of philosophical thought that flows from Nietzsche and Heidegger. These writings are perfectly suited to the needs of those hitherto unfamiliar with this tradition who would like to gain an understanding of the intellectual outlook he calls "nihilism." This way of seeing things might also be called "commonsense Heideggerianism," for it is widespread, and often taken for granted, among European intellectuals. Many philosophers who, like Vattimo and Derrida, were students in the 1950s, were deeply impressed by Heidegger essays such as "Letter on Humanism," "The Question Concerning Technology," "The Origin of the [x] Work of Art" and "Nietzsche's Word: God is Dead." Many of them presuppose, in their own writings, their readers' familiarity with Heidegger's story about the history of Western thought—his account of how the Platonic dream of escaping from Becoming to Being has been dreamt out, and how Nietzsche brought metaphysics to its destined end by inverting Plato, giving Becoming primacy over Being. -
Humanity and Hospitality an Approach to Theology in the Times of Migration
Humanity and hospitality An approach to theology in the times of migration RENÉ DAUSNER n contrast to discourses on the relation between religion and violence, this project focuses Ion the biblical commitment that God can be understood as the one who ‘loves the stranger’ (Deut. 10:18). With regard to this central passage it will be asked what are the implications that this image of God can offer? In what way can monotheism be interpreted as ‘a school of xenophilia’ (E. Levinas)? What does the inclination of God to the stranger mean for the understanding of humanity, metaphysics, and migration? Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) has suggested that we understand metaphysics, in the context of the thinking of Levinas, as ‘an experience of hospitality’ (Derrida 1999a: 46). With regard to this idea, I would like to ask what role can (the question of) God play within the political, sociological, ethical, etc. discourses of diversity and migration? Introduction In the following contribution, I will not discuss the negative effects of religion (cf. Assmann 2003, 2015; Schieder 2014); instead, I will ask what one can – positively – learn from the biblical narratives concerning God with regard to the wide field of the issue of migration – and the other way around. Migration is, without any doubt, one of the most urgent issues of a common and coming society of Europe. In Germany, as well as in other European countries such as the Netherlands, Hungary, Austria, and Finland, we can observe a tendency towards an acceptance of nationalist and right- wing parties . Xenophobia, that is, the fear, and sometimes even hatred, of strangers, is the expression of a politics of national self-isolation and what one refers to, with a German term, as Angst. -
Book Review: Gadamer's Ethics of Play: Hermeneutics and the Other
Eastern Illinois University The Keep Faculty Research and Creative Activity Kinesiology, Sport & Recreation January 2013 Book Review: Gadamer’s Ethics of Play: Hermeneutics and the Other Chad R. Carlson Eastern Illinois University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://thekeep.eiu.edu/kss_fac Part of the Kinesiology Commons Recommended Citation Carlson, Chad R., "Book Review: Gadamer’s Ethics of Play: Hermeneutics and the Other" (2013). Faculty Research and Creative Activity. 19. https://thekeep.eiu.edu/kss_fac/19 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Kinesiology, Sport & Recreation at The Keep. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Research and Creative Activity by an authorized administrator of The Keep. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BOOK REVIEW Chad Carlson Eastern Illinois University Gadamer’s ethics of play: Hermeneutics and the other, by Monica Vilhauer, Lanham, MD, Lexington Books, 2010, 166 pp., £37 (hardback), ISBN 978-0739139141 As a naıve graduate student, I remember signing up for a course in the Philosophy Department entitled, ‘Art and Truth’. Although I was studying sport and play in a different department, I was intrigued by the title – art seemed closely related to play and sport in the landscape of human experiences. Further, the course was offered at a convenient time and it fulfilled a deficiency I had toward graduation. Unfortunately, I had no idea what I was getting into. The course readings, which included Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Nietzsche, Maurice Merleau- Ponty, Jacques Derrida, Jurgen Habermas, and, most prominently, Hans-Georg Gadamer, seemed so dense that they necessitated long hours of introduction and prior training that I did not have. -
A Brief Look at Mathematics and Theology Philip J
Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal Issue 27 Article 14 Winter 1-1-2004 A Brief Look at Mathematics and Theology Philip J. Davis Brown University Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.claremont.edu/hmnj Part of the Logic and Foundations of Mathematics Commons, Mathematics Commons, and the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons Recommended Citation Davis, Philip J. (2004) "A Brief Look at Mathematics and Theology," Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal: Iss. 27, Article 14. Available at: http://scholarship.claremont.edu/hmnj/vol1/iss27/14 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Claremont at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1 A Brief Look at Mathematics and Theology Philip J. Davis "Such a really remarkable discovery. I wanted your opinion on it. You know the formula m over naught equals infinity, m being any positive number? [m/0 = ]. Well, why not reduce the equation to a simpler form by multiplying both sides by naught? In which case you have m equals infinity times naught [m = x 0]. That is to say, a positive number is the product of zero and infinity. Doesn't that demonstrate the creation of the Universe by an infinite power out of nothing? Doesn't it?" Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point, (1928), Chapter XI. I Introduction We are living in a mathematical age. Our lives, from the personal to the communal, from the communal to the international, from the biological and physical to the economic and even to the ethical, are increasingly mathematicized. -
Analytic and Continental Philosophy, Science, and Global Philosophy
CHAPTER SIX ANALYTIC AND CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE, AND GLOBAL PHILOSOPHY Richard Tieszen There are many references in the philosophical literature to the division between analytic and Continental philosophy but it is not easy to provide a simple formulation of what it is that distinguishes these approaches to or styles of philosophy. There have been significant subdivisions within what has been considered analytic philosophy, such as that between for- mal philosophy, ordinary language philosophy, and conceptual analysis, and there have of course also been many variations within the general grouping of Continental philosophy, extending from eidetic phenomenol- ogy, existential phenomenology, existentialism, structuralism and semiot- ics, and neo-Freudian analysis to deconstruction. Philosophers who have written about the split between the analytic and Continental traditions have often focused on the work of particular figures who seem to embody much of what is involved in the division. In The Origins of Analytic Philoso- phy, for example, Michael Dummett looks to Frege and Husserl and holds that Frege took a turn into the philosophy of language but that Husserl did not, thus initiating a split in modern philosophy. Michael Friedman, to take another example, writes a book entitled A Parting of the Ways in which he focuses on Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger. Over the years I have heard or read a host of characterizations of the two traditions, such as the following: Analytic philosophy strives for clarity, exactness, precision and Continental philosophy does not. Con- tinental philosophy instead tends toward the use of poetic or dramatic language. The methodology of analytic philosophy is argumentation while Continental philosophy, if it has a methodology at all, is concerned with description or narrative or literary quality. -
Stanley Hauerwas: Against Secularization in the Church Zeitschrift Für Dialektische Theologie ◆ Heft 59 ◆ Jahrgang 29 ◆ Nummer 2 ◆ 2013 Herman Paul
Stanley Hauerwas: Against Secularization in the Church Zeitschrift für Dialektische Theologie ◆ Heft 59 ◆ Jahrgang 29 ◆ Nummer 2 ◆ 2013 Herman Paul In May 2007, theologian Stanley Hauerwas addressed a packed audi- ence at Princeton Theological Seminary.1 Frowning behind his glasses, Hauerwas began his talk by firing a volley of uncomfortable questions: “How many of you worship in a church with an American flag? I am sorry to tell you your salvation is in doubt. How many of you worship in a church in which the Fourth of July is celebrated? I am sorry to tell you your salvation is in doubt. How many of you worship in a church that recognizes Thanksgiving? I am sorry to tell you your salvation is in doubt.” And so the speaker went on, to the consternation and amuse- ment of his audience, ending his accusations, less than two weeks before Mother’s Day, with the timely question: “How many of you worship in a church that recognizes ‘Mother’s Day’? I am sorry to tell you your salva- tion is in doubt.”2 These words seem characteristic, not merely of Hauerwas’s polemical style and fondness for hyperbolic metaphors, but also of the American context in which the theologian operates. Hauerwas is an American theo- logian, engaged in American debates, and always addressing American audiences or, as I shall argue, American Christians who, in Hauerwas’s assessment, better know how to be American than how to be Christian. This is not just an incidental circumstance. If he identifies himself, tongue 1 I should like to thank the conference organizers for their kind invitation to deliver this address and the audience, including in particular Ariaan Baan, Gerard den Hertog, Kees van der Kooi, Rinse Reeling Brouwer, and Hans G.