Beyond Public and Private: A Theological Transfiguration by Sean C. Larsen Graduate Program in Religion Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Paul J. Griffiths, Supervisor ___________________________ Stanley Hauerwas ___________________________ Reinhard Huetter ___________________________ Kenneth Surin ___________________________ Kathryn Tanner Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Program in Religion in the Graduate School of Duke University 2013 ABSTRACT Beyond Public and Private: A Theological Transfiguration by Sean Larsen Graduate Program in Religion Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Paul J. Griffiths, Supervisor ___________________________ Stanley Hauerwas ___________________________ Reinhard Huetter ___________________________ Kenneth Surin ___________________________ Kathryn Tanner Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Program in Religion in the Graduate School of Duke University 2013 Copyright by Sean Craig Larsen 2013 Abstract In this dissertation, I argue that the conceptual grammar of Augustine’s thought provides a way of re-thinking the public/private distinction as it has been developed in modernity. The dissertation consists of two parts. The first part is a conceptual analysis and a genealogy of the distinction through focus on specific private characters produced in both antiquity and modernity. I focus on the characters of the “woman” and the “refugee.” Conceptually, I argue that the public/private distinction can be seen both as an anthropological distinction and as a socio-political distinction: claims about the structure, nature, and history of selves have implications for how society ought to be organized, and claims about how society ought to be organized have implications about the structure, nature, and history of selves. I show how Christianity changed society by creating new character scripts and with them, new socio-political possibilities. The second part of the dissertation provides one Augustinian conceptual “grammar” that makes sense of the revolution Christianity effected possible, and it responds to problems raised by the genealogy in the first half by providing a close reading of Augustine’s texts relating to God and creation, interiority, salvation and beatitude, and the Virgin Mary. I display the logic in Augustine’s thought by which, in God, domestic and public come together, how God’s relation to creation changes how to think about interiority, what that means for how Augustine understands salvation as a restoration of proper inwardness, and how the character of the Virgin Mary condenses the grammar as a sacrament of human salvation. I draw out the ways that Mary shows how Augustinian thought provides resources to think “beyond” the public/private distinction both as it was given to her in antiquity and how it has been received in modernity. iv For my parents, James Craig Larsen and Lori Nita Larsen v Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................. iv List of Abbreviations .............................................................................................. ix Acknowledgements ............................................................................................... xi INTRODUCTION: Beyond Public and Private? .................................................................. 1 1. Interiority and Society ...................................................................................... 1 2. Problem ....................................................................................................... 4 3. The Nature of the Distinction ............................................................................. 8 4. Narrating the Distinction: Methodological Reflections ............................................. 12 5. Relevance of the Distinction ............................................................................. 17 6. Conceptual Mapping ...................................................................................... 21 7. Anthropological Distinction .............................................................................. 22 8. Sociopolitical Distinction ................................................................................. 23 9. Weintraub’s Pan-Political Distinction .................................................................. 24 10. Liberal Portrayals ......................................................................................... 38 11. Liberalisms and Corresponding Distinctions ........................................................ 45 12. Sorting the Distinction .................................................................................. 49 13. A Note on Constructive Theological Use of Augustine ............................................ 51 CHAPTER 1: A Genealogy of the Distinction ................................................................. 57 1. Introduction ................................................................................................ 57 2. Political Anthropology .................................................................................... 58 3. Plato .......................................................................................................... 59 4. Aristotle ..................................................................................................... 64 5. Early Christian Problematic .............................................................................. 68 6. Strategies of Containment ................................................................................ 71 7. The Revolution ............................................................................................. 80 8. Arendt and Augustine ..................................................................................... 90 9. Arendt on Depoliticization ............................................................................... 96 10. The Rise of the Liberal State .......................................................................... 103 CHAPTER 2: The Refugee: Sovereignty, Governmentality, and Biopolitics ........................... 110 1. Arendt and the Refugee .................................................................................. 110 2. Hobbes ...................................................................................................... 115 3. Schmitt ...................................................................................................... 120 4. Foucault and the Emergence of a Society of Control ............................................... 124 5. Foucault on Governmentality and Biopolitics ........................................................ 126 6. Foucault and Pastoral Power ............................................................................ 132 7. Foucault and the Society of Discipline ................................................................. 136 8. Effects of Biopolitics ...................................................................................... 139 9. Agamben ................................................................................................... 149 10. Hardt and Negri ......................................................................................... 155 11. Esposito ................................................................................................... 159 12. Conclusion ................................................................................................ 165 vi CHAPTER 3: Meanings of Life .................................................................................. 170 1. Introduction ............................................................................................... 170 2. Structural Distinctions ................................................................................... 172 3. Sensible/Intelligible and Body/Soul ................................................................... 177 4. Being and Nature .......................................................................................... 182 5. Simplicity of Being ........................................................................................ 190 6. The Grammar of Divine Life ............................................................................ 196 7. Nature of Deitas ........................................................................................... 198 8. Being ........................................................................................................ 200 9. Predicational Claims ...................................................................................... 202 10. Metaphysical Objection to Divine Simplicity ....................................................... 202 11. Predicational Objection to Divine Simplicity ....................................................... 211 12. Divine Life: Trinity ..................................................................................... 213 13. Trinitarian Discourse ................................................................................... 215 14. The Grammar of Created Life ........................................................................ 229 15. Two-Stage Creation ....................................................................................