DECONSTRUCTING RADICAL ORTHODOXY: POSTMODERN THEOLOGY, RHETORIC AND TRUTH EDITED WAYNE J. HANKEY & DOUGLAS HEDLEY ASHGATE 2005 Contents List of Contributors Abbreviations 1. Introduction 2. Chapter One, Catherine Pickstock, Plato and the Unity of Divinity and Humanity: Liturgical or Philosophical? Eli Diamond 3. Chapter Two, Philosophical Religion and the Neoplatonic Turn to the Subject Wayne J. Hankey 4. Chapter Three, Is There Room for Political Philosophy in Postmodern Critical Augustinianism? Todd Breyfogle 5. Chapter Four, Aquinas, Radical Orthodoxy and the Importance of Truth John Marenbon 6. Chapter Five, Duns Scotus and Suarez at the Origins of Modernity Richard Cross 7. Chapter Six, Milbank and Modern Secularity Neil G. Robertson 8. Chapter Seven, Radical Orthodoxy and Apocalyptic Difference: Cambridge Platonism, and Milbank’s Romantic Christian Cabbala Douglas Hedley 1 9. Chapter Eight, Theology, Social Theory and Dialectic: A Consideration of Milbank’s Hegel David Peddle 10. Chapter Nine, Better Well Hanged Than Ill-Wed? Kierkegaard and Radical Orthodoxy Steven Shakespeare 11. Chapter Ten, After Transubstantiation: Blessing, Memory, Solidarity and Hope George Pattison 12. Chapter Eleven, Derrida and nihilism Hugh Rayment-Pickard Bibliography Index Contributors TODD BREYFOGLE was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, studying Ancient and Modern History and Patristic and Modern Theology. His PhD is from the University of Chicago, where he wrote his doctoral dissertation on St. Augustine’s political theology. He is co-editor of a five volume commentary on Augustine's City of God for Oxford University Press. At present Director of the University Honours Program at the University of Denver, his email address is [email protected]. RICHARD CROSS is Fellow and Tutor in Theology at Oriel College, University of Oxford. Among his recent publications are The Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus, Oxford University Press, 2002, and Duns Scotus on God, Ashgate, 2004. His email address is [email protected]. ELI DIAMOND is a MA from Dalhousie University with a thesis on Plato’s Sophist and is currently writing a doctoral dissertation on Hegel’s interpretation of Aristotle’s De Anima at Northwestern University. His primary area of interest lies in the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle and their reception 2 throughout the subsequent history of philosophy. His email address is [email protected]. WAYNE J. HANKEY, having studied Classics, philosophy, and theology in Halifax, Toronto, and Oxford, is Carnegie Professor of Classics at King’s College and Dalhousie University and is Secretary and Editor of Dionysius. His God in Himself, Aquinas’ Doctrine of God as Expounded in the Summa Theologiae was reprinted in 2000 by Oxford University Press in the series ‘Oxford Scholarly Classics’. Most recently he published Cent Ans De Néoplatonisme En France: Une Brève Histoire Philosophique, Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin/Presses de l’Université Laval. His email address is [email protected]. DOUGLAS HEDLEY studied Philosophy and Theology at Oxford and received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Munich under the supervision of Werner Beierwaltes. He is the author of Coleridge, Philosophy and Religion: Aids to Reflection and the Mirror of the Spirit, Cambridge University Press, 2000. A Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and a University Senior Lecturer in the Philosophy of Religion in the Faculty of Divinity, his email address is [email protected]. JOHN MARENBON is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. His most recent book is Boethius, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. His email is [email protected]. GEORGE PATTISON is Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford. In addition to a number of books on Kierkegaard and various topics in modern theology he is also author of The Routledge Guide Book to the Later Heidegger. His new book, Thinking about God in an Age of Technology is due to be published by Oxford University Press in 2005. His email address is [email protected]. DAVID PEDDLE is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Chair of Humanities at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, Memorial University, Newfoundland. He is co-editor of Philosophy and Freedom: The Legacy of James Doull, University of Toronto Press, 2003, and managing editor of Animus and of the James Alexander Doull Archives. His email address is [email protected]. HUGH RAYMENT-PICKARD received his PhD from London University for a thesis on 'Derrida, God and Death' and taught the philosophy of history and 3 history of philosophy at Goldsmith's College for several years. His publications include Impossible God: Derrida's Theology, Ashgate, 2003; Myths of Time: from St Augustine to American Beauty, Darton Longman and Todd, 2004, and (with Robert Burns) Philosophies of History: from Enlightenment to Postmodernity, Blackwell, 2000. A parish priest working in West London, his email address is [email protected]. NEIL G. ROBERTSON is Associate Professor of the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of King’s College in Halifax, Canada. His publications include co-editing Philosophy and Freedom: The Legacy of James Doull, various articles on Montesquieu, Rousseau, and early modern political thought generally, as well as on Leo Strauss, George Grant and James Doull. He is currently co-editing a volume entitled Descartes and the Modern. His email address is [email protected]. STEVEN SHAKESPEARE completed his doctoral thesis on Kierkegaard at Cambridge University in 1994. His publications include Kierkegaard, Language and the Reality of God, Ashgate, 2001, and, co-edited with George Pattison, Kierkegaard, The Self and Society, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998. He is an Anglican priest and is currently Anglican Chaplain of Liverpool Hope University College. His email address is [email protected]. Abbreviations Radical Orthodoxy AW Catherine Pickstock, After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy, Challenges in Contemporary Theology, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1997. JP ‘Justice and Prudence: Principles of Order in the Platonic City’, The Heythrop Journal, 42 (2001), 269–282. OT John Milbank, ‘Only Theology Overcomes Metaphysics’, New Blackfriars, 76 (895), July/August, 1995, ‘Special Issue on Jean-Luc Marion’s God without Being’, 325-43; it is reprinted in WMS. PA John Milbank, ‘ “Postmodern Critical Augustinianism”: A Short Summa in Forty Two Responses to Unasked Questions’, Modern Theology, 7 (3), April, 1991, 225-37. RO Radical Orthodoxy, A New Theology, ed. J. Milbank, C. Pickstock and G. Ward, London / New York: Routledge, 1999. 4 TA John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock, Truth in Aquinas, Radical Orthodoxy, London / New York: Routledge, 2001. TST John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990. WMS John Milbank, The Word Made Strange. Theology, Language, Culture, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1997. Augustine Conf. = Confessiones div. quaest. 83 = De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus civ. = De civitate Dei lib. arb. = De libero arbitrio ep. Jo. = In epistulam Joannis ad Parthos tractatus Trin. = De Trinitate ord. = De ordine doc. christ. = De doctrina Christiana beata vita = De beata vita Serm. = Sermones Jo. ev. = In Johannis evangelium tractatus Sol. = Soliloquia c. Jul. = Contra Julianum opus imperfectum Retr. = Retractationes mag. = De magistro mus. = De musica dial. = De dialectica s. mont = De sermone Domini in monte Aquinas ST = Summa Theologiae V = Quaestiones disputatae de veritate Derrida A Aporias, trans. Thomas Dutoit, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993. C Cinders, trans. Ned Nukacher, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991. 5 Cir ‘Circumfession’ in Jacques Derrida, trans. Geoffrey Bennington, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. D Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson, London: Athlone Press, 1981. Dem Demeure: Fiction and Testimony, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. EO The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Transference, Translation: Texts and Discussions with Jacques Derrida, trans. Peggy Kamuf and Avital Ronell in McDonald, Christie V. (ed.), Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988. G Glas, trans. John P. Leavey Jr. and Richard Rand, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986. GT Given Time I: Counterfeit Money, trans. Peggy Kamuf, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. H ‘How to Avoid Speaking: Denials’, in Toby Foshay and Harold Coward (eds), Derrida and Negative Theology, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. LI Limited Inc abc..., ed. Gerald Graff, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988. M Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. OG Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Spivak, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1976. Par Parages, Paris: Editions Galilée, 1986. Pos Positions, trans. Alan Bass, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. Psy Psyché: Inventions de l’autre, Paris: Editions Galilée, 1987. SM Specters of Marx: the State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf, New York: Routledge, 1994. SP Speech and Phenomena and other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs, trans. David B. Allison, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. TP The Truth in Painting, trans. G. Bennington and Ian McLeod, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. TS ‘I have a Taste for the Secret’, in J. Derrida and M. Ferraris, A Taste for the Secret, Polity, Oxford, 2001. WD Writing and Difference, trans.