Assessing the function of Irony in Continental Philosophy’s Return to Religion: After the Death of God (The Vattimo/Caputo Dialogue) Rob Kennedy Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postgraduate Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Phd in Religious Studies Classics and Religious Studies Faculty of Arts University of Ottawa © Rob Kennedy, Ottawa, Canada, 2014 Abstract John D. Caputo and Gianni Vattimo are two of the main thinkers in continental philosophy’s return to religion. This return is accommodated by the basic theoretical framework of irony, which is predominantly an unspoken determinant upon textual meaning. In this continental sense, irony affirms and negates the subject matter that it speaks about. Adopting this framework, Caputo and Vattimo suggest that a new Christian- irony is desirable to avert a collapse back into the violence that results from metaphysics, either modern or classical, by remaining in deconstruction’s loosely held wavering between theism and atheism. The question that remains to be proven, however, is whether their ironic method of writing is not inadvertently continuing the negative effect of the Nietzschean-Heideggerian paradigm by persisting with the literary style of writing that is intrinsic to it, even while openly refuting it by their affirmative Judeo-Christian surface content. 2 Acknowledgements I wish to express my profound thanks to Professor Pierluigi Piovanelli for all of the guidance and support that he has provided to me in supervising my work. Additionally, I would also like to thank all the other Professors at the University of Ottawa. On a personal note, I would like to thank my beloved wife, Nicole McGibbon-Bothwell, whose patience and support have been angelic. Without her help, I would not have been able to finish. Likewise, her dedicated commitment to others in the social services is a humbling reminder of another kind of higher intelligence. Also, I would like to thank my mom and dad, Douglas and Vanessa Kennedy, for their never ending guidance and support, which was also vast in many ways, without whom I also would not have been able to finish. A word of thanks must also be given to Ryan Bisanz for his help editing my final draft, and for his valuable insights about Changqing. Finally, I would like to thank the teaching staff at King’s College, at the University of Western Ontario, where I completed my undergraduate degree in religious studies. In particular, I would like to thank Father Ron Trojcak and Professor Susan Brown. 3 Table of Contents Introduction 0.1 The Topic: Introducing the Dialogue p. 7 0.2 Sketching the Historical and Theoretical Roots of the Return to Religion p. 14 Religion is an Other of Modernism p. 14 Death of God and Rationality Challenged p. 17 Emmanuel Levinas and the Origins of the Critique of Modernist Exclusion p. 19 Other Critics of the Heideggerian-Nietzschean Paradigm as Precursors to the Return of Religion p. 23 The Irony of Later Deconstruction and the Return of Religion p. 30 0.3 Hypothesis p. 36 0.4 Methodology p. 38 0.5 Outline of the Chapters p. 39 Chapter 1: The Death of God and the Rise of Aestheticism 1.1 The Counter-Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Postmodernism p. 43 1.2 The Death of Philosophy and the Return of Rhetoric and the Sublime p. 49 1.3 Defining the Dionysian and the Apollonian Drives in Art p. 59 1.4 Nietzsche’s Mirror and the Play of Irony p. 64 1.5 Kierkegaard, Irony, and Postmodernism p. 68 1.6 Comparing Postmodernism, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard p. 73 1.7 German Romanticism, Irony, and Postmodernism p. 76 1.8 Romantic Irony: A New Mythology p. 80 1.9 The Solar Inversion and Its Affirmations of Yea versus Nay Saying p. 90 1.10 Getting to the Bottom of Irony: A Bottomless Bottom p. 96 1.11 The Centrality of Form in “the New Art” and the Moral Agenda of Art for Art’s Sake p. 103 1.12 Linking Aestheticism to Postmodernism? p. 116 4 Chapter 2: Evaluating Caputo’s Christian-Irony 2.1 Introducing Caputo’s “Certain” Epistemology p. 124 2.2 Radical Hermeneutics p. 130 2.3 Facticity and the Particular of Non-systematic Theorizing p. 132 2.4 Caputo: The Dionysian-Rabbi p. 136 2.5 Mythologizing Differently: The Chinese Puzzle of Boxes within Boxes p. 142 Chapter 3: John D. Caputo’s Christian-irony in a Nutshell 3.1 Caputo’s Christology p. 160 3.2 Irony and the Search for the Historical Jesus: A Tale of Two Theologians p. 163 3.3 The Possibility of the Levinas/Caputo Jesus as Third Interpretation p. 168 3.4 Caputo’s Jesus Is Definitively an Ironically Qualified Reading p. 173 3.5 Founding a Church and the Deep Undecidability in Things: The Silence of God p. 177 3.6 Exploring Caputo’s Weak Theology p. 181 3.7 “What Would Jesus Do?” and Weak Theology p. 187 3.8 Weak Theology and the Proof of God p. 189 3.9 Describing Deconstruction’s Mytheme Khora as Bottomless Bottom p. 191 3.10 Caputo’s Ethics of Obligation p. 196 Chapter 4: Vattimo’s Ironic\Irenic Epistemology and the Death of God 4.1 Irony as Vattimo’s New Mythology of Turning to New Purposes p. 207 4.2 The Death of the Moral God p. 211 4.3 Evaluating the Metaphysical Inevitability of Vattimo’s Irony p. 214 4.4 Christianizing Heidegger and Nietzsche: Asking the (Im)possible of Tradition p. 217 4.5 Vattimo’s Postmodern Paradigm of Truth p. 219 4.6 Vattimo’s Weakened Subject as Active Interpreter of Tradition p. 220 4.7 Avoiding the Violence of Metaphysics via Metaphysics p. 225 4.8 Vattimo’s Ideal Community of Equal Interpreters in Dialogue p. 229 Chapter 5: The Irony of Vattimo’s Christian Re(turn) 5.1 Contextualizing Vattimo’s Return to Religion through Irony p. 233 5.2 Inverse Platonism, Radical Democracy and Vattimo’s Theoretical Antecedents p. 240 5.3 Secularization and Biblical Charity p. 243 5 5.4 The Paradox in Vattimo’s “Credere di Credere” p. 246 5.5 The Hermeneutic Christ and Kenosis p. 252 5.6 The Influence of Girard and the Violence of Metaphysics p. 257 5.7 The Anti-Christ as Christ p. 261 Chapter 6: Caputo’s Argument in Death of God and the Jest of Ironic Criticism 6.1 A Theology of Event and the Postmodern Covenant p. 265 6.2 Prayers and Tears p. 272 6.3 The Desire of God p. 274 6.4 The Weakness of God and Sacred Anarchy p. 275 6.5 A Postmodern Theology of the Cross p. 277 6.6 The Death of God p. 279 6.7 On Radicalizing the Hermeneutical Turn: In Dialogue with Vattimo p. 282 6.8 The Secularization Theorem p. 283 6.9 The West or Christianity p. 285 6.10 Spectral Hermeneutics p. 290 6.11 Caputo’s Q&A: The Power of the Powerless p. 292 Chapter 7: Vattimo’s Argument in the After the Death of God 7.1 Knowledge and Interpretation p. 308 7.2 The Advent of Christianity and the Birth of the Subject p. 312 7.3 Charity and the Future of Christianity p. 322 7.4 Vattimo’s Q&A: A Prayer for Silence p. 329 Conclusion p. 343 Bibliography p. 349 6 Introduction The Topic I. Introducing the Dialogue The dialogue between John D. Caputo and Gianni Vattimo, which was organized and edited by Jeffrey W. Robbins for publication by Columbia University Press in 2007, is entitled After the Death of God.1 This “good-humored” dialogical exchange, as Catherine Keller tactfully, yet allusively, describes it on the book’s back cover, involves an introductory essay by each author and then a subsequent responding question and answer exchange led by Robbins with each thinker in isolation. Overall, the dialogue examines the main highlights of the religious-philosophical programs of Caputo and Vattimo, and allows each of these two thinkers to assess the other’s program in relation to their own. The main topic of the dialogue involves a debate between the two regarding the manner by which each thinker believes that contemporary continental philosophy should realign with Christianity, since each believes that secularism has dangerously abandoned certain things worth preserving of religion. Thus, the dialogue appears to examine in broader terms the fashion by which Christianity and continental philosophy can or should combine. Our examination, in turn, shall critically explore the finer details of their application of such an appropriation by examining further the predominantly unspoken ways that literary form plays in such a return. The importance of the dialogue is due to the fact that it unites two of the most influential theorists involved in what is being called “continental philosophy’s return to religion.” In examining the interaction of these two thinkers with one another, the underlying metaphysical commitments of the return to religion and postmodernism in general are themselves exposed through the argumentative mechanics of the encounter. In 1 Gianni Vattimo, John D. Caputo and Jeffrey W. Robbins, After the Death of God (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). 7 focusing upon these mechanics, the current investigation shall thereby unveil the importance of reading such an encounter equally from the workings of its literary style, and not just from a content focused reading. This second level reading also bears importance for explaining the overall significance of the return in relation to religion in general, since it offers an informed perspective for evaluating the deeper theoretical justifications operating within such a merger between religion and contemporary post-modern theory.