Econokenosis: Three Meanings of Kenosis in post-modern Thought;

Among contemporary philosophers who have, in many different ways, turned to the study of religion, one often finds an interesting tendency: the tendency to rescue religion, however minimal or reticent this rescue operation might be. They try to save something of/in religion that should be kept ‘safe’ in their view from the immense criticism that religion has been subjected to in modern thinking, with which they otherwise – apart from this small remainder to be saved, this ‘rest’ as some of the authors in question call it – fully agree. My hypothesis is that this saving-something-of/in-religion usually follows the ambivalent structure and discourse of kenosis. Kenosis can be described as one of the key notions that evoke the complex relationship between God and humanity, between transcendence and immanence, between the sacred and the profane, between the Other and the Self - in short, the religious relationship, or the specific and enigmatic relationship we call religion. Kenosis, originally an ancient Christian notion derived from Paul’s letter to the Philippians (2: 6-8), is used to refer to two entirely opposite meanings with regard to the religious relationship. It is this ambiguity of kenosis that interests me in particular in what follows

Intuitions of the Other: An Analysis of Anschauüng in Schleiermacher’s On Religion – with references to Kant

Part of a threefold publication: Erik Borgman, Laurens ten Kate, Bart Philipsen, A Triptych on Schleiermacher's On Religion, pp. 382-416; preface by L. ten Kate, p. 382. The following three texts form a triptych in the classic meaning this term has in late medieval painting. They are independent panels with their own themes, arguments and disciplinary background (literary theory, philosophy and theology); and still they ‘live’ from constant reference to and dependance on one another. They were first presented at the International Society for Religion, Literature and Culture’s conference ‘Sacred Space’ in Stirling, Scotland, October 2006, and later reworked thoroughly. There common focus is a series of new readings of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s (1768–1834) famous On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (1799). In the first article, Bart Philipsen explores the intellectual context of this book, especially Schleiermacher’s relation to the Early Romanticists, and focuses on the hermeneutical, rhetorical and poetical questions and strategies through which Schleiermacher’s performative concept of religion is developed. In the second article, Laurens ten Kate treats a key concept in Schleiermacher’s account of the meaning of religion in modern culture, that of intuition; he investigates the relation between intuition and performativity, and analyses the influence of Kant’s philosophy at this point. In the third article, Erik Borgman studies and evaluates the central notion of melancholy in Schleiermacher’s views on religion, and, comparing these with the thought of Rudolf Otto and Edward Schillebeekx, he pleads for a new understanding of the way Schleiermacher should be called a modern thinker

Intimate Distance: Rethinking the Unthought God in Christianity

The work of the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy shares with the thinkers of the ‘theological turn in phenomenology’ the programmatic desire to place the ‘theological’, in the broad sense of rethinking the religious traditions in our secular time, back on the agenda of critical thought. Like those advocating a theological turn in phenomenology, Nancy’s deconstructive approach to philosophical analysis aims to develop a new sensibility for the other, for transcendence, conceptualized as the non-apparent in the realm of appearing phenomena. This is why Nancy launches a project looking for the ‘unthought’ and unexpected within the Christian traditions, called deconstruction of Christianity. However, the deconstructive approach to the non-apparent differs fundamentally from that of the thinkers of the turn (1) in its being non-apologetic and non-restorative with regard to religion, because it starts from a problematization of the—typically modern, that is romantic—desire to defend and protect what would be ‘lost’ and possibly to restore this, (2) in its focus on the complex difference-at-work (différance) between religion and secularism, a difference that can be termed entanglement and complicity between these two, (3) in its hypothesis that this entanglement is essentially one between (the meaning and experience of, the rituality around) presence and absence in modern culture, (4) in its conviction that the philosophy and history of culture must join, support, complete and maybe even turn around phenomenology when dealing with the difficult task of determining what exactly would be ‘left’ of the ‘theological’ in our time. In this article, both positions are compared and confronted further, leading to an account of Nancy’s re-readings of the Christian legacy (its theology, doctrine, art, rituals etc.), and ending in a more detailed, exemplary inquiry into the tension between distance and proximity, characteristic of the Christian God

Outside in, inside out: Notes on the Retreating God in Nancy's Deconstruction of Christianity

According to Jean-Luc Nancy, a deconstruction of Christianity looks for the ‘unthought’ in the christian religion. By this unthought dimension he means ‘something’ in Christianity that at the same time ‘is not Christianity proper’ and ‘has not mingled with it’. It appears to be simultaneously outside and inside Christianity. At the same time, this unthought undermines and ‘exhausts’ Christianity, and it would be this self-exhaustion that would be a key characteristic of Christianity; it follows that a deconstruction of Christianity primarily investigates the way Christianity deconstructs itself. In this article, the thesis is developed that this complex, unthought structure of Christianity expresses Christianity’s modern status, and is expressed in the nucleus of the christian traditions, namely in the ways in which Christianity deals with the name, the experience and the concept of God. This is demonstrated – in dialogue with Nancy’s work – by offering short analyses of the christian doctrines of the Creation and of the Trinity. These analyses show that the christian God ‘incarnates’ in various concrete ways the structure of being outside and inside: outside as well as inside Himself, the world, and even outside and inside Christianity. Shaped by this double bind, the unthought God is always a retreating God

'Cum' Revisited: Preliminaries to Thinking the Interval

In the name of “the community,” humanity - in particular in 20th century Europe - has shown an unexpected capacity to destroy itself. This destruction has been quantitative - mass extermination on such a scale that the very concept of quantity and of quantification was perverted and inverted into a quality: the quality of the unquantifiable, numbers becoming innumerable, becoming absolute, infinite figures. And at the same time this autodestruction has been qualitative, for the idea and the value of “humanity” and of “human nature” itself was destroyed, and its fragile texture being torn up; precisely because of this, human singularities were reduced to numbers, quality being perverted and inverted into quantity. Nevertheless, the multiform history of the community, whether in its universal, global, or in its particular, local shape, should not be seen as some evil, disastrous deviation from the course of civilization; however stained it may have become, it is not an aberrance from normality but rather humanity’s and humanism’s less innocent, less ethereal side. One of the compelling questions of our time is whether the community is a place, a topos, of self-destruction humanity cannot avoid or eliminate. At least this presupposes that we must think the community as a “groundform” and not a side-effect of human existence. As soon as people are exposed to one another in a plurality – and what else could humanity be than precisely this reciprocal exposition of people and peoples? – “there is community”. But this fundamental form of community is not simply their product, nor their operation or “oeuvre”; it is not just the sum of individuals having something in common. It is a place where they, inadvertently, are in common, only to discover that this “in-common” cannot be controlled by them and so eludes them. Consequently, anything can happen, can take place in this strange place of the “inoperative community” (of “that” in a community which remains inoperative): peace and violence, order and disorder, cohesion and destruction

Interaction between current imbalance and magnetization in LHC cables

The quality of the magnetic field in superconducting accelerator magnets is associated with the properties of the superconducting cable. Current imbalances due to coupling currents ¿I, as large as 100 A, are induced by spatial variations of the field sweep rate and contact resistances. During injection at a constant field all magnetic field components show a decay behavior. The decay is caused by a diffusion of coupling currents into the whole magnet. This results in a redistribution of the transport current among the strands and causes a demagnetization of the superconducting cable. As soon as the field is ramped up again after the end of injection, the magnetization rapidly recovers from the decay and follows the course of the original hysteresis curve. In order to clarify the interactions between the changes in current and magnetization during injection the authors performed a number of experiments. A magnetic field with a spatially periodic pattern was applied to a superconducting wire in order to simulate the coupling behavior in a magnet. This model system was placed into a stand for magnetization measurements and the influence of different powering conditions was analyze

Desperate Affirmation: on the Aporetic Performativity of Memoria and Testimony, in the Light of W.G. Sebalds Story Max Ferber; with a Theological Response

Is ‘remembering’ an intentional activity, residing in the subject’s autonomy, or does it belong to the realm of receptivity, interrupting the subject? Or is it both at once? This jointly authored paper sets these questions in the context of a recently renewed interest in memoria in cultural theory and the humanities, as well as of an increasing pluralism in Western societies. The impossibility of sharing memories as a common good and a common truth is explored by putting the theme of historical responsibility, to which every gesture of memoria is tied, in a new light. The paper first demonstrates that the concept of performativity, as developed in particular by Jacques Derrida through a critical reading of Austin and Searle, can be a fruitful theoretical model in the analysis of memoria and of its double status: active and receptive at the same time. A reflection on the practice of testimony, again starting from Derrida, will further articulate this coherence between performativity and memoria. After this theoretical clarification, the value of performativity as a model for memoria will be tested through a detailed reading of the German writer W.G. Sebald’s (1944–2001) story ‘Max Ferber’, focussing on the delicate way this story stages an impossible testimonial drama. The authors will, finally, enquire as to the relevance of the performative model for a theological view of memoria and testimony

Zwischen Immunität und Unendlichkeit. Der Ort in Peter Sloterdijks Sphärologie, im Hinblick auf seine Durchdenkung der christlichen Erbe

Die Trilogie Sphären ist vor allem eine Philosophie des Ortes. Sie geht von der Primordialität des Topos des Menschen aus, statt von dessen Wesen, Substanz oder Identität. Entmodernisiert Sloterdijk mit der von ihm suggerierten Verfallsgeschichte das Christentum gewissermaßen? Das wäre zu einfach. Die Sphären-Trilogie lässt sich vielmehr als ein faszinierendes Gefechtsritual lesen: als ein analytischer und rhetorisch-narrativer Kampf mit dieser Religion, die die abendländische Welt geprägt hat und die so ärgerlich modern ist in ihren unmodernsten Erfahrungen, Vorstellungen und Dogmen. Als solches, als Symptom einer (post)modernen Unsicherheit, ist Sphären, ist die ganze Arbeit Peter Sloterdijks schon jetzt eines der kanonischen Instrumentarien für kritische Selbstprüfung in unserem neuen Jahrhundert