Some people use affect theory to challenge the notion that religion is inextricably linked to belief and language, proposing instead that body and affect are more primary. It’s good to affirm bodies, feeling, emotions, affects, but that isn’t the way to do it. It’s a red herring, challenging a notion about belief that nobody really believes (i.e., the notion that religion is inextricably linked to language and belief). Continue reading
Tag: hermeneutics
20 Days on Mercury: A Ten Year Retrospective
One year on Earth (365 days) is four years on Mercury. Mercury revolves around the sun relatively quickly: once every eighty-eight Earth days. While the years are relatively short on Mercury, the days are long—twice as long. One day on Mercury takes two years on Mercury, which is to say, it takes two solar revolutions of the planet for it to rotate fully on its axis (in Earth terms: imagine the sun rising in June, reaching its noontime zenith in January, approaching dusk the following summer, and approaching midnight the following January). In the last ten years, twenty days have transpired on Mercury.
I found some old notes of mine (perhaps even “notes” is too emphatic a word), which were written in this month ten years ago. They are clearly under the spell of Mercury, or in Greek terms, Hermes. I was quite taken with hermeneutics, particularly through the inflection of a Heideggerian-Aristotelian poetic philosophy. I was interested in a hermeneutic radicalization of hermetic philosophy (not unlike Jeff Kripal’s mystical hermeneutics or Jack Caputo’s devilish hermeneutics). Along with hermeneutics, I was also exploring the Merleau-Ponty/Whitehead alliance, anticipating current trends in hybridizing phenomenological and process thought, such as the “Whiteheadian key” to Merleau-Ponty’s ontology that Hamrick and Van Der Veken articulate (see Nature and Logos). I can also see the beginnings of my ongoing work with a philosophical concept of sense. With no further introduction or commentary, no apologia or proslogion, here’s a sample of what I was writing twenty mercurial days ago. Continue reading
Interfaith Dialogue, 1240
Putting a book on trial? That’s exactly what happened in the 13th-century trial in which King Louis IX of France decided to hold a trial prosecuting the Talmud, a central book for rabbinic Judaism. Many documents from that trial have been translated and are available in a new book, The Trial of the Talmud: Paris, 1240.
The book lost that trial. However, the trial still holds relevant lessons for cultural contact and interfaith dialogue today. One of the main lessons is that interfaith dialogue puts too much emphasis on…dialogue. Peaceful religious coexistence is not always the result of dialogue or conversation. Instead of aiming at mutual understanding, where both parties have a proper knowledge of one another, it could be helpful to let different parties differ. Instead of hermeneutics , deconstruction (I’m siding with Derrida in the Gadamer-Derrida exchange).
Instead of religious coexistence facilitated with dialogue, I’m more interested in religious coexistence facilitated sans dialogue, indeed, sans voir, sans avoir, sans savoir. This resonates with some of Michael Schulson’s comments on the new translation of the documents from the 1240 trial.
[I]ntellectual examination can actually interfere with the daily realities of religious coexistence. Above all, religious groups need to be respected, and to see that someone is making an active effort to coexist with them. Listening is important, for sure. But some of the details of religious traditions don’t make for easy hearing. To repurpose an old saying about marriage: in interfaith relationships, it’s wise to be a little deaf.
Coexistence, not through dialogue and vision, but through a touch of deafness and blindness.
