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A Poetics of Parable and the ‘Basileic Reduction’: Ricoeurean Reflections on Kevin Hart’s Kingdoms of God

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Abstract

Reading Kevin Hart’s creative hermeneutic of the ‘basileic’ reduction in his latest book, Kingdoms of God, naturally leads me to consider another eminent linguistic phenomenologist who continually occupies my thoughts. Although I have been reading Hart now for about 25 years, I have been reading Paul Ricoeur for a decade longer than that, and it is his theory of poetic discourse that my mind keeps tenaciously associating with Hart’s perspectives on parable. Granted, Hart never mentions Ricoeur in Kingdoms of God—unless my careful reading is not so careful and I missed it! In Trespass of the Sign, however, he does note Ricoeur’s significance as a hermeneutical philosopher, specifically his emphasis on the distinction between the hermeneutics of faith and the hermeneutics of suspicion. Also, in an article on John Caputo’s postsecular philosophy of ‘religion without religion,’ Hart makes a brief comment on Ricoeur’s apparent Hegelianism with reference to a general theory of revelation as nonreligious and nontheistic. Still, nowhere that I know of does he extensively address Ricoeur’s fascinating discourse theory regarding metaphor, mimesis, narrative, and parable. If great minds think alike, then Hart and Ricoeur are, indeed, great minds, for, truly, Ricoeur’s reflections on parables and the Kingdom offer an intriguing gloss on Hart’s parabolic ‘basileiology.’ Translating Hart into Ricoeur, therefore, is, in my mind, an easy and profitable exercise that may well enhance the provocative character of Hart’s basileic reduction. Such a translation is the central purpose of this essay.

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Notes

  1. Kevin Hart, Flame Tree: Selected Poems (Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books, LTD., 2002), p. 160.

  2. Kevin Hart, ‘Transcendence in Tears,’ in Gazing Through a Prism Darkly: Reflections on Merold Westphal’s Hermeneutical Epistemology, ed. B. Keith Putt (New York,NY: Fordham University Press, 2009), p. 118.

  3. Kevin Hart, Kingdoms of God (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014), 177. Hereafter parenthetically cited in text.

  4. Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having, trans. Katherine Farrer (Glasgow: Dacre Press Westminster, 1949), 117–18.

  5. Kevin Hart, ‘Without,’ in Cross and Khôra: Deconstruction and Christianity in the Work of John D. Caputo, eds. Marko Zlomislić and Neal DeRoo (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2010), p. 105.

  6. Kevin Hart, ‘The Experience of the Kingdom of God,’ in The Experience of God: A Postmodern Response, eds. Kevin Hart and Barbara Wall, eds. (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2005), p. 84.

  7. Jacques Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), p. 143.

  8. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1962), sections 15–16.

  9. Kevin Hart, ‘The Kingdom and the Trinity,’ in Religious Experience and the End of Metaphysics, ed. Jeffrey Bloechl (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003), pp. 161–62.

  10. Hart, ‘The Kingdom and the Trinity,’ p. 168.

  11. Paul Tillich, The New Being (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1955), p. 15.

  12. Hart, ‘The Kingdom and the Trinity,’ pp. 131–32.

  13. Hart, ‘The Kingdom and the Trinity,’ pp. 131–32.

  14. Hart, Error! Main Document Only. The Experience of God, 6; Hart, ‘The Kingdom and the Trinity,’ 161; Kevin Hart, ‘Religion,’ in Understanding Derrida, eds. Jack Reynolds and Jonathan Roffe (New York, NY: Continuum, 2004), p. 8. Error! Main Document Only.

  15. Hart, ‘The Kingdom and the Trinity,’ p. 166.

  16. Error! Main Document Only. Hart, ‘The Experience of the Kingdom of God,’ p. 80.

  17. Richard Kearney, ‘Epiphanies of the Everyday: Toward a Micro-Eschatology,’ in After God: Richard Kearney and the Religious Turn in Continental Philosophy, ed. John Panteleimon Manoussakis (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2006), p. 3.

  18. Kearney, ‘Epiphanies of the Everyday,’ pp. 6–7.

  19. Kearney, ‘Epiphanies of the Everyday,’ p. 9.

  20. Giorgio Agamben, The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans, trans. Patricia Dailey (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), pp. 74–75.

  21. Kearney, ‘Epiphanies of the Everyday,’ pp. 8–9, 11.

  22. Agamben, The Time That Remains, p. 43.

  23. John D. Caputo, The Insistence of God: A Theology of Perhaps (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013), pp. 92–94.

  24. John D. Caputo, The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), p. 240.

  25. Cf. Walter Rauschenbusch, The Social Principles of Jesus, Kindle Edition (New York, NY: The Woman’s Press, 1917), p. 74.

  26. Caputo, The Insistence of God, p. 22.

  27. John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion Without Religion (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997), p. 168.

  28. Kevin Hart, The Trespass of the Sign: Deconstruction, Theology, and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 48.

  29. Hart, ‘Without,’ p. 91.

  30. Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language, trans. Robert Czerny (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), p. 230.

  31. Paul Ricoeur, Semeia 4 (1975), p. 87.

  32. Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor, p. 197.

  33. Ricoeur, Semeia, pp. 77–78.

  34. Paul Ricoeur, From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II, trans. Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991), p. 172.

  35. Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor, p. 230.

  36. Paul Ricoeur, ‘The Function of Fiction in Shaping Reality,’ in A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination, ed. Mario J. Valdes (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), p. 125.

  37. Ricoeur, ‘The Function of Fiction in Shaping Reality,’ p. 128; Error! Main Document Only. Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 1, Error! Main Document Only. trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1985), p. 68.

  38. Paul Ricoeur, Oneself As Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 141.

  39. Paul Ricoeur, The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur: An Anthology of His Work, eds. Charles E. Reagan and David Stewart (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1978), pp. 146–47.

  40. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 1, p. 45.

  41. Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/Repetition, eds. and trans. Howard V. and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 131.

  42. Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 3, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 76.

  43. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 1, p. 68.

  44. Ricoeur, Oneself As Another, p. 141.

  45. Paul Ricoeur, ‘The Human Experience of Time and Narrative,’ in Valdes, p. 115; Ricoeur, From Text to Action, p. 173.

  46. Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor, p. 98.

  47. Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action, and Interpretation, ed. and trans. John B. Thompson (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 292; Paul Ricoeur, ‘Narrated Time,’ in Valdes, p. 350.

  48. Paul Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, trans. David Pellauer, ed. Mark I. Wallace (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995), p. 240; Paul Error! Main Document Only. Ricoeur, ‘Life: A Story in Search of a Narrator,’ in Valdes, p. 429.

  49. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 1, pp. 54, 57.

  50. Paul Error! Main Document Only. Ricoeur, ‘Mimesis and Representation,’ in Valdes, p. 142.

  51. Ricoeur, ‘Mimesis and Representation,’ p. 138.

  52. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 1, pp. 70–71; Paul Riceour, Time and Narrative, vol. 2, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 100–101.

  53. Ricoeur, The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, p. 237.

  54. Paul Ricoeur, Essays on Biblical Interpretation, ed. Lewis S. Mudge (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1980), p. 100.

  55. Ricoeur, Essays on Biblical Interpretation, p. 98.

  56. Error! Main Document Only. Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, p. 91.

  57. Ricoeur, Essays on Biblical Interpretation, p. 108.

  58. Paul Ricoeur, ‘Listening to the Parables of Jesus’ Criterion 13 (1974): 21.

  59. Ricoeur, ‘Listening to the Parables,’ p. 20.

  60. Ricoeur, ‘Listening to the Parables,’ p. 19.

  61. Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred, p. 165.

  62. Error! Main Document Only. Ricoeur, Semeia, p. 114.

  63. Ricoeur, Semeia, p. 100.

  64. Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred, pp. 147, 165.

  65. Error! Main Document Only. Ricoeur, Semeia, pp. 34, 108–109.

  66. Error! Main Document Only. Ricoeur, Semeia, p. 125.

  67. Error! Main Document Only. Hart, “The Experience of the Kingdom of God,” p. 86.

  68. Ricoeur, ‘Listening to the Parables,’ pp. 19–20.

  69. Ricoeur, ‘Life: A Story in Search of a Narrator,’ p. 430.

  70. Ricoeur, The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, p. 237.

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    B. Keith Putt

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Putt, B.K. A Poetics of Parable and the ‘Basileic Reduction’: Ricoeurean Reflections on Kevin Hart’s Kingdoms of God . SOPHIA 56, 45–58 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-017-0579-8

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