Abstract
The return of the repressed? Failure of nerve? However one wants to interpret the phenomenon, there is no gainsaying the fact: “religious” themes and theses have received sympathetic treatment with notable frequency in the writings of European philosophers in recent years. Whether it be the question of negative theology in the work of Derrida, the notion of Pauline “truth” in the exegesis of Badiou, the frequent reference to the spiritual in Foucault or more direct allusions to religious themes and images in the writings of Levinas, Ricoeur, Henry, Marion, Irigaray, Courtine, Chrétien, and others, the religious in both its orthodox and its heterodox forms is enjoying an attention among professional philosophers that is unprecedented in our generation. The late Dominique Janicaud called attention to this fact in an influential essay entitled “The Theological Turn of French Phenomenology.”1
One of the most deplorable aspects of the postmodern era and its so-called “thought” is the return of the religious dimension in all its different guises. (Slavo Žižeck, The Fragile Absolute)
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References
See Phenomenology and the ATheological Turn: The French Debate (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), 16–103.
See, for example, John Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997),
Harold Coward and Toby Fosbay, eds., Derrida and Negative Theology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), and
Robyn Horner, Rethinking Godas Gift: Marion, Derrida, and the Limits of Phenomenology (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001).
See A.S. King, Spirituality: Transformation and Metamorphosis, Religion vol. 26, 343–351.
See Alain Badiou, Saint Paul: La foundation de l’universalisme (Paris: Press Universitaires de France, 1997), 116; hereafter cited simply by page number.
Faith and Philosophy, vol. 10 No.4 (October 1993)
Jeremy R. Carrette, Foucault and the Religious: Spiritual Corporality and Political Spirituality (Routledge, 2000), hereafter FR, and
Jeremy R. Carrette, ed., Religion and Culture: Michel Foucault (New York: Routledge, 1999), hereafter RC.
Carrette distinguishes two successive emphases in Foucault’s thought about the “religious question,” namely, what Carrette calls “spiritual corporality” prior to the publication of the first volume of his History of Sexuality in 1976 and “political spirituality” subsequently (see Carrette, F R, 4–5).
“Sightings,” October 9, 2000, electronic mail.
Which like “art” is notoriously difficult to pin down and probably best supports an “operational” definition such as “religion” is what religious people believe and/or practice“ much like ”art is what artists produce or do. Whether this is commonsensical, circular or simply a counsel of despair I leave for others to determine.
See Michel Foucault, L’Herméneutique du sujet: Cours au Collège de France (Paris: Gallimard/Seuil, 2001), 16–20 and 28–29; hereafter cited as HS.
I recall a discussion with a prominent Anglo-American philosopher who defended the latter view of the subject: “There are two distinct intellectual enterprises, namely, Philosophy and the History of Philosophy,” he insisted. “You can learn to do philosophy in a few months of practicing its basic moves; but you could spend the rest of your life learning the history of philosophy.”
Jean-Claude Eslin, “L’Indépassable religion,” Esprit No. 233 (Juin 1997), 12.
Michel Foucault, Essential Works ed. Paul Rabinow, 3 vols. (New York: The New Press,1997–2000), 3:242
James Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993).
Intervention during discussion on the campus of Emory University regarding the current state of Hellenistic philosophy in the profession, March 31, 2000,
Alain Badiou, L’Être et l’événement (Paris: Seuil, 1988).
Thus Slavo Žižeck , after noting that “Badiou himself repeatedly refers to the Event as the laicized Grace,” adds in a note: “interestingly, when, in my account of Badiou (see Chapter 3 of The Ticklish Subject) I pointed out the religious paradigm of his notion of the Event of Truth, many a critic referred to me approvingly as if I meant this as a criticism of Badiou. That such is not the case is amply proved by my ensuing book, The Fragile Absolute” (Slavo Zižeck On Belief [London: Routledge, 2001], 112 and 161 n.12). of Hellenistic philosophy in the profession, March 31, 2000.
See my “Michel Foucault and the Career of the Historical Event,” in Bernard P. Dauenhauer, ed. At the Nexus of Philosophy and History (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1987), 188ff.
It would be interesting to compare Badiou’s understanding of the manifestation of the event with the classic religious concept of “proclamation” (kerygma), which it resembles so closely (see, for example, David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism [New York: Crossroad, 1981], 269 ff).
Jason Barker, Alain Badiou: A Critical Introduction (London: Pluto Press, 2002), 59.
The following is an extrapolation and reconstruction of Badiou’s position on Revolution as event gleaned from the rest of the book
See Immanuel Kant, “The Old Question Raised Again: Is the Human Race Constantly Progressing?” (Part Two of “The Conflict of the Faculties” in Lewis White Beck, Ed., On History (Indianapolis: Hackett,1963).
See also Lyotard’s version of this phenomenon repeated in the “postmodern” world (“The Sign of History,” in Andrew Benjamin, ed., The Lyotard Reader [Oxford: Blackwell, 1989], 393–411).
Another, related essay with this same title is printed as a chapter in Jean-François Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 151–181.
Michel Foucault, “Truth and Power” in Essential Works of Foucault: 1954–1984, vol. 3, Power, ed. James D. Faubion (New York: The New Press, 1994), 131.
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Flynn, T.R. (2004). The Religious (Re)Turn in Recent French Philosophy. In: Hackett, J., Wallulis, J. (eds) Philosophy of Religion for a New Century. Studies in Philosophy and Religion, vol 25. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-2074-2_11
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