Girard, Lonergan, Zizek and "the wound", "the gift that nobody wanted"
From: "tombot"
To: "erico"
Subject: RE: more on Weber,
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 16:07:02 -0500
Eric,
Hard to know where to begin. I guess I'll have to pick up Girard again to see if I can identify what you see as the danger - i.e. his "secularizing" of certain articles of faith to make them palatable to a modern audience... Sounds like Bultmann et. al. - Certainly - the notion of scapegoating is very powerful and revealing as an anthropological insight - why not also as "buried material" that faith helps to "substantiate" - i.e. bring to the surface? I don't know enough about Lonergan to know how his conception of "human nature" (man the truth-seeker sounds okay to me) helps to clarify the truth of Christian revelation more effectively than Girard. Does it? How about Girard+Lonergan or "man the scapegoater whose guilt-ridden activity reveals the truth that he craves but doesn't want to recognize as the real treasure..." Just a guess. Scapegoating (I would think) is born of the wound and seeks to cover over the wound...The wound could be the vehicle to the treasure - but the need for self-justification via scapegoating is too powerful. And the attempt to make oneself into "God's beloved" and others into "wretched outcasts" though forever tempting, always ends in failure - in that it leaves behind the scar of wrong-doing- i.e. someone else has to be miserable so that I can feel triumphant. But the wound always returns in some new form. Happiness never turns out to be what we first conceive it to be. It was always the gift on the sidelines that nobody wanted... I could imagine someone complaining that Christianity gives us an insight that's "too hard to bear" insofar as - me and everyone else are just going to go out there again and "scapegoat somebody" - because we need our daily fix of happiness - i.e. wretched contentment. You should see me yelling at people in traffic - venting along with talk radio. Terrible drivers in Cincinnati - really! There's a book I'm reading now by a postmodernist, postmarxist, named Slajov Zizek (The Puppet and the Dwarf) - He wants to revive Christianity as the "ultimate form of religion" that still has a hold over us, but what he means is that Christianity by "laying the [mythical] truth bare" -discredits the ancient pagan religion of "closed horizons" but at the same time turns into a religion that subverts itself --and thus becomes the final form of religion. This sort of goes along with what Weber means by disenchantment and is perhaps compatible with Girard. Thanks to Christianity, the revelation that God is there for everyone [truth-content] grates against our cynical-worldly experience of politics as usual - i.e. the universe forever divided into "friend" and "enemy" - "chosen" and "reprobate" -- "us" against "them". The problem then refers to how faith is to preserve itself in the modern world without a determinate medium -- a necessarily, one-sided, social, cultural or political entity or institution. How can God be said to speak [nowadays] through only one set of people, as opposed to through everyone all at once? How can we hope to sort through various religious and cultural perspectives to arrive at what God really wants? Suddenly revelation is more tricky than ever! a.k.a. the problem of authority - liberalism - nihilism - everyone has a right to their opinion...cafeteria-catholics all...Thanks to Christianity, God became so much a part of human experience - that we can no longer envision an objective "beyond" - called Truth or Heaven or Eternity or Final Redemption or Total Escape from Time. Yet we continue to invoke other-worldly ideals of purity that seem to hover in our midst as Weber would say like the "ghosts of dead beliefs." Weber also speaks of "a prophetless time" where no authoritative voice can be heard - everything is reduced to personal preference - nothing has the definitive, irrevocable aura of a public decree from God. Because in the absence of the universal message that everyone voluntarily accepts, the voice descends into a private utterance heard by a few - yet misheard by others. [So many examples - Mel Gibson's Passion? I haven't seen it. I don't even know what to think...] Zizek makes an interesting point that the Christian dilemma is always that the Messiah has already arrived - and we missed him so "Now what do we do with ourselves?" The torch was in effect passed to us by means of the Incarnation. He thinks of Paul as the first revolutionary operative who helped to put the community of believers and their activity [the Church as revolutionary institution] front and center. According to Zizek, the historical dialectic moves from Mysterious All-Powerful Father-Figure (Worship of Power as Promise of Happiness) to Innocent Victim-God the Son (Divine Suffering as Vindication of Human Pain) to the Community of Love (Visible Church as This-Worldly Vessel of the Holy Spirit). The Church serves to break down barrier after barrier until finally its own parameters are obscured. In other words -- we create the conditions for happiness by finally eliminating the scapegoating mechanism - or what I'm calling "the political." Here's where I get confused...I don't know what Zizek would say. It is fascinating though - whether Zizek is right or wrong - that the Church remains a powerful model and symbol for postmodernists and others - when it comes to the question of how to reconcile points of view. Even more powerful than the U.N. in terms of its effectiveness - Oh yes quite. But then what to do about those traditional tensions among Christians, Jews, Muslims. It's very frustrating - but it does affirm Girard's point about mimetic rivalries....As you might gather from this email - I continue to be haunted by questions of Political Theology -- that is, the point where Politics and Theology collide. Over to You...This conversation is very helpful by the way...
P.S. By the way, this is unrelated, but are you aware of Naomi Wolf accusing Harold Bloom of harassment at Yale back in the 80's...-- See aldaily.com
Over to you,
T.S.
To: "erico"
Subject: RE: more on Weber,
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 16:07:02 -0500
Eric,
Hard to know where to begin. I guess I'll have to pick up Girard again to see if I can identify what you see as the danger - i.e. his "secularizing" of certain articles of faith to make them palatable to a modern audience... Sounds like Bultmann et. al. - Certainly - the notion of scapegoating is very powerful and revealing as an anthropological insight - why not also as "buried material" that faith helps to "substantiate" - i.e. bring to the surface? I don't know enough about Lonergan to know how his conception of "human nature" (man the truth-seeker sounds okay to me) helps to clarify the truth of Christian revelation more effectively than Girard. Does it? How about Girard+Lonergan or "man the scapegoater whose guilt-ridden activity reveals the truth that he craves but doesn't want to recognize as the real treasure..." Just a guess. Scapegoating (I would think) is born of the wound and seeks to cover over the wound...The wound could be the vehicle to the treasure - but the need for self-justification via scapegoating is too powerful. And the attempt to make oneself into "God's beloved" and others into "wretched outcasts" though forever tempting, always ends in failure - in that it leaves behind the scar of wrong-doing- i.e. someone else has to be miserable so that I can feel triumphant. But the wound always returns in some new form. Happiness never turns out to be what we first conceive it to be. It was always the gift on the sidelines that nobody wanted... I could imagine someone complaining that Christianity gives us an insight that's "too hard to bear" insofar as - me and everyone else are just going to go out there again and "scapegoat somebody" - because we need our daily fix of happiness - i.e. wretched contentment. You should see me yelling at people in traffic - venting along with talk radio. Terrible drivers in Cincinnati - really! There's a book I'm reading now by a postmodernist, postmarxist, named Slajov Zizek (The Puppet and the Dwarf) - He wants to revive Christianity as the "ultimate form of religion" that still has a hold over us, but what he means is that Christianity by "laying the [mythical] truth bare" -discredits the ancient pagan religion of "closed horizons" but at the same time turns into a religion that subverts itself --and thus becomes the final form of religion. This sort of goes along with what Weber means by disenchantment and is perhaps compatible with Girard. Thanks to Christianity, the revelation that God is there for everyone [truth-content] grates against our cynical-worldly experience of politics as usual - i.e. the universe forever divided into "friend" and "enemy" - "chosen" and "reprobate" -- "us" against "them". The problem then refers to how faith is to preserve itself in the modern world without a determinate medium -- a necessarily, one-sided, social, cultural or political entity or institution. How can God be said to speak [nowadays] through only one set of people, as opposed to through everyone all at once? How can we hope to sort through various religious and cultural perspectives to arrive at what God really wants? Suddenly revelation is more tricky than ever! a.k.a. the problem of authority - liberalism - nihilism - everyone has a right to their opinion...cafeteria-catholics all...Thanks to Christianity, God became so much a part of human experience - that we can no longer envision an objective "beyond" - called Truth or Heaven or Eternity or Final Redemption or Total Escape from Time. Yet we continue to invoke other-worldly ideals of purity that seem to hover in our midst as Weber would say like the "ghosts of dead beliefs." Weber also speaks of "a prophetless time" where no authoritative voice can be heard - everything is reduced to personal preference - nothing has the definitive, irrevocable aura of a public decree from God. Because in the absence of the universal message that everyone voluntarily accepts, the voice descends into a private utterance heard by a few - yet misheard by others. [So many examples - Mel Gibson's Passion? I haven't seen it. I don't even know what to think...] Zizek makes an interesting point that the Christian dilemma is always that the Messiah has already arrived - and we missed him so "Now what do we do with ourselves?" The torch was in effect passed to us by means of the Incarnation. He thinks of Paul as the first revolutionary operative who helped to put the community of believers and their activity [the Church as revolutionary institution] front and center. According to Zizek, the historical dialectic moves from Mysterious All-Powerful Father-Figure (Worship of Power as Promise of Happiness) to Innocent Victim-God the Son (Divine Suffering as Vindication of Human Pain) to the Community of Love (Visible Church as This-Worldly Vessel of the Holy Spirit). The Church serves to break down barrier after barrier until finally its own parameters are obscured. In other words -- we create the conditions for happiness by finally eliminating the scapegoating mechanism - or what I'm calling "the political." Here's where I get confused...I don't know what Zizek would say. It is fascinating though - whether Zizek is right or wrong - that the Church remains a powerful model and symbol for postmodernists and others - when it comes to the question of how to reconcile points of view. Even more powerful than the U.N. in terms of its effectiveness - Oh yes quite. But then what to do about those traditional tensions among Christians, Jews, Muslims. It's very frustrating - but it does affirm Girard's point about mimetic rivalries....As you might gather from this email - I continue to be haunted by questions of Political Theology -- that is, the point where Politics and Theology collide. Over to You...This conversation is very helpful by the way...
P.S. By the way, this is unrelated, but are you aware of Naomi Wolf accusing Harold Bloom of harassment at Yale back in the 80's...-- See aldaily.com
Over to you,
T.S.
posted by erico at 10:10 AM
3 Comments:
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2004 11:14:47 -0800 (PST)
From: "EricO"
Subject: RE: more on Weber,
To: "Tombot"
Thomas,
Thank you for your reply. In reading it, at some
point I began to realize that the tide had turned,
that the chess match was brought to my home front. I
am perhaps coming to the edge of my scholarship. I am
impressed by your breadth of understanding. You give
better support, undergirding, to my somewhat airy
thoughts. Believe me, I am helped greatly by your
erudition. For example, I had no idea that Girard's
thought about Christianity being the ultimate
"demythologizer" was found in another man's thought
(Zizek). And Girard's understudy Gil Bailey talks at
great length about Christianity's role through Western
civilization, slowly subverting and laying bare.
Someone else has discussed this? Fascinating.
I still mean to provide the quotation from Merton in
the context of the last conversational thread. But on
to something new (for me) that he said. It
dovetails/coincides with the Lonergan article about
coming to understand yourself, the subject, through
transcending subjectivity and arriving at objective
understanding, through the "virtually unconditioned"
judgment that something "is so". This
self-transcending, intentional, self-aware truth
seeker begins to find authorities he can trust, and
begins to trust himself.
Merton was reflecting on solitude, and silence. His
poetic words spoke of how all things, and all words,
are nothing. Only God is. And in naming the animals
Adam gave voice to their nothingness. Worldly words
get in the way of man silent before God in his
nothingness. Words properly used should reveal man's
nothingness before God and return to silence in the
void.
Merton was talking about authentic subjectivity. As I
recall his thought, imperfectly, being authentically
"subject" results from dying to self, and knowing God,
the objectively other. A pure irony, unexpected.
When we speak out of a proper humility, poverty,
solitude, then our words can speak truth, but it is
always the truth of our nothingness.
I took this reflection with me in addressing the
intellectual concerns articulated below in my prior
email. And beyond that, in finding an even keel from
which to sail, to enact my vocation. So, it is
experientially a place of confidence, from which
insight occurs for me. It is a rock, though it
reveals my nothingness. I find great comfort in
acknowledging my own nothingness, and a feeling, at
least at this time, of a potential to do good. As if
only good can come out of this, and it is the only
place from which good can come. It is always a
temptation to turn this project into a self-centered
enterprise, of course, and now may be a time of
consolation that of course will not endure. But that
it is recognized as a place on the way is itself a
reassurance (John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila on
consolations, followed by spiritual dryness).
In watching Tiger Woods over the weekend I identified
something that bothers me, not that I can truly know
his heart, but the air that he carries with him is one
of pride, that he knows that he is the one to beat.
The psychology of that must wear on his opponents.
You have to know that you can beat Tiger Woods, was
one commentator's comment. The only way to know that
is not through pride, but through acknowledging your
nothingness, and Tiger's too. And suddenly you have
the power to believe in yourself, because it isn't
you.
And in watching the Academy Awards, you see a lot of
pride, in that the words used are always pushing out
the silence, and cowing those who hear the words into
submission. The proud person cannot admit the silence
because he is so invested in perpetuating the words
that cow. As Merton says, when the time comes at
death to speak one's nothingness the proud man will be
unable to do so.
This thread of conversation is meant to suggest an
answer to your question about ultimate authority, be
it political, philosophical, etc. It resides within
you, or nowhere. And you are nothing. And it
acknowledges the great mystery of other persons, other
subjects, and the great meditations and insights and
judgments that they have added to the pool of wisdom.
I am coming to believe you only gain entrance to
others' wisdom, or you could just say Wisdom, since it
is universal, from this place of solitude.
So do not be aggrieved as you search for a political
theological framework to answer your questions.
Going back to Lonergan again, you move from a detached
philosophical rumination on the issues at hand to a
future you are implicated in, your own subjecthood.
It feels good to move.
Once you enter into this discipline of solitude, of
prayer, then you are already on the road of faith. I
think in my own case, I look up from the road and try
to test it, judge it, by taking myself out of a place
of faith and questioning the articles of faith. I
have my own set of doubts and concerns. So I have a
construct in place about the believer, the ideologue,
who must believe, like Weber's secularist who
nevertheless pursues with "pure intentions". (Merton
would challenge one's pure intentions, insisting we
must first acknowledge our sinfulness, else we give
the lie to Christ's sacrifice, we make God a liar).
But this intellectual construct of a triad of
politician, ideologue, viewer, claims to have
"objectivity", to be "scientific", disinterested, as
cold as the universe. "In space, no one can hear you
scream."
The construct makes claims, it accuses the faithful,
it finds insights that reaffirm its structural
integrity. It says, in the end, that Christ did not
rise. And at the same time that I must put my head
down and follow the road, in my existential faith.
And that it rises above me, and pulls my strings. The
puppet master. Crucifies me, mocking. And the
passage of the centuries has resolved nothing,
countless lives have followed the monastic way,
countless lives have died in wars, countless
governments have risen and fallen, and the machine
grinds on. So what if you have become conscious of
the mechanism? Do you think you can stop it? Go
ahead and believe God will save you, put your faith in
that, you are just putting yourself more firmly in the
category I have assigned for you.
And yet Merton says that the man in solitude, in
humility, in poverty, where "Christ lives and no
longer I", defies classification, categorization. The
world passes over him, does not recognize his gift.
Yet he lives, as Christ came to give Life. Everything
else is death.
I take the step of being open about my motivations
because without it I do not think I could think as
well, I do not think I could be honest, and reach the
truth, which is what I intend. I hope it does not
come across as self-indulgent.
I will also mention, I do not know why, another
thought. You must speak the truth first, in its
harshness, in its objectionability, though you hear
the voices rejecting it even as you speak it. It is
the only way to think it, to claim it. And then, the
objections to it may be handled afterward, and
probably only those that are most troubling, though in
theory all of them could be handled. I keep
remembering my father's story about helping a nun in
the kitchen, making pies. She insisted that he
prepare the pies by following the instructions.
First, you have to know how to make a pie.
Eric
p.s. Chris went on a tirade about Naomi when we heard
about her claims and saw her on tv. Apparently, Bloom
has a defender in Camille Paglia: "It really grates on
me that Naomi Wolf for her entire life has been
batting her eyes and bobbing her boobs in the face of
men and made a profession out of courting male
attention by flirting and offering her sexual allure"
and "How many times do we have to relive Naomi Wolf's
growing up? Move on! Move on! Get on to the menopause
next!" (25 February 2004)
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity" -- W. B. Yeats
From: "tombot"
To: "erico"
Subject: Reply to Yours
Date: Tue, 02 Mar 2004 16:00:15 -0500
Eric
This will have to be a short reply - The longer one will have to wait. There is so much to speak of. I guess in thinking about our extended discussion - I basically agree with about 99.9 percent of what you're saying - and I do think what you describe touches upon what is powerful and striking about thinkers such as Lonergan and Merton - i.e. what is uniquely Catholic about them. It sort of has to do with the medium by which one gains access to the higher truth - Lonergan seems to emphasize the essential dignity of man as rational animal - while Merton is attuned to the "foolishness" involved in attaining a "pure perspective". There is some sort of via negativa involved - I mean they're both right - but Lonergan takes the side of objectivity - while Merton defends subjective experience. And Catholicism preserves the paradox. With regard to all this you make an excellent point about the necessity of "taking a stand." - as you say - a person "must speak the truth first, in its harshness, in its objectionability, though you hear the voices rejecting it even as you speak it." And I agree. There is a lot of cowardice behind the desire to simply make the controversy go away...One must declare oneself - The issue is one of simple honesty: we do in fact yearn for Truth - we wish to speak the truth and to be validated for doing so - such desire defines our humanity. But the paradox rests with the notion of the "humble particular" that asserts a "universal imperative" - or as you put it the "nothingness" that bears witness to the True and the Good - [But how?] - Answer: in the very act of owning up to itself as a nothingness (i.e. receptivity? transparency? Gelassenheit? Vessel of Truth? ). Yet it remains very obvious to me why people would go bonkers over such a declaration. Because it sounds either too easy or too impossible doesn't it? i.e. I "feel" humble - i.e. sufficiently self-aware - therefore God is on my side. The Truth speaks through me! - Either that OR... I'm so aware of my prejudices that I don't trust anything I say. I can identify the imperial will-to-power in the very act of speaking. And yet "those Christians" over there declare that somehow there IS a third way. [As other-worldly ideal or actual historical accomplishment? - Plato-Augustine vs. Hegel-Marx]- It sort of relates to what I find strange and absurd about Liberalism - this notion of everyone having the absolute right to live within their iron cage - but never allowed to step out of the cage into the realm of pure objectivity. Rather - we can all supposedly flourish in a subjective world of our own making. Translation: It's okay for people to hold daft opinions (even religious convictions) in private - but when someone ventures out into the public realm to declare - Behold the Truth! - that's when the fireworks begin. Liberalism as Mock Humility. Surely Christian humility must be something other than this - Or am I mistaken? Is modern secularized liberal-democracy perhaps (as some believe) the final culmination of Christian humility? - Everyone has a place at the table - no coercion - separation of Church and State - No tyrannical orthodoxies. etc. etc. The orthodoxy that ends all orthodoxy. It brings me back to the question that really haunts me -- Does the Truth of the gospel need to be "translated" into modern-day terms of engagement that everyone can embrace (i.e. Liberalism as elimination of controversy) -- or should the gospel retain its aura of the unassailable mystery and uncanny authority? The Truth shakes us out of our complacency - It appears as the unsought imperative - the real treasure --the one we still have yet to reckon with. Because honestly - I could wish to have it both ways -- to make everyone happy and yet still preserve the controversy - If that didn't have to come down to having to choose between secularization and fanaticism - a.k.a. Openminded-yet-Tepid Devotion vs. Blind-but-Passionate Sectarianism. I cling to the Catholic Paradigm because it seems to represent a very enticing alternative to these - BUT HOW EXACTLY - The equilibrium point eludes me and many others - at least when we try to explain it to ourselves...and to others... Over to you...
T.S.
P.S. Excuse my playing around with the fonts - bold, italics, etc
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 12:02:04 -0800 (PST)
From: "erico"
Subject: Re: Reply to Yours
To: "Tombot"
Thomas,
The iron cage is stable. Don't rock the boat, don't
raise up your head, or it will be noticed and knocked
back down. Equilibrium is the highest virtue. The
stumbling block to faith is the passage of thousands
of years since He who revealed the victim came and
proclaimed our salvation. As you once opined,
shouldn't there be evidence of things getting better?
To be debated another time.
I have been reflecting upon the following: that the
truth comes from a well of silence, and that to
formulate it with words, to speak it, is already to be
in danger of getting it wrong. To add ripples to the
face of the water. To take truth, a unity, and place
it in the world of dichotomy, or words, does it an
injustice, as it comprehends both sides. Truth is
subtle. We should not be surprised that there should
be secularism in tension with fanaticism, but both war
with each other, losing that which brought them into
being.
re: your statment about Merton's interiority as source
of wisdom or objective truth, viz. "Yet it remains
very obvious to me why people would go bonkers over
such a declaration. Because it sounds either too easy
or too impossible doesn't it?" Christopher Hitchens
may remain obstinate and even sneering of such a
position. But my focus shifts away from trying to make
the open and shut case for my point of view, for
trying to convince everyone of its objective reality,
and shifts toward trying to make the definitive case
for the parameters of the debate, for drawing the line
in the sand between a stance requiring faith, and any
other stance.
Because each individual life is precious in the eyes
of God, and is honored with interior humility,
poverty, charity, as his only proper position before
God. Then, let him have it, and let no one be a
gatekeeper to the entrance to this narrow gate.
As a part of evangelism, and a desire to love each
other, there is a legitimate desire, or duty, to try
to urge others to cross over that line into faith.
But there is no open and shut case that can satisfy
those who will not hear, only a message of hope to
those who struggle with and yet seek the truth. In
the end, one must become implicated in the argument,
in faith, in one's decision.
The second step is then to live out this faith
journey, which requires a detachment from the
intellectual debate, and the beginning of a prayer
life. And this proves difficult for me. Prayer, a
real prayer life, and not just reading about prayer
from Merton, is a difficult thing. I certainly
wouldn't consider it 'too easy', although detractors
might. Closer to 'too impossible', though perhaps not
in the sense the detractors use the word. God blesses
whom He will with passive contemplation. He hears and
answers all prayers, though.
I don't think you find the balancing point between
secularism and fanaticism. You might say there is a
relative balancing point, but not a final solution, as
creation is groaning awaiting the coming of the Lord.
Love is patient. I don't think you find any wisdom
without the humility and spiritual poverty I've been
harping on. But there is a corporate side to that, as
well. And here you get into legitimate authority as
it rests in the Church, and democratic government as
discussed in the article I mentioned on the Lonergan
website.
I think I may be subsuming all philosophical thought
into the service of apologetics. Does this offend
you?
re: merton and lonergan, I was reflecting on merton's
definition of true subjectivity as a function of
self-emptying, and being filled by God. From here
merton speaks of how concrete existence, the solitude
in the mountains, the birds, becomes filled with
experience of 'what is'. I was struck by the memory
of certain times in life when it seems perceptions are
sharpened, one is in the moment, creation fills the
eyes, the nose, the ears, and it seems to come from a
deeper well of spiritual peace and recollection. And
how lonergan speaks of a subject as well. From the
ground of merton, I move on to the subject as
intelligent seeker, who comes to know objectively. So
that the scientific knowledge obtainable is still held
by the subject in humility before God, and is not in
contradiction to religion. Both Merton and Lonergan
are placed again in the concrete world 'as it is'.
Well, I'm not sure if I'm drifting too far from your
concerns, Thomas. I hope you find them relevant in
some way.
Eric
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