No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Sequence on Modern Ontology
Abstract
This chapter summarises the theological and philosophical objections to the fourfold vision of the via moderna extended into ‘modern philosophy’, beginning with the defence of analogy versus univocity. The treatment of ‘identity versus representation’ is the most extensive, since ‘representation’ shapes the space of epistemology, which is the most determinative space of modern philosophy. The chapter shows how modern philosophy as an ‘autonomous’ discipline was paradoxically generated by a certain style of theology. This same style has fundamentally shaped its most fundamental presuppositions of univocity, representation, possibilism and concurrence – the four pillars of modern philosophy. Ontology does not govern performance so much as coincide with it, insofar as essence is ergon and metaphysics is also divine governance. Thus the manifold works of modernity implicitly assume ontological categories, but they equally construct these assumptions which they manifest.
... ns to others. In clear continuity with this personalism, later western humanism and Romanticism considered that the really democratic element is ‗genius,' the ‗originality' of each and every one which tends to be suppressed by over-scrupulosity concerning rules, or over-veneration of the specificity of the past productions of acknowledged ability.‖ [5] Kierkegaard, among others, reminds us precisely of the importance of an intentional cultivation of the individual human self, reflecting and relating to itself and the (human) other, while consciously receiving its being, dignity, and direction/destiny from the (divine) Other. A valuable lesson for us rests in learning to live with a cr ...
Having transcended the mythical conception of time, the European philosophical thinking set on the trajectory of establishing subjecthood. The ‘agape personalism’ of Ocepek and Milbank (among others) ensued, building primarily on the emphasis on the individual and his relatedness to himself and to Other. The legacy of S. Kierkegaard and his strand of theological existentialism has been and may continue to be a valuable resource for developing the agape personalism in our striving to bring about an existential revolution on the inner-personal as well as inter-personal levels. This becomes most obvious upon reading his masterpiece in theological anthropology, The Sickness unto Death. Kierkegaard here grounds authentic subjectivity in a double relatedness of a human individual’s self – as self relates to itself and as this relatedness relates to Other in faith.
... Recent collectivist and etatistic solutions have not worked and will not work. I wish to argue that in order to promote the things we hold dear – such as personal responsibility, stable families, the wellbeing of local communities, as well as a healthy measure of social empathy on a national level – we need to support voluntary action whereby individuals, families and groups of people (including the religious ones) can freely come together for a shared purpose [8]. Rather than an increase in individualism and fragmentation, we will witness the growth in social cohesion and accountability. ...
Most people in the present are convinced that liberal capitalist democracy embodies the best socioeconomic system and human political governance available. While this may be the case, for this socio-political system to function well there needs to exist a robust culture where certain values and normative concepts originate and are sustained. S. Kierkegaard helps us understand that human person's dignity is inalienable and indisputable, for in their necessary albeit often unrecognized relatedness to God, human selves have a transcendent source and eternal destiny. This article explores Kierkegaard's later work The Sickness unto Death (1849), arguing that his relational understanding of a human (authentic) self can serve as an antidote to the malign processes that threaten current liberal democracies. Kierkegaard's authentic individual, actualizing his potential in an intentional participation in voluntary associations, can help cultivate the kind of normative culture needed to sustain a liberal capitalist democracy on its course between fascism and communism.
This chapter is offered in lieu of conclusion and as a ‘preface’ to the kind of politics that may issue from the reflexive nihilist position adopted in this book. It recapitulates the book’s main points and bears out the implications of the reconceptualisation of political subjectivity as a tragicomic embodiment of a theopolitical meontology. Political action in a diverse world should not abandon the pretensions to universality but, rather, it should undermine the logic of utility and commandment resting behind such claims, while also divesting itself from any illusions of purity or self-righteousness in pursuing its goals. Political action is born in the creative tension between a re-enchanted ‘already’, wholly embracing the dimensions of loss and temporality in the here and now of everyday politics, and an eschatological ‘not yet’ that undercuts the destructive logics of domination and exploitation that permeate our world.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.