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  "canonicalUrl": "https://jcrt.org/religioustheory/posts/philosophy-as-love-unblocking-the-road-from-athens-to-jerusalem-part-1-erik-meganck/",
  "description": "Philo-sophy literally means “love of wisdom.” But this can be read in more than one way. There is the well-known objective genitive, proposing that philosophers",
  "path": "/religioustheory/posts/philosophy-as-love-unblocking-the-road-from-athens-to-jerusalem-part-1-erik-meganck/",
  "publishedAt": "2022-11-29T11:57:41.000Z",
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  "tags": [
    "theoryPosts",
    "philosophy",
    "science",
    "charity",
    "theology",
    "christianity",
    "Philosophy of Religion",
    "Lutheran Theology",
    "Theology",
    "Philosophy"
  ],
  "textContent": "The following is the first of a three-part series.\n\nPhilo-sophy literally means “love of wisdom.” But this can be read in more than one way. There is the well-known objective genitive, proposing that philosophers are thinkers who love wisdom without claiming to own it. But there is also a subjective genitive that shows how love belongs to wisdom. So, when wisdom takes the form of love, it could become philosophy. ‘Philosophy is the wisdom of love at the service of love.’\n\nThis entails that such philosophy is not merely a theoretical, analytical matter, providing a definition of love and all its logical implications. ‘Friendship is so closely linked to the definition of philosophy that it could be said that without it philosophy would not be possible.’ ‘Friendship is like hospitality. But it is a hospitality whose setting is not a house, but the sensation of existing.’ Reading these last two quotes together, I feel justified in replacing ‘existing’ with ‘thinking’, a Heideggerian move, to open the perspective that started the exploration that I retrace in this article. It explores the way philosophy changes when it takes love, charity, hospitality, and openness as its (main) topic.\n\nFirst, a note on the (in)famous continental-analytic divide. Without expanding this divide, there is a difference between continental or differential thinking on the one hand, and analytic or Anglo-Saxon thought on the other, no matter how analytic thought may dislike the notion of a difference that reaches beyond epistemology. Whereas analytic thought holds on to its traditional Anglo-Saxon aspirations, including objectivity, neutrality, transparency, and rigid logic; continental and/or differential thought embraces all the risk of contamination by what is despised by analytic thinkers, including the unconscious, unintended and marginal meaning, metaphor, etc.\n\nWhen the latter considers literature, or the unconscious, it becomes literary, psychoanalytical – unlike analytic thought that always remains analytical, whatever its topic. Here, I will propose how philosophy, when continental and reflecting on Love, becomes itself an act of Love.\n\nWhat analytic thought tends to ignore rather emphatically, is that it is also “no more” than a register of thought, which is something in between literary style and language game. You can read Plato’s work as a logically coherent system of transparent philosophical concepts, but also as a literary expression of amazed and grateful adoration. You can read Anselm’s Proslogion as a logically coherent system of transparent theological concepts, but also as a prayer and love declaration.\n\nIn each latter case, “different” meaning appears. Suddenly, metaphors and paradoxes come into play that reveal sense that lies beyond what lends itself to the metaphysical imperative of logical analysis. Actually, Nietzsche convincingly demonstrated how this imperative always threatened to suffocate thought and culture.\n\nThe Late-Modern Condition\n\nThe modern world, in Heideggerian sense, is labeled ‘technoscience’. While this world was enthusiastically considered the ultimate one, leaving all that was irrational and primitive – religion included – behind, things have shaped themselves in a way that seems to, at least, question this alleged achievement, and even its underlying ambitions. Words that undeniably refer to a religious provenance appear in philosophy, the very philosophy that was supposed to carry science, the whole science, and nothing but science. Indeed, it seems as if the unachieved modern opposition of ratio and fides, thought and faith, world and church, is fading into ‘difference’, without actually disappearing.\n\nLate- or post \\-modern condition are tricky terms. It defies Cartesian clarity and allows philosophy to be overtly contaminated by broad cultural shifts, mainly in religious or esthetic experience. The condition is also marked by an unresolvable ambiguity. On the one hand, I assume that the dominating elements of current ‘technoscientific’ thought can be summarized in the word ‘planning’. Every form of control, organization, measurement, calculation, analysis, induction, extrapolation, and management comes down to planning. No action or thought within the registers of science and technology requires public justification whereas any other does.\n\nStatements like ‘Science proves this!’ and ‘Technology works!’ – Jean-François Lyotard called this legitimation by performativity – usually end all arguments, though they are both highly problematic. On the other hand, hitherto unusual terms unexpectedly appear in late-modern philosophical discourse. We read about Martin Heidegger’s gratitude, Emmanuel Levinas’ hostage,\n\nJacques Derrida’s hospitality, René Girard’s peace, John Caputo’s perhaps, Richard Kearney’s may-be, Jean-Luc Marion’s and also Gianni Vattimo’s charity, Badiou’s love, and so on. These terms used to belong exclusively to (moral or pastoral) theology but now present themselves in mainstream (continental as well as analytic) philosophy without any real headstrong resistance.\n\nPhilosophy has not been “reconfessionalized,” nor has philosophy been restored to its previous position as servant of theology. Actually, philosophy and theology (and sociology and historiography) now agree that secularization is itself the name of an event within the history of Christianity. This also means that secularization cannot be understood as an attack on Christianity from “without” – this “without” perhaps being scientific reason. Science and Christianity are not, or at least no longer, considered each other’s “without.”\n\nThis yields a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, planning is still the official ‘mindset’ of current western culture. On the other hand, terms and topics that may well be considered as ‘other-than-planning’ are becoming recurrent themes in thought. Perhaps this is typical of our late-modern philosophical constellation where planning is leaving thought and Love is arriving in thought without this being a replacement or an antithesis.\n\nRather, Love seems to chatter the complacency of planning – which is in a way a biblically inspired or motivated aspiration. Therefore, to understand actuality and perhaps even promote these approaching other-than-planning items on the philosophical and cultural agenda, I want to look for a possible connection between planning and Love at the “end” of modernity.\n\nSince, and thanks to, Heidegger, much has been written about the “end” of metaphysics, the ‘end’ of modernity, of technology, and of history. He considered this “end” ethically motivated. “End” of metaphysics must of course be understood by thought that takes a ‘step back” (Heidegger) from metaphysics. If this end could be (scientifically) established, it would still belong to metaphysics. And, Derrida wonders, is the arrival of a new understanding of Being, as prophesized by Heidegger, the only way to adequately think away from metaphysics? Why not accept the “end” as an endless ending?\n\nRecent attempts to reconcile the “end” of metaphysics with Love and Christianity are often framed in a philosophy/theology constellation that is still highly determined by precisely the modern schemata these authors want to overcome or leave behind. They either confuse theologians by stretching Christianity too far down (like Vattimo) or they confuse philosophers by turning into theologians (like Marion) – or they radically tear down the walls between them (like Caputo). Still, they do not seem to address the question I want to raise here, to wit: How does the appearance of a theological virtue in philosophy change philosophy and its relation to theology? Furthermore, what is the actual relevance of this (for the moment still alleged) change?\n\nThis means I shall have to recognize both of these terms, i.e. Love and planning, within the confines of current thought as well as formulate a new relation between philosophy and theology – a relation that is already there since it cannot be “installed” on human initiative, which is, by the way, one of the reasons to consider thought as religious. By undoing the (modern) opposition between philosophy and theology, between reason and faith, thought and faith are seen to belong to each other. Thought always hinges on a form of faith – tearing down the objectivity system. Faith without a thoughtful footing tends to drift away from the world, and to lose touch with actuality – still Foucault here. I will elaborate on this later.\n\nLove is a theological, perhaps even Christian notion but will be treated here as a word that not only enters current philosophical vocabulary but also transforms philosophy itself. To be more precise: it transforms philosophy into Love. This Love is not to be found in the deeds that justify faith, as in James’ letter. This is about thought becoming itself Love, i.e. openness, hospitality, friendship. Philosophy befriends hope and trust, and thereby recognizes its own religious purport.\n\nHow can thought even be a form of Love? Thought that does not stem from sheer curiosity or “Neugier” – as understood in Heidegger’s Being and Time – does not look out for “news.” Thought that can become Love is thought that is open to what remained “unthought” and what arrives as a stranger, or as a thief in the night. This unthought is not some content that was somehow “out there” but remained as yet undiscovered or overlooked.\n\nThis would suggest that there exists a full (propositional?) truth about the world, a truth that we are gradually assembling and accumulating, possibly scientific. Instead, unthought means what has yet to arrive from nowhere and without ground, ex nihilo. We cannot even ever have considered its possibility.\n\nThe unthought then belongs to the future instead of the past, although its sense may be older than metaphysics itself, for ages working its way through thought – unseen and unheard-of. Hospitable thought receives, even welcomes what arrives in thought without asking for epistemological credentials. It is friendly because, though critical, it does not ridicule, censure, or reject ideas of another. It trusts that “bad” thought will eventually peter out by itself. Thus, thinking becomes “ethical” without having to resort to moral theory.\n\nBefore I outline my actual argument, I want to draw attention to another fascinating tendency of current thought. Nowadays, it is still popular to recognize the full historical merit of Christianity in its culmination in science, democracy, the current care and education industry, or the human rights discourses. But a new generation of philosophers – almost all of them “unbelievers” (like Vattimo, despite his belief that he believes), some of them even militantly anti-Church (like Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou) but solidly familiar with theology (like Jean-Luc Nancy and Giorgio Agamben) unlike most scientists (like Richard Dawkins) – highlights the ongoing and irreversible impact of certain Christian notions and irruptions on culture, including philosophy.\n\nTheir research into this impact reaches further than the sociologist tradition from Max Weber to Marcel Gauchet. They do not merely offer a theoretical description, free of triumph and regret, but introduce a motif of involvement into their reports. In their philosophy, they critically testify of this impact. Philosophy of Christianity needs to be read in the “double genitive,” where in one sense Christianity is the object of philosophical reflection and in another sense philosophy somehow belongs to Christianity as a provenance of thought, of culture.\n\nThis is not mere coincidence, confined to a specific set of philosophers. It can be called typical of current culture. The way in which the encyclical letter Laudato si’ is received outside the community of faithful Catholics is highly symptomatic. Bruno Latour estimates this letter’s impact on the world to be of the same magnitude as the Communist Manifesto. It is about climate change and socio-economic inequality, and is widely appreciated for its original and revolutionary vision, for its courage and clarity, and even for its scientific accuracy.\n\nThis means that a provenance can be recognized, which is what this paper wants to evoke. What some renounced as philosophy’s outsourcing to theology – remember the famous theological turn of French phenomenology as diagnosed by Dominique Janicaud – is actually nothing more than thought reaching beyond technology and thinking the “end” of metaphysics to reconnect with its provenance, its source – in short: thought becoming religious. This is what I would call, following Derrida, philosophy being religious without religion. The “end” of metaphysics can only be understood by religious thought since it cannot be planned, controlled, analyzed as historical fact.\n\nTherefore, I think I may be justified in bringing in Christianity as a – not the – recognized provenance of current philosophy. Even its theological virtues are welcome in philosophy these days. Apparently, these virtues that were not on Aristotle’s list still have their moral relevance. I will even go one step further here and introduce hope and faith as basic figures of thought itself, not just ethical virtues. I will argue that planning, or indeed modern thought, tends to forget that hope and faith belong to the element of philosophy – and the other way around: philosophy belongs to the element of religion that is marked by hope and faith.\n\nLate-modernity, I then contend, is when and where hope and faith inform a philosophy that connects planning with Love. Modernity, however, is when and where planning neglected, even rejected hope and faith, and (thus?) failed to connect with Love. Love was sequestered in moral theology and became a matter for saints and bigots in their spare time. Society needs organization and the solidarity this entails is laid bare by calculation, not by faith. This separation urged modernity to decide: who wants to perform charity should turn to faith and who belongs to the community of faith is expected to perform charity; but whoever wants to build society will rely exclusively on reason, preferably scientific, and launch solidarity programs.  \n\n  \n\nFootnotes\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSo, when wisdom takes the form of love, it could become philosophy. ‘Philosophy is the wisdom of love at the service of love.’ This entails that such philosophy is not merely a theoretical, analytical matter, providing a definition of love and all its logical implications. ‘Friendship is so closely linked to the definition of philosophy that it could be said that without it philosophy would not be possible.’ ‘Friendship is like hospitality. But it is a hospitality whose setting is not a house, but the sensation of existing.’\n\nReading these last two quotes together, I feel justified in replacing ‘existing’ with ‘thinking’, a Heideggerian move, to open the perspective that started the exploration that I retrace in this article. It explores the way philosophy changes when it takes love, charity, hospitality, and openness as its (main) topic.\n\nFirst, a note on the (in)famous continental-analytic divide. Without expanding this divide, there is a difference between continental or differential thinking on the one hand, and analytic or Anglo-Saxon thought on the other, no matter how analytic thought may dislike the notion of a difference that reaches beyond epistemology. Whereas analytic thought holds on to its traditional Anglo-Saxon aspirations, including objectivity, neutrality, transparency, and rigid logic; continental and/or differential thought embraces all the risk of contamination by what is despised by analytic thinkers, including the unconscious, unintended and marginal meaning, metaphor, etc.\n\nWhen the latter considers literature, or the unconscious, it becomes literary, psychoanalytical – unlike analytic thought that always remains analytical, whatever its topic. Here, I will propose how philosophy, when continental and reflecting on Love, becomes itself an act of Love.\n\nWhat analytic thought tends to ignore rather emphatically, is that it is also “no more” than a register of thought, which is something in between literary style and language game. You can read Plato’s work as a logically coherent system of transparent philosophical concepts, but also as a literary expression of amazed and grateful adoration. You can read Anselm’s Proslogion as a logically coherent system of transparent theological concepts, but also as a prayer and love declaration. In each latter case, “different” meaning appears. Suddenly, metaphors and paradoxes come into play that reveal sense that lies beyond what lends itself to the metaphysical imperative of logical analysis. Actually, Nietzsche convincingly demonstrated how this imperative always threatened to suffocate thought and culture.\n\nThe Late-Modern Condition\n\nThe modern world, in Heideggerian sense, is labeled ‘technoscience’. While this world was enthusiastically considered the ultimate one, leaving all that was irrational and primitive – religion included – behind, things have shaped themselves in a way that seems to, at least, question this alleged achievement, and even its underlying ambitions. Words that undeniably refer to a religious provenance appear in philosophy, the very philosophy that was supposed to carry science, the whole science, and nothing but science. Indeed, it seems as if the unachieved modern opposition of ratio and fides, thought and faith, world and church, is fading into ‘difference’, without actually disappearing.\n\nLate- or post\\-modern condition are tricky terms. It defies Cartesian clarity and allows philosophy to be overtly contaminated by broad cultural shifts, mainly in religious or esthetic experience. The condition is also marked by an unresolvable ambiguity. On the one hand, I assume that the dominating elements of current ‘technoscientific’ thought can be summarized in the word ‘planning’. Every form of control, organization, measurement, calculation, analysis, induction, extrapolation, and management comes down to planning. No action or thought within the registers of science and technology requires public justification whereas any other does.\n\nErik Meganck is a lecturer for FVG Antwerp (Belgium).  He is the author of Nihilistische Caritas? Secula-Risatie Bij Gianni Vattimo (Peeters, 2005) and co-author  of Philosophy and  Polytheism (Walking the Worlds 2016) as well as numerous articles in international journals.",
  "title": "philosophy-as-love-unblocking-the-road-from-athens-to-jerusalem-part-1-erik-meganck"
}