Frederiek Depoortere has sent in his manuscript for his forthcoming book Christ in Postmodern Philosophy (it's not on our website yet, so the link takes you through to Amazon). To whet your appetites for this one, here is a quote from Frederiek's introduction:
"The present books offers an investigation into the Christological reflections found in the work of three contemporary thinkers, namely Gianni Vattimo, René Girard and Slavoj Žižek. It is one of the results of my doctoral research, which began in October 2003 and which intended to compare and evaluate from a theological perspective the work of a number of contemporary continental philosophers who had recently made a so-called ‘turn to religion’ and to monotheism in particular. The original project text mentioned the names of John D. Caputo, Richard Kearney, Gianni Vattimo, Merold Westphal and Slavoj Žižek. My first exploratory study of these philosophers suggested to me that they can be divided into two groups. The first group consists of Caputo, Kearney and Westphal. In the wake of Heidegger’s announcement of the end of onto-theology and inspired by both Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, they search for a post-metaphysical God, a God who is often indicated as tout autre, wholly other. Žižek, on the other hand, does not belong to this group. First, he clearly has another source of inspiration: not Heidegger, Levinas or Derrida, but Lacan and the great thinkers of German Idealism (Kant, Schelling, and Hegel). Moreover, he does not aim at tracing a post-metaphysical God. His ‘turn’ to Christianity is a result of his concern to ‘save’ the achievements of modernity from fundamentalism as well as from post-modern relativism and religious obscurantism. Vattimo, finally, is a go-between. His sources (mainly Nietzsche and Heidegger) seem to indicate that he aligns with the first group. Like Caputo, Kearney and Westphal, Vattimo is also searching for the God who comes after metaphysics, but, as we shall see in due course, he explicitly rejects the wholly-other God defended by them. With Žižek, furthermore, Vattimo shares the attention for the event of the Incarnation and the conviction that the Incarnation amounts to the end of God’s transcendence. Both thinkers also defend the uniqueness of Christianity vis-à-vis natural religiosity. In this way, they seem to share at least some affinity with the views of René Girard, who has also defended the uniqueness of Christianity and claims that the latter broke away from the violent transcendence of the natural religions. In what follows, we will investigate the Christological ideas of these three contemporary thinkers, focussing on the topics of the relation between transcendence and the event of the Incarnation on the one hand, and the topic of the uniqueness of Christianity on the other."
"Christ in Postmodern Philosophy" will publish in August 2008 (US pub date October 2008). Frederiek's book The Death of God will be out in February (US pub date April).
Comments