Pub Date : 2019-10-30DOI: 10.35765/10.35765/forphil.2018.2302.10
A. Bartlett
Girardian anthropology tells us that the birth of human meaning and its signs are the result of a primitive catastrophe. But if these origins are exposed by the biblical record it is because another, transformative semiosis has opened in human existence. Girard’s seminal remarks on the Greek logos and the logos of John, endorsing Heidegger’s divorce of the two, demonstrate this claim and its source in the nonviolence of the gospel logos. In effect, there is a second catastrophe, one embedded in the bible and reaching its full exposition in the cross, generating a new semiosis in humanity. The transformation may be measured by viewing the original semiosis in a Kantian frame, as a transcendental a priori structured by violence. The second catastrophe generates an equivalent new a priori of nonviolence. The work of Charles Peirce illustrates both the way in which interpretants (of signs) open us progressively to new meanings, and how this process may ultimately be conditioned by love. The catastrophe of the gospel, therefore, works both on the dramatic individual level, with Paul of the New Testament as the great example, but also in slow‑motion over semiotic history, changing the meaning of existence from violence to nonviolence.
{"title":"Theology and Catastrophe: A (Girardian) Semiotics of Re-Humanization","authors":"A. Bartlett","doi":"10.35765/10.35765/forphil.2018.2302.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35765/10.35765/forphil.2018.2302.10","url":null,"abstract":"Girardian anthropology tells us that the birth of human meaning and its signs are the result of a primitive catastrophe. But if these origins are exposed by the biblical record it is because another, transformative semiosis has opened in human existence. Girard’s seminal remarks on the Greek logos and the logos of John, endorsing Heidegger’s divorce of the two, demonstrate this claim and its source in the nonviolence of the gospel logos. In effect, there is a second catastrophe, one embedded in the bible and reaching its full exposition in the cross, generating a new semiosis in humanity. The transformation may be measured by viewing the original semiosis in a Kantian frame, as a transcendental a priori structured by violence. The second catastrophe generates an equivalent new a priori of nonviolence. The work of Charles Peirce illustrates both the way in which interpretants (of signs) open us progressively to new meanings, and how this process may ultimately be conditioned by love. The catastrophe of the gospel, therefore, works both on the dramatic individual level, with Paul of the New Testament as the great example, but also in slow‑motion over semiotic history, changing the meaning of existence from violence to nonviolence.","PeriodicalId":34385,"journal":{"name":"Forum Philosophicum","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47731909","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-10-30DOI: 10.35765/forphil.2018.2302.18
{"title":"Besong Brian, and Fuqua Jonathan, eds. Faith and Reason: Philosophers Explain their Turn to Catholicism [Book Review]","authors":"","doi":"10.35765/forphil.2018.2302.18","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35765/forphil.2018.2302.18","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":34385,"journal":{"name":"Forum Philosophicum","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44687527","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-10-30DOI: 10.35765/forphil.2018.2302
{"title":"Mimetic Wisdom: René Girard and the Task of Christian Philosophy","authors":"","doi":"10.35765/forphil.2018.2302","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35765/forphil.2018.2302","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":34385,"journal":{"name":"Forum Philosophicum","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47008332","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-10-30DOI: 10.5840/forphil201722217
Akademia Ignatianum
Forum Philosophicum is a scholarly journal that seeks new insights into philosophical discussions concerning the relationship between philosophy and faith. The tradition we are rooted in is that of Christian philosophy, understood as the independent exercise of reason in the context of the faith. However, we also welcome proposals that grow from the concerns important to philosophers shaped by other religious traditions, in particular those of Jewish or Muslim heritage. We seek articles that are able to engage in critical debate with evolving views on rationality and its relationship to the irrational, the indeterminate, and the non-binary, and look forward to receiving analyses that discuss the place of faith and the rationality of faith in such contexts. We encourage discussions of human nature and spirituality that seek to address the proposals of neuroscience and confront the declarations of posthumanists, as well as inquiries into that mode of philosophizing which, while resting on the hermeneutics of culture, gives special emphasis to the hermeneutics of sacred texts. We would like to distinguish our journal through a specific approach, rather than through the specificity of the subjects we are prepared to see raised in it: an approach that allows faith to shape, enlighten, and strengthen our rationality itself. In this way, we want to offer a true Forum for the community of philosophers who view their faith as a source of inspiration, especially when seeking to face up to the new and challenging forms being given to the age-old problems of philosophy.
{"title":"Note about Forum Philosophicum","authors":"Akademia Ignatianum","doi":"10.5840/forphil201722217","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/forphil201722217","url":null,"abstract":"Forum Philosophicum is a scholarly journal that seeks new insights into philosophical discussions concerning the relationship between philosophy and faith. The tradition we are rooted in is that of Christian philosophy, understood as the independent exercise of reason in the context of the faith. However, we also welcome proposals that grow from the concerns important to philosophers shaped by other religious traditions, in particular those of Jewish or Muslim heritage. We seek articles that are able to engage in critical debate with evolving views on rationality and its relationship to the irrational, the indeterminate, and the non-binary, and look forward to receiving analyses that discuss the place of faith and the rationality of faith in such contexts. We encourage discussions of human nature and spirituality that seek to address the proposals of neuroscience and confront the declarations of posthumanists, as well as inquiries into that mode of philosophizing which, while resting on the hermeneutics of culture, gives special emphasis to the hermeneutics of sacred texts. We would like to distinguish our journal through a specific approach, rather than through the specificity of the subjects we are prepared to see raised in it: an approach that allows faith to shape, enlighten, and strengthen our rationality itself. In this way, we want to offer a true Forum for the community of philosophers who view their faith as a source of inspiration, especially when seeking to face up to the new and challenging forms being given to the age-old problems of philosophy.","PeriodicalId":34385,"journal":{"name":"Forum Philosophicum","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45834127","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-10-30DOI: 10.35765/forphil.2018.2302.12
J. Ranieri
Questions concerning the relationship between nature and grace, rea- son and faith are central to Christian anthropology. With philosopher/theologian Bernard Lonergan’s essay “Natural Knowledge of God” as a starting point, these questions will be considered in conversation with the work of Rene Girard and theologian James Alison. Lonergan agrees with Karl Rahner that, with regard to these questions, dogmatic theology needs to be transposed into a theological anthropology. Given that Girard is an anthropologist of religion and culture who is open to theology, his work can be useful in effecting such a transposition. For example, Girard’s thought can help us understand what Lonergan means when he writes: “I do not think that in this life people arrive at natural knowledge of God without God’s grace, but what I do not doubt is that the knowledge they so attain is natural.” Implicit in this statement is an awareness that “natural reason” needs to be freed of its biases before it can operate freely and “naturally.” Girard’s anthropological approach to the Bible helps to explain why this is the case.
{"title":"How Girard Helped Me Understand the Distinction between Nature and Grace","authors":"J. Ranieri","doi":"10.35765/forphil.2018.2302.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.35765/forphil.2018.2302.12","url":null,"abstract":"Questions concerning the relationship between nature and grace, rea- son and faith are central to Christian anthropology. With philosopher/theologian Bernard Lonergan’s essay “Natural Knowledge of God” as a starting point, these questions will be considered in conversation with the work of Rene Girard and theologian James Alison. Lonergan agrees with Karl Rahner that, with regard to these questions, dogmatic theology needs to be transposed into a theological anthropology. Given that Girard is an anthropologist of religion and culture who is open to theology, his work can be useful in effecting such a transposition. For example, Girard’s thought can help us understand what Lonergan means when he writes: “I do not think that in this life people arrive at natural knowledge of God without God’s grace, but what I do not doubt is that the knowledge they so attain is natural.” Implicit in this statement is an awareness that “natural reason” needs to be freed of its biases before it can operate freely and “naturally.” Girard’s anthropological approach to the Bible helps to explain why this is the case.","PeriodicalId":34385,"journal":{"name":"Forum Philosophicum","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46851323","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-10-30DOI: 10.35765/forphil.2018.2302.14
Charles Mabee
Neither rationally constructed nor intentionally imposed, humans live much of their lives guided by unspoken folkway traditions passed on from genera- tion to generation. As the American sociologist William Graham Sumner reminded us over a century ago, those norms that prescribe “acceptable” social behavior bubble up from everyday life experience, rather than imposed from the top by cultural authorities. Sumner’s insights throw further light on the mimetic theory developed by René Girard and offer a more nuanced understanding of how mimesis actually works. The benefit of the extraordinary grip that folkway traditions hold on us is their utilitarian value and resultant cost-effectiveness in terms of expenditure of mental energy. We follow folkway traditions to save time and mental energy. It is the thesis of this paper that Jesus recognized this power of customary thinking as a determinant of human behavior, and it was his strategy to attack specifically those folkway traditions that were exclusionary in nature in “shocking” ways that agitated many who followed generally accepted behavioral norms. As a result, it is wrong to take Jesus for a moral law-giver, even with such benign terms as a new “law of love,” or the like. In fact, he did not propose a new formal legal tradition, but challenged individuals to reflect consciously on their unthinking behavior and assume responsible ownership of it. To follow Jesus, therefore, does not so much imply a deeper understanding of love, but a deeper understanding of the unconscious decision-making processes that unwittingly guide our everyday lives.
人类生活的大部分时间都是在代代相传的民间习俗传统的指引下度过的，这些传统既不是理性建构的，也不是有意强加的。正如美国社会学家威廉·格雷厄姆·萨姆纳(William Graham Sumner)在一个多世纪前提醒我们的那样，那些规定“可接受的”社会行为的规范是从日常生活经验中产生的，而不是由文化当局自上而下强加的。Sumner的见解进一步阐明了ren Girard提出的模仿理论，并对模仿的实际运作方式提供了更细致的理解。民间传统对我们的特殊控制的好处是它们的实用价值和由此产生的在精神能量消耗方面的成本效益。我们遵循民间习俗以节省时间和精力。这篇论文的主题是，耶稣认识到习惯思维的力量是人类行为的决定因素，他的策略是，以“令人震惊”的方式，特别攻击那些本质上排他性的民间传统，这激怒了许多遵循普遍接受的行为规范的人。因此，把耶稣当作道德律法的制定者是错误的，即使是用一些温和的术语，如新的“爱的律法”或类似的。事实上，他并没有提出一种新的正式的法律传统，而是要求个人自觉地反思自己的轻率行为，并承担责任。因此，跟随耶稣并不意味着对爱有更深的理解，而是对无意识的决策过程有更深的理解，这些决策过程不知不觉地引导着我们的日常生活。
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Pub Date : 2019-10-30DOI: 10.35765/forphil.2018.2302.15
One might well wonder about the source of Girard’s knowledge. Where is it thought to have come from in the first place? From what vantage point are we supposed to be surveying the events he claims are originary? And what, then, is the condition for the very possibility of his Christian wisdom? In this paper, I argue that we can put forward a tentative solution by looking at one particular aspect of all the texts that Girard has interpreted: they are all written texts. Analyzing this in detail with the assistance of the proposals of Bernard Stiegler, I will claim that it is writing itself that has afforded us the possibility of paying attention. Moreover, in the second section, I shall also put forward an analysis of the gnoseological condition of the possibility of Christian wisdom. To do so, I expand on Stiegler’s reading of Kant’s notion of schema focusing on its relation with the hermeneutical notion of figura, as presented by Erich Auerbach. Commenting on the common rhetorical setting of both the Critique of Pure Rea- son and the Bible, I then show that these two written texts address a very similar problem—a critique of the way people judge—and also put forward, surprisingly, much the same solution: to properly judge, it would be better to take into account past examples of judgments and consider that, no matter whether we critique them or not, they will schematize our own experiences and influence our intentionality.
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Pub Date : 2019-01-01DOI: 10.35765/forphil.2018.2302.17
T. Ryba
This paper proposes a revision of Girard’s interpretation of Satan, along traditional theological lines. Appreciating the essential correctness of the Girardian characterization of mimēsis, it is an argument, contra Girard, that (1) Satan cannot be reduced to a mimetic process but is a hypostatic spiritual reality and, following from this, that (2) the origins of mimetic rivalry go back before the emergence of humankind and provide a model for human rivalry. Employing concepts drawn from Husserlian phenomenological psychology, Thomist theology, and psychoanalysis, it hypothesizes Satan’s psychological state, prior to his fall, as metastable anxiety and trauma and his state, afterwards, as a narcissistic, malicious, self-induced pathology in order to explain Satan’s impossible rivalry with God, a rivalry that precedes hominization and has always endangered human existence.
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Pub Date : 2019-01-01DOI: 10.35765/forphil.2018.2302.16
M. Korusiewicz
This paper asks whether there are grounds for viewing Girard’s work as a tragic vision, and explores the criteria and contexts that might figure in such an investigation. Mimetic anthropology is built on references to the tragic per- spective, but its tragic aspect is complex and diaphanous in respect of its struc- turing and dynamics. Its framework is difficult to explore without engaging with contemporary Christian theological thought—something that significantly affects its implications. As for the latter, the transformative potential of Girard’s tragic anthropology, directly engendered by its critical approach to its own theses, tends to shatter the stability of its assumptions. Therefore, from the earliest interpreta- tions of ancient tragic drama, through the pitfalls of the notion of sacrifice and the dialogue with the philosophy of existence and dramatic theology, all the way to the so-called apocalyptic phase in Girard’s thought, we can observe shifting relationships between the broadening areas of human failure on the one hand, and the elusive horizon of hope on the other. Within this vision, the last strategy of hope seems to lie in the decision of the individual as a witness to a man-made apocalypse—and/or the apocalypse itself.
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Pub Date : 2019-01-01DOI: 10.35765/forphil.2018.2302.13
Stefano Tomelleri
The mimetic desire that underlies resentment can enter into different and complex strategies of interaction. In his writings, Girard has indicated at least three such strategies: those of the solipsist, the non-conformist and the minimal- ist. His critical insight reveals indifference, transgression and minimalism to be strategies of resentment, where all of these are symptoms of an anthropological condition characterizing contemporary Western society today. At the same time, he sees evangelical revelation as the main source of our modern awareness of the mimetic nature of human beings: an awareness that has produced ongoing transformations in modernity linked to resentment. Moreover, he observes that it is the Judeo-Christian tradition itself that has disclosed the mimetic nature of human desire and the logic of resentment. Viewed from this perspective, modern humanity now has an extraordinary opportunity to renounce the scapegoating mechanism so as to resolve its resentments, as evangelical revelation makes recon- ciliation and social reconstruction possible.
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