RT Article
T1 Intimate Distance: Rethinking the Unthought God in Christianity
JF Sophia
VO 47
IS 3
SP 327
OP 343
A1 Kate, Laurens ten 1958-
LA English
YR 2008
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1785590162
AB The work of the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy shares with the thinkers of the ‘theological turn in phenomenology’ the programmatic desire to place the ‘theological’, in the broad sense of rethinking the religious traditions in our secular time, back on the agenda of critical thought. Like those advocating a theological turn in phenomenology, Nancy’s deconstructive approach to philosophical analysis aims to develop a new sensibility for the other, for transcendence, conceptualized as the non-apparent in the realm of appearing phenomena. This is why Nancy launches a project looking for the ‘unthought’ and unexpected within the Christian traditions, called deconstruction of Christianity. However, the deconstructive approach to the non-apparent differs fundamentally from that of the thinkers of the turn (1) in its being non-apologetic and non-restorative with regard to religion, because it starts from a problematization of the—typically modern, that is romantic—desire to defend and protect what would be ‘lost’ and possibly to restore this, (2) in its focus on the complex difference-at-work (différance) between religion and secularism, a difference that can be termed entanglement and complicity between these two, (3) in its hypothesis that this entanglement is essentially one between (the meaning and experience of, the rituality around) presence and absence in modern culture, (4) in its conviction that the philosophy and history of culture must join, support, complete and maybe even turn around phenomenology when dealing with the difficult task of determining what exactly would be ‘left’ of the ‘theological’ in our time. In this article, both positions are compared and confronted further, leading to an account of Nancy’s re-readings of the Christian legacy (its theology, doctrine, art, rituals etc.), and ending in a more detailed, exemplary inquiry into the tension between distance and proximity, characteristic of the Christian God.
K1 Kenosis
K1 Revelation
K1 Incarnation
K1 Rethinking Christian doctrine
K1 Phenomenology of the non-apparent
K1 Theological turn in phenomenology
K1 Religion and secularization
K1 Deconstruction of Christianity
K1 Différance
K1 Philosophy of Difference
K1 Jacques Derrida
K1 Jean-Luc Nancy
K1 Relation between modern culture and Christianity
DO 10.1007/s11841-008-0069-0