Professor Kevin Hector
THEO 307 History of Christian Thought V: Final Exam
Hyein Park
Question 1: Kant1
(b) Part one: What is Kant arguing in the Transcendental Deduction? How is this meant to respond to
characteristically “modern” problems?
Reason is occupied with nothing but itself (B708/A680).
The notion of a priori in Kant’s argument of Transcendental Deduction has established
the modern condition of the possibility of experience.2 It has significantly shaped a free
subject’s relation with given object, hence in my opinion, is responsible for the problematic clash
between independent human beings each of whom are “completely self-determining” (Pippin
1999, 46). In his utmost effort to claim a subjectivity that does not succumb to the given, Kant
has devised an “explosive notion of a self-legislating and so purely spontaneous reflective
reason” (161). The conscious subject regards oneself as free only when s/he determines “by the
nature of reason itself” (Avii). However, Kant’s account of possibility of knowledge seems to
be, from its conception, implies the self-enclosed construction or process of learning solely
through identification with sameness since Kant excludes possibility of any concept or sensibility
that is outside us first affect or inform us: “For as concepts of objects they are then empty, and do
not even enable us to judge of their objects whether or not they are possible.. Only our sensible
and empirical intuition can give to them body and meaning” (B148-9; emphasis mine). When
the constitution of an object is already, “merely in us,” “one and all in me,” Kant consequently
assimilates the objects into “determinations of my identical self” under rather a homogenizing
system of unity (A129; emphasis mine), resulting in the archetypal idea of correspondentist
method (A104). “We have such knowledge only as subject to our conditions, conditions valid
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only for experiences like us, with spatio-temporal forms of receptivity and discursive intellects”
(Pippin 53). The modern concept of objectification or the stasis/desubjectification of a given
“thing” derives from the extreme application of Kant’s subjugation of it as mere appearance to
“conform to our mode of representation” depriving the very possibility of representation from
“the given” (Bxx). Kant’s predetermined imposition therefore assumes a unity of consciousness
“under which all representations that are given to me must stand, but under which they have also
for to be brought by means of a synthesis” (B135-6), “under which every intuition must stand in
order to become an object for me” (B138), but not vice versa in the process of knowing and
being known (B165). If the possibility of any experience or knowledge rests on this absurdly
biased relation in which only one party’s understanding is recognized and deemed as “pure” and
unifying, then its categories must be indeed “formal” in disregarding manner to omit any detail
in appearance which “would not in any way concern us” (A119).3 The “objective unity of all
empirical consciousness in one consciousness, that of original apperception” does not prepare us
for any experience of disruption or fracture, for the sake of hanging the affinity of all
appearances of the manifold together. Obsession with this kind of unity can easily turn into a
dogmatism that automatically dismisses or controls any distinct novelty which cannot be
generalized beyond our existing categories,4 which becomes even more dangerous when the
denial of diversity is tied to constitution of virtue, a realm of inward morality, which is also
public and ethical.5
Kant indeed had observed the law of nature does not accord with speculative principles of
reason (A807-8/B835-6), and notably the “empirical consciousness of my existence,” “the
consciousness of a relation to something outside me.” Nevertheless, it is eventually the
“intellectual consciousness of my existence” (Bxl n.), “the determination of my own existence”
2
(Bxli n.) whose categories, in Kant’s system, “prescribe laws a priori” to “the manifold of
nature, while yet they are not derived from it” (B163). How this question could be answered
seems to remain a baffling question for Kant as well. In sum, within the limited scope of my
reading, the arguments in Transcendental Deduction, in its excessive refusal of givenness,6
creates a dichotomous relation between law-giving subject and nature, apperception and
experience— culpable for domination (and marginalization) of self over/from the other. In
Kant’s account, how experience and knowledge become possible through communication with
the object has been less explored and this leaves out the significance of the “other” who is not
only an object to me but also a “freely” thinking subject. Both nature and human beings are too
free to be bound in the restrictions of Kantian categories.
(b) Part two: How does Kant’s Religion understand atonement? Why would Kant understand and
explain it in these terms? To what extent is this explanation successful?
Kant’s understanding of atonement in his project of “improving the whole human being”
calls for actual moral change “with and within the historical faith” (6:121). Kant emphasizes that
we ought to make ourselves “worthy” of grace (6:52; 6:139). I think there is nothing unbiblical
in our effort to “elevate ourselves to this ideal of moral perfection” (6:61) in loyal emulation of
Jesus’s example. But Kantian “inner accuser” could be a disparaging, unforgiving judge-withinus when the theological essence of atonement is lost by reducing grace into merely a vicarious
sign that validates good life conduct (6:118).
Kant is not unaware of the infinite distance between good and evil (6:66), but he
maintains his faith in the presence of good disposition (6:74). Since the possibility of good
disposition remains as a matter of faith, it is hard to distill the moral faith from God’s saving
work. Although Kant apprehends the necessary unity of faith in satisfaction and faith “in the
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ability to become well-pleasing to God” (6:116), in his exclusive emphasis on the disposition and
moral conduct, God becomes a theoretically necessary yet complementary concept that supports
Kantian confidence.7 Strangely enough, God’s ambivalent status remains required to “bring
about a disposition well-pleasing” to Godself (6:143) because human beings are neither capable
of cognizing the idea of disposition (6:76) nor building a community established upon it (6:115).
Kant decisively contradicts himself when he wants to hold the prototype, the rational idea apart
from our own comprehension and evil nature —we are not its authors but the idea has rather
established itself (6:61)— on one hand, arguing the origin of prototype in human reason to which
the God-man happens to conform (6:119) on the other. As Pippin has pointed out, “even though
Kant claims to be limiting knowledge to make room for faith.. instead present an internal critique
by reason of itself, simultaneously asserting the absolute authority of rationality” (45; Stout
1981, 130). Kant’s description of atonement is insufficient because it constructs the basis of
morality solely in terms of individual rationality. Understanding Jesus as “idea” bypasses the
experience of the cross of atonement, forgetting the very significance of incarnation. In fact, the
purity of Son of God is only an idealized personification (6:74) of the prototype that inheres only
in reason. Accordingly, from the outset, the “inwardness of the disposition” is described as
needing no experiential example at all (6:63). Following Kant’s explanation, however, humanity
is rendered even more hopeless because atonement then would not be introduced only if
humanity is assured of and act upon the “unchangeableness of such a disposition” (6:67) which
we already possess. In this regard, I think Kant’s worry is right that reason, in its most negative
use, is intellectually and morally “incapable of reconciling the human being’s hope of absolution
from his guilt with divine justice” (6:76).
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“There is absolutely no salvation for human beings except in the innermost adoption of
genuine moral principles in their disposition” (6:83). If salvation is indeed about disposition, we
should interrogate what constitutes disposition of heart and how we can improve it. The
passages discussed above indicate that reason, in its self-referential circularity, holds the ideal
and checks one’s status of disposition, but inept at motivating it to change. Therefore, the
discourse of atonement cannot be completed if the rational obsession with disposition neglects
the emotional, relational aspect of love as primary motive, God’s covenant embodied in Jesus
toward us in atonement.8 In short, theory of atonement presupposes the dimension of affective,
sensuous change in the disposition initiated by other. In Kant’s explanation, this essentially
relational aspect of atonement between God and humanity has been silenced in his utmost rigor
to preserve human freedom, not to degenerate it into a “slavish subjection to the commands of a
despotic might” (6:183). But this has begotten total rejection of any givenness or externality in
the grace of atonement, inducing a failure to address God’s mercy and self-compassion for our
faltering disposition.
“For no human being will be justified in his sight by works of the law, since through the
law comes knowledge of sin” (Rom 3:20). Interestingly, the frequent usage of “law” in Kantian
atonement minimizes the role of grace, redemption, and the idea of “gift” that are pivotal in
Paul’s construction (Rom 3:24). To expect grace should not be misunderstood as “doing
nothing” (6:53) as Kant worries. Of course, “we must strive with all our might” (6:120).
However, the concept of grace is indispensable in atonement not only between God and
humanity, but also between two parties with conflicts. Being absolutely and freely assured that
one has fulfilled his or her duty according to one’s own maximum standard does not mean
forgiveness or reconciliation has effectively occurred. One still needs the other’s confirmation.
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This way, one learns how to exert or limit his or her own freedom in relation to other. Likewise,
without any social implication, faith becomes a matter of solipsistic observance of self-legislated
morality, only making reference to God to identify with perfect human ideal, yet leaving no
room for receptivity of being forgiven, which is passivity to an unconditional force of love.9
Severed from the primacy of God’s love, Kantian atonement first seriously limits the faith within
the form of individual moral commitment limiting the end of faith within the bounds of one’s
own self-righteousness. Secondly, Kant’s prioritization of improvement of moral life as “the
supreme condition under which alone a saving faith can occur” (6:118) blocks the entry for
“sinners” for whom Christ died and to whom the love of God most marvelously has been
manifested (Rom 5:8). The departure from moral degradation, guilt, shame and despair toward
leading a moral life begins from the moment of being deeply moved by Christ’s sacrificial love.
Conceiving duty as divine command (6:154; 6:192) is an expected, desirable response to the
action of Christ’s love but it should not overlook the happiness and gratitude for salvation for the
sake of full moral perfection. Kant’s description of happiness only deriving from moral progress
and the idea of morally perfect human being (6:60) requires a free subject who spontaneously
sets up the standard for worthiness and legislates one’s own maxim and action as a law, to the
point of holiness. This may put insurmountable pressure on today’s moral subjects to whom the
historical dimension, diversity and variability of both law and reason have become common
sense. Especially the law-likeness as unchangeableness is an inapplicable notion to human
disposition in a society which the value system and measure of holiness differ from person to
person, according to the disparate socioeconomic status and the ethical codes culturally and
politically habituated.
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Hence, despite Kant’s abhorrence of grace as mere receptivity that is granted by superior
(6:75n), the language of grace is still useful and much needed in the world of conflicting
subjectivities and the apparently existing hierarchies. Even after dissolution of absolute
monarchy, there is a plethora of injustice, powerlessness and vulnerability that create different
capacities for freedom. As implied in the use of “grace,” in situations of suffering with marginal
freedom to operate, should having hope in distribution of power from the party who is able to
“grant” more to those have less be condemned? Act of generosity and compassion might be
readily applicable to the sharing of material resources. But for the morally impoverished, for the
hopeless in direst need for restoration of their human dignity as well, the forceful foreign
satisfaction culminated in God’s becoming human can still be good news. The divine solidarity
with those who struggle to be moral would be only meaningful and truly powerful when God is
not a concept which is as fallible as human disposition and conduct. “Faith in a merit which is
not his own” (6:117) teaches us humility and need for divine cooperation, while we strive to be
good. As Kant himself noted, bringing out a new man out of us involves “the soul of the human
being” (6:183). For this reason, atonement can strengthen “the courage to stand on one’s own
feet” (6:183-4), when we are receptive to God’s love and encouragement, which cannot be
reduced to a supplementary metaphysical notion.
Question 2: Schleiermacher and Feuerbach10
(a) Karl Barth once claimed that Feuerbach’s account of religion represented the logical conclusion of
Schleiermacher’s theology. To what extent could Feuerbach’s theory of religion be seen as
“Schleiermacherian”? What does this say about Schleiermacher’s theology...and Feuerbach’s?
When Feuerbach pronounced that “theology is anthropology,” a critical divide seems to
be made between Schleiermacher and Feuerbach on the unnegotiable distinction between God
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and man. For Schleiermacher, despite the corruptibility of “at once finite and infinite, at once
human and divine,” what matters most is the relation of finite to the “unity of the whole”
(Speeches 115), which is implied to be reconciled by God. In contrast, Feuerbach saw no
limitedness in feeling contrasting Schleiermacher’s sense of being part of, “impinged upon” by a
larger, universal whole (Harvey 1995, 40) and was averse to turning religion into theology
because “the originally involuntary and harmless separation of God from man becomes an
intentional, excogitated separation,” generating qualitative, essential distinction between God
and man which does not exist in the origin of religion (Christianity 197).11
According to Harvey, for Schleiermacher “God” is “the name for the whence (Woher) of
this system of interdependent causes of which we are a part,” which does not monopolize the
attributes related to him, but leaving a broader place for “the feeling of absolute dependence”
(195). Although both Schleiermacher and Feuerbach agree on the passivity and givenness of
religious feeling, as feeling is understood as “the capacity to be moved by and respond to others”
(40), Feuerbach however opposes Schleiermacher’s definition of religious feeling as
“theological, nebulous, indeterminate, and abstract” in comparison to his concrete and specific
feelings mediated through the senses (172). Yet again, along with Schleiermacher, Feuerbach
recognizes the “omnipotence of feeling” as revelatory of religious consciousness, rejecting
Hegelian “speculative truth” (72), “which is only a philosophical principle, and consequently
only an object of philosophy, but not of religion, of worship, of prayer, of the heart,” alluding to
the existence of “God in reality” (Religion 74 n.24).
Upon reading closely, it is revealed that there is the seed of Feuerbach-ian thought in
Schleiermacher’s account although his system seems at first sight explicitly theological
compared to Feuerbach’s. But it is not hard to read Schleiermacher’s struggle to clarify the
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relation between finite and infinite, human and divine when Schleiermacher emphasizes that
“divine providence in all its expressions is intuited in relation to this condition” where the
infinite “spirit of the universe” must be expressed through finite nature (Speeches 116; emphasis
mine). The necessarily “historical” dimension in Schleiermacher’s intuition of the infinite (112)
and the centrality of faculty of “sense” (58-62) turn into more intensely self-referential,
immediate, materially confining horizon of consciousness in Feuerbach’s thinking. In his radical
assertion, Feuerbach defines religion as man’s self-knowledge, nature of his own, contemplated
and understood as another being (Christianity 13). This understanding of religion is supported
and grounded on man’s consciousness that itself is “self-verification, self-affirmation, self-love,
joy in one’s own perfection” in celebration of his being aware of its own becoming (6). By the
usage of perfection, completeness and complacency in his description of human consciousness,
Feuerbach elevates its power to the infinite. The limitation of an individual is overcome with the
infinitude of “species” (Christianity 7) and the capacities of rational, emotional faculties are
transformed into divine in themselves as “God is known only by himself” (9).
Although Schleiermacher’s religion foretells the infinity of all aspects of religion — of
speculation, feeling, matter and form, being, vision, and knowledge — and our close relationship
to it (Speeches 27), he still perceives the intuition of the universe as happening “completely
without your efforts” (25), characterizing our attitude toward the infinite as childlike passivity
and submissiveness (22-3). Even when Schleiermacher’s infinitude in religion envisions man
beyond his particularity, “from the vantage point where he must be what he is” (23), this
envisioning requires higher mediation that is both divine and human in order to connect the finite
with divine (120).
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In contrast to his prior movement to grant human nature the infinite power, elevating the
human to divine, which still presupposes the distinguished quality of divine, Feuerbach then
makes the nature of God as limited, finite, determinative existence: “There can be no more in
God than is supplied by religion” (Christianity 15). It is true that the infinitude of God should
not be “injured” by the qualities of real existence. Without connection to the gross, dreadful
human reality, the significance of incarnation would become meaningless. Even so, because
Feuerbach overidentifies the divine with human predicates, the breadth of God is reduced into a
concept that is only meaningful, with respect to what God is “for/to me” (16). Furthermore,
when the conception of God itself is a purely anthropological imagination, man’s own projected
reflection thought as an object (Christianity 29-30), religion becomes a form of self-worship,
nullifying the relation between God and man. Prioritizing the materiality of presence, the
infinitude already exploding in infinite man living now, Feuerbach’s overtly humanized system
forgets the imperfection of each person in favor of the ideal of species, the reality of finitude and
suffering that calls for salvation. The present is the future of yesterday that only gradually
moves toward future and the notion of time does not secure our unilinear progress to infinite all
at once. Therefore, God-man conflation is a mistaken illusion that prevents the realm of
unrealized infinite, hope and redemption from truly intervening and affecting the finite now.
Feuerbach’s idea is significant because he restores the human agency. Still, in his attempt to
illuminate the infinite within human consciousness, Feuerbach severed relation with God, for
which difference between God and man must exist.12
Exuding “secret of communal and social life” from the Trinity, Feuerbach crowns
interpersonal human relation among the principles of connection and unity (Harvey 179).
However, it is important to note that the significance of human sociality and anthropocentrism
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first appeared in Schleiermacher. It cannot simply be stated that Feuerbach merged the human
with divine, removing the clear distinctions remaining in Schleiermacher. Schleiermacher’s
theological origin of sociality (Speeches 37) does not easily concur with his own, rather
Feuerbach-ian account: the necessarily social characteristic of religion urges us to prove its
power outside ourselves, but the essence is “nothing other than what is human” (73). Even the
idea that our frustration with each individual will be cured as we reflect upon “an infinite,
undivided humanity” (38) much resonates with Feuerbach’s “species.” Like Feuerbach, the
entire humanity with infinity it embodies can be condensed into one’s individual personality. In
the whole of humanity, there are “immortalized” versions of our own selves reproduced,
promising the prospect of infinity (41).
At this point, a need arises to examine the previously mentioned Feuerbach’s criticism of
Schleiermacher as merely nebulous or abstract. Rather, it would be fairer to say that
Schleiermacher struggled to preserve the realm of extraordinary, the incomprehensible (110),
unlike Feuerbach’s attempt to remove the dialectical tension between man’s life and God.
Whereas Feuerbach equates man’s life and existence with God (Religion 4; Barth 1957, xvi)
consolidating “the original immediate knowledge of God” into “patently human knowledge,”13
Schleiermacher could not abandon the “still higher character” above and beyond humanity
(Speeches 44), even in his acknowledgement of human imagination directing and constituting
our worldview that affects belief in God (52-3). The same “incomprehensibility” Feuerbach
staunchly rejects as “immaterial, incorporeal, not natural, extramundane” (Religion 22) makes
Schleiermacher retain the relation of humanity to the infinite (Speeches 19), leaving room for
humility that one cannot embrace the spirit of a religion “completely” (113).
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Question 3: Hegel and Troeltsch14
(a) Compare Hegel and Troeltsch’s claims about the putative “absoluteness” of Christianity. To what
extent do they share material and methodological commitments? To what extent do they diverge?
And what, if anything, can we learn from this comparison?
Ernst Troeltsch’s search for universality in the context of many historical religions can be
summarized as seeking “normative validity.” I must add, despite the problematic patriarchal
system and language of Trinity exclusive to Father-Son relation, the core of Christian theology
has a redeemable essence. How so? And what is the essence? The “probably unsurpassable,”
potentially absolute quality in Christianity is the “personalism” that elevates human being to
bring changes in history with transforming, unbound values. Personalism is not clouded entirely
by historical method because its norm arises out of “singularities” of history. However,
Troeltsch’s personalism may differ from Barth’s singularity, regarding that Christianity remains
historically relative and the norm of personalism pertains to one’s own constructive choice— the
validity of this choice might be shared with others, but not in a definitive sense (Absoluteness
13). “We cannot and must not regard it as an absolute, perfect, immutable truth” (Absoluteness
115). In this aspect, Troeltsch’s absoluteness seems to be a fluid, continuous concept
characterized by the “living and creative characteristic of religion” that continues to reform
(Troeltsch 1977, 170; Absoluteness 96). The crucial distinction can be made between Troeltsch
and Hegel is that the “absoluteness” of Christianity preserved in Hegel through return to Kantian
“rational cognition of religion” (LPR 3:270) became an object of more thorough historical
investigation in Troeltsch. In Absoluteness, Christianity is viewed as “a purely historical
phenomenon, subject to all the limitations to which any individual historical phenomenon is
exposed, just like the other great religions” and thus up to verified historical research (85).
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Evoking the general tone of Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion —“Spirit’s knowing
of itself as it is implicitly is the being-in-and-for-self of spirit, the consummate, absolute religion
in which it is manifest what spirit is, what God is; and this religion is the Christian religion”
(LPR 1:91)— it is hard not to notice, in Hegel’s portrayal, Christianity is the religion that “has
arrived at what it is in itself” already having attained its proper concept (1:92).15 For Hegel,
Christianity models how the representational character of religion could express what is implicit
despite religion’s inherent inability to achieve reconciliation with the absolute philosophical
essence due to its particular form. As Hegel repeats, it is philosophy rather than religion that
defines the absoluteness of Christianity: “the witness of spirit in its highest form is that of
philosophy, according to which the concept develops the truth” (LPR 3:183); “the standpoint of
philosophy, according to which the content takes refuge in the concept and obtains its
justification by thinking,” and this thinking, encompassing abstraction and what “is itself
essentially concrete”— as an idea, the concept “determines itself in its totality” (LPR 3:267;
emphasis mine).
Seeming to agree with Hegel’s dialectical account, Troeltsch begins his sentence as
following: “[absoluteness] signifies the perfect self-comprehension of the idea that strives for
complete clarity, the self-realization of God in the human consciousness.” But Troeltsch’s
upsetting and urgent reconfiguration of the relation between faith and history (Coakley 191)
drives him to conclude that the idea of absoluteness somehow turned into the “philosophical
substitute for the dogmatic supernaturalism of the church” (Absoluteness 55).
For Hegel, what Troeltsch calls the “dogmatic supernaturalism” itself constitutes the
reason for the consummate religion. The main reason, I think, is Hegel’s absolutization of Christ
who embodies the absolute spirit as a whole in Hegel’s system. With the presence of Christ, as
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the example for finite human beings, Christianity becomes the absolute, consummate religion.
Why is this the case? The singularity of Christ stands out in Hegel’s account because the
doctrine of incarnation deals with Hegel’s own broader project of unity and reconciliation:
..the substantiality of the unity of divine and human nature comes to consciousness for humanity in such a
way that a human being appears to consciousness as God, and God appears to it as a human being. This is
the necessity and need for such an appearance. Furthermore, the consciousness of the absolute idea that we
have in philosophy in the form of thinking is to be brought forth not for the standpoint of philosophical
speculation or speculative thinking but in the form of certainty.. It is essential to this form of nonspeculative
consciousness that it must be before us; it must essentially be before me—it must become a certainty for
humanity. For it is only what exists in an immediate way, in inner or outer intuition, that is certain. In order
for it [this divine-human unity] to become a certainty for humanity, God had to appear in the world in the
flesh [cf. John 1:14] (LPR 3:237-8).
In short, the absoluteness of Christ satisfies Hegelian zeal for bridging the big gulf
between God and humanity. Christ, the God-man, man-God in nonspeculative, real form before
us achieves Hegel’s idea of reconciliation and its appearance. In Christ, Christianity finds the
very reason to be the consummate religion, and the ideal of humanity is infinitely complete.
However, when the elevation of savior as the single individual combines with following
viewpoint of Hegel, it results in a problematic obsession, reduction of Christian doctrine to the
extent only to represent philosophy: “Religion is the consciousness of the true that has being in
and for itself without limit and universally: this is an elevation, a rising above, a reflecting upon,
a passing over from what is immediate, sensible” (LPR 1:115–7). Detached from the sensible,
the philosophization of Christ coincides with Hegel’s concept of God as absolutely independent
being (1:268), and “the absolute substance, the only true actuality” (1:269; emphasis mine).
According to Troeltsch, Hegel’s construction of absolute is “hypostatization” of naïve
claims to validity that “subordinate all important matters to purely dogmatic postulates”
(Absoluteness 46). Although Hegel attempted to reconcile the divine and human, his move
unfortunately resembles the very contentless, ahistorical mode of Enlightenment he wanted to
critique.16 Borrowing Troeltsch’s words, Hegelian conceptualization of divinity, or the
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divinization of concept therefore turned the church into “a supernatural institution that stands
within history but does not derive from history” as well (47). What Troeltsch criticizes as
merely “supernatural” means the naïve absoluteness of Christianity that denies all non-Christian
religions “as the work not of God but of man” which already presupposes not only the dichotomy
of divine and human, but also the superiority of Christian absoluteness above ordinary history
full of sin and error. Troeltsch refuses to privilege Christianity with idealistic formulation and
seeks to find the divine-human unity, by examining content and essence in Christianity, “in
accordance with the requirements of history, as the realization of the idea of religion itself”
(Absoluteness 53).
Troeltsch’s claim becomes even more radical when he puts more emphasis on the
“liberating and redeeming power” of religion based on historical development. Naturally, it is
not the claim to absoluteness —supernatural revelations, truth claims supported my miracles or
sacraments— but “the religious and ethical world of thought and life itself” that lies behind the
claim (Absoluteness 158-9). Troeltsch does not disallow the possibility of the correspondence
between this religious world of life and the unique form of the claim to absoluteness. Besides,
Jesus is still the paradigmatic example in Troeltsch’s explanation of the highest transformative
“power which grasps a man inwardly and totally” (Absoluteness 123). Yet, as mentioned in the
introductory paragraph, the element of personalism embodies the faith of Jesus in God, reflecting
the “absoluteness in the reality itself, in the Kingdom of God” (148; emphasis mine). Here the
reality of religious phenomenon Troeltsch envisions is implied to be larger than the bounds of
Christianity.17
Back to Hegel, although it may be confined to Christianity, the original “absoluteness”
Hegel wanted to capture could be redeemed in conversation with Troeltsch. According to Peter
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Hodgson, in Hegel’s concept of religion, it is the relatedness of divinity and humanity to which
the absoluteness of Christianity points. Hegel’s absolute is a “dynamic, relational concept” as
the absolutely independent God necessarily releases the genuinely free “otherness with which
God has reciprocal relations” (2005, 89-90). We should note that the being of God is allencompassing spirit that differentiates and reconciles “wisdom and word, thought and being,
ideality and reality, mysticism and history” with constant movement and manifestation of spirit’s
life-giving energy (Hodgson 262-3). In Lectures, in his description of absolute, consummate
religion, Hegel stresses the self-conscious, self-determinate and self-differentiating dimension of
spirit. In the wake of realization of its need for reconciliation, the essence and self-knowledge of
spirit in LPR features the singular, spontaneous movement of thought more favorably. Or, my
limited understanding and reading of Lectures might have missed Hegel’s point— but I think
Phenomenology of Spirit is the work that does complement and makes it clear that Hegel’s
emphasis on the speculative knowledge is only part of his constitution of the absolute, and the
absoluteness of Christianity. For example, in Subjects of Desire, Judith Butler supplements the
whole of Hegel’s system through her reading of Phenomenology.18 Revisiting the Hegelian
universal, not in terms of mere sameness, but dialectically contextualizing the singular self in
order to be more inclusive, Butler’s analysis illuminates Hegel’s another important aspect:
“antithesis arises eternally and just as eternally sublates itself; there is at the same time eternal
reconciliation” (LPR 3:234).
The discourse of “absoluteness” is important not because it secures the status of one
particular religion, but rather it significantly affects how one forms his or her own subjectivity, in
relation to other. In particular, the absoluteness of Christianity matters because it pertains to the
believer’s own self-making. The element of absoluteness shapes and transforms humanity both
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in Hegel and Troeltsch. Troeltsch, too, was greatly concerned for the higher, creative power of
inner spirit, acknowledging the mysterious nature of human life that begets the perplexing human
freedom and personality which cannot be fully explained solely in terms of causal extension.
The originality of these powers and their foundation are main subjects in Absoluteness.19
However, Troeltsch avoids the temptation of universalization and articulates a “modern idea of
history” that “knows no concept of a universal principle that embodies a law governing the
successive generation of individual historical realities” (64), therefore respects the particularity
of other religious phenomena and “embraces broader and still broader horizons till finally it
opens out onto the whole” (89). In sum, Troeltsch’s definition of essence or absolute always
progresses as the history advances toward the future. It is “itself a constituent element of the
continuing historical development and indeed one of the most important and crucial means by
which it takes place” (1977, 161). Therefore, Troeltsch can avoid Hegel’s conceptualization of
religion, redeemable if and only if it overcomes the presupposed hierarchical structure of
philosophy over history.
Hegel’s unregulated merger and acquisitions of ontology, history and theology has been
justified by thinking itself in Lectures. With this inherent limitation, despite Hegel’s
differentiating move from Kant, constituting the form of thought as the absoluteness of
Christianity results in the uniformity in the name of universality which is accordingly an
extensive project of Kant (Pippin 177). Hegel’s definition of infinite as “the wholly pure
abstraction” (LPR 1:317) and his general viewpoint on particular as “only a borrowed being”
(1:268) indeed carries out the legacy of Kant in Hegel, encountering the same puzzling question
of freedom— which cannot be succinctly categorized into the essential and absolute status of
cognition although Hegel at times attempts to delimit it as simple and abstract universality. The
17
importance of thinking as “constitutive of the absolute not merely as means to that end” is at the
core of Hegel’s concept of God. But this position contradicts his own logic of reconciliation,
eclipsing the role and function of man, world and history in favor of abstract spirit. This is the
point of division where Troeltsch cannot not differ from Hegel’s view on other religions of the
world, partly due to the availability of resources and evolved methods in Troeltsch’s time.
Borrowing Hegel’s own expression, the dialectical relation between religion and social,
historical public dimension can be transformed.20 And Troeltsch would gladly agree with this
because historical context matters in the construction of reason, of the “absoluteness” itself.
Question 4: Barth and Kierkegaard
(a) Compare Barth and Kierkegaard’s criticisms of “mediation.” What motivates their accounts? To
what extent do their motivations—and the content of their accounts—converge? What, if anything,
can we learn from this comparison?
Kierkegaard sees “mediation” as misunderstood version of repetition, originally an
indispensable condition that enables moments of life come to exist (FT 148-9). Kierkegaard’s
aversion toward Hegelian systemic continuity is obvious and pervades entire Fear and
Trembling.21 For Kierkegaard, Hegelian “mediation” is an elimination of a dialectical tension
that does not allow for the subjective break for decision (Ferreira 2009, 44; 99). In rejection of
absorption into the Hegelian Absolute” (McCormack 1995, 237), Kierkegaard places the
incommensurable interiority of a thinking individual human being whose faith only starts when
s/he empties oneself in the infinite, “by virtue of the absurd” (FT 69). For Barth, in search of
hope for the seemingly hopeless humanity in his time, he as a theologian desperately needed God
as “the pure and absolute boundary,” “who is distinguished qualitatively from men and from
everything human” (ER 330-1). Therefore a concept of “mediation” turns a genuine Christian
18
faith into a merely human, “direct communication” stripping away “its ability to shock” (ER 98).
The hope in Christian faith is constituted by God, who is the Stranger, and the wholly distinct 22
Other whom we encounter “along the whole frontier of our knowledge,” in our world where
“God is finally and everywhere—outside” (318). God can intervene this way because God “is
not a known thing in a series of things” (82). Qualitative distinction between man and God is of
utmost importance for both Kierkegaard and Barth. Moreover, Barth’s perspective on the
revelation “in history, but not of history” (McCormack 233) posits God as “the pre-supposition
of ethics,” thus establishing the primacy of God over this world, over our existential being (ER
438-9).
Back to Kierkegaard, to interrogate the paradox of speaking, its limitation and tragic
dimension, we must come back to the case of Abraham. Can Abraham speak? No: “Abraham
cannot be mediated; in other words, he cannot speak” (FT 60). The significance of Abraham23
introduces to us “a paradox that is higher than all mediations” (FT 66). I think, for Kierkegaard,
Abraham models a human being who stands in “absolute relation to the absolute” (FT 93), in
total renunciation of even the littlest relief provided by speaking that could have translated him
into the universal (FT 113). However, Abraham’s faith, one for “this life,” makes him agonize
between the “world to which he did not belong” (FT 20) and his gut-wrenching love for Isaac
because the suffering he bears cannot be spoken or translated by any means, except by the virtue
of the absurd.
This is a serious problem proposed by Kierkegaard and uplifted by Barth. There is a
complex relation among thought, speaking, paradox, and one’s relation to the absolute.24 And
there is remaining difficulty for translatability and communicability in one’s wrestling with faith
and existential suffering. Nevertheless, in the end, shouldn’t we somehow “mediate” our
19
experience, regardless of the gravity of the situation, through the necessity to “speak”? In order
to make sense of what has been, or is absurd, aren’t we compelled to construct our own voice as
medium of our singularity? Regarding the significance of the communicability of theology to
the public, Kierkegaard’s following statement seems to be highly problematic: “Faith itself
cannot be mediated into the universal, for thereby it is canceled.. and the single individual
simply cannot make himself understandable to anyone” (FT 71; emphasis mine). If not through
speaking, how are we to eventually express what is “hidden”—keeping in mind that Barth’s true
reality of God lies hidden, always]—? “Abraham was God’s chosen one, and it was the Lord
who imposed the ordeal [Prøvelse]” (FT 19)— if this kind of claim is easily justified, how can
we discern if there is unnecessary, unjust suffering, imposed by false divine authority, within an
individual or community that must be addressed yet prohibited to be so?25 Isn’t Fear and
Trembling or Epistle to the Romans also final work of “speaking,” a long-awaited, prophetic
one? From my perspective, in order for a “relation” to work —not solely for the sake of unique
singularity— Kierkegaard’s and also Barth’s reluctant solipsism26 needs to reconsider the
effectiveness of the infinite resignation. Otherwise, the despair of silence is incurable for those
who are structurally oppressed in particular. Not only is there an implied divine/human
dichotomy27, but also an abysmal rejection of human rationality as Kant has worried.28 Of
course Kierkegaard’s ingenuous thirst and search for salvific form of self-formation needs to be
valued. The terrible, great disturbance in God’s approaching toward us, in Kierkegaard, is
formulated as the acceptance of grace, a givenness, with absolute dependence (Ferreira 2010,
145). However, it is hard to deny the perplexing necessity of “dying” to oneself or hatred or
even ruthless denial of self as prerequisite in Kierkegaard’s painfully silencing move. This
seems to contradict Kierkegaard’s own agenda to demonstrate “our created need to love and to
20
be loved” (143). “..He who struggled with himself became great by conquering himself but he
who struggled with god became the greatest of all.. there was one who conquered God by his
powerlessness” (FT 16). In Barth’s account, exemplified in Saint Paul, the great paradox of
power and powerlessness, what can be mediated and what cannot show no hierarchical division.
However, it is hard to read otherwise that Barth’s divine/human unity means ultimately the
“infinite victory” of spirit over the flesh. When God’s decision overwhelms our decision,
Barth’s dialectic of life ends up in a clear-cut, unilateral divine revelation “only” (ER 17; 120;
229; 283-4). Similarly, this account evokes Kierkegaard’s risk of solipsism, lurking in the idea
of telos beyond the ethical. Kierkegaard’s ideal of singular individual in absolute (personal)
relation to God without any ethical mediation transposes an individual beyond ethical as
“superior”29 beyond universal. For example, historically speaking, we can recount numerous
former revolutionary heroes who fought against totalitarian structure themselves later become
the nemesis of history— dictators. If one believes to be “immediately” an incomparable,
incommunicable singular self who dictates and absolutizes himself above any other individual,
community, or social system, his very existence degenerates due to idolization of telos he
embodies, into idolization of his own subjectivity. Therefore, one should be doubly careful to
discuss Barth’s repeated assertion on the crisis of human knowing. Not only Barth
acknowledges the absolute sovereignty of God, but also the hazardous, absolute crisis which
God Himself is. It is not correct to say that Barth completely devaluates the “known plane” of
“time and things and men.” But they never seem to play significant role unless the “unknown—
the world of the Father, of the Primal Creation, and of the final Redemption” exalts them and
makes them visible. Although Barth recognizes the ambiguous intersection between “time and
eternity, concrete occurrence and primal origin, men and God” (ER 29), it is really God who
21
solves the enigma and any previous human effort falls under “false” category. As mentioned
above, in Barth’s enhanced unilateralism, “dialectic of life” reduces all the contradictions of
human life and dissolves them into even “less” than a precondition for the revelation-event.30
Here, Barth’s attempt to overcome the “mediation” creates another problem. The biggest
irony in Barth’s Christology is that it belittles any attempt from human side so much, especially
that of rational, ethical (as universal) reflection of faith— his christocentrism, pushed to the
extreme, becomes a medium for blind-faith. To put differently, to our generation, the very figure
of Christ on the cross is the “mediation” to secure convenient salvation that neither requires nor
calls for any meaningful individual spiritual, intellectual struggle. Still and all, in order to fully
recognize and share the “death of Christ,”31 I think we must use our own maximum capacity to
confront the arising existential issues first— so that we can be “confronted by the absolute and
not merely relative ‘otherness’ of God, and therefore by His indissoluble union with us” (ER
162). This is a polarizing moment between Barth and Kant in the understanding of atonement
and grace. Pushed to the other end of extreme, however, Barth’s “God as pure negation” (ER
141),32 could be a rather depressing message to contemporary humanity, not as a gospel
(εὐαγγέλιον: good news). Why? Throughout the scorching wait for salvation from God who
“breaks forth” (ER 318), all we inherit is a dichotomy negatively imparted to us (‘God is in
heaven, and thou art on earth’), embodied in Jesus:
He sets Himself wholly under the judgement under which the world is set; He takes His place where God can
be present only in questioning about Him; he takes the form of a slave; He moves to the cross and to death;
His greatest achievement is a negative achievement.. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Nevertheless, precisely in this negation, He is the fulfilment of every possibility of human progress (ER 97).
In short, too strong the language of no and never to human side, regardless of Barth’s
intention to transcend “mediation,” rather morphs the gospel into a top-down narrative of God’s
yes— a quickly universalizable, even “cheap” grace, at its worst form of mediation.
22
Interestingly enough, in the midst of Kierkegaard’s internal tension facing the infinite
qualitative difference, we may find the ground for “purely human courage” (FT 49; emphasis
mine). Kierkegaard and Barth largely overlap in the recognition of the primacy of passionate
faith over thought, and the infinite difference in God’s time and ours. But the awareness of
Kierkegaard’s incipiently existential humanism and Barth’s account on the positive significance
in human time, perception and reception (ER 10) could have more perfectly complemented the
cruciality of God-led now as a distinct moment that “makes human as human.” For without time
in the world of mankind, eternity cannot leave its mark. If not the particularity of human love or
human law, the intersecting fulfilment of God’s love and law (ER 497-9) is an amorphous,
indistinguishable condition. What must be revised is Kierkegaard’s own interpretation of
universal, or “mediation,” as mere stasis, fixated uniformity. In Hegel’s original thought, the
dynamic movement of spirit proceeds always “evolving.” It would be detrimental for
Kierkegaard’s own project to disregard Hegelian move because the re-attachment (“true freedom
from world is freedom for it”) Kierkegaard hopes to achieve is doomed to fail outside the
mediated forms of relationality, history, and universality. Preventing the single individual from
being subordinate to the universal is definitely an important task. But the abjuration of universal
necessarily constructs an ideal impossible self who is unmediated, distinguished individual. As
soon as there is one more individual, the ideal may create a relation that is discrimination, or
inequality. As an inherent vice of postmodern discourse, this problem of discriminatory
distinction among individuals and communities has not yet been successfully resolved. At this
point we witness a collapse of the right-based, self-interested discourse of post-modernity, as an
extension of modernity, reached a total deadlock, an impasse.
23
Nevertheless, we ought to revisit the core of Kierkegaard’s and Barth’s argument,
concerning the depth, validity and significance of human suffering, denial and sacrifice of self.33
Technical discourse of our time precisely lacks the passion as Kierkegaard lamented (FT 42 n.;
67). Though it is not theologically desirable to claim that “faith begins precisely where thought
stops” (FT 53), either. It is not responsible for one to “mediate” the faith via universal.
Conversely, however, it is not viable to nullify wholesale the element of universal, for the sake
of singular individual’s incommensurable, irreducible faith. A singularity that only asserts itself,
colliding with universality, cannot sustain or be sustained because of the way individual and
community always already constitute the other intersubjectively. The preciousness of one lost
sheep out of hundred stands out, but the norms that validate and motivate other ninety-nine
should also be considered in the discourse. Tackling on “mediation” inadvertently generates
another dichotomy if the universal is neglected. If we may historicize Barth and Kierkegaard as
the messengers of their times, the message once delivered by “the single individual who is
outside the universal” (FT 71) then, by virtue of their belonging to yet another theological circle,
always already becoming the identifiable universal which in turn calls for critique.
In this sense, the discourse of modernism constructs itself through an “unending”
dialectic and the modern subject has been struggling in between Kant’s inner accuser and Barth’s
God of “nevertheless.”34 Differing in the demarcation of divine/human sphere regarding reason,
morality, and faith, from Kant to Barth, a very difficult question of faith has been proposed
surrounding the concept of “givenness” (divine decree/revelation/grace) and its relationship with
human freedom. How are we to balance these conflicting worlds? A tentative solution may lie
in not exclusively siding with either, but in acknowledging the gap between embodied reality and
language that has prescribed it— a balanced critique and appreciation of self-transforming
24
phases of givenness, in a nutshell. One therapeutic way to resolve this dilemma, as suggested by
Hector (2011, 143) is to recognize the mediating work of Spirit in and through a communal
process in which the use of theological concepts preserve the original meaning. In this process,
neither initially given norm nor the possibility of transformation in the universal is abandoned.
Recent theological discourse has renewed its interest in the role of Spirit, whose dynamic and
life-giving work not only transcends the dogmas on conceptual level but also creates a need to
recognize the new, incarnate reality. “By a process of intersubjective recognition,” according to
Hector, “the normative Spirit of Christ” is conveyed but the dichotomy between theological/nontheological concept is overcome due to the suitability of “ordinary language” for theology as it
shall be taken up to express “a novel, non-metaphysical theology of God-talk” (292).
Understanding the work of Holy Spirit allows us to participate and dare to “speak” of God, with
courage and faith— a faith in Spirit’s capacity to mediate the supernatural and the natural, the
substance and the phenomenal world. It is up to us to consistently examine whether this account
most appropriately captures the tension between theology and the discourse of modernism.
However, it is evident that we should reappraise the importance of givenness, freedom and the
status of God in both discourses. For instance, the ethos of Enlightenment has left the realm of
feeling blank, severing its possibility from being constitutive of cognition or moral action. More
holistic account is needed as the godless discourse of modernism becomes flat and clichéd. Even
Kant, the father of Enlightenment, struggled with the necessity of transcendence in order to
secure human dignity. But rightly because the necessity for grace itself remains only as a
metaphysical postulate, a rigorous application of Kantian freedom ironically suppresses the
“given,” natural, embodied humanity— subjugating everything “outside” the limits of mere
reason as tyrannical. Of course, what has been repressed still matters and exists in the
25
construction of subjectivity. But the Kantian desire for excessive control of the givenness, I
think, became the seed of neurotic obsessiveness,35 resulting in modernity’s perpetual
dissatisfactions (Pippin 178; emphasis mine).
¶ Epilogue: I went to the Lake Shore and due to the mist I could not recognize that there has been actually a
constant wave— until I saw other parts of the lake reflecting the tall building on the drive; the wave on this
side was seen much clearer to me, and this helped me to see the whole picture. The entire water in the lake
was actually moving, creating waves, and it always has been. From this, I thought about the co-existence of
Kierkegaard-Barth movement following Kant’s idealism and Hegel’s universal.36 Perhaps all these camps
are not essentially antithetical to each other as they seem to be in the first place. One is not even recognizable
without the other.
Notes
1
With limited background knowledge in the Critique of Judgment, which claims to address and contradict some of
Kant’s perspective on the subject-object relation in Critique of Pure Reason, —Kant on beauty, sublime, the good as
art in its highest form, even as a perceived object, teaches the analyzing subject humility—I want to add an
understanding of Kant’s system in its entirety expresses the inherently conflicted, far more complex status of
Enlightenment ideal, the discourse of modernity in Kant’s inventive words themselves. Kant’s original intent came
out of the struggle to preserve human freedom under pre-modern dictatorship. Yet the distinguished, individual,
singularity of modern subject who pursues freedom, again encounters the universal, needing to form a harmonious
relation. Rather than providing an answer, postmodern discourse failed to overcome the dichotomy between
individual-society, individual-individual, rather enlarging the gap with exclusive emphasis on singularity. See also
Adorno’s criticism of “instrumental reason” that objectified a person, treating one, consequently, as means to the
superior subject’s ends which ironically contradicts Kant’s categorical imperative. Dialectic of Enlightenment 86-7.
2
Cultural critic Walter Benjamin reconfigures “the conditions of possibility of experience” emerging out of experience,
“arises from the transposition of a response characteristic of human society to the relationship of the inanimate or
nature with human beings. The person we look at, or who feels he is being looked at, looks at us in return. To
experience the aura of a phenomenon we look at means to invest it with the ability to look back at us” (SW 4:338-9).
Benjamin, Selected Writings: Volume 4: 1938-1940 (Harvard University Press, 2002). For detailed discussion of this,
Miriam Bratu Hansen, "Benjamin’s aura." Critical Inquiry 34, no. 2 (2008): 336-375.
3
Of course, Kant is not unaware of the difficult dialectical tension between subject and object. Yet Kant’s preference
seems obvious: “..either I must assume that the concepts, by means of which I obtain this determination, conform to
the object, or else I assume that the objects, or what is the same thing, that the experience in which alone, as given
objects, they can be known, conform to the concepts. In the former case, I am again in the same perplexity as to how
I can know anything a priori in regard to the objects. In the latter case the outlook is more hopeful. For experience
is itself a species of knowledge which involves understanding and understanding has rules which I must presuppose
as being in me prior to objects being given to me, and therefore as being a priori” (Bxvii).
4
“Kant seemed to realize that only by linking the spontaneity of the subject with the very possibility of experience or
action could such spontaneity be self-limiting, not arbitrary or ungrounded, and so a safe, prudent aspect of modernity
to insist on” (Pippin 50); “Given that ends of reason are self-legislated for Kant, that so much is now seen to be a
result of human activity, the typical, distinctly modern (Cartesian) anxiety about skepticism and subjectivism could
be said to be greater in Kant than Descartes. The task of philosophy is still a kind of self-reassurance and selfsatisfaction, even if the means for such reassurance are no longer, I am claiming, themselves Cartesian” (193 n.9).
See also how this is exemplified in the analysis of obsessive-compulsive disorder in Jennifer L. Fleissner.
“Obsessional Modernity: The ‘Institutionalization of Doubt.’” Critical Inquiry 34, no. 1 (September 1, 2007)
5
“If anyone is held up as a pattern of virtue, the true original with which we compare the alleged pattern and by which
alone we judge of its value is to be found only in our minds. This original is the idea of virtue, in respect of which the
possible objects of experience may serve as examples, but not as archetype” (A315/B372).
26
Feuerbach contra Kant writes: “the content – even if it is to be produced internally by philosophy’s self-activity
inasmuch as it is contained in the form of the notion – is always given” from “Towards a Critique of Hegel’s
Philosophy,” http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/critique/
7
Kant’s own opinion is divided on the existence of God, for the sake of sustaining his moral system (Bxxx; A8034/B831-2; A828/B856).
8
Schleiermacher’s discussion of love, feeling as motivation of a moral subject: KGA I.3, 22; 38-9; Jacqueline Mariña,
Transformation of the Self in the Thought of Friedrich Schleiermacher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 2022; 144.
9
Kant does acknowledge both the mind’s power of receiving representations defined as sensibility and understanding,
the power of producing representations from itself (B75/A51). However, according to Jeffrey Stout, “Kant had failed
to achieve a correct view of the capacities of reason (Vernunft) largely because he philosophized from the vantage
point of the understanding (Verstand)” The Flight from Authority: Religion, Morality, and the Quest for Autonomy,
(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 137.
10
Flight from Authority, 139.
11
Harvey, Feuerbach and the Interpretation of Religion, 185-6.
12
Feuerbach’s self-contradictory account to render the nature of man as infinite, identified with religion as
consciousness of infinite (Christianity 5) is in contrast to his next move to see God as the unconscious restoration of
what is denied in man (27).
13
Karl Barth, “An Introductory Essay,” in The Essence of Christianity by Ludwig Feuerbach (Harper/Torchbooks
1957), xvii.
14
According to Troeltsch’s own overall analysis of absoluteness of Christianity, Christianity’s break with other nature
religions (112) or superiority over religion of law (109) may also need revision, considering each different religious
perspective.
15
For discussion in depth, regarding Hegel’s own tension between the pure speculation and incarnate in working out
the definition of absolute, see Thomas A. Lewis “Religion and Demythologization in Hegel’s Phenomenology of
Spirit” in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit: A Critical Guide, ed. Dean Moyar and Michael Quante (Cambridge; New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 14-6.
16
“..lands us right back in Hegel’s critique of Kant’s original formalization, the original move or strategy in the critique
by reason of itself” (Pippin 173).
17
In Absoluteness, Troeltsch seems to have left somewhat contradictory remarks on the absoluteness and the future
of Christianity. See Absoluteness, 78-9; 91-2; 114-5 with Sarah’s Coakley’s comprehensive analysis in Christ
Without Absolutes: A Study of the Christology of Ernst Troeltsch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 68 n.52;
75 n.82.
18
Butler quotes from Phenomenology of Spirit, “I distinguish myself from myself, and in doing so I am directly aware
that what is distinguished from myself is not different. I, the selfsame being, repel [abstoßen] myself from myself;
but what is posited as distinct from me, or as unlike me, is immediately in being so distinguished not a distinction for
me. It is true that consciousness of an 'other', of an object in general, is itself necessarily self-consciousness…
consciousness of itself in its otherness” (¶164). What is seemingly lacking in Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion
is reinterpreted by Butler in a way that values difference, multiplicity, human struggle and desire. Having begun with
Kant’s own dualistic account, the question of desire has been suppressed in the discourse of modernity and Hegel’s
ideas in Phenomenology makes therapeutic points to that. Judith Butler, Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in
Twentieth-Century France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 18-27, 218, 213-8.
19
“..definition of the essence always at the same time involves a shaping of the essence, this is not only not a defect
but it is a prerequisite for religion itself. Religion is not the appropriation of doctrines about things which lie in the
past, but it is the present awareness of the redemptive presence and holy rule of God, all through the mediation of
history but still a new reality, the rising up of a new life, a creation in the present” Writings on Theology and Religion
(London: Duckworth, 1977), 168.
20
On Hegel’s infinite and essence as being publicly constituted, please refer to Lewis’s chapter “Finite Representation,
Spontaneous Thought, and the Politics of an Open-Ended Consummation,” in Hegel and the Infinite: Religion, Politics,
and Dialectic, ed. Slavoj Žižek, Clayton Crockett, Creston Davis (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).
21
FT 308; Repetition 321.
22
ER 115-6.
23
Abraham as ethical figure opens up the comparative possibility for different religious narratives, such as “Buddha
who must leave the consolations of filiality for the unknown and terrifying promise of universal compassion; or, of
the epic hero Arjuna, who must wage a terrible war against his own kin, eschewing all the learnt maxims of nativist
ethics in order to arrive at an as-yet undefinable and unknowable capacity to pluralise the Self and to apprehend it
6
27
in/as all creatures, all things” Leela Gandhi. “Friendship and postmodern utopianism.” Cultural Studies Review 9.1
(2013): 19-20.
24
For example, ambivalent nuance is found in Kierkegaard’s stance in silence: “I always run up against the paradox,
the divine and the demonic, for silence is both” (FT 88).
25
A feminist critique would be one of the most poignant oppositions to Kierkegaard’s. Can we apply the same
principle to Jephthah’s daughter? Can she speak? (FT 87) No. “But every freeborn man will understand, every
resolute woman will admire Jephthah, and every virgin in Israel will wish to behave as his daughter did, because what
good would it be for Jephthah to win the victory by means of a promise if he did not keep it–would not the victory be
taken away from the people again?” (FT 58) In its dialectic the result, insofar as it is finitude’s response to the infinite
question, is altogether incongruous with the hero’s existence. Or should Abraham’s receiving Isaac by a marvel be
able to prove that Abraham was justified in relating himself as the single individual to the universal? If Abraham
actually had sacrificed Isaac, would he therefore have been less justified? (FT 63) If God did not indeed halt
Abraham’s scene of murder, would this incident be recordable? Jephthah’s daughter does not receive final salvation
as Isaac’s. Including her having no name, her act of silence and obedience lack gravity in the narrative, in comparison
to Isaac. Was she entitled to no faith? Why couldn’t her (and Jephthah’s) singularity or responsibility upon herself
save her in the end? In this case, “not disclosing” the hiddenness became, for oneself, a great suppression, a killing.
Recent cultural theories focus on addressing the previously the unspoken, despicable, the silenced in the archive of
underside of history. See also Lauren Berlant, “Trauma and Ineloquence,” Cultural Values 5, no. 1 (January 1, 2001):
41–58. In her discussion of Enlightenment model of subjectivity and its limitation concerning the case of “trauma”
also discussed in detail.
26
“the knight of faith is alone in everything.. the knight of faith is constantly kept in tension.. The true knight of faith
is always absolute isolation” (FT 79).
27
ER 356-7; McCormack 238.
28
Kant, Religion 6:139; 6:139n.
29
“Faith is precisely the paradox that the single individual as the single individual is higher than the universal, is
justified before it, not as inferior to it but as superior.. This position cannot be mediated, for all mediation takes place
only by virtue of the universal” (FT 55-6).
30
“The ‘dialectic of life’ has no theological significance whatsoever until it is brought into relation to the dialectic of
judgement and grace which is actualized in revelation. Already in the phase of Romans II, Barth understands the
gospel to have a priority over law” (McCormack 239).
31
Similitude in Hegel’s account (LPR 3:249-50).
32
“But we must not forget that no negation which human beings are capable of carrying out is as great, as fundamental,
as the Negation which is ‘carried out by the positivity of God’. Our negations do not bring about the Negation. Even
Luther’s and Kierkegaard’s critiques of Christendom were unable to do that. ‘Only where God (in that objectivity
which orthodoxy knows only too well!) becomes human, stepping into our emptiness with His fullness, with His Yes
into our no, only there is God spoken of” (Barth, Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie 170-1 quoted in McCormack
310).
33
“His entering within the deepest darkness of human ambiguity and abiding within it is the faithfulness.. In Him we
behold the faithfulness of God in the depths of Hell” (ER 97).
34
“..if there is to be revelation, God must not only determine to unveil Godself, but must put this determination into
effect by making Godself manifest to creatures—yet because creatures have no capacity for revelation, it follows that
this making-manifest, too, must be grounded wholly in God’s own capacity (cf. Barth 1932: 313-4). ..we have no
capacity for revelation, it follows that this conveyance, too, must be grounded in God’s own capacities (cf. Barth 1932:
314). God thus completes the revelational circuit, but does so wholly on the basis of God’s own capacities.” Kevin
Hector. “Karl Barth.” In The Routledge Companion to Modern Christian Thought, edited by Chad V. Meister and
James K. Beilby. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2013. But Barth was fully aware of Kierkegaard’s
limits and sought out correctives in public communicability: “All ethical action is of the nature of a protest.. An action
which represents really and genuinely the disturbance of men by God, and is not merely a casual and unauthorized
disturbance of men by their fellow men, must possess a universal validity, must come out into the open. This means
that the paradox of genuine protest must not be thought of as a private matter, valid merely for this or that particular
individual” (ER 468).
35
“Horkheimer and Adorno narrate a story which implies a kind of neurotic obsessiveness in modern subjectivity”
(Pippin 164).
36
Flight from Authority, 142-3.
28