The Importance of Rousseau

I am currently working my way through Helena Rosenblatt's study of Rousseau.  I have previously read her essay on the Christian Enlightenment in my studies of the Religious Enlightenment of the eighteenth century.  Here is what I am learning from the book:

1.  Rousseau's social-cultural context of growing up in eighteenth century Geneva is an understudied aspect of his life.  Rosenblatt is following in the footsteps of Skinner and Pocock in emphasizing this context to understand Rousseau better.

2.  The Geneva of Rousseau was one of economic and political turmoil.  There were great changes since the time of Calvin's Geneva.  Even the Reformed theologians preached a more pragmatic message to fit with the changing world.  Moreover, a separation among an oligarchy and the bourgeois was developing, which directly impacted Rousseau's family.  His upbringing brought him to admire the republican virtues of the Western classics over against the cultural admiration of everything French in Geneva.

3.  Things changed for Rousseau when he became a man of letters in France.  This middle period of his life before he wrote his greatest works was the time period when he hung out with the other French philisophes.  He abandons his love of republicanism and Geneva.

4.  Upon writing the First Discourse, Rousseau begins his turn back to being a "citizen of Geneva."  This is also his turn toward sociological interpretation of humanity and his anti-philisophes writings.  Many commentators like Jonathan Israel see a betrayal of Radical Enlightenment principles, yet perhaps it is better stated that Rousseau is trying to attempt a republican renaissance through classic virtues...

More to come...

Gary Dorrien's new book on Kant's influence on Modern Theology

A brand new book is out that features the way theologians wrestled with joining the Enlightenment(s) and Christian theology.  For Dorrien, Kant is the main thread to the story that covers both Schleiermacher's and Hegel's reaction to Kant along with the later reaction from Barth.  If you want to really understand Barth's program, you must know Kant (and Hegel too)...

Dorrien is known for his work on social-theological ethics and a great book on Barth's theology, as well.  The asking price for the book is over $100 bones, so I'm hoping to get a hold of a library copy soon.

Status of Summer work...

Since my work has taken the turn to the historical, I thought that this would increase the amount of time it would take for me to finish this bloody dissertation thing. Instead I am about 55 pages completed with three other chapters on the horizon. Here is some of the progress of my work:

 I have explored the work of recent theologians and philosophers for the last couple of years thinking about how this actually has helped my overall work.  First, struggling with concepts is rewarding in and of itself, but what my reading of thinkers like Zizek, Agamben and others have taught me is that they are often leaning on older thinkers within the philosophical tradition. The main figures, who are obviously having an impact on theological thought today, are, for me, Hegel and Spinoza. One of the things I have taken from both philosophers is that, one, labeling them in a particular school is hard and sometimes anachronistic, and, two, I found that it is better to see their historical impact and appreciate their contribution than to whine and complain about how they took things down a wrong turn or that they need to somehow be overcome. Their discussion of theological matters has had an important impact in all factors of human thought (see Jonathan Israel's majestic work if you think Spinoza is not important).

 Again, exploring the history of this tradition (and yes, I think one can see a flow from Spinoza to Schleiermacher and Hegel) has moved the trajectory on how we have historically thought about God, among other things. One can judge the merits of this turn, but, as I just start to wrestle with this history, I must admit that I stand with a certain awe of the so-called Spinozian line and the way Hegel wrestled with post-Kantian thought.  Hegel and Spinoza are very difficult thinkers that need real dedication to understand their ideas, but I have a feeling that the payoff is extremely rewarding.

 Where does Barth fit in? Well, for some who follow the neo-orthodox argument he really does not, because he is anti-modern; but if Bruce McCormack's recent interpretation of modern theology is correct then it helps lead Barth to a more actualistic understanding of God, which is very modern because it is built around a terminology that came from both Spinoza and Hegel (and Kant).  I think that my driving point here has been to articulate a thoroughly Protestant theology and to see an intellectual history that moves from the late seventeenth century into the twentieth century.  However, even against a certain Barthianism, I want to follow a sort of German tradition that notes how much Barth inherited his ideas from the nineteenth century tradition he is so noted for taking on.

Cohen on Judaism and Christianity

Enlightenment, Kant and Race

I have been buried deep in historical works on the Enlightenment, paying close attention to the issue of religion and the eighteenth century (also issues of secularization).  One aspect I will at least try to incorporate is the way the Enlightenment has been challenged in the last thirty years from the postmodern, postcolonial ans subaltern studies; from what I can tell, some of these works border the ahistorical and the imaginary.  However, J. Kameron Carter's work Race does a good job in making the point that modern racism has its roots in supersessionism.  Here is a key quote on his damning chapter on the Prussian philosopher:

For Kant, the teleological movement toward the perfect race—carried out by white flesh and contrasted to the limitations of the black race—is not yet complete. Indeed, his project, I claim, from the great critical and moral philosophy, with its account of aesthetics and its teleology of culture, to his political and religious outlook, is an attempt to work out how Aufkla¨rung as humankind’s stepping out (Ausgang) of immaturity into maturity is the sociopolitical process by which the project of whiteness is to be completed as the project of reason. The reconstituted and enlightened body politic completes the task of the (perfect) ‘‘race-ing’’ of the body (90).

Israel's work on the Enlightenment

I finally decided to dive into Jonathan Israel's enormous work.  He has written 3 large tomes numbering around 3,000 pages total on the Enlightenment.  His major contribution to modern scholarship is to define the time period along its intellectual bearings.  He classifies it by two categories: the moderate and the radical.  The radical Enlightenment is the one he favors because it is more democratic and egalitarian and has its roots in the thought of Spinoza.

What I am really looking forward to with regards to his last of the trilogy, the Democratic Enlightenment, is his attempt in defining the Enlightenment itself in the first chapter.  This is a serious, well-researched book that  non-historians who think in the shadow of the Enlightenment should at least be aware of.  The more we take the historians seriously when they produce massive works of erudition then the more we will not continue the silly, generalized statements about the Enlightenment.

My article on Barth and Zizek in new Vol 6:1 (2012)

My article on Barth and Zizek and Dialectical Theology is now in the new Zizek journal.  Check it out!!!

http://zizekstudies.org/index.php/ijzs/article/view/360/431