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11 responses to “A metaphysician and a deconstructionist walk into a bar. . .”

1. 

   dmf

   March 10, 2014

   maybe you can get in on the next round of this online seminar:
   http://syntheticzero.net/2014/03/09/the-impossibilities-of-religion-john-d-caputo/

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2. 

   Jon Cogburn

   March 10, 2014

   Cool! I’ll definitely check it out. I don’t know how much I’ll be able to follow through though. I’m so oversubscribed to stuff now.
   I’ve wanted to teach either an Adult Sunday School course or LSU class on Caputo for the last year and a half. Hopefully this will come to fruition in the next year or so.

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3. 

   Alan White

   March 10, 2014

   Jon, thanks for this. In the spirit of real inquiry, please bear with me in asking some questions about Derrida/deconstruction as it relates to faith and religion.
   Why does it seem (to me) that this dialogue is a case of highfalutin conceptual tag? Gutting says tag (is this what deconstruction says about religion?), Caputo says tag back to you (no), Gutting says tag-sub-1, and Caputo says tag-back-sub-1 (no-sub-one), etc. until one gets the impression that for whatever Gutting poses as a characterization of deconstruction of religion tag-x, Caputo will say (in effect) tag-back-x, and thus overall no-tags-x back. Is deconstruction really such a strategy of negative thesis? It defeats me.
   I read Kvanvig’s piece but I won’t go on about it at length (it needs editing). However, I don’t appreciate the “belittlers” label bestowed on the new non-believers–the harmful effects of religious zeal in defending everything from life-crushing prejudice to creationism are well-established and positions opposing that deserve a place in the spectrum of legitimate outrage, even if sometimes hyperbolic. Religious liberty is (as I see it) a negative right to be left alone in one’s faith that is being transformed into a positive one of enforced belief through political action such as state constitutional amendments against gay marriage and even the recent attempt to refuse services to gays in Arizona. (Really? The same “reasoning” that restaurants refused service to people of color in the 60s South?)
   And please know, when it comes to feasting at the table of religion–I ate there and not just paid the bill, but left a huge tip. I trained for the ministry, had deep spiritual experiences that certainly seemed as real as anything Plantinga describes, and yet finally reasoned that for all the emotional and moral pluses, it was a based on a doxastic sham I was better off without. Of course there are lots of good in religious practice; perhaps the marriage of religion and power politics throughout history and today (the US, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc.) is the choking factor for critics ultimately.
   Ok, I went on too long. I hope you can get me to see the Derrida thingy a bit more clearly at least. Thanks in advance.

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4. 

   JH

   March 10, 2014

   Overall I found this exchange enlightening. But Caputo employs a common deconstructionist tactic that can be frustrating and which I don’t understand:
   Caputo: ” … something which these inherited beliefs contain without being able to contain.”
   Gutting (paraphrase): What does that mean?
   Caputo: “The traditions contain (in the sense of “possess”) these events, but they cannot contain (in the sense of “confine” or “limit”) them …”
   I find often when reading Derrida, Ronell, or several other (though not all) deconstructionists, this apparently deliberately misleading tactic, and I’m not sure I understand its value. If you mean possess in one instance, and confine or limit in the other, why not say that first? Or qualify it without prompting? The reader benefited, in this instance, by Gutting’s request for elaboration on that claim, but often we are not given that chance. So is there another virtue, beyond sounding slightly poetic, to writing like this? If not, then, at least in instances such as this, it appears to me that certain allegations of intentional obfuscation leveled against deconstructionism are not without merit.

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5. 

   Jon Cogburn

   March 10, 2014

   I’m hoping that someone from the an und fur sich blog shows up and helps out here. I’m not good enough on Derrida to be that helpful.
   My Derrida is from a couple of sources, and the authors get kind of different things. Samuel Wheeler’s “Deconstruction as Analytic Philosophy” is able to use Derrida to see much more clearly what is at issue in Davidson (his new book on Davidson looks like dynamite; I hope to read it soon and post about it). Lee Braver’s “A Thing of this World” sees Derrida as the culmination of an anti-realist current in continental philosophy. Martin Hagglund sees Derrida as a radical atheist and not an anti-realist. Deborah Goldgaber is also reading him as at least an anti-anti-realist but she’s also reading him in his post-Husserlian context in a way that leads to a critique of Hagglund. Graham Priest and Paul Livingston interpret the arguments of differance in terms of Russell’s Paradox and Goedel’s Incompleteness Theorems (respectively, and Hagglund is close to Priest here in a way that I plan to explore).
   But for all the great philosophers that I cherish whose interpretations of Derrida strike me as incredibly important philosophically, I’m not capable of reading Derrida himself. It almost always reads like an army of false dichotomies to me. Since the people in the previous paragraph are better philosophers than me (I learn from them), I’m pretty sure that my reaction to reading Derrida reflects bias and lack of proper acculturation on my part. Whether something is a false dichotomy depends upon a lot of other premisses. The Parisian 68ers all took the Aggregation and so had this massive background in common and often write as if all of their readers also shared that.
   This is extraordinarily superficial and probably false in the details, but I tend to see Caputo’s Derrida as an important node in the negative theological tradition that has deep ties to Kantianism in philosophy, but attempting to articulate this tradition in a way consistent with the failure of Kant’s response to the mathematical antinomies.
   For the Kantian negative theologian, we can’t say anything meaningful about God at all, because that would involve talking about fundamental grounds in a way that would force us to talk meaningfully about totality (and the earliest critiques of Kant argued that if you can’t know anything at all about the thing in itself then you couldn’t talk about it). Of course Hegel/Priest see this as a complete failure. In saying that you can’t talk about something, you are nonetheless talking about it.
   So I see Caputo as using Derrida to articulate Hegel/Priest against the negative theological tradition, but trying to maintain what was right about that tradition in some dialetheist way.
   Now when in the interview he disambiguates his claim so that there isn’t a true contradiction, he’s pulling back. Also, one should note that Hagglund sees Derrida as a dialetheist and articulates that as part of Derrida’s atheism. So I don’t know how it will hang together in the end.
   But I have a lot of reverence for the negative theological tradition and for the Hegel and Priest’s critique of Kant’s response to the mathematical antinomies (and Priest’s argument that modern set theory and theories of truth fail for the same reasons). So Caputo does strike me as a central figure.
   Like I said though, this is pretty hamfisted. I’d be really happy if someone from an und fur sich or related blogs wants to show up and set me straight about this stuff. I’ve seen Caputo speak once and also seen lots of talks about him at a fantastic radical theology conference. His views really are living for a lot of ministers who take Matthew 25: 31-40 as more important than anything in the Gospel of John.
   I don’t know if it works out in the end.

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6. 

   JH

   March 10, 2014

   Wow that is incredibly detailed and helpful. Thanks for taking the time for the extensive response.

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7. 

   Jon Cogburn

   March 10, 2014

   Regarding Derrida, please read my response to JH (and I really hope that shows up and does better).
   Regarding “belittlers” in Kvanvig’s piece, maybe you have to consider the audience? He’s telling a lot of Christian theologians and philosophers that their construals of their own religions have a lot in common with the most negative critics of that religion. The enthymeme (that Kvanvig needn’t himself endorse) is that if faith really is like most Christian philosophers take it to be, then the belittlers have a pretty good point. How does one communicate this in a loving way to people who hold those very views? Kvanvig does a pretty great job I think. Since I myself am a churchgoer who isn’t capable of being that reflective about the practice, I think he does a pretty good job of charitably describing what’s going on with me and my fellow unreflective churchgoers.
   I should note that I’m a big fan of Christopher Hitchens because he is so wonderful at criticizing the horrible things about religion. That’s far, far more helpful to me as a religious person than Dennett (a philosopher I adore) going on about “brights.”
   I also agree with everything you write about Church and state. I place my commitment to Jesus over my commitment to the state, and this does affect how I vote (I’ve become vastly more left-wing since returning to Christianity; you can’t in good faith be a libertarian and be a good Christian; I also think you can’t in good faith oppose gay marriage and be a good Christian, but I realize most Christians disagree with me about this). But there are overwhelming reasons for construing separation of Church and state in the way you describe it. I should note that the foundational doctrines of the Presbyterian Church USA explicitly agree with you on this too.
   As far as your journey taking you in an opposite direction from mine, it would be presumptuous and wrong of me or anybody to try to belittle where you are at and what you are doing just because it’s not where we’re at and what we’re doing. How could anyone else possibly know what’s best for you?
   It’s pretty clear to me that I am a much more horrible person when I don’t put my shoulder to the wheel to take part in my religious community (which crucially involves charity towards those not in this community). But it would be risible for me to make that same judgment about the entire human race.
   Bertrand Russell once asked what kind of God would in any way punish someone for sincerely following their conscience and reason? Certainly not one worth worshiping. Certainly not one who is supposed to be the source of all grace.
   I don’t know why so many Christian philosophers quibble about this point. Faith is supposed to include the hope that things are in some miraculous way going to turn out alright. That’s the heart of it, and given the misery of this world the thing that is most absurd (far more absurd than someone walking on water). The idea that your sincere yet cultivated hopefulness only applies to those in your sect or who share your metaphysics is risible and dangerous (I want to say un-Christian, but that would be question begging). I think it’s in South Park where the Jehovah’s Witnesses end up being right and all but 144,000 people go to Hell; the satire was to a very good purpose there.

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8. 

   dmf

   March 11, 2014

   “Faith is supposed to include the hope that things are in some miraculous way going to turn out alright.” interestingly this is one of the ‘strong’ ideas that Caputo’s weak theology rejects (along with the Huston Smith deep down all religions are the same nonsense).
   That someone working after Derrida would perform for his audience some of the ways in which our words, like contain, have multiple meanings/resonances could certainly be frustrating if you are devoted trying to nail-down some singular/definitive meaning but surely reflects some of how our everyday language ‘games’ actually function, no?
   From my end Caputo is better understood as a sort of update of Richard Rorty’s work on sublimation and “living” metaphors (via Davidson) along phenomenological lines, not so different from Alva Noe’s recent work on presences (and Tanya Lurhmann on learning to hear gods) , only looking into our relations to perhaps inchoate event-utalites/intuitons like the promise/call of say Democracy or Peace, which drive us but which we cannot fully achieve. His work after-Foucault on a hermeneutics of not-knowing is not reminds me of some of Paul Rabinow’s perhaps more obviously constructive work: http://openwetware.org/images/7/7a/SB1.0_Rabinow.pdf

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9. 

   Jon Cogburn

   March 11, 2014

   Thanks for this and the citations.
   I realize this might sound crazy, but could it be an idea he would both reject and accept?
   A religion that does not include real hope for genuine reconciliation is just not one that I (or Hegel) or the vast majority of religious people would recognize as our own religion. But Caputo could say that it’s something we must hope for, yet have to disbelieve (because believing imbues you with all the cruelties of Dr. Pangloss). I think Derrida on the necessary impossible might be helpful in this context?

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10. 

    dmf

    March 11, 2014

    ha, yeah many of the church folks (especially on the liberal/process end of the spectrum) who are attracted to aspects (especially the contingency/constructivist strands) of Caputo’s work find out the hard way that he is actively working against many of their own central faith-commitments, I have suggested to Jack that his work is unfortunately likely to fade away much as John Dewey’s not so Common-Faith writings did.
    By my reading JC finds himself committed to and actively working for Idea(l)s that he does not believe can be fully achieved but which he cannot give up on (which if you will possess/haunt him) and I think we can all relate to finding ourselves attached to such ‘quasi-transcendental’ expectations whether we are religious or not.
    He also points to ways in which our working as-if we could achieve such ends makes differences that make a difference (in a pragmatist/ameliorative way)tho of course our all-too-human reaches are limited, always a bit narcissistic/twisted, and have consequences (and contexts) that are beyond our grasp/vision/control, so as Kierkegaard might remind us we are always already on shaky/risky ethical grounds.
    I’ve never gotten an answer from the folks close to Derrida about whether or not he was doing something sort of phenomenological like in his work tracing out Hospitality and the rest, or if this was more of a rhetorical move (he was certainly often writing in ways which were shaped with reader-responses in mind) to employ the authority of such terms to his own ends, I imagine something more like phenomenology (or otherwise academically philosophical) than rhetoric tho I prefer to read/use him along strategic/rhetorical lines, a bit of philosophical judo if you will.

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11. 

    Charles R

    March 11, 2014

    JH, you asked a question in the good sense of provocation: “The reader benefited, in this instance, by Gutting’s request for elaboration on that claim, but often we are not given that chance. So is there another virtue, beyond sounding slightly poetic, to writing like this?”
    dmf has one answer I felt fit, but made it in a different context: “some of the ways in which our words, like contain, have multiple meanings/resonances could certainly be frustrating if you are devoted trying to nail-down some singular/definitive meaning but surely reflects some of how our everyday language ‘games’ actually function, no?”
    On the one hand, it might not seem like such a bad thing to nail down definitive meaning. Clarity is the opposite of obscurity, so far as most conventions go, and to deliberately mislead is the opposite of deliberately leading, which is something a conversation is supposed to do when one is speaker and the other audience. But, on the other hand, if one also believes that the power dynamic of that relationship isn’t inherently just—is it right for a demagogue to deliberately lead an audience astray through clear facts, for example?—then denying that words have multiple meanings by denying the possible ways we could be understood differently from how we believe we’re intending our words is not part of being just. If we also think humility in allowing people the freedom to understand things mistakenly—from their own perspectives, it’s what fits the senses they think are there—then leading someone into a view is not something one should just do “for the sake of clear communication” or “for the sake of understanding.” If the initial premise we have is that communication is unstable, and thus is the reason why we have to “make ourselves clear,” then humility with respect to what we know about justice-for-all compels us to try and not disturb the possibilities too much, only just enough.
    It does end up in these situations where it’s hard to “make sense” out of what someone is saying; they could be saying different things, often are. The temptation I notice is often there: think our difficulty in appreciating the different things being shared means immediately the failure of the sharer to take us into consideration. It’s their fault for not dominating what we think or come to believe; we want to be lead to their ideas. We don’t want to have to work at it, when really, if we’re taking language to be an opening to the possibility of sharing thinking with another person, it should be something like falling in love: irresistable, direct, unifying, obsessive, with no uncertainty about what these gestures mean. A well-communicated message, so the story goes, leaves us without doubt about what’s intended, doesn’t really give us much room to have second thoughts about it’s intentions. All we are left with is deciding whether or not we agree to the overture.
    But sometimes uncertainty and slippage is desirable. Practicing a little less leading and dominating of the way others think about words ends up with a lot more confusion when we’re encouraging a society where we don’t value wonder. If, a different story might go, we value wonder, patiently asking “What does that mean?” is like being ready for love at any moment. If we encourage solicitation, we also encourage consent. If we encourage consent, we also encourage dissents, differences in how we decided the sense. In other words, it’s very counterproductive for what counts as “good communication” or “right communication,” being open to things made into sense by someone with whom we disagree. We don’t encourage consent in order to create a world where everyone always says Yes to the exchange (that’s ideological tyranny); we encourage consent to help those voices who dissent have room and space for others to listen to them saying Yes to something else entirely, some other way they have for deciding what’s Yes for them.
    It’s not the only way to practice justice through words and with words, but then the point isn’t that there is a right way for all. It’s one way some try to be humble, but, as with any display, the more loudly the humbling goes, the less it seems intended.

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