Radical Orthodoxy beats the crap out of Duns Scotus
RO is not as concerned about whether or not Kant and Descartes were modernists as it is about how a Kant or Descartes could show up on the scene at all. In this way RO follows Nietzsche and Foucault in putting forth a geneology of nihilism (mainly in the work of Conor Cunningham, University of Nottingham with daddy Milbank) which looks to find out where this idea of secualr reason (the core of modernity for RO) could be found. Who is the boy with the stolen chocolate all over his face (wierd movie coming out with Johnny Depp)? None other than Duns Scotus.
RO, following the tradition of Heidegger and other continientals, asserts that it is the question of Being (and being) which threw us into the nihilism we find ourselves (note: RO does not call this postmodernity, but rather hyper-modernity because it ultimately stems from modern secualr reason transforming into nihilism. RO claims it is doing truly postmodern work because it is divorcing itself from secular reason. Interesting claims). There are two main speakers involved: Duns Scotus and St. Aquinas.
RO claims (and seems to substantiate) that modernism and hyper-modernism stems from Scotus and his seperation of being from God.
"In contrast [to RO], Scotus asserts that "to be" is predicated univocally;
that is, both the Creator and the creature exist in the same way or in the same
sense. Being, now, becomes a category that is unhooked from participation
in God and is a more neutral or abstract qualier that is applied to God and
creatures the same way" (Smith, 97).
Or again:
"Duns Scotus, when considering the universal science of metaphysics,
elevated being (ens) to a higher station over God, so that being could be
distributed to both God and His creatures" (Ibid, Philip Bond).
So Scotus makes being some independent category with which we can discuss Creator and creation. The world is all of a sudden totally automomous, because we are no longer dependent on God for our being and existence. What is RO's response to this? A robust "theological metaphysics" will do nicely:
"For Aquinas, metaphysics - as an account of being - cannot be divorced
from theological considerations" (Smith, 97).
"[Being] is "read" in entirely theological terms as the site of the
internal fracture of creatures between their own nothingness and their alien
actuality which is recieved from God..."Being" - wholesale to a first principle,
God, which is the subject of another, higher science, namely God's own" (Word
Made Strange, Milbank, 44).
So RO argues that if we follow Scotus, metaphysics naturally leads to nihilism (hyper-modernity) because without God (who is Being and gifts us with being) we are literally nothing. So RO finds that nihilism is the only other option to the Christian story, since if you remove God's Being from a discussion of creation, you have nothing left to speak of. RO purposes to get back the Thomist (and Augustinian) notion of a "theological metaphysics." Is this justified? I think it is an incredible insight, one that resonants with St. Paul ("in him we live and move and have our being", Acts 17). RO continues to push the question of where do we get off excluding the Triune God from every aspect of creation? How could we possibly find meaning if we sunder the ground of meaning Himself?
In this project to reclaim the early Church notion of "theological metaphysics" as opposed to late medieval Scotist "univocity of being" I think RO provides a very radical critique of hyper-modernism. Not only does their geneology of nihilism explain well how we got into this metaphysical mess, but they provide an excellent way to get out of it: "Seek ye the Lord." Radical indeed, but thoroughly orthodox. Bravo.
posted by Hans-Georg Gadamer @ 8:32 pm
5 comments
5 Comments:
Wow. That's killer. J. Morg, I think this addresses some of your comment yesterday: the "problems" brought up in modernist thinking are valid only in the context of a divided (secular/holy) universe, so RO sidesteps them by asserting that they were the results of false presuppositions. Am I right? Am I understanding this? RO says that the problematic conclusions of modernism are accurate within the system and evidence of faulty presuppositions rather than a faulty existence. Thinking it was our reality that was in error lead to nihilism.
It's like we worked a physics problem and got the bizarre but oft present answers of 0, -1 or negative infinity, which more often signal an error in the problem solving than a really strange universe. Interestingly enough, it was refusing to accept the idea that an oven could contain an infinite amount of energy which eventually lead to the discovery of quantum mechanics. In this way, maybe RO is the quantum mechanics of philosophy, and does away with nihilistic modernism similar to the way quantum disposes (fulfills?) classical physics.
Sorry to get all nerdy on you. :)
redhurt: I think you got it exactly right. This genealogy that Hans has described puts Duns Scotus as the first thinker to systematically “set the terms,” that is, he fathered the categories by which Modernism would operate. To continue the trajectory toward Modernism, the questions that we (that is, Moderns) have been trying to answer and that are rooted in these categories were first systematically proposed by Bacon (who set the goals, terms, and methods of empirical investigation of the world outside of the self) and Descartes (who set the goals, terms and methods of empirical investigation of the world inside of the self). As the reasoning goes, if the foundational assumptions and categories (Duns Scotus’ contribution) are invalid, then the questions (Bacon’s and Descartes’ contribution) that rely on them are also. Your nerdy example I think illustrates the sort of shift that RO proposes very well.
The Redness - brilliant summary and analysis, especially the physics example (I think you might be on to something - RO as quantum revolution, although RO is going to ask for a reworked quantum theory based on faith commitments lost because of Scotus et al. Are you ready to get on that with me?). If you are interested in a good intro to RO, I have been going through Kevin Smith's "Introducing Radical Orthodoxy". He does a great job of orienting one to the movement, because RO is sometimes ridiculously dense and difficult to read (Milbank especially, J. Morgan can back me up on this).
I think I'm following the argument, and I think I like it. Instead of confronting the world with our 12 Kantian categories (or our 10 Aristotelian ones), which we mistakenly inherited from the Enlightenment, we confront the world from a revelatory perspective.
The trick, then, is to distinguish this revelation-informed perspective from the James Sire revelation-informed perspective in a meaningful way. Since most evangelicals eschew metaphysics for taking-the-Bible-literally, that shouldn't be a problem.
yeah; I like how this is sounding also. I need to get some books.
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