Cover of Forum Philosophicum
Already a subscriber? - Login here
Not yet a subscriber? - Subscribe here

Browse by:



Displaying: 1-20 of 21 documents


articles
1. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 23 > Issue: 2
Eric Gans René Girard and the Deferral of Violence
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Rene Girard’s anthropology goes beyond Durkheim and Freud in seeking knowledge in literary, mythical, and religious texts. Girard’s primary intuition is that human culture originated in response to the danger of violent mimetic crises among increasingly intelligent hominins, whose imitation of each other’s desires led to conflict. These crises were resolved by the mechanism of emissary murder: the proto-human community came to focus its aggression on a single scapegoat whose unanimous lynching, by “miraculously” bringing peace, led to its ritual repetition in sacrifice. Because this theory fails to found the signs of human language and worship on the deferral of spontaneous action, Girard can only attribute the internal peace necessary to the human community to the exhaustion of violent aggression. Instead, generative anthropology proposes that, beginning from the premise that the need to control internecine violence was the source of the human, an appropriative gesture toward an object of common desire, deferred out of fear of violence, becomes understood as a sign of the object’s sacred/interdicted status, after which it can be peacefully divided among the group. Following this originary event, the sacred/signifying universe of language and religion gradually comes to include the totality of human activity.
2. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 23 > Issue: 2
Anthony W. Bartlett Theology and Catastrophe: A (Girardian) Semiotics of Re-Humanization
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Girardian anthropology tells us that the birth of human meaning and its signs are the result of a primitive catastrophe. But if these origins are exposed by the biblical record it is because another, transformative semiosis has opened in human existence. Girard’s seminal remarks on the Greek logos and the logos of John, endorsing Heidegger’s divorce of the two, demonstrate this claim and its source in the nonviolence of the gospel logos. In effect, there is a second catastrophe, one embedded in the bible and reaching its full exposition in the cross, generating a new semiosis in humanity. The transformation may be measured by viewing the original semiosis in a Kantian frame, as a transcendental a priori structured by violence. The second catastrophe generates an equivalent new a priori of nonviolence. The work of Charles Peirce illustrates both the way in which interpretants (of signs) open us progressively to new meanings, and how this process may ultimately be conditioned by love. The catastrophe of the gospel, therefore, works both on the dramatic individual level, with Paul of the New Testament as the great example, but also in slow‑motion over semiotic history, changing the meaning of existence from violence to nonviolence.
3. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 23 > Issue: 2
Bernard Perret René Girard and the Epistemology of Revelation
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Rene Girard never worried about clarifying the epistemological framework of his theories. Yet it is a necessary task, if only to answer the questions of method inevitably posed by the mixture of scientificality and religious conviction that characterizes his approach. Girard’s use of the word “revelation” is paradigmatic from this regard. A philosophy of the event can provide an epistemological framework to unify the theological and anthropological meanings of this notion. On a phenomenological level, Divine Revelation is analogous to certain decisively meaningful happenings in our existence, or in history. The irruption of a radically new sense into a reality that does not contain it in any way is not an exclusive prerogative of religious experience. The schema of the meaningful event makes it possible to disclose the logic of the great Girardian narrative, whose key stages are revelations, in the sense of events bringing a new kind of meaning. The scenario of the emergence of culture described by Girard is event‑driven, and the same logical schema underlies the Girardian interpretation of the Passion as an unveiling of human violence. In the same way Girard analyses conversion, in both a religious and a “novelistic” sense, as a spiritual event. Finally, his apocalyptic conception of history can be interpreted using this epistemological framework.
4. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 23 > Issue: 2
John Ranieri How Girard Helped Me Understand the Distinction between Nature and Grace
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Questions concerning the relationship between nature and grace, reason and faith are central to Christian anthropology. With philosopher/theologian Bernard Lonergan’s essay “Natural Knowledge of God” as a starting point, these questions will be considered in conversation with the work of Rene Girard and theologian James Alison. Lonergan agrees with Karl Rahner that, with regard to these questions, dogmatic theology needs to be transposed into a theological anthropology. Given that Girard is an anthropologist of religion and culture who is open to theology, his work can be useful in effecting such a transposition. For example, Girard’s thought can help us understand what Lonergan means when he writes: “I do not think that in this life people arrive at natural knowledge of God without God’s grace, but what I do not doubt is that the knowledge they so attain is natural.” Implicit in this statement is an awareness that “natural reason” needs to be freed of its biases before it can operate freely and “naturally.” Girard’s anthropological approach to the Bible helps to explain why this is the case.
5. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 23 > Issue: 2
Stefano Tomelleri The Scapegoat, Evangelical Revelation and Resentment
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
The mimetic desire that underlies resentment can enter into different and complex strategies of interaction. In his writings, Girard has indicated at least three such strategies: those of the solipsist, the non‑conformist and the minimalist. His critical insight reveals indifference, transgression and minimalism to be strategies of resentment, where all of these are symptoms of an anthropological condition characterizing contemporary Western society today. At the same time, he sees evangelical revelation as the main source of our modern awareness of the mimetic nature of human beings: an awareness that has produced ongoing transformations in modernity linked to resentment. Moreover, he observes that it is the Judeo‑Christian tradition itself that has disclosed the mimetic nature of human desire and the logic of resentment. Viewed from this perspective, modern humanity now has an extraordinary opportunity to renounce the scapegoating mechanism so as to resolve its resentments, as evangelical revelation makes reconciliation and social reconstruction possible.
6. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 23 > Issue: 2
Charles Mabee On Mimesis, Folkways, and the Impossibility of Christianity
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Neither rationally constructed nor intentionally imposed, humans live much of their lives guided by unspoken folkway traditions passed on from generation to generation. As the American sociologist William Graham Sumner reminded us over a century ago, those norms that prescribe “acceptable” social behavior bubble up from everyday life experience, rather than imposed from the top by cultural authorities. Sumner’s insights throw further light on the mimetic theory developed by Rene Girard and offer a more nuanced understanding of how mimesis actually works. The benefit of the extraordinary grip that folkway traditions hold on us is their utilitarian value and resultant cost‑effectiveness in terms of expenditure of mental energy. We follow folkway traditions to save time and mental energy. It is the thesis of this paper that Jesus recognized this power of customary thinking as a determinant of human behavior, and it was his strategy to attack specifically those folkway traditions that were exclusionary in nature in “shocking” ways that agitated many who followed generally accepted behavioral norms. As a result, it is wrong to take Jesus for a moral law‑giver, even with such benign terms as a new “law of love,” or the like. In fact, he did not propose a new formal legal tradition, but challenged individuals to reflect consciously on their unthinking behavior and assume responsible ownership of it. To follow Jesus, therefore, does not so much imply a deeper understanding of love, but a deeper understanding of the unconscious decision‑making processes that unwittingly guide our everyday lives.
7. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 23 > Issue: 2
Emanuele Antonelli Mimesis and Attention: On Christian Sophrosyne
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
One might well wonder about the source of Girard’s knowledge. Where is it thought to have come from in the first place? From what vantage point are we supposed to be surveying the events he claims are originary? And what, then, is the condition for the very possibility of his Christian wisdom? In this paper, I argue that we can put forward a tentative solution by looking at one particular aspect of all the texts that Girard has interpreted: they are all written texts. Analyzing this in detail with the assistance of the proposals of Bernard Stiegler, I will claim that it is writing itself that has afforded us the possibility of paying attention. Moreover, in the second section, I shall also put forward an analysis of the gnoseological condition of the possibility of Christian wisdom. To do so, I expand on Stiegler’s reading of Kant’s notion of schema focusing on its relation with the hermeneutical notion of figura, as presented by Erich Auerbach. Commenting on the common rhetorical setting of both the Critique of Pure Reason and the Bible, I then show that these two written texts address a very similar problem—a critique of the way people judge—and also put forward, surprisingly, much the same solution: to properly judge, it would be better to take into account past examples of judgments and consider that, no matter whether we critique them or not, they will schematize our own experiences and influence our intentionality.
8. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 23 > Issue: 2
Maria Korusiewicz Circles of Failure, Strategies of Hope: A Girardian Perspective on the Tragic Vision
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
This paper asks whether there are grounds for viewing Girard’s work as a tragic vision, and explores the criteria and contexts that might figure in such an investigation. Mimetic anthropology is built on references to the tragic perspective, but its tragic aspect is complex and diaphanous in respect of its structuring and dynamics. Its framework is difficult to explore without engaging with contemporary Christian theological thought—something that significantly affects its implications. As for the latter, the transformative potential of Girard’s tragic anthropology, directly engendered by its critical approach to its own theses, tends to shatter the stability of its assumptions. Therefore, from the earliest interpretations of ancient tragic drama, through the pitfalls of the notion of sacrifice and the dialogue with the philosophy of existence and dramatic theology, all the way to the so‑called apocalyptic phase in Girard’s thought, we can observe shifting relationships between the broadening areas of human failure on the one hand, and the elusive horizon of hope on the other. Within this vision, the last strategy of hope seems to lie in the decision of the individual as a witness to a man‑made apocalypse—and/or the apocalypse itself.
9. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 23 > Issue: 2
Thomas Ryba The Fall of Satan, Rational Psychology, and the Division of Consciousness: A Girardian Thought Experiment
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
This paper proposes a revision of Girard’s interpretation of Satan, along traditional theological lines. Appreciating the essential correctness of the Girardian characterization of mimēsis, it is an argument, contra Girard, that (1) Satan cannot be reduced to a mimetic process but is a hypostatic spiritual reality and, following from this, that (2) the origins of mimetic rivalry go back before the emergence of humankind and provide a model for human rivalry. Employing concepts drawn from Husserlian phenomenological psychology, Thomist theology, and psychoanalysis, it hypothesizes Satan’s psychological state, prior to his fall, as metastable anxiety and trauma and his state, afterwards, as a narcissistic, malicious, self-induced pathology in order to explain Satan’s impossible rivalry with God, a rivalry that precedes hominization and has always endangered human existence.
book reviews
10. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 23 > Issue: 2
Józef Bremer Besong Brian, and Fuqua Jonathan, eds. Faith and Reason: Philosophers Explain their Turn to Catholicism
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
11. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 23 > Issue: 2
Andrzej Wierciński Małgorzata Hołda. Paul Ricoeur’s Concept of Subjectivity and the Postmodern Claim of the Death of the Subject
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
12. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 23 > Issue: 2
Jakub Pruś Piotr Warzoszczak. Fikcjonalizm modalny [Modal Fictionalism]
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
13. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 23 > Issue: 2
Reviewers of Articles Submitted in 2018
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
14. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 23 > Issue: 2
Note about Forum Philosophicum
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
articles
15. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 23 > Issue: 1
Alberto Leopoldo Batista Neto Religious Presuppositions of Logic and Rationality: An Enquiry
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
There is a crisis in philosophical rationality today—in which modern logicisimplicated—thatcanbetracedtotheabandonmentofacommonbackground of principles. The situation has no parallel within the pre-modern tradition, which not only admits of such principles (as an unproblematic presumption), but also refers them back to a set of assumptions grounded in a clearly religious frame of mind. Modern conceptions of rationality claim complete independence from religious sources, as from tradition more generally, and typically end up disposing of first principles altogether. The result is a fragmentation of reason, which can be seen to be dramatically exemplified in the realm of modern logic, populated by countless different systems and incompatible conceptions of what it is to be a logic. Many of the conceptual choices that became implicit in the philosophical discussions eventually leading to the rejection of the religious picture, and ultimately to the aforementioned crisis, were themselves originally linked to religious premises, so that all along, a kind of religious subconscious has subsisted throughout those disputations; however, the lack of any proper recognition of this background obstructs the possibility of making a reasonable assessment of the nature and causes of the crisis. Alasdair MacIntyre, whose thought inspires the argument developed here, reached similar conclusions regarding practical (or moral) rationality and the effects of abandoning the teleological framework of Aristotelian (and Thomistic) philosophy. MacIntyre’s arguments can be adapted, as he suggests, to deal with reason more generally, and his insistence upon the tradition-laden character of rational enquiry can help point toward the grounding of human reason in religion.
16. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 23 > Issue: 1
Francis Jonbäck Why Skeptical Theists are Not Involved in a Scenario of Olly-Style Deception: A New Response to the Global Skepticism Objection
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
According to Michael Bergmann, Skeptical Theism consists of two components: firstly, the belief that there is an all-powerful, all-knowing and perfectly good immaterial person who created the world, and secondly, the skeptical claim that we have no reason to believe that the possible goods and evils we know of are representative of the goods and evils that exist. According to the Global Skepticism Objection, Skeptical Theism entails that we should not be surprised if we are radically deceived by God: there just might be a greater good that can figure in a reason God has for deceiving us about reality. In support of this objection, Stephen Law presents an amusing analogy involving Olly and his reality-projector. In this paper, I outline the Global Skepticism Objection and Law’s case in support of it. I then respond by arguing that the scope of Skeptical Theism should be restricted, and seek to justify this through a narrower construal of Theism and an appeal to common sense.
17. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 23 > Issue: 1
Anthony Chuwkuebuka Ohaekwusi Bauman on Moral Blindness: Analyzing the Liquidity in Standards of Moral Valuation
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
This article analyzes Zygmunt Bauman’s notion of moral blindness against the backdrop of his designation of modern culture as a dynamic process of liquefaction constantly dissolving every paradigm and subject to the flexible and indeterminate power of individual choice. Bauman argued that the social conditions of this radically individualistic liquid modernity result in a kind of moral insensitivity that he calls adiaphorization. Adiaphorization for him places certain human acts outside the “universe of moral obligations.” It defies the entire orthodox theory of the social origins of morality as it reveals that some dehumanizing monstrous atrocities like the holocaust and genocides are not exclusively reserved for monsters, but can be attributable to “frighteningly normal” moral agents. The present text therefore attempts to discuss the various moral implications of Bauman’s analysis of moral blindness, with a view to highlighting its weaknesses. It moves on to explore Bauman’s recourse to Emmanuel Levinas’ ethics of the “face of the Other” as a viable ethical remedy that trumps the uncanny effects of this whole adiaphorization effect. Finally, the paper further advances his call for a rediscovery of the sense of belonging, by appealing to some major insights originating from African traditions of ethical communalism in order to propose a possible route towards the avoidance and amelioration of this moral challenge.
18. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 23 > Issue: 1
Mariusz Tabaczek A Trace of Similarity within Even Greater Dissimilarity: Thomistic Foundations of Erich Przywara’s Teaching on Analogy
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
This article readdresses the Przywara-Barth controversy concerning analogia entis. The main point of our analysis is the question of whether the concept of analogy presented by Erich Przywara was in line with the classical Aristotelian-Thomistic definition and use of analogy in theistic predication. First, we ask about Przywara’s strong conviction that analogy is primarily a metaphysical and not merely a grammatical doctrine. Secondly, after presenting the complexity of Aquinas’ notion of analogy, as well as the variety of opinions on this subject among his commentators, we analyze (1) the objectives of Przywara’s view of analogia entis, (2) his grounding it in the terminology taken from the typology offered by Cajetan and juxtaposing analogia proportionalitatis and analogia atributionis, and (3) his introduction of the concept of “a new ‘attributive analogy’” proceeding from above to below and sustaining the tension within analogia entis. We show that Przywara remained a faithful student and interpreter of Thomas, where this makes Barth’s accusation that the Catholic doctrine of analogia entis puts God and creatures on a common plane of being unjustified.
book reviews
19. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 23 > Issue: 1
Jakub Pruś Trzy wersje epistemicznej teorii prawdy: Dummett, Putnam, Wright
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
20. Forum Philosophicum: Volume > 23 > Issue: 1
Andrzej Wierciński Genealogia i emancypacja. Studia nad współczesną filozofią polityki
view |  rights & permissions | cited by