Terry Eagleton on having faith and an i-pod

Missa inte Terry Eagleton´s föreläsning Jesus and Tragedy där han bland annat avhandlar radikaliteten i kristen tro, samt pekar på det besynnerliga i att beteckna kristna som "troende".

The tortured, mutilated body of a political criminal who was done to death because he spoke out for love and justice, that this is what it all comes down to, this is it and no mistake. This is the single stark signifier of human history; all the rest is delusion, idolatry, false idealism, cheap sentimentalism. Those who can see this are commonly known as “having faith,” a terrible way of talking. It sounds like ‘having an i-pod.’

Eagleton om otyget att kapa andras tro

Via @sebasti_an s blogg hittade jag Terry Eagletons recension av Alain de Bottons bok “Religion for Atheists”. Eagleton bjuder som vanligt på guldkorn:

"Religious faith is reduced to a set of banal moral tags. We are invited to contemplate St Joseph in order to learn "how to face the trials of the workplace with a modest and uncomplaining temper". Not even the Walmart management have thought of that one."

"What the book does, in short, is hijack other people's beliefs, empty them of content and redeploy them in the name of moral order, social consensus and aesthetic pleasure. It is an astonishingly impudent enterprise. It is also strikingly unoriginal. Liberal-capitalist societies, being by their nature divided, contentious places, are forever in search of a judicious dose of communitarianism to pin themselves together, and a secularised religion has long been one bogus solution on offer. The late Christopher Hitchens, who some people think is now discovering that his broadside God Is Not Great was slightly off the mark, would have scorned any such project. He did not consider that religion was a convenient fiction. He thought it was disgusting. Now there's something believers can get their teeth into …"

Läs recensionen i sin helhet!

A folly to the French

"There is a carnivalesque quality about a faith for which the whole cosmos is at stake in the gift of a cup of water.  The Son of Man sweeps majestically down on the clouds of glory only to inquire prosaically whether you have visted the sick and fed the hungry.  Conventional Messiahs tend to make their entrance into the national capial in bullet-proof limousines with police outriders, not on a donkey.  Jesus is presented as a sick joke of a Saviour.  Yet the Christian gospel sees in such humdrum activity as clothing the naked the foretaste of a transfiguration of the earth, one which is folly to the French.  The exceptional and the everyday are not divided domains, as they are for the disciples of Lacan."

Terry Eagleton, The Trouble With Strangers: A Study of Ethics, 292-3.  via Sublunary sublime

Om svårigheterna med att vara radikal

"It is this lack of stable identities which for some cultural theory today is the last word in radicalism. Instability of identity is ´subversive´ - a claim which it would be interesting to test out among the socially dumped and disregarded.

In this social order, then, you can no longer have bohemian rebels or revolutionary avant-gardes because they no longer have anything to blow up. Their top-hatted, frock-coated, easily outraged enemy has evaporated. Instead, the non-normative has become norm. Nowadays, it is not just anarchists for whom anything goes, but starlets, newspaper editors, stockbrokers and corporation executives. The norm now is money; but since money has absolutely no principles or identity of its own, it is no kind of norm at all. It is utterly promiscuous, and will happily tag along with the highest bidder."

Terry Eagleton. After Theory. London: Penguin books, 2003. s. 16-17

Ovanstående stycke har viss förklaringspotential, både för varför socialdemokraterna gjorde ett katastrofval, och till varför teologi på sikt kommer ersätta kritisk teori som resurs för att stå emot kapitalismen.

Eagleton om Newman

London Review of Books har en text av Terry Eagleton där följande läsvärda stycke återfinns:

"Militant atheists today regard religious faith as a question of subscribing to certain propositions about the world. Newman countered this theological ignorance, pervasive in his own time too, with the Romantic claim (and this from one of the towering intellects of the Victorian age) that ‘man is not a reasoning animal; he is a seeing, feeling, contemplating, acting animal … It is the concrete being that reasons.’ It is the imagination, he holds, which is primary in matters of faith. Yet this passionate subjectivity was never whimsical subjectivism. How could it be, in a Catholic thinker for whom faith and truth were communal and institutional rather than a matter of private intuition? Newman, like Kierkegaard, recognised that religious faith is a kind of love, and like love engages intellect, emotion, experience and imagination together. There is a ‘notional’ kind of knowledge, Newman argues in An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, by which he means a knowledge of abstract ideas, and there is ‘real’ assent, which involves one’s whole personality."

via Thinking Blue Guitars

Med Lesslie Newbigins ord: All understanding of reality involves a commitment, a venture of faith ...

Om naturen som det yttersta hotet mot frihet

Foto: Robert Hammarstrand

På tal om föreställningen om människans oinskränkta herravälde över naturen, så tycks den återfinnas både inom marxismen och inom kapitalismen. I alla fall enligt nedanstående exempel:

Michael Allen Gillespie beskriver i sin bok The Theological Origins of Modernity, hur vänsterhegelianerna i sin jakt på total frihet även försökte bekämpa den begränsande naturen:

"In place of the existing order they imagined a world in which everyone would be able to do whatever they wished, to ´hunt in the morning, fish in the afternon, and be a critical critic in the evening.´However, such universal freedom and prosperity could only be achieved if nature were completely mastered. To achieve this goal, they believed it would thus be necesary to be free human productivity forces by means of a revolutionary overthrow of the existing social and political order. In this way the artificial constraints on the productive power of technology would be removed, a superabundance created, and all want eliminated."
Michael Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity. (The University of Chicago Press: 2008). s.283

Terry Eagleton hävdar i After Theory att kapitalismen, trots sitt vurmande för materialismen, är hemligt allergisk mot det materiella, inklusive naturen:

"It is a culture shot through with fantasy, idealist to its core, powered by a disembodied will which dreams of pounding Nature to pieces. It makes an idol out of matter, but cannot stomach the resistance it offers to its grandiose schemes. It is to be sure, no crime to tattoo your biceps. The West has long believed in molding Nature to its own desires; it is just that it used to be known as the pioneer spirit and is nowdays known as postmodernism. Taming the Mississippi and piercing your navel are just earlier and later versions of the same ideology. Having moulded the landscape to our own image and landscape, we have now begun to recraft ourselves. Civil engineering has been joined by cosmetic surgery. But there can be more or less cridible reasons for piercing your navel. The credible reason is that it is fun; the discreditable reason is that it may involve the belief that your body, like your bank account, is yours to do what you like with."
Terry Eagleton, After Theory (Penguin books, 2004) s. 165

Marxismen och kapitalismen tycks alltså förenad av ett sorts gemensamt förakt för naturen och de begränsingar som den ställer människan inför. Ny tanke för mig ...

One, but not the same

"The price the West now demands of weaker, poorer cultures which wish simply to survive is that they erase their differences. To flourish , you need by and large to stop being who you are."
(...)
Spurious kinds of universality insists that we are all the same. But from whose standpoint? (...) Genuine kinds of universality, however, understand that difference belongs to our common nature. It is not the opposite of it. (...) To encounter another human body is thus to encounter, indissocialbly, both sameness and difference."

Terry Eagleton, After Theory (Penguin books, 2004) s.160 f

Om blinda fläckar i debatten om terrorism och demokrati

Häromdagen argumenterade DN-skribenten Dan Jönsson för att yx-attacken mot karikatyrtecknaren Kurt Westergaard på nyårsdagen inte skall ses som ett utryck för ett angrepp på "demokratin och det öppna samhället". Istället menar Jönsson att attacken skall ses som "ett attentat mot en man som utmanat miljontals troende muslimer med en dum teckning av deras profet som terrorist", och forstätter "... under kriget mot terrorn har det rituella politikermantrat om ”angrepp på demokratin och det öppna samhället” fått det att se ut som om terrorn slår blint."

Idag replikerar Dilsa Demirbag-Sten med en artikel i Expressen. Demirbag menar att Jönssons artikel är "ett skolexempel på den postmoderna relativisering som i dag dominerar det offentliga samtalet". För, menar hon, "om de somaliska islamisternas mordförsök på Westergård och deras dödshot mot Lars Vilks inte är ett angrepp på yttrandefriheten - vad är de då?"

Jönsons argumentation riskerar genom sitt isolerande fokus att missa den större bilden. Detta på ett sätt som påminner om hur juryn som friade poliserna som misshandlade Rodney King i Los Angelses 1992 argumenterade, trots att hela misshandeln filmades.

Stanley Fish (The Trouble With Principle, p. 309) menar att polisernas advokater gjorde två saker: 1. De saktade ner filmen så att varje bildruta isolerades och visades en och en. (2) Sedan frågade de juryn, en bildruta i taget: Var det här slaget i sig att beteckna som överdrivet våld? Avsåg det här slaget att lemlästa eller döda? Varje ögonblick, varje ruta, och varje slag isolerades från sitt övergripande sammanhang och den historia som gav den mening. Juryn kunde därför inte säga vem av poliserna som var ansvarig för misshandeln av Rodney King, och friade dem.

Demirbag ligger å sin sida nära det så ofta upprepade officiella amerikanska svaret på varför 9/11 inträffade, det vill säga: Because they hate our freedoms. Men, med Terry Eagletons ord:

"There are those in the West who imagine that Islamic fundamentalists maim or murder as they do because they are envious of Western freedoms. This was always an absurd argument, since fundamentalists envy such freedoms as much as they long to hang out in Amsterdam cafés soming dope and reading Simone de Beavoir."
- Terry Eagleton, Holy Terror (Oxford University Press, 2005) s. 73

Jag misstänker att distinktionen mellan primärt och sekundärt skulle öka förståelsen mellan Jönsson och Demirbags perspektiv. Jag tror inte att mannen som attackerade Westergaard hade som primärt syfte att undergräva den västerländska demokratin, utan snarare att döda någon som hädat Muhammed. Men, oavsett om om det fanns ett medvetet sekundärt syfte att slå mot yttrandefriheten i det västerländska samhället eller ej, så är det svårt att inte se att effekterna av attacken har denna effekt.

Således, där Jönsson tenderar att blunda för konsekvenserna av attacken, tenderar Demirbag att blunda för orsakerna till densamma ...

Lyssningstips i höstmörkret

Är du trött på Dawkins och Hitchens stollerier? Skulle du njuta av att höra dem få intellektuell smisk?

Look no further ... Terry Eagleton’s 2008 Terry Lectures at Yale University finns att tillgå!
Gratis på iTunes!

Söndagsgodis

• Den som surfar runt på jakt efter intressanta mp3-föreläsningar att fylla podden med kommer sannolikt att uppskatta detta lilla bibliotek.

• The Immanent Frame gör en grymt intressant intervju med Terry Eagleton:
  

  "The scandal of the New Testament—the fact that it backs what America calls the losers, that it thinks the dispossessed will inherit the kingdom of God before the respectable bourgeois—all of that has been replaced, particularly in the States, by an idolatrous version. I’m presently at a university campus where we proudly proclaim the slogan “God, Country, and Notre Dame.” I think they have to be told, and indeed I have told them, that God actually takes little interest in countries. Yahweh is presented in the Jewish Bible as stateless and nationless. He can’t be used as a totem or fetish in that way."

• Zizek på norska om ideologi och tolerans:
  

  "Problemet er at ideologi i dag framstår som ikke-ideologi. Det alt handler om, er å avdekke ideologien vi alle tilhører, og som vi alle er del av og underbygger med våre handlinger, uttalte han."

• ... och till sist ett Graham Ward-citat på samma tema:
  

  "The politics of Christian discipleship is about first unmasking the theolgical and metaphysical sources of current mythologies and revealing the distortions and perversions of their current secularized forms. Then we need to reread and rewrite the Christian tradition back into contemporary culture."
  - Ur Politics of Discipleship. s.165

Eagleton om vetenskap och teologi

"The difference between science and theology, as I understand it, is one over whether you see the world as gift or not; and you cannot resolve this just by inspecting the thing, any more than you can deduce from examining a porcelain vase that it is a wedding present."

Terry Eagleton - Reason, Faith and Revolution, s. 37

Eagleton om brödrostar, ateister och Tjechov

Den amerikanske litteraturvetaren Stanley Fish bloggar på New York Times, och kommenterar även han Terry Eagletons nya bok Reason, Faith, and Revolution:

When Christopher Hitchens declares that given the emergence of “the telescope and the microscope” religion “no longer offers an explanation of anything important,” Eagleton replies, “But Christianity was never meant to be an explanation of anything in the first place. It’s rather like saying that thanks to the electric toaster we can forget about Chekov .”

Clever!

Bristen borde förena

Den brittiska litteraturvetaren Terry Eagleton har kommit ut med en ny bok. Den nyfikne kan snyltläsa ett (lysande) kapitel här. Jag fastnade särskilt för denna passage:

Multiculturalism threatens the existing order not only because it can create a breeding ground for terrorists, but because the political state depends on a reasonably tight cultural consensus. British prime ministers believe in a common culture-but what they mean is that everyone should share their own beliefs so that they won’t end up bombing London Underground stations.

The truth, however, is that no cultural belief is ever extended to sizable groups of newcomers without being transformed in the process. This is what a simpleminded philosophy of “integration” fails to recognize.

There is no assumption in the White House, Downing Street, or the Elysée Palace that one’s own beliefs might be challenged or changed in the act of being extended to others. A common culture in this view incorporates outsiders into an already established, unquestionable framework of values, leaving them free to practice whichever of their quaint customs pose no threat. Such a policy appropriates newcomers in one sense, while ignoring them in another. It is at once too possessive and too hands-off. A common culture in a more radical sense of the term is not one in
which everyone believes the same thing, but one in which everyone has equal status in cooperatively determining a way of life in common.

Alltså, en genuin vilja till möte med den andre innebär alltid ömsesidig påverkan.

Min briljanta vän Lovisa har skrivit ett paper om kosmopolitanism och religion. Hon lyfter där Augustinus tanke om "hungerns väg" som ett mer fruktbart sätt att tänka kring det mångkulturella samhället. Istället för att fokusera på det vi har, i termer av egenskaper och likheter, borde en inklusiv gemenskap kanske snarare betona det vi alla någonstans erfar att vi saknar. Kärleken blir i linje med detta en hunger efter det som vi inte har.

A people is the association of a multitude of rational beings united by a common agreement on the objects of their love [and] it follows that to observe the character of a particular people we must examine the objects of its love.
St. Augustine - City of God, XIX

En grymt spännande tanke tycker jag!

Konsten kan inte frälsa

Den brittiske litteraturvetaren Terry Eagleton skriver i en färsk och läsvärd artikel bland annat om förhållandet mellan religion, kultur och politik:

“Like religion, culture is a matter of ultimate values, intuitive certainties, hallowed traditions, assured identities, shared beliefs, symbolic action, and a sense of transcendence. It is culture, not religion, that for many men and women today forms the heart of a heartless world. (…) Yet culture fails as an ersatz religion. Works of art cannot save us. They can simply render us more sensitive to what needs to be repaired. And celebrating culture as a way of life is too parochial a version of redemption.”

"If politics has failed to unite the wretched of the earth to transform their condition, we can be sure that culture will not accomplish the task in its stead. Culture, for one thing, is too much a matter of affirming what you are or have been, rather than what you might become."

Tolle lege!

Religiös analfabetism

Varför får religionen en så ytlig behandling i skolan, och i medierna, frågar Anders Piltz i en klok krönika i gårdagens GP, och fortsätter: "Den reporter i en tidning som visade lika liten förståelse för ekonomi, politik eller sport som nu visas mot religionens yttringar skulle inte bli gammal på sin post."

Terry Eagleton är inne på samma linje i en underhållande sågning av Richard Dawkins:

"Card-carrying rationalists like Dawkins, who is the nearest thing to a professional atheist we have had since Bertrand Russell, are in one sense the least well-equipped to understand what they castigate, since they don’t believe there is anything there to be understood, or at least anything worth understanding. This is why they invariably come up with vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince. The more they detest religion, the more ill-informed their criticisms of it tend to be"

Även Piltz kopplar samman den ytliga behandlingen av religion med bristande kunskap och hänvisar i sin krönika till det senaste numret av Signum som tar sig an den undermåliga kvaliteten på läroböcker i religion. Men endast teoretisk kunskap om den andre är inte tillräckligt för fredlig samexistens i ett pluralistiskt samhälle:

"När den nya religionskunskapen utvecklades under 1960-talet betonades ständigt behovet av objektivitet i undervisningen. Detta blir särskilt viktigt när elever med olika religiös bakgrund undervisas tillsammans. Men objektivitet bör inte förväxlas med en likgiltig själlöshet, en knappologi där torra fakta radas upp utan sammanhang och mening. Religionernas känslogrund och deras förmåga att entusiasmera människor måste också bli framställd, utan att undervisningens sakliga karaktär undermineras. Balansen mellan inifrån- och utifrånperspektiv är en känslig fråga som inte kan lösas genom att endera perspektivet offras på det andras bekostnad. Detta ställer synnerligen stora krav på lärarnas förmåga att förmedla en levande bild av åskådningar och livsmönster som inte är deras egna. Men är inte just den förmågan ett tecken på den personliga mognad som man med rätta kan förvänta sig att finna hos dem som har till uppgift att fostra unga människor in i ett tolerant och levande mångkulturellt samhälle?"

Att tolerera även det man inte förstår är sannolikt en av de största utmaningarna för ett liberalt samhälle som traditionellt satt sin tilltro till att kunskap och upplysning skulle lösa alla problem.