The Soul of Reciprocity Part One: Reciprocity Refused

In this first of a two-part essay, Milbank contends that Intersubjectivity poses itself both as a problem and as a solution only within the regime of representation that has prevailed since Descartes – although it was foreshadowed by post-Scottish scholasticism. The first part, then, is given over to a deconstruction of modern notions of the self in anticipation of the second part, which is a constructive proposal for a recovery of the soul. In the present essay, then, Milbank's intention is to show that we should abandon the attempt to modify the regime of subjectivity with postmodern trans-humanism or else phenomenological intersubjectivity, or else again the neo-Kantian ethics of finitude, and instead attempt to recover the regime of the soul.