Benjamin’s Angel of History and the Work of Mourning in Ethical Remembrance: Understanding the Effect of W.G. Sebald’s Novels in the Classroom

The paper develops a conceptual framework for understanding the work of ethical remembrance in the classroom. Using David Hansen’s recent example of using Sebald’s novels in his classroom to do the work or remembrance, the paper argues that the effect of Sebald’s novels is best understood using Walter Benjamin’s figure of the angel of history. That figure indicates a view of history that goes beyond the progression of everyday time, to one called remembrance. The paper suggests that the work of mourning effects such remembrance, but simultaneously points to hope through the emergence of weak messianic power.     

“Shining in the Light of Your Glory”: Finding the Simple Reading of Scripture

This essay argues that without allowing for a legitimate extra‐biblical reasoning for the appropriateness of God's “simplicity,” Christians will be compelled biblically to affirm that God, as such, has a body — or at least Christians will have to accept this as a theologically possible reading of Scripture that cannot be ruled out. Barnes first cites ancient philosophical sources that argue that God has no parts but is utterly simple. In Barnes's quick sketch, the main role is given to Plotinus and especially to the summation found in Alcuinus's Didaskalon X.7 (Alcuinus is known also as Albinus). Barnes then examines readings of Israel's Scriptures that indicate the bodiliness of God (YHWH). Most importantly, divine bodiliness comports with the “plain sense” of Scripture. Here he draws upon such works as Benjamin Sommer's The Bodies of God, Stephen Moore's “Gigantic God,” and Tryggve Mettinger's The Dethronement of Sabaoth; and he also makes reference to the work of the Jewish kabbalist scholar Gershom Scholem. Barnes carefully investigates such passages as Exodus 33, in which God is clearly presented as having bodily parts, including a “face.” As Barnes notes, the Fathers’ arguments for why God does not have a body are tied completely to their arguments for why God exists simply.     

Historical Memory and the Resurrection of Jesus: Encountering the Risen Christ

Why did the risen Christ only impart the truth of his resurrection to future generations indirectly? Why risk the distortion and eventual loss of contact with the truth and reality of his risen life that could result? Moreover, granted he uses mediation to preserve his presence among humankind, what means does he use? This article argues that Christ employs two principal means to preserve the knowledge and saving presence of his risen life in his church, namely: the historical memory preserved in the Gospels and the church's liturgical remembrance. The first part of this work examines the existence and reliability of eyewitness testimony in the Gospels in dialogue with the work of Richard Bauckham. The second part examines the path of liturgical remembrance through active participation in the life of the crucified and risen Christ.     

Marx and God with anarchism: on Walter Benjamin’s concepts of history and violence

The article analyses relationships between profane and religious illumination, materialism and theology, politics and religion, Marxism and Messianism. For Walter Benjamin, every second is “the small gateway in time through which the Messiah might enter”. This is the starting point in the reading of Benjamin’s works, where we confront various liaisons and couplings of radical politics and messianic events. Through the reading of Benjamin and through the analysis of his conceptions of history and time, the article addresses the question what is possible in the world.     

The Origins of Walter Benjamin's Concept of Philosophical Critique

Focusing on Walter Benjamin's earliest pieces dedicated to school reform and the student movement, this article traces the basic critical approaches informing his mature thought back to his struggle to critically implement and transform the theory of concept formation and value presentation developed by his Freiburg teacher, Heinrich Rickert. It begins with an account of Rickert's work, specifically of the concept of Darstellung (presentation) and its central role in Rickert's postmetaphysical theory of historical research (which he characterizes as exclusively concerned with the Kantian quid juris). It shows that Rickert develops a speculative but practical theory of value recognition, which nevertheless leaves the status of value itself undetermined. Contra Rickert, Benjamin returns to the ignored quid facti, or origin of value, and shows that a metacritical, postmetaphysical approach such as Rickert's ultimately limits possible experience rather than grounding it. This basic insight, it is argued, is the cornerstone of Benjamin's concept of critique.     

DARWIN AND CHRISTIANITY: TRUTH AND MYTH

In recent years many historical myths about the relations between science and religion have been corrected but not always with sensitivity to different types and functions of “myth.” Correcting caricatures of Darwin's religious views and of the religious reaction to his theory have featured prominently in this myth‐busting. With the appearance in 2017 of A. N. Wilson's depiction of Darwin himself as a “mythmaker,” it is appropriate to reconsider where the myths lie in discourse concerning Darwin and Christianity. Problems with Wilson's account are identified and his provocative demeaning of Darwin is contrasted with an image gleaned from Darwin's friend and colleague George Romanes. The article concludes with a brief reference to the problem of suffering and to the work of Christopher Southgate.     

Categories of Life: The Status of the Camp in Derrida and Agamben

This essay is an exploration of the relationship between Agamben's 1995 text, Homo Sacer, and Derrida's 1992 “Force of Law” essay. Agamben attempts to show that the camp, as the topological space of the state of exception, has become the biopolitical paradigm for modernity. He draws this conclusion on the basis of a distinction, which he finds in an essay by Walter Benjamin, between categories of life, with the “pro‐tagonist” of the work being what he calls homo sacer, or bare life—life that is stripped of its humanity and value. Five years earlier, in 1990, Derrida had given a lecture at UCLA (later published in its entirety as “The Force of Law”) in which he had analyzed the very same essay by Benjamin and had highlighted the distinction between “base life” and “just life.” The implications of his analysis show a discomforting prox‐imity between Benjaminian messianism and the Nazi “final solution,” a conclusion that Agamben dismisses entirely. In this paper, however, I demonstrate that the structures of the two works are quite similar in many important ways. I argue that, though the broad scope of Agamben's work is original in many respects, and I would not wish to reduce Agamben's work to Derridean repetitions, he nevertheless utilizes much more of Derrida's analysis, specifically with respect to the categori‐zation of life, than he would like the reader to believe.     

Law,Charity and Taboo or Kant's Reversal of St. Paul's Spirit‐Letter Opposition and its Theological Implications

This article gives the first account of Kant's reversal of St. Paul's Spirit‐Letter opposition. By means of such reversal Kant defines both charity and law as obtaining a complete autonomy from ‘profane’ life. In Kant's interpretative framework Judaism and Jews represent the ‘profane’, whereas Christ symbolizes the complete transcendence of the empirical. I shall discuss how different Jewish writer – Walter Benjamin, Georg Simmel and Franz Baermann Steiner – respond to such a body‐spirit dichotomy in which ‘the Jew’ functions as the representation of that which is devalued as the material, the bodily.     

Technical filmmaking and scientific narratives: Has science overtaken fiction in recent science fiction? An analysis of Gravity,Interstellar, and The Martian

One can view the recent science fiction films Gravity, Interstellar, and The Martian as a three-part dialogue concerning the existential relationship between humanity, technology, and the science employed to create said technologies. Pitched into the deep of space, each film’s protagonist must seek to find technological answers to save their own existence. Each film’s exploration of these themes essentially questions the importance of technology as a product of scientific-calculative thinking and the validity of this thinking as the primary mode of understanding the world. In this article, I explore the existential dialogue crafted between these films through Walter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger. Through Benjamin, we will see how the medium of film is completely dependent upon technology to present its art and how this transforms the stories it tells, while also transforming the audience and the audience’s reality. Consequently, understanding the popular reception of these films becomes just as important as the films themselves for our present study. Through Heidegger, we will see how technology provides a space where we can find a truth about ourselves and our reality. However, modern technology’s increasing scientific complexity, created by scientists who in turn employ modern technology to further science, also conceals just as much as it reveals. These films provide us with an opportunity to explore a truth about our dependence upon technology even though, as technologically dependent works of art, they may also conceal how dependent upon science we have become when constructing our reality.     

Forget assimilation: introducing subjectivity to German–Jewish history

Between the Enlightenment and the Holocaust, a wide range of German-speaking Jewish subjects shared certain assumptions about a problematic associated with being Jewish and living in a non-Jewish German society (and the concomitant process of relative “assimilation”). The categories of identity and culture that undergirded this problematic became part of a shared lexicon of a German-Jewish “identity crisis”—a lexicon that was handed down to the historiography of German Jews that would develop after the community’s destruction. The author of this contribution challenges the validity of some of these categorical assumptions by setting them against the varied background of German-Jewish experience in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, offering a model of subjectivity (rather than identity) that might allow the historiography to break out of the cyclical repetition in which it currently finds itself. By examining specific exemplars, including Gershom Scholem, Edith Stein, Martin Buber, and others, the author models a reading strategy that would be appropriate for German-Jewish subjectivity.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Life Styles of Educated Women by Eli Ginzberg. Working with Groups : Group Process and Individual Growth by Walter M. Lifton. Guidance in Today's Schools by Donald G. Mortensen and Allen M. Schmuller. The Scientific Analysis of Personality by Raymond B. Cattell. The Peace Corps—Kindlers of the Spark by Edna McGuire. Study in Depth by Doris Wilcox Gilbert. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. The Student, the Interview, and the Curriculum : Dynamics of Counseling in the School by Benjamin M. Sachs. Group Values Through Children's Drawings by Wayne Dennis.     

‘Naturally More Vehement and Intense’: Vehemence in Calvin's Sermons on the Lord's Supper

This article focuses on the remarks of Conrad Badius – in the preface to his publication of Plusieurs sermons of Calvin's – about the ‘vehemence’ of sermons relating to the Lord's Supper. By comparing two of Badius's prefaces in editions of Calvin's sermons, it becomes clear that he chose his words intentionally. On examining here the rhetorical background of vehementia/véheménce, its use in the final part of Calvin's sermons is clarified. Some contemporary witnesses to Calvin's habit are cited. Moreover, in light of the role of vehemence in Calvin's preaching in general, it is shown that the context of the preparation for the sacrament and its celebration prompted Calvin to preach even more vigorously. The outcome is that Badius's comments on Calvin's preaching underline the vital importance of the Lord's Supper for the Reformer, a sacrament which required intensive and sanctifying preparation.     

“For a New World”: On the practical impulse of Husserlian theory

The thesis of this article is that in Husserlian phenomenology there is no opposition between theory and praxis. On the contrary, he understands the former to serve the latter, so as to usher in a new world. The means for doing is the phenomenological reduction or epoché. It gives the phenomenologist access to the starting point, the “first things,” and orients his/her striving towards reason and the renewal of humanity. Careful attention to the significance of the epoché also sheds light on Husserl’s understanding of the relationship of phenomenology not only to philosophy but also to the other sciences. Though an exposition of the “phenomenology of the philosophical vocation” which Husserl sketched in the 1920s, e.g., in his Kaizo articles and lectures on first philosophy, the author seeks to shore up his thesis. For Walter Biemel     

Presentation as indirection,indirection as schooling: The two aspects of Benjamin’s scholastic method

Why does Walter Benjamin claim “indirection” (Umweg) to be the proper method for philosophical contemplation and writing? Why is this method—embodied, according to Benjamin, in the convoluted form of scholastic treatises and in their use of citations—fundamental for understanding his Origin of German Trauerspiel as suggesting an alternative to most strands of modern philosophy? The explicit and well-studied function of this method is for the presentation of what cannot be represented in language, of what cannot be intended or approached in thinking. Namely, of what Benjamin understands as “truth.” Indeed, as Adorno implied, providing a method for presenting an intentionless reality, rather than for re-presenting the world as corresponding to the mind, is revolutionary. However, I claim that beyond its presentational function, the method of indirection has a further, pedagogical function. Benjamin’s concept of truth requires thinking in a manner that does not impose any exterior form, any conceptual or intuitive intention on truth and the materials in which it might be exhibited. The methodological adoption of digressive and intermittent writing is supposed to transform the way we think, or more accurately, the position (Haltung) from which thinking occurs. By examining Benjamin’s use of pedagogical terms against the backdrop of scholastic history and the Urfigure of modern method, that of Descartes, I show that writing and reading in the form of the tractatus serves as exercise in receding from the subject-position—a position of a subject intending an object—and thus conditions the presentation of intentionless truth.     

对本雅明文艺批评中"Aura"概念的梳理

“Aura”在本雅明的文艺批评中是一个非常重要的概念,本文采取文本细读的方式,对有关此概念的论述进行梳理,以对“Aura”进行多层次的界定,并以此作为契入点,来考察本雅明对现代艺术和古典艺术的看法。     

‘For our garden of remembrance is somewhere else’: Narratives of separation through the eyes of Freud's patients

This article presents a unique collection of narratives of separation – unique because the separation here is from psychoanalysis and from Freud as analyst. These narratives were published as part of memoirs written about Freud by three of his patients. Their narratives of separation give us an innovative point of view on the psychoanalytic process, in particular with respect to the importance they place on the termination phase of the analysis at a time when Freud himself had not given it much consideration. The three autobiographical texts are Abram Kardiner's memoir (1977); the memoir of Sergei Pankejeff, known as the Wolf Man (Gardiner, 1971a ); and ‘Tribute to Freud’, by the poet H.D. ( 1974 ). These three distinguished narratives are discussed here as works of translation, as understood by Walter Benjamin (1968 [1955]), Paul Ricoeur (2006 [2004]), and Jean Laplanche (1999 [1992]). They express translation under three aspects: reconstruction of the past (the work of memory), interpreting the conscious residues of the transference (the work of mourning), and, as a deferred action, deciphering the enigmatic messages received from Freud as the parental figure. This representation of the analysand's writing suggests that the separation from analysis is an endless work of translation within the endless process of deciphering the unconscious.     

JOHN MILBANK's THEOLOGY OF THE "GIFT" AND CALVIN's THEOLOGY OF GRACE: A CRITICAL COMPARISON1

In his theology of the Gift, John Milbank advocates a theology of “reciprocity” between God and humanity, involving “active” rather than “passive” reception of the divine gift. Calvin and other Reformation theologians are criticized by Milbank as demeaning the role of the human partner by advocating “passivity” in the reception of grace. This essay compares Milbank's theology of the Gift with Calvin's theology of grace, showing how Calvin overcomes the schematic options of “passivity” or “reciprocity” in the divine‐human relation, all the while holding much more in common with Milbank's concerns about sanctification and participation than has generally been recognized.     

C. S. Lewis Surprised and Humanized by Joy

Abstract : C. S. Lewis' views on sexuality and the relationship between men and women changed radically through his relationship with Joy, his friend and later wife. Lewis makes a sharp distinction between love and friendship in his writings. This article shows how his concrete experience of love and grief with Joy transformed his understanding of relationships between men and women, and, eventually, the meaning of being human and its implications for Christianity.     

Teaching Disobedience: Jung,Montuori, and the Pedagogical Significance of Conflict

Alternative education often seeks to promote creativity. In so far as this tendency might come to suggest something ideological, then the intent thus indicated is liable to become self-defeating. This article considers C.G. Jung's conservative ideas about education, and explores how these notions might relate to his wider psychology. Contrasting Jung's position with Alfonso Montuori's notion of Creative Inquiry, the author argues for the importance of a more conscious relationship to the role of conflict in the development of a relationally focused pedagogy.