Adorno and Heidegger on language and the inexpressible

I argue that the reflections on language in Adorno and Heidegger have their common root in a modernist problematic that dissected experience into ordinary experience, and transfiguring experiences that are beyond the capacity for expression of our language. I argue that Adorno’s solution to this problem is the more resolutely “modernist” one, in that Adorno is more rigorous about preserving the distinction between what can be said, and what strives for expression in language. After outlining the definitive statement of this problematic in Nietzsche’s early epistemological writings, I outline Heidegger’s solution and subsequently Adorno’s critique of Heidegger. Finally, I argue that situating Adorno within the modernist problem of language and expression is crucial for making sense of his philosophy as a form of critical theory.

Christ‐Centered Concreteness: The Christian Activism of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King Jr.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King Jr. were both pastors and theologians who wrestled with the meaning of Christ‐centered faithfulness for their time. They were advocates of social justice and human rights who resisted the temptation towards a secularizing two‐realms split that makes Christianity a private life religion; they defied contemporary laws and cultural norms, and they faced opposition to their work from many of their fellow Christians. We may learn from their prophetic witness for Christian faithfulness in our contexts by paying attention to their respective interpretations of the way of Jesus.     

Beyond Deep Incarnation: Rethinking Christology in Radical Lutheran Terms

This article takes the demise of Christendom and what Diana Butler Bass calls the end of religion as its point of departure for a “radical” rethinking of God in fully kenotic terms. It rejects any vestige of otherworldly transcendence as a temptation to escapism, inviting us instead to seek God's complete presence among us here in the world. Going beyond Niels Gregersen's understanding of the deep incarnation of the Logos and starting instead with a complete commitment to the infra‐Lutheranum, the author presents a radical Lutheran theology that embraces a total kenosis of God whose liberating and life‐giving reappearance we must find implicit among us in unexpected places, not least of which might include the embers of a dying church or the crumbling of our religious institutions.     

Challenging ‘the they’: an Heideggerian reflection on the impact of power figures in children’s spiritual lives

Through the lens of Heideggerian’s Being and Time, this paper examines the world of ‘the they’ for twenty-first century children, highlighting perceived power figures in their lives. Exploring philosophically how the falling of a child’s Dasein from its primordial state into ‘the they’ culminates in an inauthentic presentation of self, it will then describe how spiritual educators might encourage a turning of the tide, allowing children to be critically aware of contingent influencers and to act upon them from a position of authenticity.     

Higher Education in Light of the Cross

What is the summum bonum of a university education? The much lauded “liberal” approach of Aristotle, Newman, and Roche proposes that education is for contemplating the truth—an intrinsic, joyous end in itself. This approach offers the benefits of pursuing truth, virtues, and intellectual habits, but it also carries with it the temptations of idealatry and homo incurvatus in se. Christian universities can reform this approach to education, though, with Luther's theology of the cross, reorienting it through the crucified Christ toward the highest ends of life revealed in God's word: faith in God and love for the neighbor.     

中国近代心理学史上的丁韪良及其《性学举隅》

传教士丁韪良出于借心理学来传播宗教的目的在1898年出版了《性学举隅》, 这是融入了许多西方科学心理学知识的中文心理学著作。中国最早开设心理学课程的登州文会馆的两名毕业生在丁韪良撰写《性学举隅》过程中进行了笔述工作。丁韪良曾为益智书会撰写心理学教材但未完成, 益智书会转而出版了颜永京的《心灵学》(上本)。以丁韪良及其《性学举隅》为纽带, 19世纪后半叶中国近代心理学发展进程中的几个重要事件构成了一副较完整的历史图景, 反映出中国近代心理学的发展与宗教传播有着密切联系。《性学举隅》吸收了当时西方心理学前沿性的生理心理学知识, 向中国引介了催眠术和颅相学知识, 并对中国的“五官说”、“七情说”进行了修正与补充, 同时也借用了汉字的造字法来阐述其部分心理学观点。由于丁韪良向中国传播心理学是其宣传宗教思想的手段之一, 而颜永京译述海文原著的《心灵学》更倾向于向中国传播心理学这一学科, 强调了心理学与众多学科的联系和应用价值, 因此丁韪良在心理学术语创制上的历史功绩要逊于颜永京。颜永京于1882年将psychology翻译为“心才学”, 这是目前发现心理学学科的最早汉语翻译名称。     

Luther congress in Wittenberg

The Reformation year 2017 provided an opportunity for numerous congresses and publications. This article reports on the World Congress for Luther Research in Wittenberg. In addition to the main lectures and other significant currents of scholarship, the article also highlights some recent publications and public debates around Martin Luther's person and work.     

Heidegger on Expression: Formal Indication and Destruction in the Early Freiburg Lectures

Of all the methodological terms used by Heidegger in the early Freiburg period, few have attracted less consensus than Formal Indication. With its relation to the earliest lecture series, critical debate has tended to focus on the extent to which this concept defines the difference between Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenology. The argument of this paper is that Formal Indication is best understood in its relation to Heidegger’s other key methodological term from this period, Phenomenological Destruction. Not only do (i) both concepts grow out of the same problem set, but (ii) they act in a limited sense as counter-movements to one another. Considered together, I argue, they make up Heidegger’s response to the problem of language as expressed by Paul Natorp, and first dealt with in the Kriegsnotsemester in 1919.     

Social Ethics between Universality and Specificity: Outline of a Chalcedonian Social Ethic1

Abstract : In Lutheran ethics the Chalcedonian notion of the communication of properties (communicatio idiomatum) plays an important role in understanding the paradoxical relation between the reality of God and the reality of the world. This motif also plays an important role for Martin Luther and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In a contemporary context the Chalcedonian understanding substantiates a differentiated unity between universality and specificity with regard to the foundation of a Lutheran social ethic.     

Critical Notices

In Being and Time, Heidegger explicitly defers any consideration of ourselves (Dasein) as embodied. I try to account for Heidegger's reluctance to talk about 'the body' in connection with his explication of Dasein, by arguing that doing so would be at odds with the kind of investigation his 'phenomenology of everydayness' is meant to be. That Heidegger omits discussion of the body in Being and Time might lead one to think of the human body in terms of the other categories Heidegger deploys: readiness-to-hand and presence-at-hand (Being and Time) and biological organisms (Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics). I argue that any such identification ought to be resisted, as these categories serve only to deprive our bodies of their specifically human dimension. Indeed, by surveying the failure of these categories as proper to the human body, we gain further insight into Heidegger's initial deferral: only given the existential analytic can one begin to offer a proper account of ourselves in bodily terms.