Freedom and the psychoanalytic ontology of quantum physics

Jung's paper ‘Synchronicity – an acausal connecting principle’, defining the phenomenon as a ‘meaningful’ coincidence depending on archetypal activation, was published in 1952, together with a conceptually related piece by physicist and Nobel Laureate Wolfgang Pauli entitled, ‘The influence of archetypal ideas on the scientific theories of Kepler’. Slavoj ?i?ek, in The Indivisible Remainder: On Schelling and Related Matters, suggests that, in contrast to any notion of a ‘pre‐modern Jungian harmony’, the main lesson of quantum physics was that not only was the psychoanalytic, empty subject of the signifier constitutively out‐of‐joint with respect to the world, but that the Real in itself was already incomplete, out‐of‐joint, ‘not‐all’. Yet while ?i?ek frequently tries to separate Jung from his own ontology, this paper shows that his ontology is not as different as he suggests. Consistent with our earlier publications on Jung and Zizek, a closer investigation reveals an underlying congruence of both of their approaches. In this paper we show that this affinity lies in the rejection by both Jung and ?i?ek of the ideology of reductive materialism, a rejection that demonstrably draws on quantum physics in similar ways. While Jung posits an inherently meaningful universe, ?i?ek attempts to salvage the freedom of human subjectivity by opposing his Lacanian ‘dialectical materialism’ to reductive materialism.     

After Heidegger: Transubstantiation

Recent debate over transubstantiation (especially Jean‐Luc Marion's defence of it) has concentrated either on transubstantiation as a kind of embarrassment in consequence of modern physics, or on the extent to which it is both a doctrine elaborated in the light of metaphysics and recoverable in consequence of metaphysics having been overcome. In this sense the tension between Aquinas' apparently metaphysical formulation of the doctrine and the less overtly metaphysical formula adopted by the Council of Trent (in its refusal to speak of ‘accidents’) has indicated a way of ‘rescuing’ or ‘recovering’ the doctrine. This article argues that such a recovery is a false trail. Pope Paul VI was right to be wary of relativising the Eucharistic event to the believing community in any doctrine of transignification. Alternatively, attempts like Chauvet's and Macquarrie's to restate Eucharistic event in terms of Heidegger's Geviert presuppose Heidegger has succeeded in destroying the metaphysics of presence, so that they can use the fruits of his researches. What is actually at issue in thinking through transubstantiation is how the doctrine relates to conceptions of the physical: Aristotelian, what comes to be Newtonian, or postmodern conceptions which appear to eschew physics altogether. Heidegger's contribution to the debate would better point to how knowing anything means being included in and (self‐) disclosed by what I know. A re‐investigation of transubstantiation might therefore take into account the extraordinary reappearance of the term ‘transubstantiation’ in current non‐theological investigations of performativity (especially in the work of Judith Butler). Here transubstantiation would include not the maximal meaning of bread and wine as signs constituted in das Geviert, ‘after’ substance has been critiqued, but their minimality, in enacting a change in (our) substance (self‐realising). This would confirm the divinising meaning of the Eucharistic event, which stresses how we are caught up into the divine. Thus, whereas in transignification the Eucharistic event occurs in consequence of the will of the community of believers, in transubstantiation it is the enactment of the community as community that is at issue, an enactment in consequence of no act of will of its own. In terms of the postmodern and non‐theological appropriation of the word transubstantiation, this means that I who participate in the Eucharistic am re‐ordered, or re‐materialised, or ‘trans‐substantiated’ in the Eucharistic event.     

Theological Pragmatism: A Critical Evaluation

Theological pragmatists like Daly, Kaufman, McFague and Reuther claim that the God we should believe in and the kind of images we should use to express our religious faith should be evaluated primarily on the basis of the consequences they have for the maintenance of certain political or moral values. These views are presented and critically evaluated. One difficulty is that their pragmatism seems to clash with our intuition and experience that there is no automatic fit between our moral aspirations and political visions, on the one hand, and how the world is actually structured, on the other. Their strong emphasis on political and moral considerations is, therefore, questionable and only plausible under certain specific circumstances.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed: Lester L. Grabbe (ed), Can a History of Israel be Written? Michael Prior (ed), Western Scholarship and the History of Palestine Cyrus H. Gordon and Gary A. Rendsburg, The Bible and the Ancient Near East Tilde Binger, Asherah: Goddesses in Ugarit, Israel and the Old Testament Ben Witherington The Paul Quest: The Renewed Search for the Jew of Tarsus Robert Valantasis, The Gospel of Thomas (New Testament Readings) Moshe Halbertal, People of the Book: Canon, Meaning and Authority William J. Abraham, Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology: From the Fathers to Feminism Roger Haight, Jesus: Symbol of God Raymund Schwager, translated by James G. Williams and Paul Haddon, Jesus in the Drama of Salvation: Towards a Biblical Doctrine of Redemption Raymund Schwager, translated by James G. Williams, Jesus of Nazareth: How He Understood His Life A. E. McGrath, Historical Theology. An Introduction to the History of Christian Thought C. Markschies, Between Two Worlds: Structures of Earliest Christianity Khaled Anatolios, Athanasius: The Coherence of his Thought Leonard P. Hindsley, The Mystics of Engelthal: Writings from a Medieval Monastery Kent Emery, Jr., and Joseph Wawrykow (eds), Christ among the Medieval Dominicans: Representations of Christ in the Texts and Images of the Order of Preachers Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, Julian of Norwich and the Mystical Body Politic of Christ (Studies in Spirituality and Theology 5) Pat Collins, Spirituality for the 21st Century: Christian Living in a Secular Age Timothy O'Connell, Making Disciples Gordon Lathrop, Holy People: A Liturgical Ecclesiology Stratford Caldecott (ed), Beyond the Prosaic: Renewing the Liturgical Movement Michael Hurley, Christian Unity: An Ecumenical Second Spring? John M. Riddle, Eve's Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West J. Davies, Death, Burial and Rebirth in the Religions of Antiquity Simon Price, Religions of the Ancient Greeks Karsten Friis Johansen, A History of Ancient Philosophy from the Beginnings to Augustine A. A. Long (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy C. C. W. Taylor, The Atomists: Leucippus and Democritus: Fragments Gail Fine (ed), Oxford Readings in Philosophy: Plato. Vol. 1: Metaphysics and Epistemology, Vol. 2: Ethics, Politics, Religion and the Soul Noburu Notomi, The Unity of Plato's ‘Sophist’: Between the ‘Sophist’ and the ‘Philosopher’ Helen S. Lang, The Order of Nature in Aristotle's The Order of Nature in Aristotle's ‘Physics’ M. S. Kempshall, The Common Good in Late Medieval Political Thought Giordano Bruno. Edited and translated by Richard J. Blackwell and Robert de Lucca, Cause, Principle and Unity – And Essays on Magic     

Omniscience And Pantheism

This article argues that theism entails a species of pantheism on the grounds that there is simply no discernible difference between the God's knowledge of the world and the world that God knows. The case against this thesis begins with the traditional theory of distinctions. But since God is necessarily omniscient there is not even the possibility that these might be considered apart and thus distinguished in that way. But neither is it possible to do this by means of Leibnitz's law, that is, by finding some feature possessed by the one but not the other. Three potential areas of difference are considered but rejected, first, that knowledge unlike the world is representational, and second, that knowledge unlike the world is phenomenal – there is something that it is like to have. Both of these features, though able to distinguish ordinary knowledge from its objects, cease to provide the difference we require when extended to the case of divine knowledge. A final area of potential difference lies in the transcendent nature of God over the world, especially with respect to time, finitude and possibility. But this, in the end, is found no more able to distinguish God's knowledge from its object than the previous two suggestions.     

Mountain Bike Trail Building, “Dirty” Work,and a New Terrestrial Politics

Abstract

Dirt is evoked to signify many important facets of mountain bike culture, including its emergence, history, and everyday forms of practice and affect. These significations are also drawn on to frame the sport's (sub)cultural and counterideological affiliations. In this article we examine how both the practice of mountain biking and, specifically, mountain bike trail building, raises questions over the object and latent function of dirt, hinting at the way that abjection can, under certain circumstances, be a source of intrigue and pleasure. In doing so, we suggest a resymbolization of our relationship with dirt via a consideration of the terrestrial.