This article offers a political reading of Franz Kafka's posthumous work The Trial. In this novel, the main protagonist (Joseph K.) is subject to an arrest and trial conducted by the ambiguous authority of a shadowy court and its officials. This article explores Joseph K.'s experience of being subject to the Law, and relates this to our own understanding and experience of political subjectivity in modern times. K.'s doomed search for order through a ‘permanent resolution’ of his case is related (...) to the modern desire for order: Specifically, the desire for both philosophical and political frameworks that provide narratives or certainty. Here modernity is understood to be characterized by an anxiety brought about by a crisis in authorship and authority. The article then considers K.'s desire for justice and the Law, and his entanglement with the power of the court, as analogous to the modern experience of the triad of justice–law–power, which is subsumed under the banner of ‘sovereignty’. In particular, the article explores K.'s inability to locate, read, or fix the Law; a problem that is also reflected in the aporia of sovereignty as justice–law–power. K.'s experience alerts us to the contradictions in the triad justice–law–power; contradictions that occur as although each member of the triad is dependent upon the other two, each member of the triad also seeks to exclude or deny this dependency. Thus, read politically, K.'s struggle in The Trial can be seen as a reflection of the modern struggle with sovereignty as the triad justice–law–power, and the impasse that K. reaches is also the impasse that modernity has reached. (shrink)

This article offers a political reading of Franz Kafka's posthumous work The Trial. In this novel, the main protagonist is subject to an arrest and trial conducted by the ambiguous authority of a shadowy court and its officials. This article explores Joseph K.'s experience of being subject to the Law, and relates this to our own understanding and experience of political subjectivity in modern times. K.'s doomed search for order through a ‘permanent resolution’ of his case is related to the (...) modern desire for order: Specifically, the desire for both philosophical and political frameworks that provide narratives or certainty. Here modernity is understood to be characterized by an anxiety brought about by a crisis in authorship and authority. The article then considers K.'s desire for justice and the Law, and his entanglement with the power of the court, as analogous to the modern experience of the triad of justice–law–power, which is subsumed under the banner of ‘sovereignty’. In particular, the article explores K.'s inability to locate, read, or fix the Law; a problem that is also reflected in the aporia of sovereignty as justice–law–power. K.'s experience alerts us to the contradictions in the triad justice–law–power; contradictions that occur as although each member of the triad is dependent upon the other two, each member of the triad also seeks to exclude or deny this dependency. Thus, read politically, K.'s struggle in The Trial can be seen as a reflection of the modern struggle with sovereignty as the triad justice–law–power, and the impasse that K. reaches is also the impasse that modernity has reached. (shrink)

. The question of whether or not our universe is deterministic remains of interest to both scientists and theologians. In this essay I argue that this question can be solved only by metaphysical decision and that no scientific evidence for either determinism or indeterminism will ever be conclusive. No finite being, no matter how powerful its cognitive abilities, will ever be able to establish the deterministic nature of the universe. The only being that would be capable of doing so would (...) be one that is at once transcendent and immanent. Such a being is compatible with the God of the Christian tradition, which yields that a deterministic worldview is compatible with a deterministic worldview. A more important point is that because science is never able to establish the determinism of our universe, it can never definitely rule out divine action except on metaphysical grounds. (shrink)

Abstract.Reflecting on the future of the field of science-and-religion, I focus on three aspects. First, I describe the history of the religion-and-science dialogue and argue that the emergence of the field was largely contingent on social-cultural factors in Western theology, especially in the United States. Next, I focus on the enormous influence of science on Western society and on what I call cultural scientism, which influences discussions in science-and-religion, especially how theological notions are taken up. I illustrate by sketching the (...) way divine action has been studied in science-and-religion. The divine-action debates may seem irrelevant to theologians because the way divine action is dealt with in science-and-religion is theologically problematic. Finally, I analyze the quest for integration and unity of science and religion that underlies much of the contemporary field of science-and-religion and was stimulated particularly by the efforts of Ian Barbour. I argue that his quest echoes the logical positivist vision of unification and has a strong bias toward science as the sole source of rationality, which does not take theology fully seriously. (shrink)

This article explores the significance that environments play in terms of the learning process. In the United States, the legacy of John Dewey's intellectual efforts left a theoretical understanding that views the architectural composition of learning environments as instrumental mediums which house the educational process. This understanding of learning environments is precipitated by a separation of human agents as subjects and their environments as objects. By contrast, Martin Heidegger's theory of ontology, and its reconfiguration of the subject and object relationship, (...) lends itself to an understanding of the architectural composition of learning environments as dwellings. (shrink)

This essay introduces, for theological consideration, some recent work in the field of cultural evolutionary theory, specifically the kin‐influence hypothesis. This theory holds that, following the beginnings of industrialization and economic growth, a nation's fertility rate commences a decline, which is further abetted by the consequent and increasing imbalance in the relative influence of kin versus nonkin influences on individuals in favor of the latter. It is further proposed that this process is itself a major independent factor in the emergence (...) of many of the features of what is called modernity, among which is that of secularization. Extending further this work, I argue that, given the historic alignment of family and religious values in Christian nations, a loss of religious belief and practice is, at least in part, the spill over effect of the opposing influence of values emerging from ever more dominant nonfamily social interaction. I conclude with some reflections on possible theological implications. (shrink)

While post-modernist assaults on modernity correctly expose the pretensions of modernity – including its constructs of meaning in history, its abnegation of mystery, and its lapses into scientism, historicism, and relativism – the philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan discerned progress as well as decline in recent intellectual history. In part this is because under contemporary conditions we can avoid the pretensions of modernity, since – in the wake of modern science and modern historical scholarship – we witness the differentiation of (...) interiority, which, properly understood as the discovery of the self, may be seen as leading to a new integration of the spiritual, the intellectual, the moral, and the historical. (shrink)

According to a long-standing narrative of Western modernity science is one of the main drivers of secularization. Science is said to have generated challenges to core religious beliefs and to have provided an alternative, rational way of looking at the world. This narrative typically relies on progressive and teleological understandings of history, and commitment to some version of an ongoing struggle between science and religion. By way of contrast, recent theories of secularization, such as that of Charles Taylor, have suggested (...) that the role of science in secularization has been greatly exaggerated. This article also offers a critique of the standard “science causes secularization” story. But in contrast to other critiques of this kind, it suggests that science nonetheless has a significant role in secularization – one that can be maintained without a commitment to a crude progressivist history or a narrative of science-religion conflict. (shrink)

According to a long-standing narrative of Western modernity science is one of the main drivers of secularization. Science is said to have generated challenges to core religious beliefs and to have provided an alternative, rational way of looking at the world. This narrative typically relies on progressive and teleological understandings of history, and commitment to some version of an ongoing struggle between science and religion. By way of contrast, recent theories of secularization, such as that of Charles Taylor, have suggested (...) that the role of science in secularization has been greatly exaggerated. This article also offers a critique of the standard “science causes secularization” story. But in contrast to other critiques of this kind, it suggests that science nonetheless has a significant role in secularization – one that can be maintained without a commitment to a crude progressivist history or a narrative of science-religion conflict. (shrink)

This paper examines the concept of sovereign agency in Nygren’s agapic theology. I argue that Nygren’s theology is structured by a voluntarist-inspired idealization of sovereignty that in effect precludes a viable agapic theory of alterity. ‘Otherness’ plays no essential role in Nygren’s subject-centred ethic. George Grant’s profound meditations on ‘otherness’ in Technology and Justice and other late works will provide the critical perspective for my reading of Nygren and agapist theology in general.

I examine a tension between temporal and spatial conceptualization of the genesis of the cosmos to show how chronological characterization of ‘beginnings’ occludes ontological interpretation of our existential orientations, to help my audience distinguish symbolic expressions of wonder that the cosmos exists from explanations for it. I bring together resources from multiple intellectual and religious traditions to perform a philosophy of religions that goes beyond the narrowness, intellectualism, and insularity of institutionalized philosophy of religion. I turn to Ibn Rushd, Tillich, (...) Pamela Sue Anderson, and Sara Ahmed to expose problems of confusing symbols with concepts. I bring Aristotle, Nagarjuna, Maimonides, Kant, Wittgenstein, and Nasr together in conversation about the notion of a ‘beginning.’ Through this, I seek to shift questions of cosmic linearity to questions of spatial symbols of inclusivity and suggest that our orientation toward chronology distracts us from inclusive ontologies, inadvertently getting us stuck in imagistic representation of a closed cosmos rather than critical conceptualization of open symbols for an inclusive cosmos. (shrink)

In this paper, I bring together Jewish and Buddhist philosophical resources to develop a notion of radical responsibility that can confront a complicity within nursing and health care between empathy and (neo)liberal white supremacist hegemony. My inspiration comes from Angela Davis's call for building coalitions to advance struggles for peace and justice. I proceed as follows. First, I note ways phenomenology clarifies empathy's seeming foundational role in nursing care, and how such a formulation can be complicit with assumptions about private (...) individualism. Second, I turn to the Jewish philosophies of Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas, and their advocacy for a kind of responsibility that precedes the constitution of individuality as this can provide a resource for action and practice circumventing liberal influenced empathy. I note critical reservations about direct and practical application of Levinasian ethics in nursing care, and turn to engaged Buddhist philosophies of interdependence—such as in Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama—as a corrective. Third, I conclude by indicating ways interreligious radical responsibility can reorient us toward housekeeping habits of character and away from exceptional crisis management, noting specific examples and actions in health care, nursing education and nursing scholarship. (shrink)

Taking the use of the logos in Ratzinger's Regensburg Lecture as its starting point, the thesis expands three horizons in Ratzinger studies. Firstly, it extends the understanding of Ratzinger as the author of a logos theology. Secondly, it shows how the Regensburg theme of the full breadth of reason, represented by the logos, is applied by Ratzinger in a critique of secular modernity. Thirdly, it claims that the logos theology of Joseph Ratzinger can provide a repair of the culture of (...) human rights. The thesis argues that if human rights are set exclusively within the framework of secular modernity, they fall sick and fail to meet the criterion of inclusivity and universality. Set within the framework of a Ratzingerian logos theology, their power is strengthened and their promise of inclusivity and universality restored. The thesis calls for a mutually reparative dialogue about human rights, based on the full breadth of reason, between the three constituencies of Christianity, the religions and secular modernity. The thesis concludes that the Regensburg Lecture, far from damaging the dialogue with Islam, and with secular modernity, opens up a new intercultural bridge based on a mutually enriching engagement with a logos-based culture of human rights. (shrink)

Adapting Western self-critical discourse, the Arab Egyptian intellectual Abdelwahab Elmessiri attempted to Islamize modernity; however, he did this ironically via Western critique itself. This paper follows a comparative approach to show how Elmessiri’s construction of the duality of immanence and transcendence is based on the critiques introduced by Eric Voegelin and Zygmunt Bauman. However, while Bauman saw the role of critical theory as the modest comment on human experience, Elmessiri and Voegelin uncovered the dominance of immanence in Western modernity so (...) as to contrast it with Islamic monotheism and the Christian humanistic legacy, respectively. The critiques introduced by Elmessiri and Voegelin reach their climax when modernity is compared to a form of heretical Gnosticism. (shrink)