Belief and Unbelief. A Straussian Perspective (original) (raw)
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Between Faith and Belief (reviewed by Colby Dickinson)
Joeri Schrijvers' latest study in contemporary continental philosophy and the possibility of the religious steers immediately toward very familiar terrain: the possibility of atheism, the phenomenon of secularism and the 'return of religion' in recent continental thought. Considering a number of popular writers, such as John Caputo, Jean-Luc Nancy, Peter Sloterdijk, and Jean-Luc Marion, to name only the most prominent, Schrijvers looks not only to how their arguments are rooted in the nuanced philosophies of Heidegger, Levinas and Derrida, but he also begins to critique the narrow interests they maintain in attempting to overcome ontotheology and metaphysics once and for all (the subject too of his earlier study Ontotheological Turnings, also with SUNY Press). Such efforts, according to Schrijvers, are really a matter of philosophical hubris—that is, of presenting a totalizing narrative that really cannot be declared as such to exist as an enclosed space. By focusing on lesser known figures such as Reiner Schürmann and Ludwig Binswanger, Schrijvers deftly parses the arguments given for moving beyond Christianity in the work of several of the aforementioned authors, and mounts a position that faith without belief is 'phenomenologically impossible' as this formulation leaves our embodied existence out of the picture. In short, these critiques of metaphysics attempt to present a world without love and a love without world. There is a subtle criticism but also defense of tradition that Schrijvers mounts in this book through the turn to love and life as they 'outwit' tradition, while simultaneously grounding themselves in it. It is the task of the book as a whole to preserve metaphysics as a possibility through a philosophical account of incarnation developed alongside Binswanger's phenomenology of love. By contrasting Binswanger with Heidegger in order to elucidate a phenomenology of religious life, Schrijvers promotes a more robust, intersubjective way of being in the world that can more adequately account for the role of love in one's life—an acknowledgement too of the necessity for being-with others (and otherness itself) that describes how we, ontically, do exist in our world, and in the lived institutions and religions that comprise it. We cannot simply abandon such ways of being in the world in favor of a purely abstracted critique of every institutional order. The other before us gives us something that we cannot give ourselves and, to put things rather bluntly, this matters a good deal in terms of how we experience life and love. To abstractly develop an anarchic, gnostic or antinomian critique of all institutional, systematic, ordered and religious ways of being in our world without acknowledging our embodied ('incarnational') reality of needing such forms (such as he charges Caputo, Nancy and Sloterdijk of aiding) is to miss a major feature of what it means to be human. Though this may sound like an overly simplistic account of Schrijvers' rigorous treatment of a much more complex argumentation as it is pursued in each thinker's works, it is a major strength of the book that he is able to distil matters into such clear lines of thought. What struck me time and again while reading this book was its entirely readable quality, as if I were listening to someone who wasn't trying to hastily dispatch a difficult argument as much as it was the voice of someone who has such a strong grasp of the field as to render their commentary in crisp and lucid prose. This book is a reliable guide to a series of ongoing debates in continental thought that have seemed for some time to be at an impasse. My intuition is that this impasse has mainly resulted from somewhat partisan entrenchments (phenomenology versus deconstruction) that refuse to engage with the connections between diverse methodologies. Schrijvers' fine work navigates this impasse with precision and fairness, and thereby gives us a path forward for maintaining embodied religious practice in our world today.
Review of Between Faith and Belief (Justin Sands)
Joeri Schrijvers ' previous monograph, Onto-Theological Turnings? (Schrijvers 2011), settled upon the conclusion that perhaps onto-theology is inevitable when the self or subject eventually must ground their thoughts and experiences through some concept or thing in order to make judgements about the world around them (see e.g. Schrijvers 2011, 208). This was a remarkable conclusion given the numerous explorations and debates surrounding subjectivity, the self, and its grounding after Martin Heidegger. Although contentious by some, Schrijvers is so convinced by his painstakingly argued conclusion in Onto-Theological Turnings that he has already begun questioning what comes after these debates, settling on the fact that one must still go through metaphysics and now asking how one might do so without falling prey to its various seductions. This questioning becomes the launching point of his newest work, Between Faith and Belief, which re-presents and re-argues Schrijvers' conclusion, and then provides a possible pathway forward for phenomenology. For those who were already convinced of Onto-Theological Turnings, such as myself, I highly recommend Schrijvers' new book to explore the implications of accepting onto-theology's inevitability and how we perceive the humanity in us and others. For those who were skeptical or suspicious of his claims, I still highly recommend this book since it clarifies many of his previous arguments through critical readings of various thinkers within the field, particularly those influenced by Derrida such as Jean-Luc Nancy, John D. Caputo, Peter Sloterdijk, and Martin Hägglund. People from within both camps should also thoroughly enjoy the final part of this book's reprisal of Ludwig Binswanger, a contemporary and critic of Martin Heidegger whose work has heretofore been overlooked.
FROM BELIEF TO UNBELIEF AND BACK TO BELIEF: A RESPONSE TO MICHAEL RUSE
Zygon�, 1994
Historian James Gilbert argues that the dialogue between science and religion is an important dynamic in the creation of contemporary American culture. He traces the dialogue not only in the confines of the academic world but also in popular culture. The science-religion dialogue reveals a basic tension between the material and the spiritual that helps define the core of the American psyche: fascination with material progress yet commitment to traditional religious beliefs. Gilbert's cultural narrative traces the dialogue in a unique way because of the attention given to popular renditions of science and religion in evangelical films used by the military, in televised science programs, in science-fiction literature, and at the Seattle World's Fair in 1962. Gilbert suggests that the discussion between science and religion is significant because it is part of the process of creating new cultural structures necessitated by social, scientific, and technological developments. The tensions between religiously informed commonsense science and professional science work to create new cultural forms in a democratic society. Religion and science in dialogue are part of the process of cultural creation. Dogmatism on the part of either scientists or religionists is countered by the democratic process itself.
Some ruminations about inculpable non-belief
Religious Studies, 2012
ABSTRACTThis article presents a discussion of the concept of ‘non-belief’, focusing on a variety of difficulties it raises for the theist. After considering how the notion of ‘non-belief’ may be construed, I catalogue five major problems facing the theist who insists on maintaining the traditional notion of ‘non-belief’. Those theists who insist on maintaining this traditional notion sometimes appeal to the ‘sin defence’ in an attempt to defend their position. I critique this defence and conclude with a mention of how rejecting the traditional notion of ‘non-belief’ will lead us towards revisionary theologies.
"I doubt. Therefore, I Believe.” Three Modalities of “Belief in the Making (Book chapter, 2014)
In Religion in Times of Crisis, edited by Gladys Ganiel, Christophe Monnot and Heidemarie Winkel. Leiden : Brill, 2014
In this chapter, I locate expressions of the relationship between belief and doubt in a pragmatist frame of “belief in the making.” Combining pragmatist approaches with empirical research on various forms of lived religions in Western European contexts, I identify three ideal-typical modalities of belief: believing as aspiration and trust, believing as self-discipline, and believing as an experience of being together. These modalities may practically alternate or combine within a given person. Although religion is often considered an effective response to the existential crisis of uncertainty and more specifically to personal or social crisis, through providing supposedly infallibly true answers to natural and existential questions, religious “belief” does not insulate people from uncertainty or doubt. Particularly among self-identified believers in Western European contexts, belief is often complex and messy, with people’s beliefs regularly subject to oscillations and periods of doubt. The relationship between doubt and belief takes various forms. One is acceptance of doubt as an integral part of belief, which may be expressed as: “I doubt; therefore, I believe”. At the opposite end, people strive to reduce or to avoid doubt while searching for “pure religion”, which often results in the rigidification of religious identities and beliefs. Intermediate situations include considering doubt as an inescapable part of a believer’s experience, which is nevertheless useful for strengthening belief. It is through observing the way people grapple with belief and doubt in ordinary, practical ways that we can shed light on the act of believing as a lived experience, rather than as a simple intellectual assent to religious or spiritual ideas. This more nuanced approach to belief is important for the study of religion in times of crisis. It provides insights into how potential crises of doubt are negotiated at the micro-level, helping us understand how “believers” may become radicalized or develop more open, transigent perspectives.
Between faith and belief: toward a contemporary phenomenology of religious life, by Joeri Schrijvers, Albany, SUNY Press, 2016, 380 pp., $90 (hardcover), Between Faith and Belief builds significantly on Schrijvers's earlier work Ontotheological Turnings? 1 In his earlier work, Schrijvers argues that traces of ontotheology remain among French phenomenologists like Lacoste, Marion, and Levinas who expressly sought to overcome metaphysics. While this is a pointed critique, Schrijvers interprets this 'ontotheological turn' constructively. Previous attempts to overcome metaphysics have prematurely presupposed that metaphysics can actually be overcome. They have thereby overlooked, à la Reiner Schürmann, that ontotheology is an existential-ontological problem since there is 'a natural metaphysician in each of us'. It is on this point that Between Faith and Belief begins and builds. Not for the purpose of affirming and reasserting traditional metaphysics, but rather to develop an alternative ontology that gives an account of this proclivity for metaphysics while attentive to those contemporary critiques of ontotheology that led to its collapse. Schrijvers discovers an alternative ontology in the work of the Swiss psychiatrist and existential phenomenologist, Ludwig Binswanger, whose description of Dasein plays a decisive role in what Schrijvers calls an 'ontology incarnate'. Whereas contemporary attempts to overcome metaphysics inadvertently conceive faith at the expense of finitude as an other-worldly, mystical insight or inclination known only for the percipient, Schrijvers and Binswanger conceive love phenomenologically as 'being-beyond-the-world-in-theworld' (über die Welt hinaus sein) so that everyday, finite experience (from a simple salutation to friendship to the lover's embrace) opens up within finitude the possibility for an experience of the infinite for all people in many diverse ways and degrees.