The story is too good to be true, right? It sounded like a joke in bad taste that hit the media at the right time to go wild. So I tried to dig around a bit to find out exactly what he was trying to say. That's what a good blogger does, right? And it would be cool to have a scoop.
He deleted his Twit account, so I don't have any history to look at there. But he has some things out on the web already--his home page, for example. He cites a passage from François Laruelle to describe himself, which includes this gem: "If philosophy has only been and only ever will be an opinion and a poorly thought out passion, then the question is of passing from its state of war and of competition, a state of exploitation of thought and as such of man, to its civil state, which we want to call human and democratic." Maybe the context would help dress that word salad, but hoi polloi don't deserve any context.
His areas are "Philosophy of Religion, Political Theology, Psychoanalysis", or alternatively "continental philosophy of religion, political theology, psychoanalysis, and black studies" "His dissertation undertakes a philosophical investigation of pessimism and the ethical and political significance of bad moods in the context of the contemporary climate disaster. He also thinks and writes about police."
If you attempted to read that last link, you'll have noticed that his stock in trade is redefining words.
Other little gems: “I suggest that the emergence of this figure of the malicious God is one of the many conceptual felicities of Kotsko’s general theory of political theology”, and, from Professor Watchlist, this: “Our imperative is to join the struggle for subjectivity, to struggle to speak truthfully about ourselves, to discover that relation to the outside which allows us, in accordance with Nietzsche’s injunction, to become what we are—to become, in a word, anti-Christian.”
The reporters were right. He was perfectly serious. God help him.
"Political Theology" is exactly the phrase for this sort of thing. "God is that, than which nothing greater can be conceived." For some of us, that is the state, and political theory is its theology. E.g. "The greatest thing I run across regularly is humans (who have the transcendental capacity to decide), and the only thing greater than that is a whole lot of humans deciding things."
5 comments:
"Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church." -- Screwtape, Letter II
I wonder how he'd react if he were shown in a vision what he really means, à la Till We Have Faces.
These seem to be exercises in proving that he can speak the language of his chosen field. There doesn't seem to be a lot of thinking, just touching on buttons like a politician making a speech.
By "he" I mean this amateur philosopher TA.
"The meaning doesn't matter/If it's only ide chatter/Of a transcendental kind", AVI?
I thought further about this, and realised (probably inspired by Korora's Lewis quote) that this philosopher talks in moral terms that do not much exist outside the Christian and Jewish traditions.
Post a Comment