cosmopolitical theology

8/11/2019 Cosmopolitical Theology

1/22

Cosmopolitical

TheologyViolence, Value, and the Push for aPlanetary People

Saturday, October 6, 12

The ideas for this presentation come from thinking with Stengers and Whitehead for severalyears, from trying to think #occupy as a political event since its emergence last year, andfrom from my discovery of Simon Critchleys experimental work in political theology this pastsummer. Ill begin by unpacking what is meant by cosmopolitical and in what sense I aim to

do theology.


2/22

Cosmopolitics

Philosopher of Science

Isabelle Stengers

The prefix cosmos... should not be

confused with what we call theuniversal...The cosmos has nothing todo with this universal or with the

universe as an object of

science...Cosmopolitics is emphaticallynot beyond politics, it designates ouraccess to a question that politics

cannot appropriate

-Cosmopolitics II (2011), p. 356.


The prefix cosmos...should not be confused with what we call the universal. The universal is a question within the tradition that has invented it as a requirement and also as a way ofdisqualifying those who do not refer to it. The cosmos has nothing to do with this universal or with the universe as an object of science...The prefix makes present, helps resonate, the unknownaffecting our questions that our political tradition is at significant risk of disqualifying... the cosmos corresponds to no condition, establishes no requirement. It creates the question ofpossible nonhierarchical modes of coexistence among the ensemble of inventions of nonequivalence, among the diverging values and obligations through which the entangled existences thatcompose it are affirmed. Thus, it integrates, problematically, the question of an ecology of practices that would bring together our cities, where politics was invented, and those other places

where the question of closure and transmission has invented other solutions for itself. Cosmopolitics is emphatically not beyond politics, it designates our access to a question that politicscannot appropriate (-Cosmopolitics II, p. 356).


3/22

Cosmopolitics


Isabelle Stengers

Cosmopolitics aims to discover relevantmodes of togetherness between

ecologically situated practices, includingthinking together. It calls for a shift away

from the knowledge economy to aknowledge ecology.

What is the university for? Is knowledgeproduced to be sold in a competitive

market, or cultivated as contribution tothe further flourishing of the community

of life?Saturday, October 6, 12

Cosmopolitics is both a prescriptive and a descriptive concept.Prescriptive: Knowledge, which includes science, must no longer be a product bought andsold in the marketplace as an object (objective knowledge), but a mode of thought aware ofand concerned with, not objectivity, but relevance, concerned with its e!ects on other

lifeforms, known and unknown.Descriptive: All knowledge is a risk because it involves us in relations. Modern science hasnever been purely empirical; it is mostly experimental: scientists dont modestly witnessnature, they build alliances with her (knowing with stars, cells, molecules, etc.). Thereliability of knowledge depends upon the cohesiveness of the social fabric. Stengers wantsto do science in public without reducing it to political opinions. She wants politically activeknowledge.


4/22

Alfred NorthWhitehead

The task of aUniversity is the

creation of the future.

-Modes of Thought (1938), p. 105


the role of the university, and of education, in the growth of knowledge and of civilization iscentral. Citizens must be educated in order to be free. Freedom is not simply given by natureto individuals, it is socially achieved by communities.


5/22


We seek the evidence for that

conception of the universe which isthe justification for the idealscharacterizing the civilized phases

of human society.-Modes of Thought (1938), p. 105


Stengers and Whitehead are very aware of their situatedness. They are philosophers,educators. They are entrusted by society not only to solve the problems of the future, but tocreate the problems of the future. They are the inheritors of an ancient tradition ofcosmopolitical practices...


6/22

Platos Cosmopolitics

Platos ideal city is not democratic, butaristocratic, ruled not by elected officials,

but philosopher-kings and -queens.

Arete-excellence & virtueFor Plato, aretespecifically refers to

excellence in knowledge(i.e., wisdom)

which for him is the highest value ofcivilization (higher than the potentially

ignorant will of the masses). Aristocracy isrule by the wise and learned.


In other words, education is the highest value. And for Plato,education is a process ofspiritual growth, of soul-making, of becoming fully human (i.e., becoming God-like) bylearning to converse with Love, Beauty, Goodness, Truth, and Justice. One of theshortcomings of liberal democracy is that education has been secularized: we go to school to

learn job skills and to join the workforce. Its education disconnected from the cosmos, fromthe adventure of ideas. Well return to Plato again below.


7/22

Political Theology

Continental Philosopher

Simon Critchley

soul-smithing politics of love

mystical anarchism fictional force

faith of the faithless politics as poetic task


Critchley among a growing minority of philosophers calling for a return to religion (Post-Secular Age): Soul-smithing (=soul-making) is part and parcel of any politics of love- thesoul is made in public, not given at birth. To become a free person, one first needs to belongto a loving community.

Mystical anarchism- Critchleys way of talking about an omnicentric divinity, a God whodoes not lord over but infinitely inhabits the universe, seeding Itself within every atom, everycell, every creature, every soul. For Critchley, democracy only works if everyone is God.The fictional force of politics makes forging a people a poetic task- politics, like religion,is about myth and imagination, about bringing forth livable worlds together.Faith of the faithless- Critchleys philosophical religion, which begins in disappointmentand is primarily concerned with learning to die, and learning to love despite the certainty of

death.


8/22


9/22

Violence & Capitalism


#Occupy has done a good job connecting the dots in the popular imagination betweeninstitutionalized violence, world trade/global capitalism, terrorism, and ecologicaldevastation.


10/22

#Occupy Wall Street

#Occupy exposed the violence inherent to the capitalist

fiction and the theology of money, but does not yet have

a new story to replace them.Saturday, October 6, 12

#Occupy did a wonderful job creating political theater and spectacle which is precisely themix of art and politics that Critchley calls for. The old channels of political discourse nolonger work; the political system has been bought. #Occupy did a great job avoiding the callto propose policy changes, which would have immediately made the movement irrelevant as

political art. Occupy was trying to bring forth a new world rather than give further legitimacyto a dying world.


11/22

Civilization v. Capitalism

The mission of Modernityhas been to civilize others.

-Stengers

Civilization can be an adventure incompassionate and cocreative

composition, rather than a competitive

conquest ruled by selfishness and thethreat of violence.

$ It depends on how we create value.


12/22


Everything has some value for itself, forothers, and or the whole. [Value]

characterizes the meaning of actuality. Byreason of this character, constituting reality,the conception of morals arises. We have noright to deface the value experience which is

the very essence of the universe.

-Modes of Thought (1938), p. 111


We need a cosmopolitical theology to replace the theology of money. Value is intrinsic to theuniverse, not added to nature by the whims of the human marketplace.

li i


13/22

Cosmopolitics


Isabelle Stengers

Will capitalism, with its opportunistic and

competitive logic, be able to deal with thecoming intrusion of Gaia?

Human individuals are not the onlypolitical actors and value makers on the

planet.

The ecological catastrophe will not allownature to remain the background of

human history.Saturday, October 6, 12

The shift is from ownership and domination, from treating Gaia as property and as resource,to paying attention to Gaia, composing with her, being domesticated by her.But giving up the theology of money also means giving up the theology of me.

Ethi f th


14/22

Ethics of the

Infinite DemandCritchleys ethics is a Levinasian ethical dividualism:

The self shapes itself in relation to the

experience of an overwhelming, infinite

demand that divides it from itselfthe demand

that Christ made in the Sermon on the Mount

when he said: Love your enemies, bless themthat curse you, do good them that hate

you...

-Critchley, Faith of the Faithless (2012)


Getting beyond the theology of me and the theology of money is not easy. It is demandingto the extreme.

Transformation


15/22

13th c. Christian mystic

Marguerite PoreteOne must crush oneself, hacking

and hewing away at oneself towiden the place in which Love will

want to be...the Soul does notbelieve that God has any greater giftto bestow...than this love whichLove for love has poured forth

within Her.

Transformationof the Religious Soul:

The Way to Virtue is through Love


Critchleys infinitely demanding ethics of dividualism are not only modeled after Levinas, butafter Marguerite Porete, who, in a way similar to Meister Eckhart, created a spiritualtechnology of auto-theism though ego-annihilation.


16/22

Private Public

individualism collectivism

congresscorporation

law

military

police

The Liberal Compromise


Without the drastic curative of Love, we are stuck with liberal capitalisms schizophrenicprivate v. public split. #Occupy has arisen largely in response to the continual encroachmentof the private sphere into the public, such that freedom for an American now means the exactopposite of what it did for an Athenian (Hannah Arendt on slavery of privacy). Crichley cites

Robert Bellahs essay on Civic Religion: America an unsettled mix of Protestant Christianityand Roman republicanism.

Th P bl i h Lib l


17/22

The Problem with LiberalDemocracy

...one is asked to vote or exerciseones freedom on the basis of ones

private interest as an individual ratherthan the public interest which mightwell simply conflict with ones private

interests, depending upon ones

wealth, class, status, property, etc.

-Critchley,Faith of the Faithless, p. 41


Liberal democracy doesnt demand transformation of the ego; it encourages egoism. Itbecomes impossible to form a public, to become a people, to share common concerns, andso its no wonder that the public sphere is increasingly being swallowed by the private sphere.


18/22

Platos Cosmopolitics

The challenge presented by a post-liberalpolitics is the same as that of a pre-liberal

politics:

As in PlatosRepublic, the order of the citymust become congruent with the order of

the soul. Only then can the soul and the citylive in harmony with the cosmos.

This is made possible through thecultivaition of virtue. Virtue is that which

enables the particular will to conform withthe general will.


Soul=City=Cosmos

Social Threefolding


19/22

EconomyCulture

Politics

equality

freedom cooperation

Social Threefolding

thinking

feeling

willing

Soul

Society

Rudolf Steiner


Steiners social threefolding as an example of how civilization can be modeled on thethreefold structure of the soul.


20/22

Politics, like religion, is fiction.

We must remember that our political institutions wereinvented, less we remain slaves to the cycles of violence

they have initiated and maintain.

To remember the poetics of politics is to become acitizen again, empowered by the virtues of word and

song to re-legislate the world with others.

But divine poets dont just make law,they make love.


Shelly- Poets are the unacknowledged legislaters of the world.


21/22

Critchleys politics of love leads him tocharacterize Christ as the supreme creative artist,

the purest of political poets.

The truth of art...is the incarnation of theinwardness of suffering in outward form...Christ

creates himself as a sublime work of art byrendering articulate a voiceless world of

pain...Christ is the incarnation of love as an act of

imagination...the imaginative projection ofcompassion onto all creatures.

-Faith of the Faithless, p. 5


Should the Left really cede Christianity to the right wing fundamentalists? No, there areresources within this tradition that can be redeemed for a radical cosmopolitical project ofemancipatory love.


22/22

CosmopoliticalTheology

Violence, Value, and the Push for aPlanetary People


It is the religious impulse in the world which transforms the dead facts of science into theliving drama of history. -Whitehead, Modes of Thought, p. 104

cosmopolitical theology

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