Description
Book SynopsisA reassertion o fthe importance of theology to political action that goes beyond both liberal democratic theory and neoconservatism.
Trade Review"Underlying all the very varied essays in this volume is a set of issues about how we understand human action. And what the essays have in common, I believe, is a conviction that the fundamental requirement of a politics worth the name is that we have an account of human action that decisively marks its distance from assumptions about action as the successful assertion of will. If there is no hinterland to human acting except the contest of private and momentary desire, meaningful action is successful action, an event in which a particular will has imprinted its agenda on the ‘external’ world. Or, in plainer terms, meaning is power . . . and any discourse of justice is illusory."--Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, from the introduction
“
Theology and the Political is a helpful book because it gathers in one volume a representative sample of very serious theologians. . . .” -- Stephen H. Webb * First Things *
“[A] collection of this caliber on such a timely subject is to be welcomed.” -- D. W. Congdon * Princeton Theological Review *
“[A] patient reader will be rewarded with some intriguing perspectives and insights that take seriously the difficult challenge confronting political action in the context of global capitalism.” -- Christopher Craig Brittain * Dalhousie Review *
“[T]hat there is no majority discourse in the book is to the credit of the editors for it has increased the depth and variance of the analyses presented, allowing the book to become more fully a ‘debate.’ Though this format often leads the reader to feel as if the book is somewhat schizophrenic, this is ultimately its greatest strength and precisely why it is worth reading.” -- Anthony Paul Smith * Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory *
“The new debate referenced in this rich, lengthy, and important collection is a desperately urgent debate. . . . [T]he work itself functions as a symphony, building between and among chapters to orchestrate a complex and fruitful investigation of some of the most crucial theoretical issues we face in our contemporary world and includes some of the most influential contemporary philosophers and theologians working today.” -- Clayton Crockett * Journal of the American Academy of Religion *
“This book is another ‘deliberate kick against the tide of the times.’” -- Stephen Webb * Insights *
“This volume is . . . . a welcome and much-needed wake-up call— if not a call to arms, then no less radically because it is a scandal to the postmodern mind, at least a call to truth and its consequences.” -- Jeffrey W. Robbins * Political Theology *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments xi
Introduction / Rowan Williams 1
Part I. Revolution and Theological Difference
Tragedy and Revolution / Terry Eagleton 7
Metanoia: The Theological Praxis of Revolution / Creston Davis and Patrick Aaron Riches 22
The “Thrilling Romance of Orthodoxy” / Slavoj Zizek 52
Nothing is Something Must Be: Lacan and Creation from No One / Conor Cunningham 72
Revelation and Revolution / Regina Mara Schwartz 102
Part 2. Ontology, Capital, and Kingdom
Capital and Kingdom: An Eschatological Ontology / Philip Goodchild 127
Neither Servility nor Sovereignty: Between Metaphysics and Politics / William Desmond 153
Of Chrematology: Joyce and Money / Simon Chritchley and Tom McCarthy 183
Only Jesus Saves: Toward a Theopolitical Ontology of Judgment / Daniel M. Bell Jr. 200
Part 3. Infinite Desire and the Political Subject
The Political Subject and Absolute Immanence / Antonio Negri 231
Rewriting the Ontological Script of Liberation: On the Question of Finding a New Kind of Political Subject /
Kenneth Surin 240
Ecclesia: The Art of the Virtual / Anthony Baker and Rocco Gangle 267
The Univocalist Mode of Production / Catherine Pickstock 281
Part 4. Reenchanting the Political beyond Ontotheology
The Unbearable Withness of Being: On the Essentialist Blind Spot of Anit-ontotheology / Mary-Jane Rubenstein 340
“To Cut Too Deeply and Not Enough”: Violence and the Incorporeal / Elanor Kaufman 350
The Two Sources of the “Theological Machine:: Jacques Derrida and Henri Bergson on Religion, Technicity, War, and Terror / Hent de Vries 366
Part 5. Theological Materialism
Materialism and Transcendence / John Milbank 393
Truth and Peace: Theology and the Body Politic in Augustine and Hobbes / Karl Hefty 427
The Politics of the Eye: Toward a Theological Materialism / Phillip Blond 439
Notes on Contributors 463
Index 467
