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Page 1. HENT DE VRIES "Lapsus Absolu": Notes on ... Page 4. HENT DE VRIES 33 ... The apparent neutrality of this reference (neither an ap-probation nor a critique) deserves a patient and original treatment that we cannot... more
Page 1. HENT DE VRIES "Lapsus Absolu": Notes on ... Page 4. HENT DE VRIES 33 ... The apparent neutrality of this reference (neither an ap-probation nor a critique) deserves a patient and original treatment that we cannot undertake here. [Aporias, 87 n. 18] ...
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... of creation. III. Boga nyet: No God Up Here Following Nancy, we ought to conclude that Heidegger ascribes to the manifest sky what Lévinas accuses him of attributing to the place (le Lieu), to the world, to the earth. It is worthwhile... more
... of creation. III. Boga nyet: No God Up Here Following Nancy, we ought to conclude that Heidegger ascribes to the manifest sky what Lévinas accuses him of attributing to the place (le Lieu), to the world, to the earth. It is worthwhile ...
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Research Interests: Philosophy and Humanities
Der Philosoph Hent de Vries untersucht das Verhältnis von Technik und Religion in Benjamins Text Rastelli erzählt. Im Zentrum der Interpretation steht die Erfahrung des Wunders, die Benjamin häufig in einen Zusammenhang mit technischen... more
Der Philosoph Hent de Vries untersucht das Verhältnis von Technik und Religion in Benjamins Text Rastelli erzählt. Im Zentrum der Interpretation steht die Erfahrung des Wunders, die Benjamin häufig in einen Zusammenhang mit technischen Apparaturen bringt. Rastelli erzählt behandelt das Verhältnis von Religion und Materialismus mit erzählerischen Mitteln. Die Unmöglichkeit, die Entstehung des Wunders und das Wunder selbst zu erklären, steht ihm zufolge im Zentrum von Benjamins Überzeugung, dass Religion und Materialismus sich nicht ausschließen müssen. Im Gegenteil. Vielmehr steht die Unauflösbarkeit des Wunders bei Benjamin paradigmatisch für die moderne Erfahrung von Religion, die keine Antworten mehr gibt, sondern neue Fragen aufwirft.
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Abstract This article discusses the remarkable conversation between Ernst Bloch and Theodor W. Adorno regarding the relationship between utopia and death. It unpacks the antinomy of death and analyzes the motif of an ever diminishing –... more
Abstract This article discusses the remarkable conversation between Ernst Bloch and Theodor W. Adorno regarding the relationship between utopia and death. It unpacks the antinomy of death and analyzes the motif of an ever diminishing – and, hence, minimally theological – messianic hope in light of the no less theological trope of the restitution or redemption of all things, whose maximal effect ties a shared profound metaphysical intuition with a deeply pragmatic effect or impetus. This said, Bloch always remained a Schellingian Marxist, whereas Adorno ended up as Platonist of the non-identical. This is where their common path parts ways.
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Research Interests: Philosophy and Europe
Preface Publications of Burcht Pranger Contributors Part 1: Literary Imagination 1. "Movesi un vecchierel canuto et bianco...": Notes on a Sonnet of Petrarch, Peter Cramer 2. Moments of Indecision, Sovereign Possibilities: Notes... more
Preface Publications of Burcht Pranger Contributors Part 1: Literary Imagination 1. "Movesi un vecchierel canuto et bianco...": Notes on a Sonnet of Petrarch, Peter Cramer 2. Moments of Indecision, Sovereign Possibilities: Notes on the Tableau Vivant, Frans-Willem Korsten 3. History and the Vertical Canon: Calvin's Institutes and Beckett, Ernst van den Hemel 4. Christ's Case and John Donne, "Seeing through his wounds": The Stigma of Martyrdom Transfigured, Anselm Haverkamp 5. Playing with History: The Satirical Portrayal of the Medieval Papacy on an Eighteenth-Century Deck of Playing Cards, Joke Spaans 6. From East to West: Jansenists, Orientalists, and the Eucharistic Controversy, Alastair Hamilton 7. Labouring in Reason's Vineyard: Voltaire and the Allegory of Enlightenment, Madeleine Kasten Part 2: The Canon 8. The Search for the Canon and the Problem of Body and Soul, Piet de Rooy 9. Music at the Limits: Edward Said's Musical Elaborations, Rok...
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... Review 10 (1987): 73-130; id., Legislations: The Politics of Deconstruction (London: Verso, 1994), 11-60; and Richard Beardsworth, Derrida and ... human-istic scholarship kept my feet firmly on the ground; with Karin de Boer, Peter... more
... Review 10 (1987): 73-130; id., Legislations: The Politics of Deconstruction (London: Verso, 1994), 11-60; and Richard Beardsworth, Derrida and ... human-istic scholarship kept my feet firmly on the ground; with Karin de Boer, Peter Dreyer, Paola Marrati, Beate Roessler, Jenny ...
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In May 1916, Walter Benjamin, in response to Martin Buber's request for a contribution to the journal Der Jude, wrote that the spirit of Jewish tradition was one of the most important and persistent themes in his thought.'... more
In May 1916, Walter Benjamin, in response to Martin Buber's request for a contribution to the journal Der Jude, wrote that the spirit of Jewish tradition was one of the most important and persistent themes in his thought.' Benjamin had met Buber earlier in 1914 when he had invited him to give a lecture for the 'Freie Studentenschaft' in Berlin, but his relation to him had from the very start been marked by a certain reservation which became even more evident after the outbreak of the war. It must have come as
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This article revisits the original meaning of “spiritual” as distinct from “intellectual” experience in Theodor W. Adorno’s late work. It does so through the implicitly Hegelian motifs in Wassily Kandinsky’s manifesto “On the Spiritual in... more
This article revisits the original meaning of “spiritual” as distinct from “intellectual” experience in Theodor W. Adorno’s late work. It does so through the implicitly Hegelian motifs in Wassily Kandinsky’s manifesto “On the Spiritual in Art,” a text that Adorno engages in passing in his Aesthetic Theory and that was, in turn, deeply influenced by the thought of Kandinsky’s nephew Alexandre Kojève, who also wrote an essay on his uncle’s paintings. This genealogy of motifs is of more than mere historical and anecdotal significance. At stake is nothing less than an accurate understanding of “spiritual experience [geistige Erfahrung]” as a more than merely theoretical matrix for what Adorno, in Negative Dialectics and the lecture courses, calls his materials studies. Rather than indicating largely esoteric or theosophical elements in Kandinsky’s influence on modernist aesthetic discourse, “spiritual experience,” in part read through the eyes of Kojève and, via him, Vladimir Soloviev, ...
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Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do... more
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. (I Corinthians 9:24–27)
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In the Book of Acts, Paul is recorded as being struck by the unchecked idolatry in the streets of Athens: “Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spiirt was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry” (Acts... more
In the Book of Acts, Paul is recorded as being struck by the unchecked idolatry in the streets of Athens: “Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spiirt was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry” (Acts 17:16). Paul not only disputed with those in the synagogue; he also took to the streets, contending for the faith in the market. As ancient Athens was a place of great learning, Paul found himself arguing with the philosophers: “Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoics, encountered And some said, What will this babbler say? him. others some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection” (Acts 17:18). Stoicism taught, as Paul did too, that carnal desires are empty. Both are agreed that the transcendental egoism of lust is to be avoided. When, then, separates their respective doctrines? In the face of life’s ephemerality and incompletion, Paul highlights the hope of the Resurrection as what alone can redeem time from despair. It frees us from having to live under the shadow of the grave. Hope in the Resurrection alone lays the basis for a life of genuine meaning and hence free from anxiety and torment. In a secular age where it has become so common to place our hopes for satisfaction in the finite things of time—an education, a career, a family, a comfortable retirement—hope for the Resurrection lends an unparalleled exigency to time. To be truly human, this chapter suggests, is therefore to embrace the desire for meaning—and hence, it is to live for eternal life, not only life in the time that leads to death. Dutch vanitas, particularly those of van Steenwyck and van Utrecht, are focal pieces.
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IT SHOULD BY NOW BE CLEAR THAT THE SCHOLARLY STAKES IN discussing religion historically and system atically are m uch higher than those o f m ere im passive, intellectual interest. Even “m ethod ological atheism ” and “ascesis”—two well... more
IT SHOULD BY NOW BE CLEAR THAT THE SCHOLARLY STAKES IN discussing religion historically and system atically are m uch higher than those o f m ere im passive, intellectual interest. Even “m ethod ological atheism ” and “ascesis”—two well known provisos m ade by nonconfessional, nondenom inational, nonsectarian inquiries into religion that espouse not so m uch value-free but rather differently valued normative perspectives o f their own—clearly do not suffice to suppress or contain the passion the subject o f religion provokes and, perhaps, deserves. Modern states, their functionaries, and enlightened citizens have begun to take notice and express not ju st concern but also genuine curi osity, informing themselves more thoroughly about the cultural pres ence and political force o f the phenomenon o f “public”—or, as I would prefer to say, “global”—religion in the contem porary world. While many stress its perils far more than its promises, they are convinced— on either side o f this som ewhat artificial divide (artificial, since one could hardly separate such perils from their prom ises and the very conceptual and practical possibilities for which both stand)—that the phenomenon in question can no longer leave us indifferent, not least because it is unlikely to disappear from our expanding and increasingly flattening—worldwide, “global”— horizon anytime soon.
ABSTRACT
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Research Interests: Philosophy and pardes
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This chapter offers the example of a philosophy that began with Jacques Derrida, the genesis and structure of whose overall thinking, writing, and interpretative praxis it reviews. Derrida, who has played an influential role as a... more
This chapter offers the example of a philosophy that began with Jacques Derrida, the genesis and structure of whose overall thinking, writing, and interpretative praxis it reviews. Derrida, who has played an influential role as a groundbreaking thinker, speaks of an unconditional affirmation, an absolute performative, whose contours are not established. The neologism mondialatinisation captures the old-new and new-old taken as a total social phenomenon and one that is “at the same time hegemonic and finite, ultra-powerful and in the process of exhausting itself.” Derrida determines that if religion was ever dead and overcome, in its resurrected form it is much less localizable and predictable than ever before, most manifestly in the “cyberspatialized or cyberspaced wars of religion” or “war of religions.” Religion, the political religions, and religious wars and terrorisms in the contemporary world resist their very own demise or rumors thereof.
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An earlier version of this work was published in a German-language edition as Theologie im pianissimo: Zur Aktualitat der Denkfiguren Adornos und Levinas' (Kampen, Neth.: JH Kok, 1989). © 2005 The Johns Hopkins University Press All... more
An earlier version of this work was published in a German-language edition as Theologie im pianissimo: Zur Aktualitat der Denkfiguren Adornos und Levinas' (Kampen, Neth.: JH Kok, 1989). © 2005 The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published 2005 ...
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... yet a different kind of resource that would allow us to answer these questions in strictlydiscursive—philosophical no ... a project that can be understood only in the singular through the image of reinhabiting the space ... As Marx... more
... yet a different kind of resource that would allow us to answer these questions in strictlydiscursive—philosophical no ... a project that can be understood only in the singular through the image of reinhabiting the space ... As Marx continues, “emancipation” consists of the “formation . . . ...