- Wayne, PA
Jack Caputo
Syracuse University, Religion, Emeritus
- John D. Caputo, the Watson Professor of Religion Emeritus (Syracuse University) and the Cook Professor of Philosophy ... moreJohn D. Caputo, the Watson Professor of Religion Emeritus (Syracuse University) and the Cook Professor of Philosophy Emeritus (Villanova University) is a constructive theologian who works in the area of “weak” or “radical” theology. His majors works include Radical Hermeneutics (1987), The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida (1997), The Weakness of God (2006). His most recent works are Cross and Cosmos: A Theology of Difficult Glory (2019), Hermeneutics: Facts and Interpretation in the Age of Information (2018) and a second edition of On Religion (2018). The Essential Caputo (2018) a collection of his work from the early 1970s on. In Search of Radical Theology is forthcoming in 2020. He has addressed more general audiences in books like What Would Jesus Deconstruct? (2006) and Hoping against Hope (2015).edit
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I distinguish between the deep culture and the manifest culture, the relationship between the two constituting a circle, which constitutes the circulation of a radical theology of culture. The deep culture surfaces in the manifest, and... more
I distinguish between the deep culture and the manifest culture, the relationship between the two constituting a circle, which constitutes the circulation of a radical theology of culture. The deep culture surfaces in the manifest, and the manifest draws upon the depths; neither one without the other. My hypothesis is that religion is an expression of the deep culture and for that reason, religion is not accidentally violent; religion is violent in virtue of something essential to religion. Religion is playing with the fire of the concealed depths, of the unconditional, of the impossible, of the undeconstructible. Religion is the best way to save the world, but it also the best way to burn it down. It is both of these things and in virtue of the same property. This is not to say that religion is structurally violent, always and necessarily violent. It is structurally ambiguous, dangerous, on the verge of violence, whipsawing between radical violence and radical non-violence, between...
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Despite Heidegger’s constant claims to the contrary, thinking is not opposed to faith. Indeed, against his own intentions, Heidegger’s critique of onto-theo-logy, which breaks the grip of modernity, issues in a faith more radically... more
Despite Heidegger’s constant claims to the contrary, thinking is not opposed to faith. Indeed, against his own intentions, Heidegger’s critique of onto-theo-logy, which breaks the grip of modernity, issues in a faith more radically conceived. This faith is the thinking, this thinking is the faith that becomes possible in the post-secular space which Heidegger’s critique of modernity opens. Although the great medieval theologians like Augustine and Aquinas are not onto-theo-logians in a strict sense, they, along with the whole history of metaphysics, fall under its wider sense of any centered and foundational discourse. But any discourse that eludes onto-theo-logy in the wider sense finds itself embracing a faith, not reducible to belief, where thinking is a form of faith and faith is a form of thinking. Derrida’s “Circumfession,” a paradigmatic post-ontotheological discourse, is a work of prayer and a confession of faith in the open-endedness of the event, an un-programmable future ...
Research Interests: Humanities and Art
... John Caputo and Gianni Vattimo, each in their turn, stand as representative voices of these distinct, though profoundly interrelated, modes of thinking through, and thinking about, the relation of religion to society and the continued... more
... John Caputo and Gianni Vattimo, each in their turn, stand as representative voices of these distinct, though profoundly interrelated, modes of thinking through, and thinking about, the relation of religion to society and the continued viability of theological thinking. ...
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Research Interests: History, Ethics, Epistemology, Genealogy, Cognition, and 15 moreHermeneutics, Culture, Justice, Imagination, Language, German, Hebrew, Forgetting, Knowledge, Future, Memory, Grasp, Land, Jewish, and Existential
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The genuine import of Derrida’s work has become particularly plain in the last ten years or so. The result has been to complicate the relationship of Gadamer and Derrida in a wonderful way, to raise the level of the discussion up a notch,... more
The genuine import of Derrida’s work has become particularly plain in the last ten years or so. The result has been to complicate the relationship of Gadamer and Derrida in a wonderful way, to raise the level of the discussion up a notch, thereby entering two of the most important European philosophers of the 20th century into a much more interesting exchange than their ill-fated non-exchange in 1981 at the Goethe Institute in Paris would have led any of us to suspect.1 Derrida was for too long taken to be one of the ‘French followers of Nietzsche’, as Josef Simon puts it,2 someone who has let the fox of the will-to-power into the hen-house of language. However, while Nietzsche’s perspectivalism and critique of metaphysical opposites are very important for Derrida, and while Derrida worked out his early writings on language and literature in close consort with Nietzsche, it has become increasingly clear over the years that Derrida is also, perhaps even more so, a French follower of Levinas. Well, not exactly French but Algerian, and not exactly a follower, but an original and distinctive voice quite his own. It has also become clear that Derrida’s work has an ethical and political cutting edge, that it has to do with Marxism and democracy, justice, hospitality and the gift, and even with a certain religion.3 One thing that has emerged very clearly from the later writings is that both Gadamer and Derrida share an emphasis on the irreducibly ‘intersubjective’ character of language, although that is not a word that either would use in his own name. This is something they share with Levinas and on which all three differ from Heidegger. It has become increasingly clear that Derrida does not allow everything to dissolve into a play of traces but rather, like Levinas, he is interested in my responsibility for,
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I. HEIDEGGER AND MEDIEVAL MYSTICISM In the "Introduction" to his habilitation dissertation at Freiburg, The Doctrine 01 Categories and of Meaning in Duns Scotus (1916), the young Heidegger praised the "objective"... more
I. HEIDEGGER AND MEDIEVAL MYSTICISM In the "Introduction" to his habilitation dissertation at Freiburg, The Doctrine 01 Categories and of Meaning in Duns Scotus (1916), the young Heidegger praised the "objective" orientation of medieval philosophy: "Scholastic psychology, precisely inasmuch as it is not focussed upon the dynamic and flowing reality of the psychical remains in its fundamental problems oriented towards the objective and noematic, a circumstance which greatly favors setting one's sight on the phenomenon of intenfionality" (DS, 15). 1 While modern philosophy is characterized by a keen sense of subjective experience, the Scholastic thinker is concerned primarily with the object of knowledge, with "being." The Scholastic, he says, is typified by an "absolute surrender" to the "content" of knowledge (DS, 7). In a sentence which is prophetic in the light of what he would later call the "subject matter of thinking" (die Sache des Denkens) Heidegger observes: "The value of the subject matter [Sache] (object) dominates over the value of the self (subject)" (DS, 7). Because thinking "tends into" (intendere) being, the medievals spoke of the "intentional" character of knowledge. Thus the Scholastics' neglect of subjective experience at least kept them free of the "unphilos-
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Page 1. MODERNITY AND JAMES L. MARSH j»t)N d (yipi3J Page 2. Page 3. MODERNITY AND ITS DISCONTENTS "This On© ZOOB-55J-TC5P Page 4. Page 5. MODERNITY AND ITS DISCONTENTS edited by James L. Marsh ...
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... It imagines impossible bodies. ... The risen body is a figure of an unfigurable future, of impossiblebodies, of the event of the future, of the future of the event, of bodies still unrisen, of events still unsaid. Notes. notes. 1 See... more
... It imagines impossible bodies. ... The risen body is a figure of an unfigurable future, of impossiblebodies, of the event of the future, of the future of the event, of bodies still unrisen, of events still unsaid. Notes. notes. 1 See Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, eds. and trans. ...
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... John Caputo and Gianni Vattimo, each in their turn, stand as representative voices of these distinct, though profoundly interrelated, modes of thinking through, and thinking about, the relation of religion to society and the continued... more
... John Caputo and Gianni Vattimo, each in their turn, stand as representative voices of these distinct, though profoundly interrelated, modes of thinking through, and thinking about, the relation of religion to society and the continued viability of theological thinking. ...
... Kearney seeks to reinterpret the possible as eschatological possebeyond, otherwise than, or more than the impossibleclose to Kierkegaard's ''passion for ... we have the long tradition of speaking of God as three... more
... Kearney seeks to reinterpret the possible as eschatological possebeyond, otherwise than, or more than the impossibleclose to Kierkegaard's ''passion for ... we have the long tradition of speaking of God as three persons (from the Latin, persona) or three hypostases (from the ...
... conflict of interpretations arises from the ambiguity of this conversation, from the difficulty we have in making out just what the dead are saying, which I will relate to what Derrida calls the absolute "secret." Whence the... more
... conflict of interpretations arises from the ambiguity of this conversation, from the difficulty we have in making out just what the dead are saying, which I will relate to what Derrida calls the absolute "secret." Whence the Derridean idea that only as "hauntology" is hermeneutics ...
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Augustine of Hippo was a philosopher as well as theologian, bishop and saint. He aimed to practice philosophy not simply as an academic discipline but as a love for divine wisdom pervading everything in his life and work. To inquire into... more
Augustine of Hippo was a philosopher as well as theologian, bishop and saint. He aimed to practice philosophy not simply as an academic discipline but as a love for divine wisdom pervading everything in his life and work. To inquire into Augustine and philosophy is thus to get to the heart of his concerns as a Christian writer and uncover some of the reasons for his vast influence on Western thought. This volume, containing essays by leading Augustine scholars, includes a variety of inquiries into Augustine's philosophy in theory and practice, ...
... JACQUES DERRIDA Edited with a Commentary by ... Deconstruction in a nutshell : a conversation with Jacques Derrida /edited with a commentary by John D. Caputo. ...
Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida: these are not merely the names of three authors, but of three matters for thought, of three ways beyond metaphysics, three transgressions. I want to offer here a reflection, first, upon the dynamics of... more
Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida: these are not merely the names of three authors, but of three matters for thought, of three ways beyond metaphysics, three transgressions. I want to offer here a reflection, first, upon the dynamics of these transgressions—how each conceives metaphysics and where each makes its move against metaphysics—and, then, upon the relationships of the three to one another, on the interplay of their transgressive practices.
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... 18, pp. 59-73 Langue / Language. Anglais Editeur / Publisher. Brill, Leiden, PAYS-BAS (1971) (Revue) Mots-clés anglais / English Keywords. Ethics. ; Deconstruction. ; Derrida, J. ; History of philosophy. ; Mots-clés français / French... more
... 18, pp. 59-73 Langue / Language. Anglais Editeur / Publisher. Brill, Leiden, PAYS-BAS (1971) (Revue) Mots-clés anglais / English Keywords. Ethics. ; Deconstruction. ; Derrida, J. ; History of philosophy. ; Mots-clés français / French Keywords. Ethique. ; Déconstruction. ; Derrida, J ...
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Page 1. Man and World 15:343-367 (1982] 0025-1534/82/15/0343-25 $00.15/0 Q1982, Martinus Nifhoff Publishers, The Hague. Printed in the Netherlands HERMENEUTICS AS THE RECOVERY OF MAN JOHN D. CAPUTO Villanova University ...
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... Titre du document / Document title. WHO IS DERRIDA'S ZARATHUSTRA? OF FRATERNITY, FRIENDSHIP, AND A DEMOCRACY TO COME. Auteur(s) / Author(s). CAPUTO JD ; Revue / Journal Title. Research in phenomenology ISSN 0085-5553 Source /... more
... Titre du document / Document title. WHO IS DERRIDA'S ZARATHUSTRA? OF FRATERNITY, FRIENDSHIP, AND A DEMOCRACY TO COME. Auteur(s) / Author(s). CAPUTO JD ; Revue / Journal Title. Research in phenomenology ISSN 0085-5553 Source / Source. 1999, vol. ...
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Foreword of John D. Caputo to Cruz-Villalobos, L. (2015). Theological Poetry. Santiago de Chile: Hebel. Like Chapter in: Caputo, J. D. (2019). Cross and Cosmos: A Theology of Difficult Glory. Indiana: Indiana University Press (Chap.... more
Foreword of John D. Caputo to Cruz-Villalobos, L. (2015). Theological Poetry. Santiago de Chile: Hebel.
Like Chapter in:
Caputo, J. D. (2019). Cross and Cosmos: A Theology of Difficult Glory. Indiana: Indiana University Press (Chap. 6).
Caputo, J. D. (2018). Theology, Poetry and Theopoetry. In: R. Kearney & M. Clemente (Eds.). The Art of Anatheism (Chap. 3). London: Rowman & Littlefield.
Like Chapter in:
Caputo, J. D. (2019). Cross and Cosmos: A Theology of Difficult Glory. Indiana: Indiana University Press (Chap. 6).
Caputo, J. D. (2018). Theology, Poetry and Theopoetry. In: R. Kearney & M. Clemente (Eds.). The Art of Anatheism (Chap. 3). London: Rowman & Littlefield.
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Prólogo de John D. Caputo para Cruz-Villalobos, Luis (2015). Poesía Teológica. Santiago de Chile: Hebel.