Intensities: Philosophy, Religion and the Affirmation of Life

198 Pages·2012·1.26 MB·English

by  Katharine Sarah Moody & Steven Shakespeare

Intensities
Philosophy, Religion and the Affirmation of Life
Edited by
Katharine Sarah Moody
Steven Shakespeare
IntensItIes
IntensItIes: Contemporary ContInental
phIlosophy of relIgIon
series editors:
patrice haynes and steven shakespeare,
both at liverpool hope University, UK
this series sits at the forefront of contemporary developments in Continental
philosophy of religion, engaging particularly with radical reinterpretations and
applications of the Continental canon from Kant to Derrida and beyond but also
with significant departures from that tradition. A key area of focus is the emergence
of new realist and materialist schools of thought whose potential contribution to
philosophy of religion is at an early stage. Rooted in a vibrant tradition of thinking
about religion, whilst positioning itself at the cutting edge of emerging agendas,
this series has a clear focus on Continental and post-Continental philosophy of
religion and complements ashgate’s British society for philosophy of religion
series with its more analytic approach.
other titles in the series:
Re-visioning Gender in Philosophy of Religion
Reason, Love and Epistemic Locatedness
pamela sue anderson
Intensities
Philosophy, Religion and the Affirmation of Life
Edited by
KatharIne sarah mooDy
steven shaKespeare
© Katharine sarah moody, steven shakespeare and the contributors 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Katharine sarah moody and steven shakespeare have asserted their right under the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
published by
ashgate publishing limited ashgate publishing Company
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Intensities : philosophy, religion and the affirmation of life.
1. Life. 2. Life – Religious aspects.
I. Shakespeare, Steven, 1968– II. Moody, Katharine Sarah.
128–dc23
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Intensities : philosophy, religion, and the affirmation of life / edited by Steven Shakespeare
and Katharine Sarah Moody.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-4094-4328-5 (hardcover)—ISBN 978-1-4094-4329-2 (pbk.)—
ISBN 978-1-4094-4330-8 (ebook) 1. Life. 2. Meaning (Philosophy) 3. Spirituality.
I. Shakespeare, Steven, 1968– II. Moody, Katharine Sarah.
BD431.I58 2012
128—dc23
2012018434
ISBN 9781409443285 (hbk)
ISBN 9781409443292 (pbk)
ISBN 9781409443308 (ebk – PDF)
ISBN 9781409472292 (ebk – ePUB)
III
printed and bound in great Britain by the
MPG Books Group, UK.
Contents
Notes on Contributors vii
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction: Irritating Life 1
Katharine Sarah Moody and Steven Shakespeare
Section one: the PoliticS of life
1 Believing in This Life: French Philosophy after Beauvoir 21
Pamela Sue Anderson
2 Agamben, Girard and the Life that Does Not Live 39
Brian Sudlow
3 Entangled Fidelities: Reassembling the Human 53
John Reader
4 Grace Jantzen: Violence, Natality and the Social 67
Alison Martin
Section two: life and the limitS of thinking
5 Bodies without Flesh: Overcoming the Soft Gnosticism of
Incarnational Theology 79
John D. Caputo
6 From World to Life: Wittgenstein’s Social Vitalism and the
Possibility of Philosophy 95
Neil Turnbull
7 ‘A Weariness of the Flesh’: Towards a Theology of Boredom
and Fatigue 117
Kenneth Jason Wardley
vi Intensities
Section three: life and SPirituality
8 The Spirituality of Human Life 139
Lorenz Moises J. Festin
9 Two Philosophies of Life 153
Don Cupitt
10 Thinking and Life: On Philosophy as a Spiritual Exercise 165
Philip Goodchild
Afterword 177
Katharine Sarah Moody and Steven Shakespeare
Index 179
Notes on Contributors
Pamela Sue Anderson is Reader in Philosophy of Religion, University of Oxford,
and Fellow in Philosophy, Regent’s Park College, Oxford. Anderson has published
in Continental philosophy, and especially on Kant, Ricoeur and Michèle Le
Doeuff. Her books include Ricoeur and Kant (Scholars Press, 1993), A Feminist
Philosophy of Religion: The Rationality and Myths of Religious Belief (Blackwell,
1998), Feminist Philosophy of Religion, co-edited with Beverley Clack (Routledge,
2004), New Topics in Feminist Philosophy of Religion (Springer Press, 2010),
Re-visioning Gender in Philosophy of Religion: Reason, Love and Epistemic
Locatedness (forthcoming 2012) and Kant and Theology, co-authored with Jordan
Bell (Continuum, 2010).
John D. Caputo is the Thomas J. Watson Professor Emeritus of Religion at
Syracuse University and the David R. Cook Professor Emeritus of Philosophy
at Villanova. His latest book, The Insistence of God: A Theology of ‘Perhaps’,
which will appear in 2013, is a sequel to The Weakness of God: A Theology of
the Event (Indiana University Press, 2006). He is also the author of What Would
Jesus Deconstruct? The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church (Baker
Academic, 2007), On Religion (Routledge, 2001) and The Prayers and Tears of
Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Indiana University Press, 1997).
Don Cupitt is Life Fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge and the author of
many books, including Taking Leave of God (SCM Press, 1980), The Sea of Faith
(3rd edn, SCM Press, 2003 [1984]), The Long Legged Fly (SCM Press, 1987),
The Last Philosophy (SCM Press, 1995), Philosophy’s Own Religion (SCM Press,
2000), Life, Life (Polebridge, 2003) and The Fountain: A Secular Theology (SCM
Press, 2010).
Lorenz Moises J. Festin is a priest of the Archdiocese of Manila. He earned his
doctorate degree in philosophy in 1998 from the Pontifica Università Gregoriana
in Rome, Italy. He is currently the dean of the San Carlos Seminary, College of
Philosophy in Makati, Philippines. He is also an associate professor at De La Salle
University in Manila, where he teaches philosophy and theology.
Philip Goodchild is Professor of Religion and Philosophy in the Department of
Theology and Religious Studies, University of Nottingham, UK. He is the author
of Gilles Deleuze and the Question of Philosophy (Fairleigh Dickinson University
Press, 1996), Deleuze and Guattari: An Introduction to the Politics of Desire
viii Intensities
(Sage, 1996), Capitalism and Religion: The Price of Piety (Routledge, 2002) and
The Theology of Money (Duke University Press, 2007). He is also currently a
Senior Fellow of the Rethinking Capitalism Initiative, University of California
Santa Cruz.
Alison Martin is Senior Lecturer in French Language at Nottingham Trent
University. Her previous publications include Luce Irigaray and the Question
of the Divine (Maney, 2000) and ‘Beauvoir and the Transcendence of Natality’,
in Pamela Sue Anderson (ed.), New Topics in Feminist Philosophy of Religion:
Contestations and Transcendence Incarnate (Springer, 2010), pp. 249–60.
Katharine Sarah Moody (PhD Lancaster University 2010) is the author of Truth as
Event: Radical Theology and Emerging Christianity (forthcoming Ashgate, 2013).
Other publications on deconstruction, materialism and contemporary Christianity
include ‘Retrospective Speculative Philosophy: Looking for Traces of Žižek’s
Communist Collective in Emerging Christian Praxis’, Political Theology 13/2
(2012): 182–98 and ‘Between Deconstruction and Speculation: John D. Caputo
and A/Theological Materialism’, in Clayton Crockett, B. Keith Putt and Jeffrey W.
Robbins (eds), The Future of Continental Philosophy of Religion (forthcoming).
John Reader (PhD University of Wales, Bangor) is Rector of the Ironstone Benefice
in the Diocese of Oxford and a Senior Honorary Research Fellow with the William
Temple Foundation (University of Chester, UK). His books include Reconstructing
Practical Theology (Ashgate, 2008), Encountering the New Theological Space co-
edited with Chris Baker (Ashgate, 2009), Christianity and the New Social
Order with John Atherton and Chris Baker (SPCK, 2011), Theological Reflection
for Human Flourishing with Helen Cameron, Victoria Slater and Chris Rowland
(SCM Press, 2012) and Heteropia: Alternative Pathways to Social Justice with
Caroline Baillie and Jens Kabo (Zero Books, 2012).
Steven Shakespeare is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Liverpool Hope
University and co-facilitator of the Association for Continental Philosophy of
Religion. His published work includes Kierkegaard, Language and the Reality of
God (Ashgate, 2001), Radical Orthodoxy: A Critical Introduction (SPCK, 2007),
Derrida and Theology (Continuum, 2009) and Beyond Human: From Animality
to Transhumanism, co-edited with Claire Molloy and Charlie Blake (Continuum,
2011).
Brian Sudlow is Lecturer in French with Translation Studies at Aston University,
Birmingham. He is the author of Catholic Literature and Secularisation in France
and England 1880–1914 (Manchester University Press, 2011) and is keenly
interested in the comparative and interpretative uses of René Girard’s mimetic
theory.
Notes on Contributors ix
Neil Turnbull is currently Principal Lecturer in Philosophy at Nottingham Trent
University. He was awarded his PhD in 2001 and has since published on a number
of philosophical issues in books and academic journals such as Theory, Culture
and Society, Telos, Space and Culture, and New Formations.
Kenneth Jason Wardley is a librarian at the University of Edinburgh, where he
is also a doctoral researcher in the School of Divinity, New College. His research
interests are in Continental philosophy of religion, phenomenology and theological
anthropology. He has published articles on metaphysics, thanatology, liturgy and
transcendence.