This page is an archive from the previous version of The Row Boat, which is why it doesn't look and work the same as the current version. However, these archives are fully functional and integrated with the new system.

Why does this site permit advertising?
Click here to discuss.

The Row Boat

"Had we but world enough, and time..." *

After After God

5/15/2007 18:45:38

The last few days have been very invigorating. Mark C. Taylor, the philosopher of religion from Williams College (now starting as chair of Columbia's religion department), came to Santa Barbara for a seminar and a lecture. He is the career-long teacher of one of my teachers, Tom A. Carlson, and the connection between them is clear both in intellectual style and fashion sense. I followed Taylor around as much as I could and learned a lot by doing so. This, I kept thinking, is the conversation I want to be apart of. This is important and beautiful stuff. (If you're interested, my paper "Hegel's Proof and the Experience of God" depends heavily on one of his early essays.)

Taylor is an interesting guy who knows a lot of interesting people. Over the course of his career he has developed relationships with leading artists, businessers, scientists, and thinkers, and through them he has tried to be a useful force in putting ideas into action toward a better world. Many of these connections have come about through former students, many of whom he maintains strong connections with. As I learn to be a kind of philosopher myself, he seems to me an important role model for how to be a philosopher for the better, for the greater good.

In advance of his visit, several of us got the chance to read copies of the advance proofs of Taylor's upcoming book due in September, After God. (The title is a double entendre; "after" means both "subsequent to" and "in pursuit of.") It is a real career-spanning magnum opus for him, collecting and summarizing the telos of his far-flung interests over the years. I share, incidentally, virtually all of them. The book begins with a theory of religion as a complex adaptive system. The next several chapters outline a history of ideas meta-narrative of modernity, beginning from Luther and extending his logic through into secular modernity, the death of God, the rise of autonomous science and art, and the invention of neofundamentalism. Toward the end of this he gives a sophistocated and lively account of the interrelations of information networks, markets, and thought in modern times. The final two chapters are post-theological theology, titled "Religion without God" and "Ethics without Absolutes." The latter, in particular is a striking account of the urgency of water in the age of global warming. Its effect is to insist on the need for a hermeneutic of "relationalism" over and against fundamentalism or crass relativism. Even if there is no transcendent divine judge, it suggests, a tremendous ethical imperative can be found in the very fact of our own relatedness.

When the book comes out, I definitely recommend it. Since reading it and spending time with Taylor, I have been left with a lot to think about. My notes from the seminar with him can be seen here.

re:After After God - 5/16/2007 20:56:45
Posted by BT

Huh. It's not fair of me to post this, since I haven't read much of Mark C. Taylor carefully, but I'm always suspicious of the post-, after-God talk (even with n+1 entendres!). So far whenever I've followed through on those sorts of claims they always end up being a function of the writer depending on bad starting presuppositions (such as relying on whatever loaded notion of "God" is presumed), rather than anything really post- or after per se. (That is, if one just starts from a broader, more nuanced or intricate notion of "God," which acknowledges paradox from the beginning, or the mystery of transcendence and immanence interacting from the beginning, then it usually turns out one doesn't need to be post- or after *that* God, just the "God" one was presupposing, etc.) So to me it all ends up seeming rather gimmicky, going back to Heidegger, although not surprising (given, of course, how many people do push a "God" one *would* like to, or should, put behind!).

Anyhow, I'm all for relatedness anyway, but I've never understood why one would need to ground relatedness in *either* theism or atheism per se, since relatedness exists with or without the extra "coup de grāce" of a transcendent totality to boot. So I'm sort of sympathetic to the way J.-L. Nancy writes about "absentheism" (vs. the atheism/theism dichotomy), although also don't think the more nuanced senses of "traditional theism," or panentheism, get enough credit for the paradoxes they can potentially *already* acknowledge...

The one sentence version would be: I've never understood why relatedness requires all the post- or after-ness claims; it seems to me those claims are just a function of the starting presuppositions, and ultimately are bound to be trapped by them.

re:After After God - 5/17/2007 01:19:07
Posted by nathan

This is a good point, as always! Taylor admits explicitly, assumes rather, the basically Heideggerian metaphysics (or lack thereof). To him, I suspect, the concept of God now feels (and yes, I think it does come down to a feeling really, and a pretty social agreement) unnecessary. That said, he is incredibly concerned with the religiosity that drove and drives people to God and assumes that that basic religiosity still needs to be satisfied. This relatedness is part of how to do that, I guess. And it also means that the history of religious thought is really relevant, for future directions will be in essential continuity with it.

The way you phrase it, there's no reason God needs to be eliminated for relatedness. The way he understands it, there's no reason God needs to exist since we can still talk about relatedness. Does this seem right?

re:After After God - 5/17/2007 18:56:00
Posted by BT

The way you phrase it, there's no reason God needs to be eliminated for relatedness. The way he understands it, there's no reason God needs to exist since we can still talk about relatedness. Does this seem right?

That's the difference I guess. To me, though, there's also something especially presumptuous whenever someone makes the move from claiming God doesn't "need" to exist to a claim that a God-of-faith *doesn't* (or can't) exist. It's like someone reading a bunch of travel diaries of a far away place and concluding that not only might the destination not "need" to exist, but in fact *must not* exist at all since they admittedly haven't been there themselves. (Of course, "believers" can be just as obtuse about insisting or enforcing that others have faith, but I have no respect for that either.)

It's basically the same feeling I get when someone like Heidegger claims to speak to what Meister Eckhart must have "really" been getting at (as in: no need for taking what someone like Eckhart was talking about seriously, in full context, beyond a few paradoxical passages or terms reinterpreted within one's own framework, etc.). To me that sort of approach is in its own way just as presumptuous as fundamentalists sending anyone who disagrees with their interpretations to eternal damnation -- just a much, much more well-read instantiation of that sort of logic (to the extent that post-God talk insists on redefining/mapping a "God of faith" to its own terms instead, implicitly claiming to *more* adequately account for God that way -- since it still, in its own way, claims to speak for what's "essential" about God, but relyies upon supposedly more "restricted" notions of God in order to even distinguish itself as something supposedly more insightful). I honestly don't particularly care if anyone happens to believe in God or not, but an approach would at least need to bypass all the after-, post-, death-of-x metaphors and tropes and claims in order for me to be able to take its claims to be ethically motivated seriously.

For all those reasons, I tend to have more respect for honest atheists (since they're at least just claiming to speak from their own immediate view and experience!) than most of the post-God talk (to the extent that it lives off of the implication that it's "really" speaking about God after all, even more so than "believers" do). Although "it takes one to know one" I suppose (I used to be more enamored with Heidegger, etc.)...

re:After After God - 5/18/2007 01:57:12
Posted by nathan

What you say here is really important, I think. I especially like the metaphor of a travel diary. Perhaps a way of phrasing what he is doing (sort of what I said before): he is an atheist, from his experience, but he doesn't want to alienate that experience from that of believers. This I relate to a great deal. So: A. God doesn't exist. B. People have talked about God to express things important to them. C. I want to understand what has been important to people and how it connects to what is important to me. D. Since God never existed in the first place (A), in principle there is no reason why I can't understand people's experience of God (B-C) by translating it into my own atheistic view. E. By doing so, I recognize that my view is probably equally "theological" than that of those who believed in God.

I see your point on the ethical question, but I think it he doges it by his own insistence on the truth of his anti-metaphysics.

re:After After God - 5/19/2007 09:25:19
Posted by BT

...he is an atheist, from his experience, but he doesn't want to alienate that experience from that of believers.

My gripe is just that that would be *his* desire (not to pick on M. C. T. personally...), not necessarily the desire of believers of whatever faith that or may not need their God re-explained to them through Heidegger or whoever else. (To me it's actually just a more philosophically sophisticated version of Mormons not wanting to alienate their own experience or sense of baptism from the already-deceased!) In the case of all the post-God discourse, it's really just the presumption to still be speaking about God in any meaningful way (and usually a presumption to be speaking about God in a *more* meaningful way) that I find irritating (with some exceptions sometimes in Nancy and Agamben).

...Since God never existed in the first place (A), in principle there is no reason why I can't understand people's experience of God (B-C) by translating it into my own atheistic view. E. By doing so, I recognize that my view is probably equally "theological" than that of those who believed in God.

To me this train of thought (if M. C. T. were to use it as a defense of re-explaining a believer's God as his no-God, or vice versa) is an example of all the incredible presumptions required just in order to "not" speak of God (or to speak of a no-God), not only because it has to assume (A), but because it assumes that understanding and expression coincide, or that understanding can be achieved solely through appreciating expression. (Believers who claim to speak for what atheists must "really" think or experience run into the same problems, though.)

I see your point on the ethical question, but I think it he doges it by his own insistence on the truth of his anti-metaphysics.

Although accepting Heidegger's (or Derrida's, or whomever's) approach to metaphysics is still a choice about how to think about metaphysics, not different in principle from accepting or advocating whatever Aquinas or Whitehead might have to say. When it comes to God especially, I just don't think falling back on Heidegger ultimately holds up (especially considering all the Christian themes re-worked by H. in his own terms -- I'm just not convinced that H.'s sense of Being is more insightful than what's already worked-through in the different mystical traditions)...

re:After After God - 5/19/2007 11:52:48
Posted by nathan

I actually don't think he is trying to convince anybody (by metaphysical arguments) to get in the post-God camp. I think he is simply speaking from his own sense of the real, as you say "not different in principle" from other metaphysical options." To him, the idea of believing in the living God is not an option, so he doesn't. He is not trying to tell you that you should be "after God" also, though of course like all of us he would love it if you joined his team.

I don't think that this is a question of "falling back on Heidegger" any more than the average believer is "falling back on the ontological proof." It isn't a question of arguments. He chooses his metaphysics, I suspect, based on an intuitive belief about what is real. It is natural that you would experience disbelief about that, since you don't seem to share the same intuitive belief.

I would say that he is what you call an "honest atheist." His form of honesty is to recognize the theological roots and character of his atheism. You seem to be reading these kinds of people as being far more malicious than they might deserve.

re:After After God - 5/19/2007 22:38:09
Posted by BT

...You seem to be reading these kinds of people as being far more malicious than they might deserve.

That's probably true.

...Yet I just read M. C. T.'s NYT obituary/essay for Derrida, wherein he states, "...True believers of every stripe - Muslim, Jewish and Christian - cling to beliefs that, Mr. Derrida warns, threaten to tear apart our world," as if there is only one variety of "true believer." It's that sort of pretension (implying that Derrida's sense of undecidability/unknowability is the only or best ethical alternative/andidote to a single variety of "true belief") that I think can have (perhaps unintended) malicious effects, just as it can coming from *certain* types of "true believers" too of course, etc.

I probably do read-in more pretension than is intended, though. (Although I have to say that it's hard not to in the case of a book like _Hiding_...but you're right, it's also just a question of taste or feeling.)

Printer-friendly version

The Row Boat basks under a liberating Creative Commons license