Comments on: A case of heteronomous thinking http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2008/01/19/a-case-of-heteronomous-thinking/ Secularism, religion, and the public sphere Fri, 12 Mar 2010 21:27:55 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: John Whitelaw http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2008/01/19/a-case-of-heteronomous-thinking/comment-page-1/#comment-439 John Whitelaw Sun, 20 Jan 2008 16:47:05 +0000 http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2008/01/19/a-case-of-heteronomous-thinking/#comment-439 Very erudite of you to say so. Turning, however, to the gist of what Gourgouris is trying to say: I tried translating this into English, and here's what I got: (1) Taylor says we need the transcendent, but all he's really talking about is acceptance of the pre-existing belief in the christian god. His affirmation of this is arbitrary ("political"); and unmotivated in terms of his own cultural narrative (he ignores Castoriades who shows the dialectic of "the social-imaginary" with "the society" that "institutes" it and "is instituted by it"). (2) Rather than making us accept "the transcendent" off the shelf in this way, what a book like Taylor's inadvertently calls our attention to is what's really going on (or should or could be going on?) in history, and that is transcendence as radical change, where the "other" comes about in "the very process/practice of transformation [by which he means the exercise] of one's radical capacity to imagine and enact oneself and one's world in a way heretofore unimaginable". Rather than allowing the substantive point to be buried in the latest jargon, I think it would be a good idea to highlight it in simple terms, and that for two reasons: In practical terms, it seems clear that Taylor reflects a trend. He shares with candidate Huckabee an almost saintly character ("irenic", Bellah calls him), coupled with a methodology that threads the line "between pulpit and podium" (as the New York Times put it on Saturday). In other words, this whole scheme of nice people getting us directly from here to the "transcendent" without paying attention to the rest of the world is really a widespread temptation that needs to be confronted for practical reasons. And secondly, as a scholarly issue, it would be wrong to think that this idea of change ("in a way heretofore unimaginable" is something that was just thought of yesterday. Very erudite of you to say so. Turning, however, to the gist of what Gourgouris is trying to say:

I tried translating this into English, and here’s what I got:

(1) Taylor says we need the transcendent, but all he’s really talking about is acceptance of the pre-existing belief in the christian god. His affirmation of this is arbitrary (“political”); and unmotivated in terms of his own cultural narrative (he ignores Castoriades who shows the dialectic of “the social-imaginary” with “the society” that “institutes” it and “is instituted by it”).

(2) Rather than making us accept “the transcendent” off the shelf in this way, what a book like Taylor’s inadvertently calls our attention to is what’s really going on (or should or could be going on?) in history, and that is transcendence as radical change, where the “other” comes about in “the very process/practice of transformation [by which he means the exercise] of one’s radical capacity to imagine and enact oneself and one’s world in a way heretofore unimaginable”.

Rather than allowing the substantive point to be buried in the latest jargon, I think it would be a good idea to highlight it in simple terms, and that for two reasons: In practical terms, it seems clear that Taylor reflects a trend. He shares with candidate Huckabee an almost saintly character (“irenic”, Bellah calls him), coupled with a methodology that threads the line “between pulpit and podium” (as the New York Times put it on Saturday). In other words, this whole scheme of nice people getting us directly from here to the “transcendent” without paying attention to the rest of the world is really a widespread temptation that needs to be confronted for practical reasons. And secondly, as a scholarly issue, it would be wrong to think that this idea of change (“in a way heretofore unimaginable” is something that was just thought of yesterday.

]]> By: Daniel Steinmetz http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2008/01/19/a-case-of-heteronomous-thinking/comment-page-1/#comment-418 Daniel Steinmetz Sat, 19 Jan 2008 18:42:43 +0000 http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2008/01/19/a-case-of-heteronomous-thinking/#comment-418 Taylor may not adequately address Blumenberg but he does not entirely ignore him. On page 176 he actually remarks that Blumenberg's self-assertion thesis can explain in part the emergence of secularism. "And yet it seems plain that the drive to reconstruction also had other sources, and sprang also from less reactive sources." Also, how do we adjudicate when an author should or must discuss specific secondary literature relative to their project? For instance, you fault Taylor for not discussing Castoriadis, but I could have just as arbitrarily mentioned Lacan or Claude Lefort here. What all three writers have in common is that they were influenced by Merleau Ponty (actually they all influenced each other in a variety of ways) as is Charles Taylor. Taylor may not adequately address Blumenberg but he does not entirely ignore him. On page 176 he actually remarks that Blumenberg’s self-assertion thesis can explain in part the emergence of secularism. “And yet it seems plain that the drive to reconstruction also had other sources, and sprang also from less reactive sources.”

Also, how do we adjudicate when an author should or must discuss specific secondary literature relative to their project? For instance, you fault Taylor for not discussing Castoriadis, but I could have just as arbitrarily mentioned Lacan or Claude Lefort here. What all three writers have in common is that they were influenced by Merleau Ponty (actually they all influenced each other in a variety of ways) as is Charles Taylor.

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