Richard Kearney's Anatheistic Wager

Pierre Drouot

Description

Philosopher Blaise Pascal famously insisted that it was better to wager belief in God than to risk eternal damnation. More recently, Richard Kearney has offered a wager of his own—the anatheistic wager, or return to God after the death of God. In this volume, an international group of contributors consider what Kearney's spiritual wager means. They question what is at stake with such a wager and what anatheism demands of the self and of others. The essays explore the dynamics of religious anatheistic performativity, its demarcations and limits, and its motives. A recent interview with Kearney focuses on crucial questions about philosophy, theology, and religious commitment. As a whole, this volume interprets and challenges Kearney's philosophy of religion and its radical impact on contemporary views of God.

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: The Risk of the Wager (Chris Doude van Troostwijk and Matthew Clemente)

Part I: Conversations after God
1. Theism, Atheism, Anatheism (James Wood and Richard Kearney)
2. A Conversation after God (Chris Doude van Troostwijk and Richard Kearney)
3. Mysticism and Anatheism: The Case of Teresa (Julia Kristeva and Richard Kearney)
4. Anatheist Exchange: Returning to the Body after the Flesh (Emmanuel Falque and Richard Kearney)

Part II: At the Limits of Theology
5. The Anatheistic Wager: faith after Faith (Brian Treanor)
6. Archē and Eschaton: Kearney and Desmond on God (Richard Colledge)
7. Is it Possible to be a Reformed Anatheist? (Helgard Pretorius)
8. Anatheism and Inter-religious Hospitality: Reflections from a Catholic Comparative Theologian (Marianne Moyaert)
9. Buddhist Anatheism (Joseph O'Leary)
10. The Wager that Wasn't: An Education in Shady Chances (L. Callid Keefe-Perry)

Part III: Poetics of the Sacred
11. Recognition and Hospitality: Coming Back to the Odysseus's Coming Home (Pierre Drouot, trans. Sarah Horton)
12. The Twofold Face of God: an Anatheist Reading of the Sacrifice of Abraham (Jacob Rogozinski)
13. The Apparent God: Biblical Poetics and the End of Time (Theo Hettema)
14. Kearney's Other and the Anatheist Shadow (Patrick Burke)
15. Trauma, Resurrection, and the Anatheistic Wager (Shelley Rambo)

Epilogue: From Wager to Art and Back Again (Chris Doude van Troostwijk and Matthew Clemente)
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• PHILOSOPHY
• Religión
• Philosophy of religion

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 23 avril 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253034038
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

RICHA RD KEA RN EY’S ANATHEISTIC WAGERINDIANA SERIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
Merold Westphal, E d i t o rRICHARD KEARNEY’S
ANATHEISTIC WAGER
Philosophy, Theology, Poetics
Edited by Chris Doude van Troostwijk and Matthew
Clemente
Indiana University PressThis book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
© 2018 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI
Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Doude van Troostwijk, Chris, [date] editor.
Title: Richard Kearney’s anatheistic wager : philosophy, theology, poetics / edited by Chris
Doude van Troostwijk and Matthew Clemente.
Description: 1st [edition]. | Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2018. | Series: Indiana series
in the philosophy of religion | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018006095 (print) | LCCN 2018003215 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253034014
(ebook) | ISBN 9780253034007 (hardback : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Kearney, Richard. | God. | Religion—Philosophy.
Classification: LCC B945.K384 (print) | LCC B945.K384 R53 2018 (ebook) | DDC 210.92—
dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018006095
1 2 3 4 5  23 22 21 20 19 18For Emma and Nathan
and
for Dominic and JonathanContents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations of Kearney’s Works
Introduction: The Risk of the Wager (Chris Doude van Troostwijk and Matthew Clemente)
Part I. Conversations After God
1 Theism, Atheism, Anatheism (James Wood and Richard Kearney)
2 A Conversation after God (Chris Doude van Troostwijk and Richard Kearney)
3 Mysticism and Anatheism: The Case of Teresa (Julia Kristeva and Richard Kearney)
4 An Anatheist Exchange: Returning to the Body after the Flesh (Emmanuel Falque and Richard
Kearney)
Part II. At the Limits of Theology
5 The Anatheistic Wager: faith after Faith (Brian Treanor)
6 Kin and Stranger: Kearney and Desmond on God (Richard J. Colledge)
7 Is it Possible to Be a Reformed Anatheist? (Helgard Pretorius)
8 Anatheism and Inter-Religious Hospitality: Reflections from a Catholic Comparative Theologian
(Marianne Moyaert)
9 Buddhist Anatheism (Joseph S. O’Leary)
10 The Wager That Wasn’t: An Education in Shady Chances (L. Callid Keefe-Perry)
Part III. Poetics of the Sacred
11 Recognition and Hospitality: Coming Back to Odysseus’s Coming Home (Pierre Drouot, trans.
Sarah Horton)
12 The Twofold Face of God: An Anatheistic Reading of the Sacrifice of Abraham (Jacob Rogozinski)
13 The Apparent God: Biblical Poetics and the End of Time (Theo L. Hettema)
14 Kearney’s Other and the Anatheist Shadow (Patrick Burke)
15 Trauma, Resurrection, and the Anatheistic Wager (Shelley Rambo)
Epilogue: From Wager to Art and Back Again (Chris Doude van Troostwijk and Matthew
Clemente)
Bibliography
Index<
6
Acknowledgments
A BOOK LIKE this would not be possible without the support and effort of a great number of people.
First, our contributors who put their time, talent, and energy into making their pieces as strong as they
are. And, of course, Richard Kearney whose generosity and encouragement has been a constant source
of reassurance. e excellent staff at Indiana University Press—especially Merold Westphal, Dee
Mortenson, and Paige Rasmussen. Sheila Gallagher who provided the artwork for our cover. Fr. John
Panteleimon Manoussakis who has been a mentor and a friend. Lee Oser, Peter Kree, Vanessa
Rumble, Gary Gurtler SJ, omas Miles, and Donald Brand. e Luxembourg School of Religion &
Society, the Boston College Philosophy Department, the College of the Holy Cross, UniLib: Atelier de
ré exion théologique, Le Promontoire (www.climont.eu), the Tolle Lege Literary Society, and Duo.
Our wonderful families, especially Maarten Doude van Troostwijk, Robert and Marie Clemente, and
Rob Clemente. And, most importantly, our wives without whose constant support and understanding
we would not have been able to nish this project. Alexandra Breukink and Tracy Clemente, thank
you.Abbreviations of Kearney’s Works
Anatheism (A)
The God Who May Be (GWMB)
On Stories (OS)
Poetics of Imagining (PI)
Sam’s Fall (SF)
Strangers, Gods, Monsters (SGM)
The Shulammite’s Song: Divine Eros Ascending and Descending (SS)
Walking at Sea Level (WSL)RICHA RD KEA RN EY’S ANATHEISTIC WAGER/
/
Introduction: The Risk of the Wager
Chris Doude van Troostwijk and Matthew Clemente
I
e notion of faith necessarily implies risk. Faith entails the possibility of the loss of faith. It entails the
possibility of faithlessness. A faith that is comfortable, that is not threatened by insecurity and
instability, that does not grapple with doubt, is no faith at all. It is evidence, science, gnosis, or the
system. Perhaps it is blindness. And though all of these ways of relating to the world can be subjected to
the same type of skepticism and critique as faith itself, none is faith. No, with faith, there is something
different at stake. Something at once awesome and awful. Something primary, foundational,
fundamental. Something that can only be authentically approached in fear and trembling.
For a person of faith, the risk of the loss of faith is ever-present. It is an inherent part of faith itself.
However, one does not lose one’s faith as one loses a conviction. Convictional belief is an expression of
faith. It is an expression of an existential, prere exive disposition that comes from within. It echoes a
radical, archaic, primal experience—the experience of the question of faith. And if this experience is
always already precarious, if it is never secure, never stable, always uncertain, then the question of faith
necessarily implies two possible answers and the primordial experience provides two viable responses.
Faith and faithlessness are equally valid options. Belief and unbelief are their respective articulations.
Both attempt to provide an answer to an original call. Both attempt to express the radical, foundational
moment of human experience—a moment both primary and unending, a moment at the heart of the
human condition itself.
roughout his corpus, Richard Kearney has attempted to examine this very experience. Making use
of both philosophical and theological approaches to the question of faith—methodologically, he
operates within the French hermeneutic tradition of Ricoeur, the continental phenomenological school
of Levinas and Merleau-Ponty, and the poststructuralist deconstructionist tradition of Derrida and
Caputo—Kearney offers poignant re ections with the sense of urgency that his subject demands. In his
work over the last decade—most notably, Anatheism: Returning to God Aer God (2010) but elsewhere
as well—Kearney has put forth the proposition that faith is a wager. Faith, he claims, is a response to a
question posed to us, even forced upon us, by those limit experiences that make religious and poetic
discourse possible.
e debt that this development in Kearney’s thinking owes to other philosophers of the wager—
Pascal, Kierkegaard, and James come readily to mind—is clear. Yet as this volume will show, Kearney
offers us a wager all his own—one that demands serious attention, engagement, and critique. Along
these lines, one question that we, the editors, have grappled with time and again as we have delved
deeper into Kearney’s work is, what is at stake in Richard Kearney’s anatheistic wager? What can be lost
and what is there to gain?
II
In the well-known formulation of his theistic wager, Pascal emphasizes the fact that the stakes are high.
Choosing rightly has the potential to save one from the grips of death, destruction, and despair.
Choosing wrongly might very well lead to an eternity spent in hell. Bliss, torment, or nonexistence—
these are the possible outcomes with which man is presented. And for that reason, Pascal insists, one
ought to wager belief in God. God is the only one who can save us from damnation and the void.
Like Pascal, Kierkegaard presents us with a wager that entails real risk and real consequence. He
proposes a double existential wager which forces the question of faith onto the individual. Aer all,
according to his Lutheran tradition, the individual alone is responsible before God. To become a
Christian, Kierkegaard insists, one must ? rst become oneself. But how can one do this? At ? rst, one
wagers between the life of the aesthetic and the ethical life. Neither option, however, leads to a life
lived authentically. e ? rst wager fails; it ends in despair. e individu