De invloed van het denken van Paul Moyaert is zeer groot. Daarom wil 'Orde scheppen' hulde brengen aan deze filosoof en zijn intellectuele bezetenheid. De thematische diversiteit van het boek weerspiegelt de biodiversiteit van Moyaerts eigen werk, die met enig geweld tot drie grote thema's of domeinen kan worden herleid: wijsgerige antropologie, psychopathologie en religie. Onderwerpen zijn: het symbolische, de liefde, uchronie, de echtheid van beelden, en poëzie; de afstemming bij jongvolwassenen met een meervoudige handicap, homoseksualiteit bij vrouwelijke adolescenten, (...) en Kant en Foucault; en ten slotte de hardnekkigheid van religie, christelijke ascese, de vele gezichten van Kierkegaard, Franciscus van Assisi, en de oorlogsdagboeken van Hans Keilson. (shrink)

In this book, Marianne Moyaert develops a new interreligious appropriation of Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutical philosophy. Viewed in context of his philosophical, anthropological, and ethical work, Ricoeur’s fragmentary reflections on the encounters between religions provide insights on global cooperation practices and religious identity concerns.

Bergson argues in his Creative Evolution that life has to be defined as an élan vital, that is, as a driving force that presses forward incessantly, overcoming obstacles to its progress and exploding in a variety of directions at once. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud elaborates a critique of such a vitalistic notion of the drives. For him, the drives are not only sources of excitation, but also forces that resist change and that cause the body's movements and activities (...) to stagnate. Freud ascribes a remarkable name to these conservative and stubborn tendencies at work in the body, viz. the death drive. I argue that this drive is to be understood as a force in life that resists life and that, instead of following a course of progression and development, consists in a production of antiproductivity. I show how Freud is led to reconsider a vitalistic conception of the drives by means of a study of phenomena of repetition. One suggestion that Freud makes in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, which I examine in detail, is that the ego-drives are the “myrmidons of death.” To clarify this claim, I consider a remark that he makes on the viscosity of the drives and melancholia in his short essay On Transience. (shrink)

The present contribution focuses on the place of religion in the public domain and revolves around three concepts: vulnerability, recognition and tragedy. Focusing on these three notions, I will endeavour to shed some light on the complex relationship between religion and the public arena. More specifically, I will draw attention to the fact that the struggle for recognition can often lead to tragedy. There is no adequate political solution to this problem. The reason for this is that the nature of (...) the recognition religious people desire differs from that which the political system seems to be able to offer. Nevertheless, and I hope to elaborate this in what follows, an appropriate answer to this problem needs to be found, since the danger exists that the struggle for recognition might derail . It is in this perspective that I turn to religion. Whereas politics manoeuvres within the domain of solvable problems, religion offers people a framework to deal appropriately with problems for which no solution appears to exist, or at least not an immediate one. In situations of inner conflict, religion can open up perspectives of hope for solidarity. (shrink)

The essay defends praying with images against those who claim this type of prayer is objectionable. The hermeneutical defence consists of three arguments. First I observe that people relate to ordinary photos in ways that cannot be explained in terms of the image's sign-value alone. Second, I develop an account of praying with images as a form of symbolic practice. Finally, in order to bolster my account, I compare icons with a particular class of symbolic objects, viz. relics. The general (...) idea I put forward is that icons have to be understood as expressions of the reality they represent, and not simply as accurate or inaccurate visual representations of that reality. Icons are not created by human hands; instead, the hand of the painter is the instrumental cause of God's self-expression, via the painter, on the canvas. (shrink)

I argue that idealization can throw a new light upon Freud’s theory of sublimation and that courtly love can be seen as an illustration of this suggestion. For Freud sublimation is the process in which the sexual aim of the instincts is diverted towards a non-sexual aim that is still related with the original one. Freud’s theory struggles with at least two problems.The first problem regards the relation between the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quem. Freud describes this (...) relation with different terms. The notion of ‘desexualization’ represents precisely what he has in mind. This term propounds that Freud understands sublimation as a one-sided movement that consists in leaving behind the original sexual aim. Courtly love proves that desexualization, as Freud understands it, is not a necessary condition for sublimation. A weakening of Freud’s strong claim concerning desexualization implies however that the distinction between sublimation and perversion is not always clearcut.The second problem appertains to the processes that bring about the transformation of the sexual aim. Courtly love infers that idealization of the love-object can play an important role in bringing about sublimation. The kind of sublimation that corresponds to courtly love is what has been called Verführung in German Idealism.Psychoanalytic theory is not willing to conceive idealization in this sense. According to the classical psychoanalytic theory, idealization produces repression of sexual instincts. I argue that this idea is counter-intuitive and that Freud’s understanding of idealization is more subtle. I give a short overview of Freud’s approach and I draw attention to some elements in his approach that help us to describe the direct link between idealization and sublimation.Idealization of the beloved can go together with an inhibition of sexual instincts. But it is wrong to identify aim-inhibition with repression or with a softening of the instincts. My suggestion is that the interaction between idealization and sublimation can be characterised as an interaction between an intensification of the sexual instincts, as it happens in any form of falling in love, and an inhibition of them.This interaction results in being lifted up above the sexual instincts that are caused by the idealised object. In religion and art, the double movement of the instincts is called ‘exaltation.’. (shrink)

I argue that courtly love can throw a new light upon two major problems in Freud's theory of sublimation. For Freud sublimation is the procès in which the sexual aim of the drives is diverted towards a non-sexual aim that is still related with the original one. The first problem regards the relation between the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quern. Freud describes this relation with different terms. The notion of ‘desexualisation’ represents precisely what he has in mind. (...) This term propounds that Freud understands sublimation as a one-sided movement that consists in leaving behind the original sexual aim. Courtly love proves that desexualisation as Freud understands it, is not a necessary condition for sublimation. A weakening of Freud's strong claim concerning desexualisation implies however that the distinction between sublimation and perversion is not always clear-cut. The second problem appertains to the processes that bring about the transformation of the sexual aim. Courtly love infers that idealisation of the love-object can play an important role in bringing about sublimation. The kind of sublimation that corresponds to courtly love is what has been called in German Idealism ‘Verführung’ (rapture). Psychoanalytic theory is not willing to conceive idealisation in this sense. According to the classical psychoanalytic theory, idealisation produces repression of sexual drives. I argue that this idea is counter-intuitive and that Freud's understanding of idealisation is more subtle. I give a short overview of Freud's approach of idealisation and I denote some elements in his approach that help us to describe the direct link between idealisation and sublimation. Idealisation of the beloved can go together with an inhibition of sexual drives. But it is wrong to identify aim-inhibition with repression. I suggest to characterize the interaction between idealisation and sublimation as an exaltation of drives. (shrink)

In this paper a distinction is made between two conceptions of the ego in freudian metapsychology. According to the first conception, a conception which Freud never gave up, the ego is conceived as a specific function on the surface of the living organism ; it is the result of a progressive differentiation of the Id ('Es') under the driving power of internal stimuli and external reality. Fitted with specific neutral, i.e. non-conflictual functions as perception, memory, control of the bodily motions (...) and consciousness, the ego has to defend the individual as a biological living organism against the threats from without and within. In this conception the ego is treated as an instance that doesn't take part in the different psychic conflicts. We analyse the philosophical presuppositions and show the metapsychological disadvantages of this hypothesis that has been worked out especially in the American ego-psychology. According to the second conception, that takes into account important clinical pheno mena as identification, idealisation, narcissism, ideal of the ego, the ego is conceived as a metaphorical effect of a specific psychic act. With Lacan, we try to analyse and to interpret this specific act as an act that causes an infinite splitting in the ego : the ego is constituted as a subject that from its origin is separated from itself. Instead of being a biological function that lives in the immediate metonymical prolongiation of the living organism, it rather has to defend a certain representation of himself. This point of view doesn't exclude a purely functional description of the ego ; but the different functions have now to be interpreted differently because the ego is the effect of conflicts in which it takes part (consciousness is interlaced with unconsciousness, perception with denying...). In the last part of our study we show how Freud makes the philosophically important distinction between the ego as an object of the Id and the ego as a subject that has to speak in the first person ('I'). We try to give a Lacanian interpretation of the subject as act on the basis of the well-known Freudian formula 'Wo Es war soll Ich werden'. (shrink)

This article reflects on the struggle for recognition, in particular on the question of how to avoid people becoming battle-weary. Where do people find the strength to continue this struggle without lapsing into violence? These are questions which we derive from one of Paul Ricoeur’s latest publications Course of Recognition. Ricoeur claims that the only way to avoid the struggle for recognition degenerating into violent conflicts, is to place it in a horizon of hope—the hope that the struggle does not (...) have the final word on interpersonal relations. In this article we take up Ricoeurs suggestion and elaborate it successively from a broad religious perspective and a Christian-Biblical perspective. This also allows us to develop new anthropological insights concerning the Struggle for Recognition. (shrink)

According to a popular view charity is reduced to mercy and benevolence. Through an exploration of traditional, Christian, charitable acts -- both corporeal and spiritual in nature -- I set out to develop an alternative view. Why, for example, is the simple act of laying the dead to rest considered an act of charity? Feelings of pity and commiseration offer an insufficiently firm basis for justifying such an attribution. By adopting the burial of the dead as a sort of touchstone, (...) I suggest that the indigent other finds him- or herself in need of charity at the precise moment that he or she loses the ability to react as a person. Sometimes being charitable comes to expression in relinquishing one’s demands that the other behave as morally responsible people ought to behave. Charity involves the question of how to bear the other’s ”transcendence’. (shrink)

This article reflects on the struggle for recognition, in particular on the question of how to avoid people becoming battle-weary. Where do people find the strength to continue this struggle without lapsing into violence? These are questions which we derive from one of Paul Ricoeur's latest publications Course of Recognition. Ricoeur claims that the only way to avoid the struggle for recognition degenerating into violent conflicts, is to place it in a horizon of hope – the hope that the struggle (...) does not have the final word on interpersonal relations. In this article we take up Ricoeurs suggestion and elaborate it successively from a broad religious perspective and a Christian-Biblical perspective. This also allows us to develop new anthropological insights concerning the Struggle for Recognition. (shrink)

ABSTRACTRicoeur’s proposal to understand the encounter between religions as a practice of ‘linguistic hospitality’ has appealed to many interreligious scholars. Usually, religious texts are at the heart of interreligious hermeneutics, turning Ricoeur’s linguistic hospitality into a practice of interreligious cross-reading. Recently, due to the influence of material and ritual scholars, the textual focus of interreligious hermeneutics has been criticized. Two criticisms are prominent. First, the assumption that understanding religious otherness is best mediated via language and texts leads religious scholars to (...) minimize the ‘non-textual’ practices in religious life. Second, interreligious interpreters mistakenly assume that they can read all meaningful action and ritual performances, especially as texts. This assumption leads to a textualization of the world and does not take into account that there might be other ‘vehicles of intelligibility’ apart from texts. In this article, I explore to what extent the criticisms raised against Ricoeur’s interreligious hermeneutics are fair. I have learned from Ricoeur the importance of mediating between seemingly opposed positions, and I seek to follow his example in this article. (shrink)

Franciscus Sanchez ist profunder Kenner der erkenntnistheoretischen Auseinandersetzungen seiner Zeit. Sein konsistentes skeptisches Denken und der hohe Grad der Argumentativität seiner Ausführungen machen Sanchez zu einem herausragenden Vertreter des frühneuzeitlichen Skeptizismus.

This article focuses on multiculturalism in the context of present-day societies and the need to incorporate minorities within a reframed social order. In his critical theory, Axel Honneth rightly draws attention to the idea of the moral grammar of struggles for recognition. Analyzing his theory in depth, the article shows that Honneth underestimates the violent power of ideological discourse in marginalizing and excluding society’s others, e.g. cultural minorities. It then puts forward an alternative approach based on Ricœur’s creative and original (...) reflections on ideology and utopia. For the incorporation of cultural minorities to occur, the symbolic order of society needs to be critiqued, transformed and expanded. From this perspective, the author highlights the subversive and transformative strength of utopian counter-narratives. The latter form a vital resource for cultural minorities in their struggle for recognition. (shrink)

Nous essayons d'éclaircir quelques principes fondamentaux de la grammaire transformationelle de Chomsky à partir de Derrida et de Lacan. Nous tâchons d'approfondir deux problèmes : le premier concerne la portée de ceci que la possibilité de la déviation est donnée comme inhérente à l'institution même de la règle grammaticale; le second a trait au statut et au contenu du tiers sujet en tant que fondement de la structure intersubjective du langage. Primo : Selon Chomsky, une grammaire idéale doit être capable (...) de générer toutes les phrases — et rien que les phrases — bien formées à partir d'un nombre fini de règles. Une grammaire idéale et cohérente ne peut traiter les déviations que comme des possibilités purement accidentelles : une déviation n'aurait pas dû y être; elle n'aurait même pas pu y être. Bref, le risque d'un échec n'est pas interrogé comme prédicat essentiel de la grammaire. À en croire Derrida, on devrait regarder les conséquences qui découlent du fait qu'un risque possible est toujours possible. Comme les déviations présupposent une règle, chaque règle présuppose le risque d'un échec. La possibilité d'un échec est la condition nécessaire d'une règle grammaticale. Mais il s'agit d'une condition très spécifique, puisqu'elle rend impossible cela même qu'elle rend possible. Ni la grammaire, ni la déviation ne sont originaires, mais bien la différance entre les deux, ce qui veut dire qu'à l'origine de la production du sens il n'y a pas une grammaire idéale. Nous avons élaboré cette remarque de Derrida à partir d'une analyse de la métaphore, précisément parce que celle-ci ne peut être intégrée dans un système grammatical préalable. Secundo : la présence implicite d'un sujet compétent chez Chomsky doit expliquer pourquoi le sens ne dépend pas de l'arbitraire d'un sujet empirique. Chaque parole présuppose un Tiers, un Autre qui transcende les positions de destinateur et de destinataire. Mais, pour Chomsky, il s'agit d'un sujet idéal capable de déterminer a priori le sens invariable des lexemes auquel doivent se tenir les différents sujets. Le sujet compétent correspond à la nature universelle et rationelle de l'homme. Pour Lacan toutefois, ce Tiers — l'Autre — n'est pas un sujet universel mais bien un sujet marqué par un manque : cet Autre — sujet à manque et dès lors pas absolu — ne peut plus fixer a priori le sens d'un signifiant. Les différents effet de sens d'un signifiant ne peuvent plus être reuni dans une signification commune que l'Autre pourrait déterminer a priori. Nous démontrons comment l'intersubjectivité doit être comprise dans la perspective lacanienne. (shrink)

La différence entre l'interprétation lacanienne de la métaphore et celle de la linguistique doit être comprise à partir de la double structure fondamentale de la différence (la langue étant un système de différences). La linguistique conçoit ces différences comme une ensemble fini d'oppositions : le développement de la langue est régi par la présence a priori d'un nombre de formes. Cette conception, selon laquelle les différences sont dominées par l'identité d'une forme, est due à une certaine interprétation de l'événement de (...) la communication, interprétation qui se base sur l'évidence d'un je-sujet et une délinéabilité précise de la signification. L'événement de la métaphore doit être compris en fonction de cette forme a priori : la linguistique ne peut donc interpréter la métaphore autrement que comme une déviation qui serait -en principe -annulable. L'opposition propre vs impropre revêt ici une fonction prépondérante. Lacan veut délivrer la création métaphorique et le mouvement métonymique de l'opposition stérile de propre vs impropre. L'expérience clinique n'a pas uniquement débloqué la position centrale du sujet, mais de plus, elle impose une manifestation de sens irrécupérable dans un processus linéaire. La langue se présente ici comme un enchaînement infini de signifiants : ce mouvement est infini parce qu'il est soustendu par un vide (cette batterie ne peut être refrénée par aucune instance). Lacan identifie la métonymie à ce mouvement incessant : l'enchaînement de signifiants réfère à un manque qui ne peut être comblé. Il manquera toujours un signifiant pour dire ce qui doit être dit. La métaphore surgit dans ce mouvement comme un moment où le vide est identifié d'une façon provisoire (la métaphore engendre une nouvelle identité). Pour Lacan, la métaphore et la métonymie doivent finalement se confondre, vu que chaque identité, produite par la métaphore, est brisée par le glissement incessant du signifié sous le signifiant. (shrink)

In Upheavah of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions, Martha Nussbaum suggests understanding charity simultaneously as mildness, pitiful commiseration, and altruism on behalf of the human community. This essay argues that these elements do not put charity inthe correct perspective. Not mildness, but patience, should be taken as the core of charity. Rather than reinserting a person into the community, charity endures someone who is no longer capable of taking part. Ultimately, respect and pity are not the motivating forces of charity. (...) By relying on the traditional Christian works of mercy — the corporeal and the spiritual — an alternative view of charity is developed. Why, for one, is burying the dead considered a (corporeal) work of mercy? Undoutably, pity is an insufficient basis for justifying this attribution. Moreover, burial can hardly be interpreted as benevolence oras a form of altruism in the usual sense. Taking burial as a paradigm for other works of mercy, the author suggests that the dead body is an in-between, being at the same time outside and inside the community of men. The dead person no longer belongs to the living, nor does he or she fall radically outside the ongoing circle of interpersonal meanings. This point of view provides an approach to the socalled spiritual works of mercy.The (corporeal or spiritual) indigent other is in need of charity at the very moment that he or she is no longer capable of reacting as a person. To be charitable does not always consist in doing something for the other, but sometimes in renouncing the prospectof improvement and even in refraining from demanding that the other should behave as a person should. Hence the title of the essay: charity means wondering how to bear the 'transcendence' of the other. By transcendence here, we mean the other's estrangement from the community of men that does not yet fall outside the circle of interpersonal meanings. Charitycannot be reduced to helpfulness or readiness to help. In some circumstances, charity reveals a deeper sense by accepting and bearing the indigence of someone who cannot be helped. (shrink)

The view that charity consists in an expansion of existing interpersonal relations is rather misleading. We need to see it as a radical transformation, of existing relations, even if this suspension is only temporary. In charity we see a person as someone who is no longer capable of reacting appropriately. Someone who is no longer capable of behaving as a „person‟ nevertheless continues to be a person. She does not lose her personal sanctity or dignity even if she has lost (...) a practical grasp on controlling and guiding the course of her life. Today we often tend to reduce charity to a compassionate form of helping, or aid-giving, such as when materials, doctors and psychologists are sent to regions that are torn apart by war or famine. It is much easier to understand charity when it can be measured against the reduction of physical and emotional distress. It is much more difficult to understand charity in cases where aid proves to be powerless, when there is no measurable return or change that is brought about. While ethics cannot teach us what to do once compassion, benevolence and forgiveness fail to make any difference, prayer can help us to move forward. Praying for others, more specifically, the long-suffering involved in prayer, is a particularly important form of charity. It has the power to lift us above our inability to do anything helpful. We pray at the very moment when we experience our powerlessness to help. (shrink)

The paper argues for a notion of religion that is based on a strong human sense for symbols. Symbols are the natural milieu for religion. I distinguish symbolsfrom signs through the fact that the symbol brings together the elements kept separate in the sign. A symbol does contain something of the force of the realitywhich it represents. With this approach we can look at fides quaerens intellectum in a new light. Moreover, religious images and icons can gain from understanding religion (...) as a symbolic practice. The paper argues that the theological debate on the religious value of icons should not be focused on the tension between the visibility and the invisibility of the divine. Against Marion I argue that touching, rather than seeing, is the core of religious images. People kiss and caress icons. Examples from ordinary life are adduced to illustrate this understanding. (shrink)

This article pushes Lacan into the area of moral philosophy. In the posthumously published Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret, Goethe expresses his perplexity concerning a short passage in the tragedy of Antigone in which the eponymous character gives to Creon a rather extravagant justification of her deadly gesture. This essay contends that Lacan’s reference to Goethe in his Ethics of Psychoanalysis clarifies what is at stake in his dialogues with Aristotle and Kant. Moral sensibility gravitates towards contingencies that (...) hinder a subject from fully participating in the market of exchangeable goods and the realm of social justice or the universal demands of a categorical imperative. In the tragedy of Antigone, a contingent blood tie incarnates a symbolic value that accumulates such enormous power that it isolates Antigone from her social context and even from her desire for self-preservation. Moral sensibility circulates around those areas in which an individual is separated from the universal. (shrink)

The Christian commandment of love of neighbour “You shall love your neighbour as yourself” might rather easily give rise to what I would like to call, with the necessary reservations, ‘immoderate images’. If we examine the consequences of the commandment, we very soon run into a world of excessive obligations and exaggerated unselfishness which can trouble the imagination and stir up fantasies of desire. The commandment which some would say is irreconcilable with the natural limits of common sense, is nonetheless (...) intriguing to both the imagination and the desire of the human person. Associations can easily be made with the peculiar and sometimes spectacular lives of certain saints, martyrs and impassioned mystics in which the boundaries between perversion, narcissism, selflessness, self-destruction and high moral standing are not always crystal clear.It is perhaps possible that Christianity’s attractiveness is due, in no small measure, to this associative network of tormented images and extreme examples which are easily evoked by the vestiges of our commandment. The fact that some people, when reflecting on the commandment, are almost exclusively inclined to think of extreme, and sometimes sinister, sacri- fices does not only speak of the commandment itself but also reveals something about such people and their desires. It is almost as if the commandment, while at first sight running against common sense, at the same time plays along with, and even leans towards, our human desires.We might ask ourselves if it is not a fact that every ethical theory somehow turns around a ‘core’ which, if we relate to it too directly and too literally, can let the theory’s principles run wild. Perhaps the commandment of love of neighbour has taken the place of such a ‘disorienting core’ in Christianity. Perhaps also there can be no particular ethic which does not somewhere run the risk of leading to excess. If this is the case, however, then the commandment of love of neighbour loses something of its specific expressiveness. Nevertheless, it is my contention that we can argue with good reason that our Christian commandment disorients moral rules and obligations in a very direct, radical and even characteristic way.In order to argue my point, the first part of this essay will be devoted to a discussion of Freud’s repudiating and reticent attitude in relation to this commandment. In this regard, I will make an abstraction of the question how the tradition, the church and moral education have taught us to understand the commandment and focus our attention on a structural and grammatical analysis of its formulation. I will argue that Freud’s aversion entails the fact that our commandment, in contrast to the incest taboo and the Ten Commandments, as such forbids nothing. Indeed, it is precisely the fact that it forbids nothing that makes it so alarming.In the second part of the essay I will return to the way in which the tradition has taught us to understand this ‘opaque commandment’. I will point out that the paradigmatic line of approach concerns ‘helping the needy’, although the commandment, in the literal sense, speaks only of love. I will also tackle the question of the identity of my neighbour and what it means for someone to become my neighbour. In conclusion I will raise the question whether in fact every kind of charitable activity can be understood from the perspective of ‘helping’.The problem which lies at the root of this question, however, is the following: if it is the case that the solid and characteristic core of love of neighbour has to do with the alleviation of needs, then why, in exceptional circumstances, is burying the dead considered an act of charity? (shrink)

This article critically examines Paul Ricœur’s philosophical contributions to inter-religious dialogue, focusing on his treatment of religion as a presumed universal category. Ricœur’s insights into religious violence and post-religious faith have influenced scholars advocating non-violent interfaith interactions. However, this article argues that Ricœur’s framework, rooted in a modern Western understanding of religion, neglects critical perspectives from scholars in critical religion studies. These perspectives reveal how the category of religion is historically contingent, Eurocentric, and intertwined with processes of power and exclusion. (...) By uncritically adopting this concept, Ricœur’s approach risks perpetuating hierarchical structures that marginalize non-Western religious traditions and obscure histories of violence against religious minorities. (shrink)