Benjamin J. O'Brien

In his recent book, Reason, Faith, and Revoltution, Terry Eagleton points to the Christian message as a more practicable and authentic iteration of the aims and message of Marxism. Whilst the book itself is not necessarily profound as a theological work (indeed, it was never meant to be), upon reading it one is once again reminded of the reality of a “fallen” humanity. In response to contemporary humanism and the notion of human “Progress”, Eagleton objects that our progress is, in real terms, not quite as profound as we are led to believe.[i] Whilst the humanity of the present appears to be, and in fact is in many ways, morally superior to the humanity of the past, we cannot forget the polarity that modernity has presented us with. Our moral advancement, in affording (relative) equality to LGBT people, women and ethnic minorities, is placed in a stark contrast to the (ever looming) shadow of Auschwitz. For Eagleton, the hope of gradual progress toward a brighter future is all too optimistic; rather, he suggests, we must rely on the possibilities of a radical revolution.[ii]

The state of fallen man is typified by the possibility of radical evil; even per the advancement of humanity in the reduction of inequality, we are reminded of the undeniable atrocities of our recent past. The greatest lesson of Auschwitz should not be politicised, we should not teach that through it we are taught the evils of any detached and faceless “Other”, be it National Socialism as a general concept or Hitler’s specific iteration of Fascism; the lesson of Auschwitz is a reflection on self. The truth of the Hegelian absolute became clear to me in the most simple of ways: in reflecting upon eating my lunch I consciously cognised a self-evident but rarely considered fact of our being: every human being that has ever lived has partaken in this activity. I am rendered particular, indeed, but in my locating of myself in the being of the other I am inevitably placed in a position of shared interest, as well as individual negation. That simple fact, “every human being has eaten”, draws us (in coalition with countless other similar propositions) to the undeniable fact of our absolute consciousness: the unity of all things in their particularity. Now, of course, it is our particularity that ultimately matters: insofar as we are repulsed by the very notion of Auschwitz we are acquitted of its guilt. That said, it reveals to us the dire possibility of radical evil: the persons who executed the operations of Auschwitz are of the very same category of being as ourselves. As much as it was fellow human beings who ended slavery, achieved universal suffrage and outlawed racial discrimination, it was also fellow human beings who commit genocide in the concentration camps of the Second World War and who continue to commit similar (if smaller scale) atrocities all over the world at present. Like myself, the people who constituted the Nazi regime – who enacted such great evil – ate lunch; they enjoyed the company of their families and maintained their own sincere moral convictions, they were (and are, in countless subsequent atrocities) human.

In light of this it must be the very fact of our particularity in distinction from those who commit such evil, always seen alongside the possibility of that evil in our own being, which guides our understanding of the fallen state of humanity. As Emmanuel Levinas reminds us, our particularity apart from such possibility is reliant on our always giving face to the other, such that those whom we interact with never become simple faceless others, the object of the masses, the crowd, the multitude. “For Levinas, intersubjective experience, as it comes to light, proves ‘ethical’ in the simple sense that an ‘I’ discovers its own particularity when it is singled out by the gaze of the other. This gaze is interrogative and imperative. It says ‘do not kill me.’”[iii] The relevance of all this to the body’s grace is in the creation of intersubjective spaces. The particular desire that is illustrated in sexuality is mirrored in all human relationality: a desire for the society of the other, located in the desire that the other reciprocate that desire for our own society. Love, in all its incarnations, is founded in this capacity to render the conceptual (and faceless) “other”, an intersubjective “other-self”. It is this radical good, this sympathy for the self-consciousness of the other, which is the message of the Christian Gospel. Eagleton’s argument is that the person of Jesus represents a radical departure from those norms that result from (albeit less extreme iterations of) evil. This evil is none other than the departure from the mutual desire of the self and other, the failure to comprehend the humanity of all people. More than the simple example of Jesus however, he presents this same imperative as the absolute moral edict of his message: “love your neighbour as yourself”.[iv]

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It is in terms of this “distortion” of sexuality that we come to the conservative understanding of homosexuality in theology. Drawing on sporadic verses with somewhat specific contexts and meanings, an argument (in the broadest possible sense of the word) is constructed wherein homosexuality is reduced to abomination. Without dwelling on dealing with each of these verses in turn – a task that has been pursued in other places in more detail than I may allow myself here – I wish to address the very notions of “perversion” and “abomination” that are want to come up in such treatments. The term perversion essentially refers to the sexual enjoyment of something other than the proper object of sexual enjoyment. This is certainly the more nuanced expression of, or behind, the blunter claim (or, more often than not, slogan): “homosexuality is an abomination”. I will respond to this claim in terms of inter-subjective mediacy and immediacy.

If desire renders us vulnerable, in the terms expressed by Williams, then perversion is ultimately a realisation – a practical and intuitive profusion – of the distortion and trivialisation of desire. Specifically, it is the distortion and trivialisation of the other insofar as we engage (or, in this case, do not engage) them in sexual and loving encounter. The joy that is to be found in sexuality, for both the self and the other, is ultimately located in the joy of the self. The joy of the self emerges from the fulfilment of the desire that the other return the desire we feel for them, i.e. as joy in experience of the gaze. Otherwise expressed, the joy of the other is to be located in the desire that they feel for the return embodied in our mutual desire for them. Desire for the desire of the other is therefore fulfilled in one moment for both the self and the other, as the return of that which is other to the self. Thus, whether viewed from the point of view of the self or the other, desire is fulfilled in the return of the other to the self; desire and fulfilment are mutually and identically implicit. “For my body to be the cause of joy, the end of homecoming, for me, it must be there for someone else, be perceived, accepted, nurtured; and that means being given over to the creation of joy in that other, because only as directed to the enjoyment, the happiness, of the other does it become unreservedly lovable.”[i] Our grace and our joy are one; insofar as we are lost in the other, the ultimate end of sexuality is this one notion of the body’s grace. The proper object of desire i.e. that which is not an abomination or perversion, is ultimately and most simply expressed as “the body’s grace”.

Even perversion in itself is not intrinsically wrong, for “sexual ‘perversion’” is simply “sexual activity without [personal] risk, without the dangerous acknowledgement that my joy depends on someone else’s as theirs does on mine.”[ii] The limitations of acceptable perversion are rather firmly delineated however; perversion becomes abomination when the object of our desire extends beyond ourselves but does not return that desire and, specifically, when our initial desire is acted upon regardless. “Solitary sexual activity works at the level of release of tension and a particular localised physical pleasure”, this in itself is does not strike us as abhorrent insofar as “it isn’t of much interest for a discussion of sexuality as process and relation, and says little about grace.” Masturbation in itself is detached from the conundrum of sexual morality insofar as it is mere physicality, it does not involve implications beyond the self: “it has nothing much to do with being perceived from beyond myself in a way that changes my self-awareness”.[iii]

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At the most basic of levels this phrase, “the body’s grace”, refers to the capacity of the body as loved and lover. Whilst, when considered from a rather externalised point of view, sexuality is given to be driven entirely by the impulse to feel attraction for the other, this attraction is not – in fact – so a blunt a desire for the physicality of that other. That is, we do not feel the need to possess the other in an erotic relationship; implicit to the very notion is the necessity of response, such that the other is rendered not an object but rather another-self. Quite apart from the simple physicality of the other, then, it is the affirmation of the other – in their mutual desire – operating in concert with the reality of their physicality that we desire; as Nagel puts it “[s]ex has a related structure: it involves a desire that one’s partner be aroused by the recognition of one’s desire that he or she be aroused.”[i]

Insofar as we are said to desire another, we desire the desire that they have for us; and thus, through us as other, their reciprocate desire that we in turn desire them. Desire is located in the gaze: in our longing to be longed after; it is the social expression of our wish to be completed in the other, but also, importantly, in that other. The specificity of our desire locates sexuality firmly in the remit of the body: I do not desire simply to be desired by anyone, but by this person. The category of the other is therefore the receptivity of the other-self to the self and, in particular, the self’s own capacity to return that receptivity. “[M]y desire, if it is going to be sustained and developed, must itself be perceived; and, if it is to develop as it naturally tends to, it must be perceived as desirable by the other – that is my arousal and desire must become the cause of someone else’s desire.”[ii] In this sense, the self and the other serve as mutual gift, one to another: an intimate sharing of the body’s grace. Referring to Nagel’s work, Williams submits that “sexual awareness of another involves considerable self-awareness to begin with – more than is involved in ordinary sensory perception.” [iii] The other is like a mirror, a gauge of the possibilities of self; desire is to be located in knowing the desire of another for oneself. More than this though, the other is the affirmation of the very nature of desire and selfhood, especially in terms of the self as embodied.

“For my desire to persist and have some hope of fulfilment, it must be exposed to the risks of being seen by its object”;[iv] in order that our initial intuition of ourselves in another find genuine reality, the other must in turn intuit themselves in us. We may only desire the confirmation of our desire in the other insomuch as the other responds in desire for confirmation in us. It is for this reason that we perceive not only a want for someone, but also a want for them to want us in return; in Augustine’s words, this is love’s love of loving. The most intimate desire of our desires is to be desired. Thus desire in itself is rendered inseparable from the return: we do not momentarily desire the other, then desire ourselves in the other and finally desire the desire of the other; these moments are not only atemporal, insomuch as they occur in one solitary moment, but are identical.

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In light of the recent applications, I haven’t had a huge amount of time for thinking. Nor have I had much time for reading or writing (in any constructive sense) either. However, as a general summary of my problem with Hegel’s characterisation of God (and the resolution thereof) I thought I would take a break from mindlessly filling in forms and digging out undergraduate transcripts, (gu)estimating averages and editing sample essays.

My problem was this: Hegel’s philosophy seemed to reduce God to a kind of essential thought, the basis of thinking as its collective unity.

Having delved a little deeper in the Science of Logic and the Phenomenology of Spirit, and having done a lot of turning the ideas over in my head, I have come to the understanding that this is not the case. I think I was too resolutely adherent to my Kantian mindset. When I saw terms like concept (thesis), negation (antithesis) and synthesis I immediately reduced self-consciousness to thought qua Kantian representation.

What I (now) think is important to realise about Hegel’s project is the assumption of being; as he himself puts it in the image of the grove. I torturesly describe this image as follows, with my sincere apologies:

Two philosophers are out walking one afternoon. Not just at any point in the afternoon however; for one of these philosophers is Immanuel Kant, his afternoon walks are so infamously precise that it is said the people who live nearby set their clocks according to his passing. Indeed, his philosophy (at least in the mind of the other fellow) reflects this attitude as a kind of neo-Stoicism. This other is, of course, none other than Georg Hegel.

As they walk, they come across a grove. They are near Königsberg (naturally) and Immanuel knows this place well. As they approach it he remarks,

“Look, are these trees not quite charming?” Glancing over at them Georg responds,

“Indeed they are, but what do you think of them?” In response Immanuel raises his eyebrow and looks to his companion with measured suspicion,

“What do I think of them?” he repeats. “They are a number of trees of course, or at least so they appear.” Georg nods, somewhat unimpressed by Immanuel’s answer.

“Surely you must see that they are more than that? This is a grove, it is the very dwelling place of a god!” His evaluation is met with silence.

What Hegel’s philosophy does is not a creative process; rather it is a question of (a) how we know what we know; (b) how that knowing relates to the knowledge of other things; and (c) how this knowledge as a whole, i.e. as the sum of all known things, is reconciled in the absolute idea. Insofar as God is the agreement of concept and reality, he is the concept of the absolute unity of all ideas; but also, and in the very same moment as his conceptual absoluteness, he is the reality of all ideas, particularly in their relations to one another. To say that God is the agreement of concept and reality is almost too divisive however: his conceptual and realised being are identical, as the pure sublation of all difference.

The time has come to start PhD application. Part exciting, part infuriating and part disruptive.

It’s nice to finally have the (beginning of the) end in sight; as much as I enjoy academia and don’t actually plan on ever leaving the University… More news on how that goes at a later date, I am sure… it seems that I am forever engaging in short projects that don’t ever really give me the time to get to grips with my topic properly.

The system itself, however, is not so full of promise as the thought itself. Due to the way the AHRC now hand out funding for research degrees, it seems to be in my interest to apply to as many places as possible. Now, in reality… I don’t want to go to most places, and would prefer to re-apply after a year of some filler job than go to them. But still, it means applying to at least five places where I really do want to go. I am currently thinking Leeds, Cambridge, KCL (London, yuck!), Nottingham and Oxford. All of the applications ask for different things, have different deadlines and demand a couple of copies (each) from two academic references. Not a personal inconvenience per se, but I feel bad asking for them!

The biggest problem that the application process throws up is in disrupting my current studies. It means that for a month I will be reading different stuff, perhaps not radically different, but I will be thinking in a different direction. What’s the problem with that? Well, it inevitably means that my excitement for my MA thesis will be dimmed and that when I return, it will be like rehashing an old project.

RE: my previous post; I think I may have misunderstood the predicament somewhat.

My concern with Hegel’s philosophy has been with what this thought object, i.e. concept, of God means for God in actuality. Essentially, Hegel’s theology seems to reduce God to the sublation of all thought in some absolute category. This was a mistake on two counts:

1. For Hegel, thought isn’t a positive activity per se; that is, we don’t choose when to think and when not to think. This is why he refers to thought, dialectic, reason etc. in terms of consciousness. So, it isn’t a question of thinking God into being, or our particular thoughts constituting God in se. Rather, it is the assumption of God and the question of how we may experience him.
2. Hegel demonstrates that the thing-in-itself, i.e. rather than the thing-for-us (in terms of perception), is in fact itself an abstraction. This still strikes me as a little hard to fathom, probably because all of my past experience in (serious) reading of philosophy has been Kantian. Essentially what Hegel is saying is that Kant allowed the thing-in-itself to operate as a barrier between the subject and the object.

I still find his conclusion a little troubling as an implication for God; for, he posits, the thing-in-itself is “Nothing; pure nothing.”[1]

I can see, on the horizon, some resolution of this problematic outlook in a kind of super-conciousness, or absolute conciousness, that is God, i.e. as that which is always in relation to itself (as a sort of Trinity-perceiving-itself) and that which guarantees the possibilities of Creation as the determination of all things.

I am struggling with the possibilities presented by Williams’ treatment of dialectic and representation qua God, in his essay Logic and Spirit in Hegel.[1]

I realise I am essentially criticising an Idealist of being too Idealistic, but it seems beyond remit of what could be described as a “Christian” understanding of God to summarise his being as the absolute (merely) of all thought (i.e. consciousness, representation etc.).

Perhaps I am being too essentialist about this, but it does seem that God ought to have more to him than the absolution of all difference as a kind of dialectic sublation, i.e. a perichoretic being as the summation of all concepts. On the other hand, and insomuch as Hegel understands God explicitly as the agreement of concept and reality[2], it could be that I am missing the point of Hegel’s dialectic a little – especially with regard to the thing-in-itself.

[2] G.W.F. Hegel, The Logic of Hegel, translated from The Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, trans. W. Wallace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1873), p.52.

At the most fundamental level: “God alone is the true agreement of concept [Begriff] and reality [Realität].”[1]

Williams expands Hegel’s contribution as follows:

“So, from the fundamental analysis of mental life as relatedness, we are led first to understand what ‘God’ means, as the guarantor of the thinkable (reconcilable) nature of the world, and thence to the understanding of divine identity as complete and inclusive relation to self (thus dissolving the idea of an ‘essential’, relationless selfhood or mental/spiritual identity) as Trinity; and finally to the acknowledgement that our history has already told us all this, though in ways that have yet to reach full self-consciousness. Scripture and doctrine must be unveiled for what they truly are, and this is the destiny of philosophy.”[2]

Essentially, Williams wants to highlight that, for Hegel, in representation (Verstand; i.e. the concept in a Kantian sense) we find the goodness of God (insomuch as “everything can be thought… nothing is beyond reconciliation”) and in dialectic we find the “power of God”.[3]

In his calling dialectic the power of God, I can only presume that Williams means that God, in the sense of the absolute, is the reconciliation of all things, i.e. as the unity of all difference.

More to come!

[2] Rowan Williams, ‘Logic and Spirit in Hegel’, in Phillip Blond (ed.), Post-Secular Philosophy: Between Philosophy and Theology (London: Routledge, 1998), pp.116-130 at p.116.

[3] Ibid., at p.118.