Philosophy and Theology by John D. Caputo

Author:John D. Caputo
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781426723490
Publisher: Abingdon Press

F I V E

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There are both theological (Kierkegaard) and antitheological (Nietzsche) motives behind the emergence of the postmodern. But no matter how you cut it, if the main drift of modernity was toward secularization, it is inevitable that something that gets to be called postmodern will provide an opening for the postsecular, a word that has recently gained some currency in tandem with postmodern. If the long arms of the modern and the secular are overreaching, what then are the possibilities for theology in the postmodern situation? What is postmodern theology? What is theology in the postmodern situation? Does not theology today operate in a milieu that is, for better or for worse, postmodern, just as theology in the thirteenth century was deployed in the midst of an Aristotelian revival that swept over western Europe, and just as Augustine's theology was embedded in the world of late antiquity in which he lived? Theology has never existed in a vacuum, nor has philosophy, which is the strong suit of those theologians who insist on the "correlation" of theology and the surrounding culture. Theologies come to birth in a concrete time and culture and language, and, for better or worse, they come under the influence of the philosophy and culture of the day. Theologians give words to revelation by means of the words theologians are given to speak, and these words are given by the world in which they live.

For simplicity's sake, and I concede that I am simplifying to an extreme, I will single out three background ideas that shaped the postmodern situation. In Being and Time (1927), Martin Heidegger argued—here is where the impulse of Kierkegaard is palpable—that, as he put it, as soon as we come to be we find that we are already there. That seeming tautology actually says quite a lot. It means we can never get behind ourselves and see ourselves come into being, or that we can never get out of our skin and look down upon ourselves from above. We "always already" are the beings that we are, and rather than trying the impossible, to make a presuppositionless start à la Descartes, we should realize that we are in truth shaped by the presuppositions we inherit. These presuppositions do not bind or blind us but rather give us our perspective, our angle of entry, enabling us to understand in the first place, giving shape to the way the world presents itself to us here and now. Angles do not bend and distort; they give us access. Without them, we would be lost, like those students who come to see their professors to discuss a topic for their research papers, with that deer-caught-in-the-headlights look on their faces, for while they have read the material (I am being generous), they lack the one thing necessary: an angle. Let us call that the hermeneutical turn.

Secondly, consider the simple fact that when Descartes wrote the Meditations, he was already writing. Once again, a tautology that packs a punch.

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