Giving and receiving

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:42 pm By Peter Leithart

Pickstock offers a theological alternative to Derrida’s concern that giving is impossible since any hope of a return robs the gift of its character as gift and puts it instead into the category of mutually advantageous capitalist exchange. Pickstock points out that in renouncing “the return” as “an ethical category,” Derrida is in fact renouncing “mutuality or the enjoyment of shared society” as “the ultimate ethical goal,” to be replaced by a “self-abasing sacrifice as unambiguous ‘loss,’ which, by definition,... Read more

Lists

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:46 pm By Peter Leithart

Pickstock uses the “list” as a crucial example of the dominance of asyndeton of modern discourse. Lists provide “a powerful organization of random phenomena,” but at the same time the order slips into chaos because there is nothing linking the “unrelated elements” of the list. They are merely juxtaposed spatially, and the apparent unity of the items of a list is “shattered by the inherent violence of linearity,” so that the reader of the list must provide coherence by his... Read more

Derrida’s indifference

Last updated on: July 14, 2005 at 11:50 am By Peter Leithart

Pickstock again: For Derrida, there is ultimately no real difference, since all difference is univocally violent. There are particular differences of this and that, but they are all different in the same way – violently different – so there is a “transcendent” sameness. Derrida’s absolute difference collapses is really penultimate difference enveloped by an absolute indifference. Clever point, that. Read more

Derrida’s indifference

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:53 pm By Peter Leithart

Socrates and the erotic gaze

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Catherine Pickstock argues that Socrates does not articulate a “metaphysical” view of self-presence or interiority. She focuses on the erotic character of knowledge in the Phaedrus, which she points out, radically undermines the interior/exterior boundary. Knowledge on this view always involves ecstasy, an attraction to an object outside, and the subject is constituted by this ecstasy. The subject is thus not a sealed-off interiority but is always opening out to what is exterior to it. The gaze that Socrates defends... Read more

Structure in 2 Kings 16

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

2 Kings 16 is organized chiastically: 1. Formulaic introduction, 16:1-4 2. Threat to Jerusalem, and bribe of Tiglath-pileser, 16:5-9 3. State visit to Damascus, 16:10-11 (altar) 4. Ahaz ministers at the altar, 16:12-14 3’. Continuing worship at the altar, 16:15-16 2’. Tribute to Tiglath-pileser and plunder of temple, 16:17-18 1’. Summary, 16:19-20 This chiasm provides a good example of the “rhetorical helix” that John Breck says is at work in chiastic structures. In the rhetorical helix structure, the text can... Read more

Faithfulness to Israel

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:41 pm By Peter Leithart

Through much of Kings, the parallel of North and South has been deigned to emphasize the South’s apostasy. When the South becomes a mirror-image of the idolatrous North, it’s a sign of Judah’s doom. Here, the mirroring goes the other way: Yahweh’s faithfulness to David’s house is reflected in His faithfulness to Israel for the sake of Abraham (vv. 22-25). This gives us considerable insight into the situation of post-Reformation Christendom. Israel, despite her idolatries, despite several generations of Omride... Read more

Antony and Aeneas

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:46 pm By Peter Leithart

Shakespeare’s Antony is an Aeneas who refuses to act piously by leaving his Dido and moving on to found Rome. Hence, in pursuit of Cleopatra he leaves Empire to Octavius, and Aeneas is split between the two of them. But Antony is also an Aeneas who will never be separated from his Dido, who will never suffer the pangs of seeing her retreat to her former husband. At least, so he hopes, and Cleopatra too, whose suicide is not an... Read more

Perpetual War

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:04 am By Peter Leithart

According to Deuteronomy 20, any man who had built a house, planted a vineyard, or married a wife without enjoying their benefits and joys was excused from military service. While it was certainly possible for a 20-year-old Israelite to be unmarried and propertyless, it would seem that the military was largely made up of men who already had these benefits of peace. I base this on the supposition that men would be entering on an independent adulthood at 20, the... Read more

Of Kline and Kings

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:05 am By Peter Leithart

In his book on the Deuteronomistic history, Terence Fretheim notes the marked differences between God’s dealings with Israel and the expectations suggested by suzereignty treaties: “the historian makes it abundantly clear that God is not bound to react to the people in some schematic or univocal fashion. The relationship between God and people is much too personally oriented, has too much flexibility in it, for contractual language to do it justice. God’s mercy and compassion go beyond simple justice, again... Read more