tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post611819694401657966..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: The Return of the Pig?Cord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-70580126776647095242008-10-14T09:11:00.000-04:002008-10-14T09:11:00.000-04:00Skrbina looks really cool, NM.And, yeah, I like yo...Skrbina looks really cool, NM.<BR/><BR/>And, yeah, I like your approach to Marion matters in your comment. I've been thinking a bit more about Marion's divergence from what I understand about Levinas. Levinas is concerned with what happens in external relations (although given that we're talking a <I>kind of</I> ethical phenomenology, the relationship with the other is not a WHOLLY external relation), whereas Marion--perhaps influenced by psychoanalysis?--also thinks about the problem of the self as other to the I. What becomes fascinating, then, is that the preserved mystery of the I/me relation becomes a way to think ethics in the I/you field. Exciting stuff!Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-21247955035119298612008-10-11T11:26:00.000-04:002008-10-11T11:26:00.000-04:00Karl, thanks for the quick digestion of Marion, on...Karl, thanks for the quick digestion of Marion, on the limitations of which I completely agree.<BR/><BR/>As usual, my first response on reading it was why doesn't this -- <BR/><BR/>"The weakness of humanism’s claim consists in dogmatically imagining<BR/>not only that man can hold himself up as his own measure and end<BR/>(so that man is enough for man), but above all that he can do this<BR/>because he comprehends what man is, when on the contrary nothing<BR/>threatens man more than any such alleged comprehension of his humanity. For every de-finition imposes on the human being a finite essence, following from which it always becomes possible to delimit what deserves to remain human from what no longer does."--<BR/><BR/>lead to recognition of *every/all being* as occupying the "privilege" of unknowing, not necessarily as mental state (talking to oneself about being a question) but as a structure of the movement of being itself in direction of Derrida's "It is, in some way, a structural non-knowing, which is heterogeneous, foreign to knowledge. It's not just the unknown that could be known and that I give up trying to know. It is something in relation to which knowledge is out of the question."? I.e. new ontology of the question embracing the whole "chain" of being?<BR/><BR/>Want to read: Skrbina's <A HREF="http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=4681" REL="nofollow">Panpsychism in the West</A>.Nicola Masciandarohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01279665722551517693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-65916269827655705102008-10-10T13:30:00.000-04:002008-10-10T13:30:00.000-04:00Nicola, thanks very much for the Marion suggestion...Nicola, thanks very much for the Marion suggestion. Just read it. I'm hesitant about it on a number of points that you could have predicted: his linking of the infinite to God, first of all, since I think that continuing to use the God-concept, even if only a kind of placeholder for the infinite, tethers us to theology and its many many problems; and thus Marion's inability to conceive of an <I>apophatic atheism</I> just annoys: I realize he's a professor of theology, but, whatevs! what of a skeptical atheism, like mine, that refuses to believe that all can be offered to knowledge without remainder? what of an atheism, like mine, that is secular only if the saeculum is thought to be infinite, never given to us without remainder?; finally, the way he just shies away from considering the question of the animal, which is, for him as much for any traditionalist, the perfect example of the reified thought object.<BR/><BR/>With all those caveats, I love what Marion does here, and can't help but hear Levinas in it, which means I think Marion can be rescued from his crypto-humanism as readily as Levinas can be rescued from his.<BR/><BR/>""A frightening consequence thus imposes itself: to claim to define what a man is leads to or at least opens the possibility of leading to the elimination of that which does not correspond to this definition. Every political proscription, every racial extermination, every ethnic cleansing, every determination of that which does not merit life--all of these rest upon a claim to define (scientifically or ideologically) the humanity of man; without this claimed guarantee, no one could put such political programs into motion. Even the worst of modern tyrants needs reasons and concepts. Here we find a new experientia crucis : in order to kill a human being, it is necessary to have the permission to kill. But in order to have that, it is first necessary to be able to deny to such and such a human being (the well-named "So and So") his or her face and thus his or her humanity; and one gets there by defining and comprehending humanity through concepts, by fixing its limits and, in this way, discovering the one who cannot claim humanity, and thus can or ought to die. Here a metaphysical proposition in appearance perfectly neutral takes on the aspect of a silent threat: every determination is a negation, or more exactly (because in the event the issue is extension alone), "figura non aliud quam determinatio, et determinatio negatio est" ("figure is nothing but limitation, and limitation is negation"). Determining amounts to denying (and not the inverse, for if determination is sufficient for denial, a negation does not always suffice to determine). Determining the humanity of man thus amounts to making an end of him.<BR/><BR/>Moreover, this experientia crucis can be confirmed by inverting it: I can only love (the contrary of killing) another that, precisely, I do not know, at least in the sense of being able to comprehend him or her as an object and define him or her by a concept. I can only love him who remains for me without definition, and only for as long as he thus remains, which is to say as long as I will not have finished with him."Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-35107617048614962502008-10-09T10:16:00.000-04:002008-10-09T10:16:00.000-04:00Anon.Guibert of Nogent was an early 12th-century B...Anon.<BR/><BR/>Guibert of Nogent was an early 12th-century Benedictine monk known for a crusade history, his apparent suspicion about the cult of relics, and, now, especially, for his strange <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/Monks-Confession-Memoirs-Guibert-Nogent/dp/0271014822/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223561073&sr=8-1" REL="nofollow">autobiographical writing.</A> [now I grab material from the diss., all of which will find space in the book the diss is becoming] For more on Guibert, see Jay Rubenstein, <I>Guibert of Nogent: Portrait of a Medieval Mind</I> (New York: Routledge, 2002), which concentrates on the <I>Moralia in Genesin,</I> and Steven F. Kruger, <I>The Spectral Jew: Conversion and Embodiment in Medieval Europe,</I> Medieval Cultures 40 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 39-60, who focuses on Guibert’s attitude towards Jews and other non-Christians.<BR/><BR/>So, here's the graph from the diss on these matters:<BR/><BR/>The standard teaching often went so far as to exonerate humans from any blame for causing animals to suffer. An exegetical tradition beginning as early as Paul argues that verses in Proverbs and the Mosaic law that seem to urge compassion for animals should either be ignored because of their self-evident absurdity or, because of their absurdity, be interpreted as moral precepts benefiting only humans. Paul cites the Mosaic law against muzzling oxen while they tread corn (Deuteronomy 25:4) and adds incredulously, “Doth God take care for oxen?” (1 Corinthians 9:9). Of course Paul answers no, but he still honors the law by converting it into a maxim for the human community: “Or doth he say this indeed for our sakes? For these things are written for our sakes: that he that plougheth, should plough in hope; and he that thrasheth, in hope to receive fruit” (1 Corinthians 9:10). In his anti-Jewish treatise, Guibert of Nogent appropriates, to a degree, this Pauline mode when he examines Deuteronomy 22:6-7: <BR/><BR/>If thou find as thou walkest by the way, a bird’s nest in a tree, or on the ground, and the dam sitting upon the young or upon the eggs: thou shalt not take her with her young: But shalt let her go, keeping the young which thou hast caught: that it may be well with thee, and thou mayst live a long time.<BR/><BR/>Regardless of this law’s original purpose—perhaps for game management or ritual purity—and even despite what it might have meant to exegetes among the Jewish communities Guibert himself encountered, Guibert interprets the verse as concerned with solicitude for animals. His purpose in constraining the verse in this manner is to make it easy to refute in a work that aims at refuting, or rather, taunting, Jews and Judaism. This ease derives, first, from Guibert’s bluntly literal interpretation, which in fact exemplifies the ham-fisted interpretative modes that Christian polemicists impute to Judaism; and second, from the sympathy for animals Guibert finds in the verse, a quality whose self-evident mawkishness makes for effortless contempt against the Jews, whom Guibert claims embrace it. Having set up the easiest of targets, Guibert trumps his own exegesis by citing God’s granting of flesh to Noah (Genesis 9:2-4) and then by adding, “Ut modo bene nobis et longam vitam spondeat, si manus nostra pullorum matribus parcat?” (<I>Tractatus de incarnatione contra Iudeos</I> III.8, PL 156: 524B; in what way could He promise us long life if He spared mother hens from our hands?). Although Guibert follows Paul in scorning any implication that God could care for animals, he parts from the Pauline technique by dismissing the Deuteronomic text out of hand, refusing even to preserve it in a symbolic moral register. By countering it with a Genesiac law predating the Mosaic code, Guibert goes still further by implying that the Mosaic injunction—at least in the constrained interpretation Guibert gives it—never had any validity. Previously in the same treatise, Guibert had jeered at Jews for avoiding pork (Tractatus III.8, PL 156: 523D-524A); here he mocks them for avoiding the flesh of mother birds, so characterizing, in each instance, human/animal relationships as a zero-sum game in which any sparing of animal life would inevitably result in the deterioration of human existence.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-3631415294884810422008-10-09T09:57:00.000-04:002008-10-09T09:57:00.000-04:00Great piece, Karl. I look forward to reading or he...Great piece, Karl. I look forward to reading or hearing more of your thoughts on the issue of animals and resurrection theology. I had a quick citation question. At one you talk about how St. Paul and Guibert of Nogent scorn the Deuteronomic verses that call for kindness towards animals. I've never heard of Guibert of Nogent, but I would like to read what he says about kindness to animals. Can you give me a citation to that? Thanks.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-41971417767680482842008-10-08T19:45:00.000-04:002008-10-08T19:45:00.000-04:00Do these thinkers ever speculate on what fleshly f...<I>Do these thinkers ever speculate on what fleshly form this hybridity would assume? </I><BR/>So far as I know, no. I doubt I've discovered anywhere close to all the instances where resurrection doctrine focuses on the problem of meat, so perhaps someone does, somewhere. I like to imagine, however, that it's NOT invisible. After all, the pork might resurrect. That means not pork, but pigs. Now this either means pigs WITH people in the afterlife, or pigs IN people, i.e., monstrous hybrids. The former, pigs with people, is probably what the scholars meant, but the monstrous hybrids is what I push at in my idea of the systemic conflict of the human being written onto the body for eternity. I'm probably pushing at things a bit too hard, though.<BR/><BR/>Something else is <I>really</I> grabbing me about this research. It's the veritas humanae naturae problem, which leads to us not being able to know what of our body is its truth. This doctrinal trick, which preserves us from change, loads us down with a stranger in our own bodies and refuses to, or is unable to (I think: I haven't checked into this deeply), identify where that stranger is. How strange is that! How unsettling? Given the corps morcelé reference for SEMA this year, how appropriate!Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-37763191114825787492008-10-08T09:54:00.000-04:002008-10-08T09:54:00.000-04:00Wow. I blame Eileen for having made me miss the in...Wow. I blame Eileen for having made me miss the in-the-flesh performance of this piece, since she put a GW grad student up against you. Evil, evil Eileen.<BR/><BR/>Your paper maps the complicated ratiocinations over animal and human flesh so well that I'm not sure what to ask ... other than about those hybrids, through which animals are enabled to survive death and endure into the afterlife. You write that according to some thinkers "humans might enter eternal life as hybrid human-animals" because the animal flesh they have ingested stays forever part of their substance. Do these thinkers ever speculate on what fleshly form this hybridity would assume? Are we talking about human-appearing bodies that carry within them some invisible remnant of perduring animal substance ... or is there a separateness to this animality, as well as a potential monstrosity?<BR/><BR/>I like the question with which you close, and look forward to your ruminations on possible answers. I'd identify that as being the most Karl Steel portion of the essay -- meaning, it is in the answer to such a question that you will make your own enduring mark on medieval studies. <BR/><BR/>Whether that mark will survive into the resurrection I don't know.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-68409653416835092072008-10-06T13:31:00.000-04:002008-10-06T13:31:00.000-04:00Thank you Karl! Sorry to have missed the live, fle...Thank you Karl! Sorry to have missed the live, fleshy version. <BR/><BR/>I think you may find Jean-Luc Marion's "Mihi magna quaestio factus sum: The Privilege of Unknowing" Journal of Religion 85 (2005):1-24 as a creative counterpoint/interlocutor for your argument.Nicola Masciandarohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01279665722551517693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-41217441937260408652008-10-06T04:40:00.000-04:002008-10-06T04:40:00.000-04:00That makes one think: if you are a vegetarian, you...That makes one think: if you are a vegetarian, you might be denying animals an afterlife. Vegetarianism as cruelty to animals :)LJNhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04003522787987545206noreply@blogger.com