On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life — Chap. 4.2

Summary: Based on the understanding of revelation put forth in the first few parts of chapter four, we are ready to connect the importance of Rosenzweig (following Freud) to the claims about violence and monotheism that Santner alludes to at the beginning of the book. Rosenzweig’s contribution to a psychoanalytical understanding of monotheism is thus [...]

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On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life — Chap. 4.1

Summary: Santner begins chapter 4 by noting that Rosenzweig, following Schelling, connects the irreducible materiality of the Other with the concept of human freedom. When we encounter the Other in his or her singularity, we are able to encounter the characteristic way that the Other “contracts” his or her predicates of Being. This characteristic mode [...]

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On The Psychotheology of Everyday Life — Chap. 3.2

The second portion of Santner’s third chapter reiterates the reason for his long discussion of Schreber’s memoirs, outlined in the previous posting, which he believes serves as helpful backdrop to Franz Rosenzweig’s magnum opus The Star of Redemption. Santner feels that the Star should be understood, “not only as a systematic analysis of those ‘conditions [...]

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On The Psychotheology of Everyday Life — Chap. 3.1

Santner begins his third chapter of On the Psychotheolgy of Everyday Life with a lengthy excurses to the memoirs of the Saxon Supreme Court judge Daniel Paul Schreber, which he holds to be a fertile junction of psychoanalytic and theological thought. Schreber, whose paranoid delusions were interpreted by Freud to be “fantasmatic elaborations of a [...]

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On The Psychotheology of Everyday Life — Chap. 2

Summary Santner begins chapter 2 with a discussion of a Harold Bloom article on Freud. Bloom argues that the “Freudian Eros” is Judaic rather than Greek because every “investment of libido” is a transference of authority ultimately with reference to the Jewish God. (25) But Bloom also argues that Freud’s concept of authority is Roman [...]

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On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life — Chap. 1

Summary Santner’s first chapter begins with a summary of two stories. The first is by Robert Walser, the story of a child who decides to run away to the end of the world. As it runs, the child fantasizes about what the end of the world will be. Finally it meets a farmer who points [...]

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On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life – Introduction

Introduction Santner begins his book by assessing work of scholars in our pluralist, globalized society who have investigated the origins of intolerance and its relationship to religion. Schwartz’s The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism is an exemplary case. According to her, Yahweh’s elected people Israel define themselves negatively against other local peoples. [...]

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RIP Howard V. Hong

Students of Kierkegaard hardly need an introduction to the name Howard Hong. He has been unquestionably one of the most important Kierkegaard scholars working in English for the past several decades. News of his death is saddening, but he lived a full life, passing away at the age of 98. Howard Hong was not only [...]

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Quick grad school update

I’m not sure if updating the blog is any more efficient than simply emailing the 5 or 6 people who sometimes read the blog, but just wanted to say that I’ve been accepted into Boston College’s MA program for the fall. I still have other schools to hear from, and this would be a pretty [...]

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Favorite Song of 2010

In lieu of actually posting something substantiar and thoughtful, or simply practicing writing, I’ll offer up my favorite song of ’10 so far: Joanna Newsom’s Good Intentions Paving Co.

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