Evil in History: Karl Löwith and Jacob Taubes on Modern Eschatology

Styfhals, Willem

doi:10.1353/jhi.2015.0012

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Hannah Arendt-Karl Jaspers. 1926-1969 apocalipticismo imanente deve ser compreendido segundo suas finalidades políticas e morais, tendo em vista que a -proclamação do fim dos tempos é quase sempre um ato de resistência política de uma minoria violentamente reprimidaos judeus da Babilônia, os primeiros cristãos do Império Romano‖, por exemplo (Styfhals, 2015).…”

Section: Sentido Semântico Da Vitóriaunclassified

“…Esta visão do apocalipticismo como ato de resistência política é esposada por vários intérpretes, como é o caso de Jan Assmann (para quem -apocalipticismo e opressão andam de mão dadas‖, tendo em vista que a visão apocalíptica da história -é uma forma de resistência religiosa e intelectual‖ contra a -opressão violenta‖ e a -perseguição‖) 218 Para os cristãos, o fim da história não implica a destruição de um mundo perverso, mas a -realização providencial da história transcendente da salvação‖ (Styfhals, 2015). O quadro a seguir sintetiza esta comparação.…”

Section: Sentido Semântico Da Vitóriaunclassified

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Do Social à Questão Social: Hannah Arendt entre a Zoologia e a Teologia da Compaixão

de Almeida

2024

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In this dissertation, I propose a distinction between Hannah Arendt’s description of the social presented in The Human Condition (1958) and the social question that she presented in On Revolution (1963). In doing so, I argue that both the social and the social question should be regarded as phenomenon rather than just as concepts. Each of these two terms have their own historical and institutional origins. I will discuss Arendt’s definition of the social as a group of ongoing experiments with human issues. Such experiments unfolded into anonymous and, as A. N. Whitehead calls it, concrescent processes whose original purpose was to abolish individual political action. This allows me to articulate how, in the last three centuries, the European scientific elite has continuously experimented with the biological needs of mankind (ἀναγκαῖά) by deploying experimental and processual scientific methods that have developed through the development of social phenomenon itself. Regarding the social as a process that cannot be fully grasped if described into a static structure, I will also demonstrate that Arendt proposes to grasp it through a phenomenology of fluency. I show that Arendt would have drawn this concrescent image of the social on A. N. Whitehead’s philosophy of the organism presented in his work Process and Reality (1929). Likewise, the thesis on experiments with human issues would have been drawn on Karl Polanyi’s political anthropology, in particular in his work The Great Transformation (1944). Considering, on the one hand, the historical narratives Arendt proposed to the social, in which this particular phenomenon would have surfaced as such upon a secular pact between the modern European nation-states and the royal scientific societies, I look into textual evidences left by Arendt to contend that the social question, on the other hand, is a whole distinct phenomenon unfolded from the Cartesian doubting process which, in its turn, allowed the expansion the European critic mentality as well as gave birth to the so called public opinion. Since Descartes, the criticism on the natural and theocentric origins of poverty and social inequality has become increasingly public. From the 18th-century on, this criticism has been taken on by revolutionaries imbued with the libre-pensée principle of the Enlightenment mindset, that is, the free thinking emancipated from the limits of experience, tradition, and Christian faith. With this at stake, I will pose that the interpretation of the social in Hannah Arendt’s work followed two separate paths: one based on her zoologic-scientific interpretation of the social found in The Human Condition; and another based on her cartesian-theological interpretation of the social question found in On Revolution. Moreover, I intend to offer evidence that Arendt’s dialogue with poet W. H. Auden (1907-1973) was essential to Arendt’s realization of the social question as a revolutionary attempt to not only bring up Christian compassion into the public debate but also instrumentalize it for political purposes. At last, I will explore how Arendt has set yet ambiguously two distinguished modes of political action: the traditional action inherited by Hellenic political experience, and the scientific-processual modern action (or Whiteheadean processual action). Drawing on excerpts of The Human Condition, I will contend that the particular characteristics of these two modes of action are in fact antithetical and therefore mutually exclusive.

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Section: Sentido Semântico Da Vitóriaunclassified

Do Social à Questão Social: Hannah Arendt entre a Zoologia e a Teologia da Compaixão

de Almeida

2024

Preprint

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Paul’s Reduction of the Dual Commandment: The Significance of Worldliness to Messianic Life

Baker

2020

Political Theology

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Jesus' dual commandment to love God and neighbour, in that order, was clearly central to the teachings of the earliest communities of believers. Paul's reduction of this twin commandment (Galatians 5.13; Romans 13.9) to love of neighbour was therefore very significant, as Spinoza and Taubes both noticed. How, then, to account for Paul's audacity? Building on related readings of Paul from Heidegger and Agamben, particularly their respective interpretations of Paul's hos me ('as not') of 1 Corinthians 7.29-32, this article seeks a context for Paul's reduction. It finds it in Paul's messianic conception of worldliness as something to appropriate or use, but never as something to transcend in otherworldliness. Whether appropriation (Heidegger) or use (Agamben) is a better rendering of this insight into the messianic vocation is also discussed. While appropriation continues to assume a subject that seizes worldliness, use has the advantage of conceiving messianic subjectivity as entirely in-the-world.The New Testament has Jesus reduce the many commandments of the law to two. The 'first and greatest' of these, the so-called Great Commandment

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Unsecularizing history and politics: Jayne Svenungsson and Karl Löwith on meaning in history

Chorell

2021

International Journal of Philosophy and Theology

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The debate about secularization in recent decades has challenged long-held assumptions about Western modernity and the purported decline of religion in modern societies. However, the impact of this criticism on the idea of history has so far not received as much attention as it deserves. Jayne Svenungsson's analysis of the influence of biblical motives on contemporary political theology illustrates one way in which the concept of history might be rethought in the wake of the crisis of the secularization thesis. In dialogue with Karl Löwith's classical argument that modern philosophy of history and the idea of historical progress are secularized versions of Christian eschatology, she argues that the prophetic vision of history as a struggle for a justice that supersedes every current law or moral system is a viable and promising alternative that ought to be considered in contemporary discussions of politics and history. Svenungsson's analysis thus amounts to what one might call a postsecular challenge to a secular historical discourse.

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Evil in History: Karl Löwith and Jacob Taubes on Modern Eschatology

Cited by 3 publications

References 17 publications

Do Social à Questão Social: Hannah Arendt entre a Zoologia e a Teologia da Compaixão

Do Social à Questão Social: Hannah Arendt entre a Zoologia e a Teologia da Compaixão

Paul’s Reduction of the Dual Commandment: The Significance of Worldliness to Messianic Life

Unsecularizing history and politics: Jayne Svenungsson and Karl Löwith on meaning in history

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