The Anatheistic Wager: faith after Faith

Abstract

The hermeneutic wager described in Richard Kearney's Anatheism seems to share a number of characteristics with both agnosticism and other postmodern religious wagers. All these approaches maintain a certain epistemological humility with respect to what we can and cannot know about God. Nevertheless, the anatheistic wager includes an existential aspect that risks commitment even in the uncertainty of epistemological uncertainty. The fivefold motion of imagination, humility, commitment, discernment, and hospitality circumscribes a wager that is neither the blind leap of fideism nor safe assurance of certainty.

The Wager of Faith in Fiction and Psychoanalysis: Reading Colm Tóibín's The Testament of Mary

“…In order to sharpen the contours of these complex questions, we might do well to start with Treanor's (2010) discussion of Kearney's anatheism in which he attempts to distinguish between faith, belief and knowledge. What are the implications of the wager of faith in fiction for how we might understand any notion of faith in psychoanalysis?…”

“…Indeed, how might we understand ‘faith’ in the first place? In order to sharpen the contours of these complex questions, we might do well to start with Treanor's () discussion of Kearney's anatheism in which he attempts to distinguish between faith, belief and knowledge. To know something, he suggests, requires evidence or credentials that establish our knowledge as ‘true’, while to believe something is to accept it without the need for any such verification.…”

Transcendence, Taxis, Trust: Richard Kearney and Jacques Derrida

“…While romantic hermeneutics offer modern accounts of interpretation which aim at convergence between the interpreter and the interpreted, radical hermeneutics offer postmodern accounts of interpretation which aim at divergence between the interpreter and the interpreted ( [3], pp. [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. Both the romantic and the radical hermeneutics map onto the interpretation of the other.…”

“…In accordance with his hermeneutic, he introduces the conceptual couple of 'immanence' and 'transcendence': "if others become too transcendent" and "if others become too immanent," he argues, "they become equally exempt from ethical relation" [3]. The consequence of this exemption is that one cannot distinguish between the other who should be welcomed and the other who should not 5 Of course, Kearney is inspired by Emmanuel Levinas, especially Levinas's account of ethics. See [8].…”

“…What is at stake in the taxi is the entanglement of ethics and eschatology. 5 For Kearney, both have to do with the other-ethics with the present other and eschatology with the potential other. When the driver has to decide about the other whom she does not know, the present ethical other is also a potential eschatological other and the potential eschatological other is also a present ethical other.…”