 previous article in this issue | next article in this issue  |
|
Document Details : Title: De christelijke passie voor het nieuwe Subtitle: De theologische relevantie van Alain Badious filosofie Author(s): DEPOORTERE, Frederiek Journal: Tijdschrift voor Theologie Volume: 49 Issue: 3 Date: 2009 Pages: 237-254 DOI: 10.2143/TVT.49.3.3203472 Abstract : The author of this article seeks to show that work by the French philosopher Alain Badiou is relevant to theology. He does so in three steps. [1] In the first step he provides a brief introduction to Badiou’s life and work. The author presents the central question in Badiou’s philosophy – whether radical newness is possible – and pinpoints the core ideas in his philosophical system. Here the focus of attention falls on Badiou’s view of ‘the event’ (l’événement). The article uses the resurrection to illustrate Badiou’s concept of event. [2] In the second step, the author outlines a theological issue for which Badiou’s work is important, i.e. the Christian passion for the new. Starting from the observation that modernity is marked by a passion for the new, the author asks whether this passion is or is not an essential part of Christianity. This question gets an affirmative answer, partly via an appeal to the French theologian and sociologist Jacques Ellul. [3] Finally, the author confronts the Christian passion for the new with Badiou’s work. He refers to Badiou’s 2005 book Le siècle that contains Badiou’s interpretation of the violence that has marked the twentieth century, which Badiou explains in terms of passion for the real, the twentieth-century variant of the passion for the new. A key aspect of this is Slovenian thinker Slavoj Žižek’s critique of Badiou’s notion of the passion for the real. A discussion of Žižek’s critique of Badiou leads to a confrontation of Christian passion for the new and the variant of it that Badiou defends. In a first step, Badiou is linked to the Christian vision of the eschatological proviso. This proviso is then put in a double perspective: first by introducing the interplay between the already and the not yet and second by referring to creation theology’s contribution to the discussion. The article concludes that Badiou can and must be criticized from the perspective of creation theology, but that his work is nevertheless promising for thinking about the resurrection as a new creation. |
|
