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Document Details : Title: Waarom het christelijk gedachtegoed een strijd waard is Subtitle: Slavoj Žižek over Gilbert K. Chesterton Author(s): DE KESEL, Marc Journal: Tijdschrift voor Theologie Volume: 53 Issue: 1 Date: 2013 Pages: 63-78 DOI: 10.2143/TVT.53.1.3203308 Abstract : Contemplating a total annihilation of institutionalized Christianity, Slavoj Žižek declares he would not lament its passing for one second, being the atheist that he is. Yet, in many of his writings of the last decade, he openly defends the Christian legacy. This defence started in The Fragile Absolute (2000), presented as a book answering the question ‘Why the Christian legacy is worth fighting for’ (its subtitle), and it still continues in, for instance, The Monstrosity of Christ (2009) with John Milbank, and God in Pain (2012) with the Croatian theologian Boris Gunjeviæ. But how can he be a militant atheist and at the same time fight for the preservation of the Christian legacy? To understand that paradox, one has to take into account the Hegelian and Lacanian background of Žižek’s thought. Like Hegel and Lacan, Žižek defines Christianity as the religion of God’s death and resurrection, which makes it an inherently revolutionary religion, enabling a radically new world in every single moment. But Žižek is also interested in a second feature of Christianity: that it is a religion of truth, of universal truth, since Christ died and was resurrected for ‘both Greek and Jew’, as Saint Paul repeatedly writes. Resurrection and universal equality: those two ideas of the Christian legacy are worth fighting for, even if one is a convinced atheist, Žižek believes. Since the emergence of modernity, defending universal equality has become self-evident, but it may be less clear why this should still be linked to Christianity. The opposite goes for ‘resurrection’. It is the central concept of Christian doctrine, but to most of us it is an enigma what this idea has to do with modernity. In this essay, Marc De Kesel offers a critical discussion of Žižek’s arguments in favour of a positive appreciation of the Christian legacy. It will at the same time introduce the core of the Žižekian thought and the central problem to his entire oeuvre. In that perspective, a focus on Žižek’s reading of G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy (1908) is very enlightening. It offers an excellent introduction into Žižek’s own reflection on the current value of Christian thought. Yet, reading Chesterton’s novel of the same year, The Man Who Was Thursday, Žižek discovers the problematic core of his defence of Christian ‘orthodoxy’, enabling him to refine his own appreciation of the Christian Legacy. |
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