Calvin D. Ullrich

In the era of pandemics, digitalization, mass migration and precarious ecology, the idea of what it means to live as a bodily creature is more important than ever. Descriptions of the body in religion and philosophy have sought to integrate the sources of Spirit and Matter into a comprehensive framework of embodiment. But what is the status of this paradigm today? In thinking humanity as a unified being of bodily perception, are there not dimensions of corporeal existence that remain constitutively 'unthought', and what are the implications of this insight for religion, politics, and ethics? What is one to make of the body if it is not simply a canvas for meaning, but rather a transgressionary medium made up of diverse forces and affects? What kinds of tensions are involved in the body's materiality and exposed existence to all forms of 'the natural'? What is now the role and limits of 'touch' within our intersubjective social existence? Do we perhaps need to retain the centrality of the 'lived-body' concept as a 'carrier of meaning', or does the weight of the body's material existence force us to abandon it? In this volume various authors have collected responses to these questions to 'think' the Unthinkable Body both together with, and beyond, embodied reason.

[Winner of the Manfred Lautenschläger Award - 2022]

In this book, Calvin D. Ullrich argues for the political significance of the philosopher-theologian John D. Caputo's radical theology. Against the backdrop of present debates, the author traces the notions of 'sovereignty and event' by drawing on the political theology of Carl Schmitt and Caputo's evolving engagement with postmodern thought; from its genesis in Martin Heidegger to its deeply involved association with Jacques Derrida. Calvin D. Ullrich shows that contrary to some misleading interpretations of his religious deconstruction, Caputo has always held nascent political concerns which culminate in his radical theology. Writing for scholars working in contemporary philosophy and theology, this book offers one of the first major in-depth analyses covering Caputo's writings of the last four decades, and seeks to defend their relevance for discussions responding to ongoing political-theological challenges.

In this short tract, Calvin D. Ullrich proposes that the reinventions of radical theology have important political consequences, focussing on the American philosopher and theologian John Caputo. He introduces some of Caputo’s key ideas: the notion of events, God’s weakness and insistence, and the importance of theopoetics. Ullrich’s argument is that this radical theology challenges us to think of a God without sovereignty, and therefore to imagine a very different politics.

This article presents a series of reflections on the so-called 'singularity' of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It begins with a meditation on Freud's notion of the 'Uncanny' to help us understand the experience of interacting with the new AI. It then critically engages the formal notion of 'the singularity' by returning to the classical critique of artificial computing in Hubert Dreyfus, and suggests that 'singularity' should be understood rather in its effects within the context of a socio-cultural phenomenon which progressively disembodies the human being. Finally, in conversation with Dominique Janicaud and Emmanuel Falque, it begins to outline the contours of an alternative 'philosophical-theological intelligence': characterized by ambivalence, the 'potentiality' of rationality, and the finitude of our human condition that Christ came to fully embody and share with us, not so that we might escape it, but 'undergo' it in common together.

This article presents a constructive dialogue between contemporary theological phenomenology and systematic theology. It considers the writings of the French phenomenologist Emmanuel Falque by offering a precis of his unique approach to “crossing” the boundaries of theology and philosophy. This methodological innovation serves as an intervention into contemporary theological phenomenology, which allows him to propose an overlooked dimension of human corporeality, what he calls the spread-body (corps épandu). Within the latter is embedded a conception of bodily existence that escapes ratiocination and is comprised of chaotic forces, drives, desires, and animality. The article challenges not so much this philosophical description but rather suggests that Falque’s theological resolution to this subterranean dimension of corporeal life consists in a deus ex machina that re-orders these corporeal forces without remainder through participation in the eucharist. It argues that Falque’s notion of the spread body can be supplemented theologically by an account of ‘affectivity’ that is distinguished from auto-affection, as in the case of Michel Henry, and which also gleans from the field of affect theory. This supplementation is derived from current research in systematic theology, which looks at the doctrines of pneumatology and sanctification to offer a more plausible account of corporeality in light of the Christian experience of the affective body.

This text is set to be published in a collected volume at Wipf & Stock.

The modus operandi for this chapter consists in outlining four contours of political theology: (1) first, the origins of political theology are introduced at length with respect to the twentieth century German constitutional lawyer, Carl Schmitt, a figure to which most references in contemporary political theology begin and continue to proliferate. Schmitt’s normative account of politics and theology are deeply problematic, but his ‘descriptive’ account of political theology has been highly influential, though in South Africa this has been indirect or even marginal. (2) The second contour engages the so-called German alternatives, where a group of post-war theologians, namely Jürgen Moltmann, Johann-Baptist Metz, and Dorothee Sölle, are seen in part as an implicit reaction to Schmitt’s political theology and post-War German Protestantism, but whose projects are also inflected by other contemporary political concerns, and which eventually migrate from the North to the Southern hemisphere. (3) The third contour most recognizable in South Africa is explored under the title of “Reformed political theology.” This term covers a variety of theological approaches born out of theological responses to apartheid. This section, however, first focuses on its problematic sense in the mode of neo-Kuyperian Calvinism and then on an alternative rendering that ‘revitalized’ Calvin’s political thought to subvert and offer a new ‘positive’ political theology. (4) The fourth and final contour suggests that reformed political theology developed into an umbrella term known as ‘public theology’. This mode has dominated theological discourse before and after the transition to democracy in 1994, and while it can rightly be said to conform to a modality of political theology, it will also need to be distinguished from it. Including public theology then, the section traces two other trajectories of political theology as possible futures for this discourse. Both share a conviction in moving beyond secular sensibilities, but while the former argues for the Christian liturgy and the church as the source for a counter-politics, the latter fashions a post-secular political theology that takes the absence of authority as constitutive of the political as such.

Tentatively emerging from a global pandemic, we are confronted with a horizon of immanent adversities: (1) the closing window for altering the trajectory of our climate crisis, (2) the political antagonisms that exacerbate greater polarization, and (3) the effects of late-stage capitalism that service these first two interconnected configurations. Far from indulging a doomsday pessimism or comfortable misanthropy, this article pursues two continental philosophers, situating them within the tradition of "negative political theology" to think through a future of nothingness. Developing and then distinguishing between what is called the "plastic apocalypticism" of the philosopher Catherine Malabou, which thinks the end of the world as such, and an "insistent messianic" of the radical theologian, John D. Caputo, which takes the end of the world as the condition for saving it, an argument is made in favour of a mutual compatibility-recognizing the passing away of this world, its absolute contingency, but also the "event" of God's insistence. This messianic insistence and plastic revelation both resist divine intervention and instead look toward the formation of a new future, just as such a future (of nothingness) is the condition for the persistent interrogative of all concrete political arrangements.

The contributions of "the turn to religion" in continental philosophy have begun to find their place in South African theological and philosophical circles. This article asks: how are we to position this phenomenon in the South African context and what implications might it have for the future of systematic theology? After situating the "turn to religion" in general, the article traces the historical development of philosophy's creative relationship to theology by focusing on three representatives from the Stellenbosch tradition: the theologian Johannes du Plessis, the philosopher J.F. Kirsten, as well as the philosopher, Johann Degenaar. It argues that the relationship between philosophy and theology cultivated in these figures is characterized by what can be called the "propaedeutic" model, whereby theology is subjected to a "preparation" by philosophy. This model raises questions about the "use" of philosophy in contemporary systematic theology within the context of the secular academy and an ever-pluralizing world. The article suggests that recent debates in the continental "turn" are uniquely positioned to help reflect on such questions of methodology, and to this end makes a tentative proposal drawing on the philosophical-theological approach developed by the French thinker, Emmanuel Falque.

Given the evidence of black suffering more than two and half decades after apartheid, this paper proceeds on the premise that theology cannot continue as business per usual. It attempts to stage a critical and creative encounter between the radical theology of the philosopher, John D. Caputo and the liberation Christology of the South African theologian, Takatso Mofokeng. It demonstrates both the commonalities and limits of their respective accounts and suggests that radical theology and liberation Christology supplement each other in critically-constructive ways. Liberation Christology’s criticism of power, institution, and Western modes of theological discourse, which it shares with radical theology, supplements the latter’s somewhat abstract account of “the event” with the particularity of black experience. Radical theology, on the other hand, offers black Christology a way to be critical of its own metaphysical claims, as well as its tendency to mimic the oppressor in its categories of positive identification.

The theological turn in continental philosophy has beckoned several new possibilities for theoretical discourse. More recently, the question of the absence of a political theology has been raised: Can an ethics of alterity offer a more substantive politics? In pursuing this question, the article considers the late work of Jacques Derrida and John D. Caputo. It argues that, contrary to caricatures of Caputo's "theology of event, " his notion of theopoetics evinces a "materialist turn" in his mature thought that can be considered the beginning of a "radical political theology. " This position is not without its challenges, however, raising concerns over deconstruction's ability to navigate the immanent but necessary dangers of politics. In order to attempt to speak of a form of "radical political theology"-i.e. a movement from theopoetics to theopraxis-the article turns to some of the political writing of Simon Critchley. It is argued that a much desired "political viscerality" for a radical political theology is supplied by Critchley's anarchic realism. The latter is neither conceived as utopian nor defeatist, but as a sustained program of inventive and creative political interventions, which act as responses to the singularity of the situation.

This article seeks to distill key moments in the early work of the philosopher John D. Caputo. In considering his early investigations of Martin Heidegger, it argues that an adequate account of the trajectory of his later theological project requires a refraction through a crucial double gesture in these earlier writings. To this end, the article follows Caputo's relationship with Heidegger where the optics of 'overcoming metaphysics' are laid bare (the first gesture). In these deliberations, alongside Neo-Scholastic Thomism, it is clear that what constitutes (theological) metaphysics for Caputo is any thinking which fails to think that which 'gives' the distinction between Being and beings. The second gesture, then, reveals 'a certain way' (d'une certaine maniére) of reading that allows him not only the unique possibility to re-read Scholastic Thomism by way of Meister Eckhart, but also the delimitation of the mythological construal of Being in the later Heidegger himself. The article's methodological argument is that this transgressionary impulse gleaned from Heidegger, constitutes the 'origins' of Caputo's move into the ethical-religious paradigm of deconstruction and, therefore, is also axiomatic for his later radical theology of 'religion without religion.'

This article seeks to offer insights into what is called a radical public theology. Such a theology views contemporary religious uncertainty as an opportunity rather than as a site for apologetic resistance. The article sketches the linguistic-hermeneutic turn, before reflecting on an example of a new proposal of faith from the philosopher Simon Critchley. In conversation with the prominent radical theologian, John D. Caputo, the article argues that Critchley's (ir)religious faith can be read idiomatically as a radical theology. This reading carves a space for a public theological reflection, which is 'public' because it engages and is responsive to the call of 'the least of these' in society. Finally, it is argued that a radical public theology offers resources toward the notion of 'meontological communities,' functioning to deepen theological reflection on the public nature of faith and life of the church.

In his 2012 work, Faith of the Faithless, the philosopher Simon
Critchley presented an ‘atheistic’ formulation of faith as an ‘experiment’
in ‘political theology.’ This work, as part of the so-called
‘turn to religion’ in continental political philosophy, gave an
account of what Critchley had formerly articulated as ‘atheistic
transcendence.’ Tracing the genesis of the latter and then linking
to his notion of the supreme fiction, the paper seeks to account for
Critchley’s ‘a/theological’ shift. Through a close reading, the paper
argues that Critchley’s ‘faith of the faithless’ depends on the
Christian hermeneutic tradition – or radical theology – for its
articulation. Finally, using John D. Caputo’s radical theology as
the principal proponent in this regard, the paper demonstrates a
necessary symmetry with Critchley’s faith of the faithless. Such a
claim leads to the conclusion that while symmetrical, Critchley and
Caputo are also inversely related. That is: a Critchlean radical
politics nourished by radical theology opens up the possibility
for a Caputoian radical political theology nourished by Critchlean
radical politics.

At the heart of the Christian faith are these twin concerns: the visible and material presence of God ("this is my body") and the ritual of memory which keeps this reality alive ("do this in remembrance of me"). Riffing Immanuel Kant, memory without this body is empty, and this body without the tradition of memory is blind. In what follows, it will be argued not that the acts of memory of this body have become obscured (such would be far too presumptuous a claim), but rather more modestly that an aspect of what is to be remembered has been forgotten, i.e., the organic body—more specifically, the organic body as an unstable substrate for subjectivity.

It is surely no overstatement that if in recent times we have ever needed a counter-narrative, what one might call a ‘politics of hope’, now is that time. This is what David Newheiser has given us in his prescient new book, Hope In A Secular Age (2019). Newheiser enjoins us that despite all the disappointment and uncertainty, we must persist; neither blindly into idealist utopias which resist ambiguity, nor into cynicisms which thwart concrete improvements. Hope as the solution to these false choices has that character of resilience which “enables desire to endure without denying vulnerability”.

The preamble of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 begins with a declaration, ‘We, the people of South Africa’ and concludes with a prayer, ‘Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika’ (God bless Africa).These incipits are neither ornamental nor convenient drapery for a country’s founding legal document. Rather, they are visible evidence of a deep contestation inherent to post-apartheid South Africa with respect to law and religion. On the one hand, the opening makes clear that the traditional sovereign has been divested and dispersed into the ‘will of the people’, but on the other, it appears that the sovereign remains; ‘his’ protection and favour are invoked. To ask then ‘how did we get here?', at once eliding the traditional while at the same time seemingly re-affirming it, is to ask a series of timely questions, such as: what is ‘the state of secularism’ in South Africa? What kind of secularism does the country have? Given its historical saturation in religious politics and dependence on religion's institutions, how is it possible for a new post-apartheid state to find itself without [this] authority?

In our unprecedented times, the body as a phenomenon has issued its own cri de cœur for the fragility and vulnerability of life. No longer is the body a topos for thought within the confines of the academy only; not least, our pandemic age has created a fissure, impressing itself with a force of an opening in a continuous line from nature to politics, the religious, and onto our very own bodies. Therefore, what is calling is a body not only exceeding thought or escaping its confines, but also a body which presents an impossibility or even a monstrous gravity for thought: an unthinkable body that might open alternative ways to articulate its relation to religion, politics, and understanding. How are we to make sense of our bodies in this uncertainty? How are we to ‘think’ about the body when the body seems itself to be ‘unthinkable’?

Prof. Dr. Rebekka Klein and Dr. Calvin Ullrich will pursue a new research project and conference series on this topic in the years 2022 and 2023. Drawing together experts in the fields of philosophy, theology, and psychoanalytic theory, the research project will debate contemporary notions of the body with a focus on their material, affective, and alien nature.

Part I of this project will include contributions from the following:

Richard Kearney
Lisa Blackman
Donovan Schaefer
Rachel Aumiller
Philipp Stoellger
Gregor Etzelmüller
Selin Gerlek

In our unprecedented times, the body as a phenomenon has issued its own cri de cœur for the fragility and vulnerability of life. No longer is the body a topos for thought within the confines of the academy only; not least, our pandemic age has created a fissure, impressing itself with a force of an opening in a continuous line from nature to politics, the religious, and onto our very own bodies. Therefore, what is calling is a body not only exceeding thought or escaping its confines, but also a body which presents an impossibility or even a monstrous gravity for thought: an unthinkable body that might open alternative ways to articulate its relation to religion, politics, and understanding. How are we to make sense of our bodies in this uncertainty? How are we to ‘think’ about the body when the body seems itself to be ‘unthinkable’?

Prof. Dr. Rebekka Klein and Dr. Calvin Ullrich will pursue a new research project and conference series on this topic in the years 2022 and 2023. Drawing together experts in the fields of philosophy, theology, and psychoanalytic theory, the research project will debate contemporary notions of the body with a focus on their material, affective, and alien nature.

Part II of this project will include contributions from the following speakers:

Thomas Fuchs
Francesca Ferrando
Theresia Heimerl
Markus Mühling
Michael Staudigl
Mathias Wirth
Reinhold Esterbauer

In our unprecedented times, the body as a phenomenon has issued its own cri de cœur for the fragility and vulnerability of life. No longer is the body a topos for thought within the confines of the academy only; not least, our pandemic age has created a fissure, impressing itself with a force of an opening in a continuous line from nature to politics, the religious, and onto our very own bodies. Therefore, what is calling is a body not only exceeding thought or escaping its confines, but also a body which presents an impossibility or even a monstrous gravity for thought: an unthinkable body that might open alternative ways to articulate its relation to religion, politics, and understanding. How are we to make sense of our bodies in this uncertainty? How are we to ‘think’ about the body when the body seems itself to be ‘unthinkable’?

Prof. Dr. Rebekka Klein and Dr. Calvin Ullrich will pursue a new research project and conference series on this topic in the years 2022 and 2023. Drawing together experts in the fields of philosophy, theology, and psychoanalytic theory, the research project will debate contemporary notions of the body with a focus on their material, affective, and alien nature.

Part III of this project will include contributions from the following speakers:

Emmanuel Falque
Hartmut von Sass
Kurt Appel
Ulrich Körtner
Espen Dahl
Burkhard Liebsch
Fana Schiefen
Aaron Looney

This project offers a contemporary theological-philosophical account of the body. It takes as its starting point the widely held assumption that conceptions of the body in the West have often been ascribed an inferior and subordinate status. The corollary is all too evident, not only historically, but also today in the 'age of pandemics', where the (in)visibility of the body and forms of violence perpetuated against it have become common occurrences. Aligning with recent intellectual trends which have sought to overturn this dynamic, the primary aim of this project is to produce a description of the body that can aid theological reflection by reinterpreting some of its own-often problematic-doctrinal claims and assessing what impact this might have for religious and political life.

First appeared, 3 July, 2018
Critical Legal Thinking: https://criticallegalthinking.com/2018/07/03/carl-schmitt-katechon/

The concept of the katechon first appears in biblical literature with two hapaxlegomena occurring in the second deutero-Pauline epistle to the Thessalonians: “And now you know what is now restraining him [τὸ κατέχον], so that he may be revealed when his time comes. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, but only until the one who now restrains [ὁ κατέχων] it is removed.”