Best reads of 2011

It's been a busy year, and 2012 is looking to get even worse. I have, however, not allowed my studies to disrupt my education, and have managed to get through a few books. Here is my list of highlights from 2011:

1) Marshall and Eric McLuhan: 'Media and Formal Cause' and 'The Medium and the Light.'

Marshall McLuhan (the man behind catchphrases such as 'the medium is the message' and 'global village') is one of the philosophers taken up by Graham Harman, the 'object-oriented' one in the 'speculative realist' milleu. I have mentioned earlier on this blog how Harman draws on the metaphysics of Bruno Latour, but fails to fully appreciate the subtle Catholicism in the latter's philosophy. This year I learned that McLuhan was a convert to Roman Catholicism. Hence, two of the most important philosophers drawn on in the most interesting recent philosophical movement were/are themselves (to put it carefully) blurring the boundaries between philosophy and theology. In 'Media and Formal Cause,' the McLuhans (Marshall wrote much with his son Eric, who is still producing) make more explicit the role of Aristotelian/Thomist formal causality in their analysis of modern media. The failure to understand formal cause accounts for our failure to understand the 'deep' effects of various media, and also the nature of reality as such. In 'The Medium and the Light,' Eric has collected the most explicit religious writings of his father's.

2) Bruno Latour: 'On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods'

A couple of years ago, Bruno Latour 'came out' as a philosopher. Obviously, his project had never been about the sociology of science at all, but always about ontology - more precisely, the kind of ontology that might account for the ontologies of modernity itself. In this essay collection, he continues to 'come out,' as a religious philosopher. That is, a philosopher who seeks to think and speak religiously, if not necessarily about religion (though the essays do touch upon typical topics of philosophy of religion). Latour is one of those who blur the boundary between the 'secular' and the 'religious' to such a degree (and so generously) that it sometimes feels like a relief to let go of the whole distinction.His reflections on the loudly publicized clashes between 'religion' and 'science' provide entertainment as well as encouragement for those of us who (perhaps because based in Oxford, where the 'science-vs-religion' industry particularly thrives among old as well as young and promising atheists and apologists alike) are beginning to become sick of the whole theatre.

3) Patrick Rothfuss: 'The Wise Man's Fear'

The sequel to the best fantasy novel (I was about to write 'ever written') I have read did not disappoint! The multitalented Kvothe spends a second day recounting his incredible life story to the visiting scribe called Chronicler. I have yet to write about the series on this blog, but for me it already ranks high above both Martin and Hobb. I am delaying the analysis in a kind of reverent fear of what Rothfuss might be up to next. Highly recommended!

4) Michel Serres 'Malfeasance: Appropriation Through Pollution?' 

Michel Serres's reflection on the nature of property connects the mental pollution of advertizing billboards with the ecological pollution in the global backyard of modern Western civilization. A beautifully written (as always) meditation on the world, on the violence on which the modern civilization of 'peace' is founded, with even a few gestures to the God Incarnate, who claimed nothing for Himself, and so left no material trace; no womb, no bed, no grave. Serres simply calls us to make the decision that a certain amount is 'enough.' One wonders why we don't.

Christian Tradition 4 - epilogue

I ended my 3-part series on Christian tradition quite abruptly, so I thought I would add a little note on where I am trying to take these ideas. While I am so amateurish it's not even funny, I will still try to point out some of the more high-brow philosophical paths I dream of walking one day. I am pulled by certain intiuitions rather than a clearly defined agenda, brought to the fore by my reflection on the dynamics of tradition.

One way to articulate these concerns, is that I think we need to engage the problem of how to construe human creativity, representational naming and construction (this is not a list, I am just not sure what to call it), as something else than a sort of alien intrusion upon a more authentic (whether actual or virtual) Reality, while at the same time resisting the temptation to retreat into solipsistic phenomenology, thus 'forgetting' the always-already presence of metaphysical speculation and presumption. In other words, we can't pretend not to have presumptions about the whole of Reality, even though we don't know how to articulate these. And we need to fit our own act (or the 'event') of thinking the structure into the structure, even in the very 'newness' of this act/event.

Here many so-called 'postmodern' philosophies tend to disappoint, exhibiting only a consistent albeit 'dialectic' and self-contradictory working-out (ad absurdum) of the 'modern' logic they claim to (at least ironically) distance themselves from. Whether they speak of 'perspectives', 'illusions', 'representations', or 'cultures', there is always a subtle denigration of the human element compared to Reality as such. Even when they erase the ontological status of 'the human', and speak of fissures or fractures in Reality itself (of which the level we call 'human' is perhaps only a set of events randomly collected for someone's convenience, or some kind of cosmic attempt of self-healing), the represented/repeated/static/named is always of somewhat less ontological solidity than the always-elusive Real. The numerous available 'death-of-god' theologies so popular among many 'emerging' churches disappoint equally, for the same reasons. The 'metaphysics' they fear is, I think, simply a gigantic straw man constructed by themselves for the rushing pleasure of demolishing it - a rush that is allegedly a 'trace of the Real'. However, since these thinkers can only 'enter the void' by deconstruction and a complete rejection of any 'merely human' erection of metaphysical orders, these (theo-)philosophies cannot but deny, ignore and/or forget the instance of their own 'active' thinking, but only deconstruct whatever has been thought - allegedly by others. The 'merely human' is hence only secondary, ontologically speaking, even though it can never be completely eradicated.

Some of the places I register more consistent and fruitful concern with these ideas are:

1) Some writings of self-proclaimed 'radical orthodox' theologian John Milbank, whose early work explored the philosophy of Giambattista Vico, whose philosophy of history and historiography dealt  with questions regarding the relationship between historical action and the act of representing this in historical writing. Milbank's later explorations include ventures into (neo-Platonic) theurgy and (Eastern Orthodox) Sophiology. A central concern in his oeuvre, at least in my reading, is precisely one of the relation between human creativity/representation/construction and Reality as a whole - a question he approaches through categories such as 'mediation', 'relation', and 'participation' in a transcendence represented in (somewhat updated Thomist) terms of Creation, Incarnation and Trinity. While Milbank is perhaps more known for a certain (un)popular historical narrative of theological deviation and decline as lying at the root of the modern secular (where the sensed experience, representation, and 'realness' of Reality have somehow been split apart), I think that to make this narrative as such the central element in his oeuvre is a misreading.

I think the undeniable relevance of Milbank's metaphysics regarding the ontological status of human making has lately been drowned out by quick 'translations' of his work in public debates over 'Red Tory' policy (which tend to anger those who insist on debating within the terms of the modernity Milbank rejects), or, within the rather narrow confines of Dominican scholarship, questions over his reading of - the in that context seemingly untouchable - Thomas of Aquinas. However, on the perspective of Milbank's own metaphysics of human action and Reality, such re-readings of Aquinas are (I would think) not necessarily in themselves any more of a problem than any other instance/act of translation or exegesis.

2) Some writings of French philosopher (and so not primarily sociologist or anthropologist, though he does carry the burden of those titles) Bruno Latour, as well as his former mentor Michel Serres (by the way - thanks to the people over at this fine blog for linking to my pieces on Serres!). Serres invariably describes - albeit in sometimes very poetic and beautiful language - a Reality that is mediation and relation all the way up and all the way down - often centered around the mundane world of the French parish. Reading his work alongside that of Latour reveals how much the latter is indebted to his mentor, even though his (strikingly similar!) metaphysics are articulated in a kind of 'deep empiricism' and material case studies rather than poetic stories and reflections. (It also seems Latour prefers referencing Alfred Whitehead when it comes to philosophy - though his sensitivities are definitely 'Serresian'). Latour's point of departure is precisely the false break between the 'Human' and 'Nature'.

Bruno Latour's big ideas have lately been taken up by a group of philosophers in a movement loosely labeled 'Speculative Realism', who are (rightly so!) utterly unapologetic about their metaphysical speculation. While these readings are right to consider Latour a philosopher, and do deal with some key texts in his oeuvre, my own (amateur!) opinion is that they miss the facets of his work that emerge when he is read alongside Michel Serres, as well from a consideration of his own subtle Catholicism (Harman in fact expresses positive surprise over the fact that Latour's Catholicism does not seem to hamper his ability to speak of God 'on level with' material objects and mediation - as if this was somehow a curious thing. One wonders whether he has heard of "sacraments"...?). Placing relation rather than 'flux' or 'chaos' at the (moving) centre of his metaphysics seems to me to already allow for the kind of ontological 'borders between things' that these sophisticated 'object-oriented' thinkers are calling for. Another key (paradoxical, perhaps, to mentioned philosophers) is that Latour's own PhD was on biblical exegesis, and centered on nothing less than the question of faithful translation - the relatively reliable transmitting of some-thing from one context to another, and the dynamic between stability and change in such events. That Latour has lately extended his ideas to speculate about Reality as such should come as no surprise, even though he is more famous for what he did during what was arguably only a 20-year detour through so-called Science Studies and the articulation of 'Actor Network Theory'.