The Transcendental Turn
Christian Atheism (Pre-Course Series: 1)
Starting October 20th, Philosophy Portal will be starting a course focused on the concept of “Christian Atheism”. Christian Atheism is not a worldview or a denomination, but rather a conceptual contradiction that may provoke new thinking about both the nature of religion (and specifically Christianity), as well as secular society (and specifically contemporary liberal society). The goal of the course is not to offer a final metaphysical solution, provide a coherent meta-paradigmatics, or even to teach the foundations of Christianity or Atheism in-themselves. The goal of this course is to demonstrate that one important aspect of the modern philosophical tradition as a whole, is a type of Christian Atheist project, that has been unreflected and unintegrated into both contemporary philosophy and society. The course will feature classes on German Idealism, Hegelo-Marxism, Nietzsche and Psychoanalysis, Altizer’s Gospel, Žižek’s Philosophy, and Rollins’ Theology. The course will also feature guest lectures from Slavoj Žižek, Peter Rollins, Barry Taylor, and Mark Gerard Murphy. To find out more, or to get involved, see: Christian Atheism.
The video below is part of pre-course material for the course on Christian Atheism:
In this video:
I emphasise that philosophy needs to prepare itself for the revival of interest in religion and theology, and specifically in the context of Western society, Christianity. Christian Atheism is an important concept because it seeks to hold the monstrous contradiction between the two terms as opposed to viewing these concepts as separate and irreconcilable (which is both the fashionable and dogmatic move).
The key turn in modern philosophy is not to give you a consistent and coherent worldview, e.g. X Christian denomination (Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, etc.), or X scientific paradigm (Newtonianism, Darwinism, etc.), or X general paradigmatics (Integralism, Metamodernism, etc.). The role of the modern philosopher is to expose the cracks and antinomies of the present moment in such a way as that we increase the probability for the liberation of thought, for thinking processes as such.
The specific context for the emergence of the modern Kantian philosophy must be situated as a reaction to the background dependence of Newton’s notion of absolute space and time, which Kant conceives of as a priori categories of reason, as opposed to ontological entities or “things-in-themselves”.
Framed positively Kant’s philosophy is referred to as a “transcendental philosophy” focused on the “transcendental constitution of reality”. Here focus of analysis shifts to the way reality appears to us, and towards heightened self-reflection on the limits of our own capacity to know being independent of our cognition.
One of the major consequences of this turn is that “appearances” loses their pejorative characteristic vis-a-vis transcendental reality (as in the classical distinction between imperfect appearances and perfect forms) as appearances are themselves transcendentally constituted.
What we see in the emergence of the Kantian philosophy is a movement from a general notion of Being towards self-reflection on a priori categories that transcendentally constitute Being. In the context of the concept of Christian Atheism, we might say that this is analogous to what happens in a certain dialectical interpretation of Christianity, where God (general Being) becomes Christ (transcendental a priori).
Note: in the course itself, this pre-course material will not only be further developed, but also provide us with a foundation for further discussion.