Category: Uncategorized

the simulacra of community: the gathering of individuals. where is community? What does it look like? too often our search for community ends in a cheap simulation, a simulacra, and the church is most complicit in this illusion. Churches aren’t called “Church” anymore; they’re called “communities” of Christ, faith, friendship, whatever you want. Yet rarely […]

While the argument in this essay meanders among many topics (as do all of Zizek’s writing), I’m going to focus on the twists and turns of Zizek’s complaint against Levinas. Summary In the face of our neighbor, do we glimpse the Other as transcendent ground of ethical relations, or spy a terrifying monstrosity from which […]

(these are some thoughts I prepared for an interview [an commented on], most of which I didn’t say, nor was shown, but I thought, hey why not post it.) …it is like a renegade stage production. Several of us have been given a role and consumes, but the clothes didn’t fit right, and we didn’t […]

Here is a great interview with Alain Badiou.It is a great intro to his thought in the area of St. Paul, universalism and truth. Here is a bit of it: What is this new conception? For me,something is universal if it is something thatis beyond established differences. We havedifferences that seem absolutely natural tous. In […]

Alain Badiou on Emmanuel Levinas: concerning the ‘ethics of the other’ and whether it has a future…from Alain Badiou’s Ethics: Summary of Levinas: The greek origin of metaphysics has subordinated all thought to the logic of the Same, that of substance and identity. The metaphysics makes it impossible to encounter the Other in its alterity, […]

if any of you care. I’ve got a new feed by feedburner.

I would say that philosophically and cultural/pastorally our problem is not our abandonment to the present, but rather the inability to receive the ‘present’ time. on answering the philosophical objections to the present (if that can be done): as I mentioned in the comments the either/or the modern/postmodern discussion seems to be a univocal present […]

what is the situation of the ‘present’, or the ‘now’, in the current philosophical and cultural perspective? philosophically:The ethics of the Other, recourse to the Past/Future, are all attempts to escape a totalitarian conception of rationality and correlated politics. With Levinas’ turn toward a forgotten past where ethics preceeded ontology, and Derrida’s endless deferral to […]

Well I’ve been working a bunch for church and at the ‘bucks. But I did manage to finish The Worthing Saga. I’ll post my reflections for SciFi Friday. Very thoughful posts on Senator Obama and that lack of the Christian Left from Jamie Smith (Barack Obama: Another Reason to Leave the Christian Left) with expansion […]

I’ve been in a discussion with Kester Brewin over at Complext Christ concerning the relationships of gift, market, and plunder economies. And then I came over this this morning. Very disturbing: “Dehumanizing the Lowest of the Low: Neuro-imaging responses to Extreme Outgroups”. If you believe someone is not human, they even your brian acts as […]