Of all the presentations I’ll be giving in the next few months, the one that’s caused me the most consternation is Liverpool Hope’s Thinking the Absolute conference. As described in its announcement,
This conference invites proposals which critically consider this speculative turn in philosophy and its implications for thinking about religion. To what ‘end’ is speculation leading? Does it simply announce the closure of religion and its subordination to a philosophy of the absolute, nature or the ‘All’? Can it open new lines for a philosophy of religion which is not wedded to the Kantian horizon? Is speculation itself open to Kierkegaardian critique as yet another move to position and reduce ethical and religious claims, sacrificing the future on the altar of abstract possibility? Does renewed attention to the canon of speculative idealism offer a way beyond the impasse between relativism and dogmatism?
The problem here is that I’m just not sure what I have to say on the topic of religion situated in these terms. I don’t want to engage in the rather mechanical exercise of elaborating what an object-oriented theology would look like and why such a theology would undermine any importance we might grant to theology altogether. Nor do I wish to go in with guns blazing as the atheist object-oriented materialist seeking to demonstrate why any and all theologies are mistaken. Nor, finally, do I wish to show how object-oriented ontology recommends a mode of sociology analysis that focuses on religious practices and objects rather than beliefs in the formation of religious collectives and forms of subjectivity.
It seems to me that the real question ought to be what it is about philosophy as it has historically unfolded that perpetually leads it to be haunted by the invitation of religion as an irresistible supplement. In other words, rather than raising the question of whether we should choose philosophy or religion (clearly we should choose philosophy), and rather than adopting the stance of the new atheists and asking whether the ontological claims of religion are true or false (from a factual perspective they are false), I would instead like to ask what it is about philosophy that almost ineluctably leads to the necessity of religion as a supplement that fulfills something that philosophy cannot itself fulfill. Why, in other words, does philosophy encounter the “eternal return” of religion as a necessary supplement that surmounts the limitations of philosophy?
read on!
Following Levi-Strauss and his account of myth, my hypothesis is that the return of religion within philosophy marks the place of a fundamental speculative project. In other words, because philosophy structurally leaves something vital in the question of being unfinished, religion perpetually returns as a necessary supplement to symptomatically mark the place of this forgotten. Here I draw on Etianne Gilson’s analysis of the questions of metaphysics to locate the place of this remainder that haunts philosophy. As Aristotle tells us in book 4 of the Metaphysics, the “highest science” of philosophy is that of metaphysics which investigates being qua being. However, immediately this project leads to difficulties for the meaning of the term “being” is ambiguous. On the one hand, being is a noun that refers to what being is. On the other hand, being is a verb that refers to the fact that beings are or existence. It is in relation to this dual signification of being that metaphysics encounters the necessity of its first decision. Will metaphysics consist in the analysis of the noun “being” or what being is? Or will metaphysics consist in the analysis of the verb “to be” or existence? Or will metaphysics consist in the thought of the relation between being (noun) and existence (verb)?
Already features internal to the difference between being as a noun and being as a verb incline, according to Gilson, philosophers to treat metaphysics as the investigation of being rather than existence. On the one hand, being, as Gilson reminds us, “…is quite conceivable apart from actual existence; so much so that the very first and most universal of all the distinctions in the realm of being is that which divides it into two classes, that of the real and that of the possible” (3). As Gilson continues, “[s]ince being is thinkable apart from actual existence, whereas actual existence is not thinkable apart from being, philosophers will simply yield to one of the fundamental facilities of the human mind by positing that being minus actual existence as the first principle of metaphysics” (3). In other words, if being as a noun is what recommends itself as the proper object of metaphysical inquiry, then this is because 1) it’s indifference to existence allows it to be thought without need of taking a detour through [contingent] existence (thereby grounding metaphysics as an a priori science), and 2) because insofar as every existence necessarily includes reference to being, existence is already subsumed under the thought of being. In short, it is the existential neutrality of being, its indifference to determinations of possibility and actuality, that recommends it as the proper object of metaphysical inquiry.
The same cannot be said of being as a verb or existence. First, and obviously, existence is obviously not existentially neutral. While we can readily agree with Kant’s thesis that “being (noun) is not a real predicate” in that 100 imagined dollars are conceptually identical to 100 actual dollars, we cannot agree that it makes no difference whether these dollars exist in one’s wallet or not. The problem lies in determining just what difference existence makes. And it is here that thought runs up against a barrier. For, as Gilson remarks, “[i]t is not enough to say that being is conceivable apart from existence; in a certain sense it must be said that being is always conceived by us apart from existence, for the very simple reason that existence cannot possibly be conceived” (3). Existence is like pornography. We [allegedly] know it when we see it, but we cannot formulate a concept that would allow us to represent what existence is. Existence is that which escapes all conceptual determination and which evades all thought. We readily concede that existence exists, that existence is, but try as we might we cannot articulate a set of conceptual criteria that would articulate what existence is. Such is the lesson of Lacan’s discourse of the master (upper right), where the naming of anything leaves a residue or remainder that cannot be accounted for (objet a) and of Hegel’s critique of sense-certainty in the open of The Phenomenology of Spirit. The brute existence of beings always, Hegel teaches, escapes conceptual mastery.
If metaphysics is to be a science it thus follows that it must decide in favor of the articulable or that which is existentially neutral or indifferent to the brute contingency of existence. If metaphysics must choose being (noun) over existence (verb) then this is because being admits of conceptual elaboration. Insofar as conceptual thought thinks possibility and insofar as being is existentially neutral, it also allows thought to think that which is the same as thought. It is this decision on behalf of being and against existence that metaphysics is also so persistently ends in idealism. For in thinking being it encounters the mirror of itself, thereby ineluctably being drawn to the conclusion that being and thought are identical to one another. Nonetheless, this decision is seen as innocent for it is held that being already subsumes existence or that being already contains all that is of importance with respect to existence… Except, of course, it’s brute contingency.
However, just as we expect from Lacan’s discourse of the master, conceptual determination (the relation between S1 and S2) is not without a remainder. Despite the attempt of the philosopher to capture existence within the existentially neutral claws of conceptual possibility, the remainder of contingency persists and haunts philosophy. We sense that while philosophy has taught us much about the structure of possibility it has still missed what is most vital and important to us: the brute contingency of existence. For us it is not what is abstractly possible that matters, but what is. Yet of what is, metaphysics has nothing to say for it has already set existence to the side as a possible domain of inquiry insofar as existence is precisely that which cannot be represented.
It is here, with respect to this remainder, that we encounter the siren song of religion as that seductive supplement that would pick up the slack for what metaphysics has failed to address. For while metaphysics, as the investigation of that which is existentially neutral or the structure of possibility, is unconcerned with existence, the sole concern of religion is with existence. Religion is above all concerned with the fact that this world exists, that it was created by an existing entity (God), and that we exist and that these particular entities exist. From beginning to end, religion is an attempt to come to grips with this facticity of existence and its significance (and here it’s worth noting that the principle of sufficient reason is metaphysic’s sad attempt to do something similar within a framework focused not on existence but on being as existentially neutral structure of possibility; h/t to Tom Sparrow on this point). Just as myth, according to Levi-Strauss, surmounts a fundamental paradox or contradiction within a signifying structure, religion is an attempt to mark the place of existence forgotten by philosophy’s meditation on existentially neutral being. Put differently, religion is the attempt to complete the thought of being by other means.
What I would thus like to conclude is that religion is symptomatic of the speculative project of metaphysics. Religion is what comes forth to supplement metaphysics when metaphysics sets existence to the side. If this hypothesis is true, then it follows that the choice of philosophy over religion– a choice we presumably all make as philosophers –cannot be completed by demonstrating that philosophy is the “rational” choice over religion, nor that the claims of religion are inadequate as descriptions of reality. Rather, philosophy only surmounts religion in completing its project of thinking being. Yet this project can only be successful where the science of being or metaphysics is not simply the thought of existentially neutral being as structure of abstract and indifferent possibility. Rather, philosophy must also think existence. However, if the speculative project of philosophy is only complete in thinking both existence and being and their relation, this entails that there is a paradox at the heart of metaphysics. For in striving to think existence, philosophy must think that which is anterior to all thought, that which cannot be represented, and that which evades all conceptual determination. If the speculative project of philosophy is to be completed philosophy must think that which cannot be thought or the unthinkable. Such is the move beyond correlationism and the condition under which it might be possible to exorcise the endlessly returning specter of religion. How this might be done, I don’t know, but such seems to be the projecting uniting all variants of speculative realism.
Larval Subjects . 
February 7, 2012 at 5:59 am
… as philosophy ventures beyond philosophy into poetry? Blake claimed that all religion was in the beginning, poetry… but perverted by the failure of imagination.. or as Lacan has it? Catachresis, litotes, anonomasia, hypotyposis, metalepsis… to venture into the dreamy widlerness of tropes?
February 7, 2012 at 6:29 am
Why does religion haunt philosophy? For me, Luc-Marion’s cuts to the quick: who cares? Not as a dismissal of philosophy but as a real question in its own right. Is knowledge bearable without a friendship to equal it? I don’t really know, but among the strange strangers of the mesh, I can say that I certainly seek the strange friend. (And is it possible not to?)
February 7, 2012 at 7:13 am
I’m trying to suggest that philosophy is haunted by religion because of a structural fault within it that calls for a supplement to mend that fault. I don’t think Marion responds to the query with the answer “who cares?” Rather I think he tries to rigorously circumscribe the limits of philosophy and representation (through his analysis of “the saturated phenomenon”) to mark the place where theology begins. Interestingly, in his opus Being-Given this begins with a meditation on existence as opposed to being.
February 7, 2012 at 5:56 pm
Understood. And apologies: There was a word missing from my last post. “Who cares?” is not Marion’s answer, but his initial question, at least in The Erotic Phenomenon. He goes on at some length in that work as to why he starts with this question rather than more traditional starting points in philosophy (such as the ontological “what is it?”)
February 7, 2012 at 9:57 pm
[…] on an upcoming conference, Thinking the Absolute, Levi Bryant posted some thought-provoking remarks on the implications of the speculative turn in philosophy for thinking religion. The topic […]
February 8, 2012 at 4:55 am
Anyway, thanks for responding. It’s always a pleasure to see your posts in my inbox.
February 8, 2012 at 5:07 am
[…] Reason and science alone are supposed to guide our species into its adulthood. Levi Bryant’s recent post complicates this picture: …the choice of philosophy over religion…cannot be completed by […]
February 8, 2012 at 6:42 am
“Would you like to try being God? — No I would like to try being.” – Kenneth Patchen, The Journal of Albion Moonlight
Philosophy will always be ‘haunted’ by religion because of the inescapable existential aspects of hominid being. The “big questions”, and all that. What links them is Sophia, wisdom for our sake.
February 9, 2012 at 8:30 pm
Levi, Despite your declared difficulty with this topic, I found this to be one of your most beautiful posts. Its honesty with its own problematic leads it to evolve with a kind of internal dialectic with its own contingent working hypotheses and to grapple with them as it goes. It presents a kind consistency of concern without any surrender to a dogmatism and it takes seriously the historical and cultural recurrence of a religious appeal. In passing, you say: “If metaphysics is to be a science it thus follows that it must decide in favor of the articulable or that which is existentially neutral or indifferent to the brute contingency of existence.” The subjunctive seems to leave the door open to an interrogation of the relation of metaphysics and science but the post seems to uphold the scientific as the best base of operations. Still, your conclusion seems not scientific itself. “For in striving to think existence, philosophy must think that which is anterior to all thought, that which cannot be represented, and that which evades all conceptual determination. ” Certainly, one version — they are legion — of religion exactly obviates the concept of representation of that which is anterior. In wonder, all is becoming in its relatedness. As Derrida repeated showed, the supplementation of the logic of representation is concomitant with its function. But isn’t this problem close to one of the solutions of the fictive you have presented before? To use the classical example of chimeras, we can concentrate on their “non-existence in fact” or we can accept that they express existence in themselves without a supposed truth-value that is correlationist. There is no being that is, however non-referentially, not becoming. So, expression is a dynamic of existence that is not undercut by the trace’s delusions of representation. This recognition cannot satisfy science, but that cannot be its functioning, as from its perspective, the scientific is a small subset of ontological relations, those that lend themselves to mastered representation. The mapping and re-producibility that science demands of its objects are not ontologically inconsequent. They are a severe delimitation and scope a very small part of our interactivity. If we start with the presumption that the scientific — with all its wonders and virtues — is also to be the measure of that which it is incapable, then perhaps we no longer value other than the mapping and mistake it for its territory. To close, this post — perhaps as all mine to your site — moves too quickly and facilely across the huge problematics you evoke and does not fully honor all the vocabularies and approaches you display. As such, it may seem (or be) incomprehensible or inadequate, but this is not because I wish to do other than respect the thinking you present.
February 9, 2012 at 11:06 pm
What I would thus like to conclude is that religion is symptomatic of the speculative project of metaphysics. Religion is what comes forth to supplement metaphysics when metaphysics sets existence to the side.
Do you think this is why Continental philosophy primarily engaged by atheists took what some called the theological turn in the 90’s? (Recognizing not all were atheists – Marion being but one example)
February 9, 2012 at 11:07 pm
[…] has a nice post on thinking the absolute. “…religion is symptomatic of the speculative project of metaphysics. Religion is what […]
February 10, 2012 at 11:17 pm
Levi,
Not only do I agree with you that the existent aspect of reality is addressed by religion in ways it isn’t by philosophy, but I’d add that the pragmatic consequences of much modern philosophy just aren’t there. You can see this yearning for such pragmatism in Nehamas’s “The Art of Living,” and the Nehamas-clone text released last year, “Examined Lives.” Much of what you call “correlationist,” anti-realist philosophies don’t have much to say about how tomorrow should be different from today, and that condemns them to produce an unsatisfying feeling of incompleteness in the reader.
February 11, 2012 at 3:29 am
Isn’t there a problem in thinking about religion as though religion were primarily a system of ideas—as though religion, whatever that is, were reducible to ‘philosophies of religion,’ or for that matter, to the objective claims some forms of religion make about the world (what Establishment Atheist publications make of it?
Religions seems always to be—whatever it seems to be about, to be primarily ‘about’ something else other than what it appears or presents itself to be about. In that—Blake’s take on religion as failed poetry is more than a rhetorical trope, as those aspects of religion he attacks are like in kind to what he attacks in philosophy—or the rule of law in established power, or conventional notions of male & female sexuality. Blake’s poetry throbs with images and tropes drawn from religious sources, and likely thought of himself as a Christian. To see this as contradiction, or as Shirley Dent put it, a ‘confused thinker’
, does him a grave injustice. There is something in Blake’s critique worth thinking about—though not as philosophy, not as what Blake understood as ‘reason’ (the rule of Urizon…
bring out rule and measure in a year of drought)
Not to over simplify, but for Blake, what poetry and the remainder of religion, that which had not been corrupted by reason and failed imagination, had in common—is that they are always about ‘something else.’ Here I think Blake was on to something. What makes this even more difficult to recognize than it was at the turn of the 19th C, is the thoroughly reactionary usurpation of most of what we see and recognize of religion—reactionary, in that religion—in its defenses and rationalizations—which is pretty much all that we notice or think worth thinking about, has translated itself into an ersatz modernist self-reflection of itself. That is—if science offers a new version of our origins that seems to threatening—defenders reverse the order of importance and meaning of whatever their mythical narratives might have once meant (how would ever know?), recast as counter-claims to what they assume they mean to science—so we have ‘creationism’ as, not only pseudo-science, but pseudo-religion… or rather, a remaking of religion as a negative image of a modern counter-religion (the creationists have to make evolution a kind of religion to find common ground to opposite it).
Back to Blake… and this is not a defense of religion, but a plea to get beyond the reductive miscasting of religion as a kind of ‘idea,’… a badly twisted misguided idea… no matter how strong a hold these ideas do in fact have, and how dangerous they are… but that the persistence of religion has very little to do with those ideas, with its high-theological re-constructions, and can’t be adequately explained by them. The social and political rhizomes of religion are so intimately entangled in every other aspect of life—so much more than “what people believe’ – that we miss what may be the only thing the indefinably diverse stuff we label as ‘religion’ has in common… it’s being always about ‘something else.’ And in that… I think Blake was no confused thinker—but right on target, in seeing the deeper roots of religion and poetry as one.
February 11, 2012 at 6:26 pm
I think I would argue that before we can talk about the “brute contingency” of existence, we’d have to talk about its “brute necessity.” Contingency seems a derived concept, necessity primitive. Or at least necessity subtends contingency, so that it makes more sense to speak of the contingency of necessity than it would to speak of the necessity of contingency.
I’m thinking of Agamben’s definitions of the two terms: necessity is that which “cannot not be,” contingency is that which “can (not) be.” Any observation of any instance whatsoever will show things in a configuration that cannot not be: there cannot not be snow on the ground as I look out my window, my teacup cannot not be empty, Hegel’s bones cannot not be moldering in the ground, etc. It’s true that any particular configuration is contingent: that nothing is fated to exist in the Greek sense or providentially arranged to exist in the Judeo-Christian sense. But what butts up against observation first is the existence of existents and not their contingency. (At least i think)
There is something objective about the contingency of every particular necessity. But there is also something subjective about it, at least insofar as it’s observed. The objective contingency may be taken up and transformed by desire. Watching the Republican primaries makes me realize that I live in a world of shit. But the world appears shitty to me because I can envision a far better form of political organization, one that would allow for greater experimentations in the constructing of BwOs. A religious person thinks the world is “fallen” because her desire for destratification intensifies the contingency of what cannot not be, and makes her construct a fantasy of what can be. Usually this fantasy is jettisoned to another world, an imaginary upper floor, a sign that desire is weak enough to be restrained into fantastic form.
The commenter above mentions William Blake. Blake indeed thought religion a perverse reterritorialization of poetry. And he thought of poetry itself as nothing but “vision,” that is, the experience of desire at its transcendental limit. For Blake, poetry and religion wouldn’t begin in the abstract contemplation of a word, but in the concrete experience of thunder as voice or in dreams of golden rivers, stately pleasure domes and midnight suns: i.e. in the productions of desire. I guess I would then say that religion haunts philosophy (and poetry) to the degree that philosophy (and poetry) can’t account for or can’t produce these limit experiences, to the degree that philosophy can’t recharge the objective movement of necessity’s contingent transformation.