Timothy Stanley

Meeting Times: Thursdays, 12-1pm Lecture (Leamington Theatre, LG12, Samuel Alexander), 2-3pm Seminar 1 (5.212 University Place), 3-4pm Seminar 2 (5.212 University Place)

Instructor: Dr. Timothy Stanley, timothy.stanley@manchester.ac.uk, Samuel Alexander WG20b

Readings: All of the readings for the course have been compiled in a course reader which will be handed out in two stages. The first half of the course readings are handed out here and the second will be handed out before reading week. The assigned readings should be read in advance and you should be prepared to discuss the readings in each seminar.

Course Requirements:

• 1 x 1000 word formative outline essay due Thur 12 Nov
• 1 x 2500 word summative essay (40%) due Fri 18 Dec
• 1 x 2 hour unseen exam (60% of your grade)

Course Content: Not long after the 11 September attack on the twin towers in New York, Stanley Fish wrote an article entitled, “One University Under God?” for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Syllabus All in One PDF

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Lecture: Thur 1/10 12-12.50pm, Orientation and Introductory Lecture. PDF Handout

Seminar: Thur 1/19 2-2.50pm & 3-3.50pm, There will be no seminar for this week. The class bibliography will be handed out here.

Lecture: Thur 8/10 12-12.50pm, Desecularization and the Future of Religion Download: (PPT)(PDF)(Mp3)

Seminar: Thur 8/10 2-2.50pm & 3-3.50pm, Berger, Peter. “The Descularization fo the World: A Global Overview.” In The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics, edited by Peter Berger. Washington, D.C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1999, pp. 1-18. What examples does Berger give in support of his desecularization thesis? How does he explain the exceptions? What does he suggest are the reasons for the continuation of religious participation around the world? And how does this affect the future of religion? (p. 11ff).

In today's lecture we discussed Berger's The Sacred Canopy, towards the end of which he posits why he thinks secularism will continue in the world.

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Lecture: Thur 15/10 12-12.50pm, A Place for Transcendence in a Secular Age Download: (PPT) (PDF) (Mp3)

Seminar: Thur 15/10 2-2.50pm & 3-3.50pm, Taylor, Charles. “A Place for Transcendence.” In Transcendence, edited by Regina Schwartz. London: Routledge Press, 2004, pp. 1-11. What does Taylor suggest has happened “between 1500 and 2000” and how has it affected the “place of transcendence?” “How have human beings been able, after the centuries and miullennia during which moral life was inconceivable without God or another transcendent reality, to conceive of their entire existence only in terms of immanence?” (pp.4-5ff).In what sense are we in a “post-Durkheimian” age? (p. 7). How does he suggest “believers” live after the “eclipse of God?” (p. 8ff).

There are just a few points I wanted to make to summarize Taylor's significance for our discussion regarding the return of religion in the west. Firstly, his understanding of secularism

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Lecture: Thur 22/10 12-12.50pm, Religion and Rational Choice? (PPT) (PDF) (Mp3)

Seminar: Thur 22/10 2-2.50pm & 3-3.50pm Stark, Rodney and William Sims Bainbridge. The Future of Religion. London: University of California Press, 1984, pp. 1-18. How do Stark and Bainbridge define religion? What problems does this solve in the study of religion more generally? (pp. 5, 8). How does religion serve human needs? (p. 5ff). What are compensators? How are they related to rewards in Stark and Bainbridge’s theory? (pp. 6-7). What were the five modes of religious expression that were invoked in Glock and Stark’s study? And how did social class indicate the multifarious manner in which they manifest themselves? (pp. 9-10ff). What is the meaning of Stark’s three propositions on p. 12? Is this theory reductive? Does it really account for what “lies beyond the reach of all science?” (p. 14).

Stark's theory of religion is admittedly reductive. In essence, he suggests that people choose religions for rational reasons like the rewards they think they will gain and the compensators promised.

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Lecture: Thur 29/10 12-12.50pm, Religion in the Postmodern World (Mp3)(PPT)(PDF)

Seminar: Thur 29/10 2-2.50pm & 3-3.50pm, Bauman, Zygmunt. Postmodernity and Its Discontents. Bauman Reader. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997, pp. 165-85. “Religion is indeed the awareness of human insufficiency, it is lived in the admission of weakness.” (p. 168). Why does Bauman cite this definition? What is its value for his theory of religion in postmodernity? How does the idea of human self-sufficiency undermine the grip of institutionalized religion? (p. 172). What three uses of religion and how has modernity eroded by modernity? (p. 172). How has death been re-appropriated by modernity? (p.175). If death no longer functions as an ever present uncertainty how have the uncertainties of “individual identity” affected a postmodern religiosity? (p. 178ff). In what way has the “peak-experience” become “a duty and realistic prospect for everybody,” in postmodern culture? (p. 180). Has consumer culture become quasi religious? In what way is fundamentalism an attempt to “have one’s cake and eat it” for postmodern people? (p. 182ff).

Readings for weeks 7-11 will be handed out here.

How do we understand the return of religious symbols in contemporary culture? The quasi-transcendent language of religious traditions is increasingly applied to everything from cosmetic products to beer and fast food. Furthermore, the traditional approaches to the study of religion don't always address this phenomena very well.

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Reading Week: 2/11 - 6/11, No sessions. This is a break to catch up on reading and focus on completing your formative essay.

Lecture: Thur 12/11 12-12.50pm How Does God Enter Philosophy? (PDF)(PPT)(Mp3 failed to record)

Seminar and Essay 1 Due: Thur 12/11 2-2.50pm & 3-3.50pm Heidegger, Martin. “The Way Back into the Ground of Metaphysics.” In Existentialim from Dostoevsky to Sartre, edited by Walter Kaufman. New York: Penguin, 1989, pp. 265-79. In what way is metaphysics like a tree with roots according to Heidegger? (pp. 265-66). Why does he wish to get beyond metaphysics in order to understand it more clearly? Why is the ground more important than the tree? “Why… should such an overcoming of metaphysics be necessary?” (p. 267). Why does Heidegger think philosophy is onto-theological? (p. 275ff). Why does he cite St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 1.20, and the conception of philosophy as foolishness for theology? (p. 276).

Heidegger is difficult to summarize, but in this lecture we discussed his question, "What is metaphysics?" which he addressed as a lecture to the Freiburg faculty in 1929 upon taking up Husserl's chair in philosophy. Heidegger is doing two things with this question: 1) he is summarizing the history of western metaphysical reflection; and, 2) opening up a new future for philosophy.

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Lecture: Thur 19/11 12-12.50pm, Toward a Non-Religious Christianity (Mp3)(PDF)(PPT)

Seminar: Thur 19/11 2-2.50pm & 3-3.50pm, Vattimo, Gianni. “Toward a Nonreligious Christianity.” in After the Death of God, edited by Jeffry W. Robbins. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007, pp. 27-46 “The concept of intepretation is all here: there is no experience of truth that is not interpretative. I do not know anthing that does not interest me. If it does interest me, it is evident that I do not look at it in a noninterested way.” (p. 28). What does Vattimo mean by this? How is Christianity related to this conception of hermeneutics/interpretation and philosophy as such? (pp. 31ff, cf. 33ff). Why does Vattimo think that “to take away the Bible is to take away meaning?” (p. 36). How does Vattimo create the link between metaphysics and authoritarianism? (p. 37). Why is television more real? (p. 40). How is virtue different than nature? (p. 41). Why does Vattimo still pray the Lord’s prayer even though he knows that it is culturally conditioned? (p. 42).

Vattimo is, in many ways, the post-Heideggerian philosopher par excellence. He not only reads the history of philosophy in the west along Heideggerian lines, but, so too, the history of Christian theology. Vattimo will see an analogy between the critique of metaphysics articulated by Heidegger and the kenotic incarnation of God in Jesus Christ (kenosis is a term St. Paul uses in Philippians 2:5-8)

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Lecture: Thur 26/11 12-12.50pm, Reason, Rationality and Revolution (PDF)(PPT)(MP3)

Seminar: Thur 26/11 2-2.50pm & 3-3.50pm, Eagleton, Terry. “Faith and Reason.” in Reason, Faith and Revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008, pp. 109-139. Why is the claim that reason does not go all the way down so hard for radical Freudians and theologians alike? (this is his thesis p. 110, which he comes back to on p. 127) How are statements about the existence of God different than statements about the sexual orientation of goblins? (p. 111) How are positivism and fundamentalism related in Eagleton’s view? (p. 114-15) What is a truth event? And why doesn’t the actuality of the resurrection, for instance, matter? (p. 117) Why is faith necessary for revolution? (p. 121) Why is the difference between reasonable and unreasonable beliefs so important? (p. 125) What is the paradox of liberalism? (p. 127) What does he mean by “Theology is a species of materialism?” (p. 129) “Reasons run out in the end, but the end is a long time coming.” What does this mean? (p. 130) Why is it ridiculous in Eagleton’s view to see science as the opposite of religion? (p. 133)

What is the relationship between faith and reason? Or, as Eagleton puts it, does reason go all the way down? One of the main targets of Eagleton's work is the atheism of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchins, which he affectionately nicknames "Ditchkins." Eagleton is interested, and maybe a little exasperated, by the amount of media attention that the Ditchkins ideology has produced in the western media. This is, in many ways, a key indicator of the return of religion in the west.

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Lecture: Thur 3/12 12-12.50pm, Religion and Cultural Rights (PDF)(PPT)(Mp3)

Seminar: Thur 3/12 2-2.50pm & 3-3.50pm, Habermas, Jürgen. “Religious Tolerance – The Pacemaker for Cultural Rights.” In The Derrida-Habermas Reader, edited by Lasse Thomassen Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006, pp. 195-207. Why does the stigma of exclusion remain inscribed in toleration? (p. 197). Why does the paradox of inclusion-exclusion dissolve if religious freedom is conceived “as part of a democratic constitution?” (p. 197). Why does the paradox re-emerge? (p. 198ff). A number of legal conflicts are discussed on pp. 202-203. Why does Habermas argue that “these legal conflics show why the spread of religious tolerance… has now become also a stimulus for developing further cultural rights?” What does Habermas mean by “cultural rights?” (p. 203). Why is it so important for Habermas that “cultural groups [be] expected to adapt their internal ethos to the egalitarian standards of the community at large?” (p. 205).

There is a profound need today to  re-investigate religion's relationship to a public political sphere of authority. Whether it's the media row over Rowan Williams' suggestion that Sharia law might play a part in the British legal system, or when a woman working at a public marriage registrars office is allowed to abstain from granting marriage licenses to gay couples, we are constantly made aware of the need to continue to think through the role of religion in the public sphere today.

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Lecture: Thur 10/12 12-12.50pm, Toward a Materialist Theology (PDF)(PPT)(Mp3)

Seminar: Thur 10/12 2-2.50pm & 3-3.50pm, Zizek, Slavoj. “The Monstrocity of Christ.” In The Monstrocity of Christ, edited by Creston Davis. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009. 43-51 and 73-82. Why isn’t Christianity’s God rational enough for Islam? (pp. 84-85). How does Zizek respond to this criticism? (p. 87). Why do Catholicism and dialectical materialism both have such problems with quantum mechanics? (p. 89). Why are Polish elevators correct according to Zizek? (p. 91). Why is the “non-all” the starting premise of true materialism? (p. 97). Why is it so important to Zizek to maintain that “there is no Beyond of Being which inscribes itself into the order of Being?” (p. 99). In the end, why does Zizek believe that his is the “proper atheist stance?” (p. 101).

Zizek presents us with a radicalization of what belief implies in the west today. His aim is to go beyond a dichotomy between something and nothing, or between physics and faith. But he even goes beyond a kind of believing materialism as we find in Eagleton's work. Rather, it is unbelief that he concludes this essay with. This is not so much a doing without belief or undoing belief, but rather, that there is no exteriority where belief would be needed. Our love for the objet petit a would be sufficient. Here, we find Zizek's interest in an atheist account of Christ, as the objet petit a, the non-all, to be so important. So too, we find the heart of his irreverent dissatisfaction with Judaism and Islam. 

Zizek is deceptively difficult to apprehend. His work is full of everday anecdotes and film references, but this is all subterfuge for some of the most difficult and complex philosophy around today. I've tried to be as careful as possible when explaining his ideas in this recording and the PowerPoint slides help to supplement what is being said. A couple of notes on the lecture are needed here nonetheless. This is a recording of a smaller group seminar offered on Zizek which attempted to explain the latter half planned in the original lecture. This recording does a better job of connecting how Zizek brings Lacan and Hegel together into a total system of metaphysics and epistemology, or what's real and how what we can know about it. I will say, that having listened back there are points at which I tend to intermingle desire and drive a bit. To reiterate, drives are different from desires. Drives are the irrational point at which desire becomes irrelevant. We are driven towards what we cannot have, in the broadest sense, an absolute account of the thing in itself. Hopefully that will help a bit in this part of the discussion.

Mp3 Lecture Download (17.9mb)

Lecture: Thur 17/12 12-12.50pm, Exam Review Lecture (PDF)(PPT)(Mp3)

Seminar: Thur 17/12 2-2.50pm & 3-3.50pm, No seminars. Time to polish your essays to perfection!

Essay 2 Due Fri 18/12 by 4pm to the School Office, Samuel Alexander A6.

In the lecture today the aim was to orient students to the kind of broad questions that are likely to appear on the exam. These questions are not directly answerable in two hours, but demand that students develop a concise thesis and focused argument. The point here is that you know the figures covered in this course so well that you know what is appropriate to leave out, and why a particular problem deserves more detailed attention.  

Mp3 Lecture Download (13mb)

Exam Period Mon 18 - Fri 29, January 2010, 2 hour unseen exam will be scheduled by the exams office. Check you student account for further details.