Thursday, August 17, 2006
(12:42 AM) | Brad:
Altizer on Leahy
I'm under absolutely no illusion that this essay is up everybody's alley. For some, its content will be irritating; for others, it will have no discernible content at all, what for Thomas Altizer's style & cadence of his prose. And yet, I find something strangely intriguing, and at times hypnotic, about it. Granted, I consider myself a friend of Thomas Altizer, and am not immediately opposed to the philosopher he is writing about here, D. G. Leahy, and this may predispose me to a kind reception.But it is more than that. Again, I know it will inevitably rub many of you very badly, but I rather like the hyperbole Altizer employs -- and, in the eyes of many, has lived for most of his life (see, for example, his memoir). According to him, the little-referenced, little-known Leahy is not only the "next Hegel," he is the "most pure" thinker of the 20th century (note: Altizer wrote this review in the late '90s). And this is just some of the lighter praise Altizer heaps upon his friend! Indeed, it is just this kind of praise that probably got this review excised from the pages of the Journal of Religion. But, such is what you get with Altizer. It is what makes him attractive for some, and something to ignore for others.
Having said all that, I'm not at all sure what one can "do" with Leahy. In my eyes, his thinking of creation & beginning, at the end of the day, is not a purely theological or mystical vision, but an aesthetico-theological insight, & one that is perhaps crippled by the very (cumbersome, to say the least) philosophical means that articulate it. If there is any truth to it at all -- & I find it potentially very compelling, sort of like a deranged version of John Milbank sans the disingenuous Christian baggage he espouses but doesn't actually need to make his point -- I suspect it is something that can only be enacted, and not something "tamed" into disciplinary/discursive submission (cf., the Rancière essay on "in-disciplinarity" that I linked to earlier this week).
This is a long disclaimer, I know. But, hey, it is a long, robust review article about a philosopher most of us have never heard of let alone read that desperately needs it! Consider this before you flame it in the comments: damning it is really only the most obvious & easy thing you could do -- its flaws, if that is what they are, are all too obvious -- and thus the least interesting contribution you can make. Now that I think of it, maybe this is the unintended aim, versus simply alienation and obfuscation, of Leahy & Altizer's styles.
