Philosophy of Religion

Philosophy As Love – Unblocking The Road From Athens To Jerusalem, Part 1 (Erik Meganck)

The following is the first of a three-part series.

Philo-sophy literally means “love of wisdom.”[1] But this can be read in more than one way. There is the well-known objective genitive, proposing that philosophers are thinkers who love wisdom without claiming to own it. But there is also a subjective genitive that shows how love belongs to wisdom. So, when wisdom takes the form of love, it could become philosophy. ‘Philosophy is the wisdom of love at the service of love.’[2]

This entails that such philosophy is not merely a theoretical, analytical matter, providing a definition of love and all its logical implications. ‘Friendship is so closely linked to the definition of philosophy that it could be said that without it philosophy would not be possible.’[3] ‘Friendship is like hospitality. But it is a hospitality whose setting is not a house, but the sensation of existing.’[4] Reading these last two quotes together, I feel justified in replacing ‘existing’ with ‘thinking’, a Heideggerian move, to open the perspective that started the exploration that I retrace in this article. It explores the way philosophy changes when it takes love, charity, hospitality, and openness as its (main) topic.

First, a note on the (in)famous continental-analytic divide. Without expanding this divide, there is a difference between continental or differential thinking on the one hand, and analytic or Anglo-Saxon thought on the other, no matter how analytic thought may dislike the notion of a difference that reaches beyond epistemology. Whereas analytic thought holds on to its traditional Anglo-Saxon aspirations, including objectivity, neutrality, transparency, and rigid logic; continental and/or differential thought embraces all the risk of contamination by what is despised by analytic thinkers, including the unconscious, unintended and marginal meaning, metaphor, etc.

When the latter considers literature, or the unconscious, it becomes literary, psychoanalytical – unlike analytic thought that always remains analytical, whatever its topic.[5] Here, I will propose how philosophy, when continental and reflecting on Love, becomes itself an act of Love.

What analytic thought tends to ignore rather emphatically, is that it is also “no more” than a register of thought, which is something in between literary style and language game. You can read Plato’s work as a logically coherent system of transparent philosophical concepts, but also as a literary expression of amazed and grateful adoration. You can read Anselm’s Proslogion as a logically coherent system of transparent theological concepts, but also as a prayer and love declaration.

In each latter case, “different” meaning appears.[6] Suddenly, metaphors and paradoxes come into play that reveal sense that lies beyond what lends itself to the metaphysical imperative of logical analysis. Actually, Nietzsche convincingly demonstrated how this imperative always threatened to suffocate thought and culture.

The Late-Modern Condition

The modern world, in Heideggerian sense, is labeled ‘technoscience’. While this world was enthusiastically considered the ultimate one, leaving all that was irrational and primitive – religion included – behind, things have shaped themselves in a way that seems to, at least, question this alleged achievement, and even its underlying ambitions. Words that undeniably refer to a religious provenance appear in philosophy, the very philosophy that was supposed to carry science, the whole science, and nothing but science. Indeed, it seems as if the unachieved modern opposition of ratio and fides, thought and faith, world and church, is fading into ‘difference’, without actually disappearing.[7]

Late- or post[8]-modern condition are tricky terms. It defies Cartesian clarity and allows philosophy to be overtly contaminated by broad cultural shifts, mainly in religious or esthetic experience. The condition is also marked by an unresolvable ambiguity. On the one hand, I assume that the dominating elements of current ‘technoscientific’ thought can be summarized in the word ‘planning’.[9] Every form of control, organization, measurement, calculation, analysis, induction, extrapolation, and management comes down to planning. No action or thought within the registers of science and technology requires public justification whereas any other does.

Statements like ‘Science proves this!’ and ‘Technology works!’ – Jean-François Lyotard called this legitimation by performativity[10] – usually end all arguments, though they are both highly problematic.[11] On the other hand, hitherto unusual terms unexpectedly appear in late-modern philosophical discourse. We read about Martin Heidegger’s gratitude, Emmanuel Levinas’ hostage,

Jacques Derrida’s hospitality, René Girard’s peace, John Caputo’s perhaps, Richard Kearney’s may-be, Jean-Luc Marion’s and also Gianni Vattimo’s charity, Badiou’s love, and so on.[12] These terms used to belong exclusively to (moral or pastoral) theology but now present themselves in mainstream (continental as well as analytic) philosophy without any real headstrong resistance.

Philosophy has not been “reconfessionalized,” nor has philosophy been restored to its previous position as servant of theology. Actually, philosophy and theology (and sociology and historiography) now agree that secularization is itself the name of an event within the history of Christianity. This also means that secularization cannot be understood as an attack on Christianity from “without” – this “without” perhaps being scientific reason. Science and Christianity are not, or at least no longer, considered each other’s “without.”[13]

This yields a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, planning is still the official ‘mindset’ of current western culture. On the other hand, terms and topics that may well be considered as ‘other-than-planning’ are becoming recurrent themes in thought. Perhaps this is typical of our late-modern philosophical constellation where planning is leaving thought and Love is arriving in thought without this being a replacement or an antithesis.

Rather, Love seems to chatter the complacency of planning – which is in a way a biblically inspired or motivated aspiration. Therefore, to understand actuality[14] and perhaps even promote these approaching other-than-planning items on the philosophical and cultural agenda, I want to look for a possible connection between planning and Love at the “end” of modernity.[15]

Since, and thanks to, Heidegger, much has been written about the “end” of metaphysics, the ‘end’ of modernity, of technology, and of history. He considered this “end” ethically motivated. “End” of metaphysics must of course be understood by thought that takes a ‘step back” (Heidegger) from metaphysics. If this end could be (scientifically) established, it would still belong to metaphysics. And, Derrida wonders, is the arrival of a new understanding of Being, as prophesized by Heidegger, the only way to adequately think away from metaphysics? Why not accept the “end” as an endless ending?

Recent attempts to reconcile the “end” of metaphysics with Love and Christianity are often framed in a philosophy/theology constellation that is still highly determined by precisely the modern schemata these authors want to overcome or leave behind. They either confuse theologians by stretching Christianity too far down (like Vattimo) or they confuse philosophers by turning into theologians (like Marion) – or they radically tear down the walls between them (like Caputo). Still, they do not seem to address the question I want to raise here, to wit: How does the appearance of a theological virtue in philosophy change philosophy and its relation to theology? Furthermore, what is the actual relevance of this (for the moment still alleged) change?

This means I shall have to recognize both of these terms, i.e. Love and planning, within the confines of current thought as well as formulate a new relation between philosophy and theology – a relation that is already there since it cannot be “installed” on human initiative, which is, by the way, one of the reasons to consider thought as religious. By undoing the (modern) opposition between philosophy and theology, between reason and faith, thought and faith are seen to belong to each other. Thought always hinges on a form of faith – tearing down the objectivity system.[16] Faith without a thoughtful footing tends to drift away from the world, and to lose touch with actuality – still Foucault here. I will elaborate on this later.

Love is a theological, perhaps even Christian[17] notion but will be treated here as a word that not only enters current philosophical vocabulary but also transforms philosophy itself. To be more precise: it transforms philosophy into Love.[18] This Love is not to be found in the deeds that justify faith, as in James’ letter. This is about thought becoming itself Love, i.e. openness, hospitality, friendship. Philosophy befriends hope and trust, and thereby recognizes its own religious purport.[19]

How can thought even be a form of Love? Thought that does not stem from sheer curiosity or “Neugier” – as understood in Heidegger’s Being and Time – does not look out for “news.”[20] Thought that can become Love is thought that is open to what remained “unthought” and what arrives as a stranger, or as a thief in the night. This unthought is not some content that was somehow “out there” but remained as yet undiscovered or overlooked.

This would suggest that there exists a full (propositional?) truth about the world, a truth that we are gradually assembling and accumulating, possibly scientific.[21] Instead, unthought means what has yet to arrive from nowhere and without ground, ex nihilo.[22] We cannot even ever have considered its possibility.

The unthought then belongs to the future instead of the past, although its sense may be older than metaphysics itself, for ages working its way through thought – unseen and unheard-of. Hospitable thought receives, even welcomes what arrives in thought without asking for epistemological credentials. It is friendly because, though critical, it does not ridicule, censure, or reject ideas of another. It trusts that “bad” thought will eventually peter out by itself. Thus, thinking becomes “ethical” without having to resort to moral theory.

Before I outline my actual argument, I want to draw attention to another fascinating tendency of current thought. Nowadays, it is still popular to recognize the full historical merit of Christianity in its culmination in science, democracy, the current care and education industry, or the human rights discourses. But a new generation of philosophers[23] – almost all of them “unbelievers” (like Vattimo, despite his belief that he believes), some of them even militantly anti-Church (like Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou) but solidly familiar with theology (like Jean-Luc Nancy and Giorgio Agamben) unlike most scientists (like Richard Dawkins) – highlights the ongoing and irreversible impact of certain Christian notions and irruptions on culture, including philosophy.[24]

Their research into this impact reaches further than the sociologist tradition from Max Weber to Marcel Gauchet. They do not merely offer a theoretical description, free of triumph and regret, but introduce a motif of involvement into their reports. In their philosophy, they critically testify of this impact. Philosophy of Christianity needs to be read in the “double genitive,” where in one sense Christianity is the object of philosophical reflection and in another sense philosophy somehow belongs to Christianity as a provenance of thought, of culture.[25]

This is not mere coincidence, confined to a specific set of philosophers. It can be called typical of current culture. The way in which the encyclical letter Laudato si’ is received outside the community of faithful Catholics is highly symptomatic. Bruno Latour estimates this letter’s impact on the world to be of the same magnitude as the Communist Manifesto.[26] It is about climate change and socio-economic inequality, and is widely appreciated for its original and revolutionary vision, for its courage and clarity, and even for its scientific accuracy.

This means that a provenance can be recognized, which is what this paper wants to evoke. What some renounced as philosophy’s outsourcing to theology – remember the famous theological turn of French phenomenology as diagnosed by Dominique Janicaud – is actually nothing more than thought reaching beyond technology and thinking the “end” of metaphysics to reconnect with its provenance, its source – in short: thought becoming religious. This is what I would call, following Derrida, philosophy being religious without religion. The “end” of metaphysics can only be understood by religious thought since it cannot be planned, controlled, analyzed as historical fact.

Therefore, I think I may be justified in bringing in Christianity as a – not the – recognized provenance of current philosophy. Even its theological virtues are welcome in philosophy these days.[27] Apparently, these virtues that were not on Aristotle’s list still have their moral relevance.[28] I will even go one step further here and introduce hope and faith as basic figures of thought itself, not just ethical virtues. I will argue that planning, or indeed modern thought, tends to forget that hope and faith belong to the element of philosophy – and the other way around: philosophy belongs to the element of religion that is marked by hope and faith.

Late-modernity, I then contend, is when and where hope and faith inform a philosophy that connects planning with Love. Modernity, however, is when and where planning neglected, even rejected hope and faith, and (thus?) failed to connect with Love.[29] Love was sequestered in moral theology and became a matter for saints and bigots in their spare time. Society needs organization and the solidarity this entails is laid bare by calculation, not by faith. This separation urged modernity to decide: who wants to perform charity should turn to faith and who belongs to the community of faith is expected to perform charity; but whoever wants to build society will rely exclusively on reason, preferably scientific, and launch solidarity programs.


[1] If philosophy is becoming love, it probably does not mean romantic love. This love is where openness, hospitality, desire (eros), friendship (filia), Christian charity (agape) come together. In order to mark this excessive meaning, I have chosen to write Love with a capital letter – without promoting Love to an absolute nonnegotiable principle since then it would not be “lovely” anymore.

[2] Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence. Pittsburg: Duquesne University Press, 1998, 162.

[3] Giorgio Agamben, ‘The Friend’ in What is an Apparatus? Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009, 25.

[4] ‘Friendship and Philosophy: an interview with Giorgio Agamben. A shared sensation. (Leland de la Durantaye). Cabinet (2012) 45: cabinetmagazine.org/issues/45/durantaye_agamben.php.

[5] One might compare this to the way Heidegger’s thinking about the givenness of Being, truth, and thought, actually becomes an act of gratitude: thinking is thanking.

[6] Nietzsche pointed out that Plato’s philosophy largely hinges on metaphorical work. Anselm’s contentions that ‘God is the greatest that can be thought’ and ‘God is greater than what can be thought’ cannot be logically reconciled. Differential thought can deal with this. It just notices an excess on the metaphysical notion of Supreme Being. See Erik Meganck, ‘World without end. From hyperreligious theism to religious atheism.’ Journal for Continental Philosophy of Religion 3 (2021) 1, 65 – 89.

[7] The Church clumsily tried to overcome this opposition by deliberately misunderstanding Vatican II. Priests in jeans started handing out the host from a plastic cup and preaching on socio-economic and political issues. Others fell back on the Latin rites introduced after the Council of Trent (16th century), thereby hardening the opposition. Both the immersion in and detachment from the world were not what John XXIII meant by aggiornamento. Perhaps our days, half a century later, finally start this movement that may be marked by the publication of Laudato si’.

[8] This “post-” is a problematic prefix since it cannot simply mean ‘after’. Post-modernity is still modernity, but at its “end,” yet another problematic term since it cannot be established as such. See Erik Meganck, ‘Ratio est Fides. Contemporary Philosophy as Virtuous Thought.’ International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 77 (2016) 3, 154 – 170.

[9] Planning denotes the world at the “end,” i.e. the summit and transition, of technologically motivated thought since Aristotle. It refers to Heidegger’s Ge-stell. “Summit”, in that it has exhausted its potential – according to Heidegger, Basic Writings, 374 – 377; Off the Beaten Track, 157 – and “transition” into what has not yet arrived and cannot be deduced from current culture and thought. For further elaboration, see Erik Meganck, ‘Spem in Aliud …: What May I Hope For?’ Ethical Perspectives 23 (2016) 3, 473 – 498.

[10] Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

[11] Without any objective reference or legitimacy, the validity of proof and efficiency only holds within the context of a technological-scientific reason, much like the rules of a game. Usually, a Nietzschean approach to science in terms of perspectivism is met with a curt: ‘Perspectives do not put people on the moon.’ Quite so, but the great achievement of thought is precisely the notion of the moon as a place where to shoot people and things at. Thought has been able to shift the perspective of the moon as a divine being to that of an exploitable object. Once this notion, typical of technological mentality, has entered and convinced thought, it all becomes a mere matter of calculation and fabrication. This explains why Plato did not “do” science and why Archimedes had to apologize in public for his inventions, arguing that he still considered the good of society the ultimate focus of existence and thought. They were not too “primitive” or stupid for that; they just were not receptive to the idea of total exploitability of nature. History, or destiny (as Heidegger would have it), is the way thought had to become familiar with its own technological tendency, going from ancient intelligibility to current control and exploitation.

[12] Charity and the like, by the way, are still very different from the way solidarity is formulated by, let’s say, Jürgen Habermas or Richard Rorty. The former stays safely within metaphysics, despite his intentions, and the latter just rejects metaphysics completely as futile. They both remain insensitive to the Verwindung of metaphysics as elaborated by Heidegger. Solidarity is always the result of careful calculation; charity is of the order of the widow’s mite (Mk12: 41 – 44).

[13] It is said that secularization is the transition of philosophy’s position of ancilla theologiae or servant of theology, to its master, keeping religion ‘within the boundaries of reason’ – after the title of one of Kant’s works. This is only one side of the story since philosophy at that time also became the servant of science, as Lyotard famously argued in The Postmodern Condition.

[14] Actuality is used here in the sense that Foucault suggested, namely a reflective connection with the present, more concerned with what goes on behind the facts than with the facts themselves. In a more recent jargon, we might say that actuality is the ‘event’ of the present.

[15] Solidarity can be derived from or integrated in planning whereas charity cannot. To put it biblically, solidarity is putting plenty of money into the treasury; charity is the widow’s penny or mite. Its meaning is completely non-economical, even in the salvatory register. Precisely because they seem so totally unrelated, even the label “other-than-planning” does not really do justice to charity as a philosophical figure or style. Every other-than always hides a reduction to the “same.” In other-than-planning, charity may be reduced to a function of planning, even if their mutual deduction is impossible. And even this impossibility does not appear in the same way to them. In planning, impossibility is the result of a survey of all possibilities where no-one “works.” In charity, the impossible can happen, but only beyond all possibilities we discern. This is how Derrida and Caputo present their “impossibility.”

[16] Even science thrives on a philosophical confession, namely the belief that only what is rational, logical, measurable, etc. can be true. This belief is suppressed by the objectivity thesis, which comes down to the tautological: ‘It is not a matter of belief because it is what it is.’

[17] Marius Reiser, ‘Love of Enemies in the Context of Antiquity.’ New Testament Studies 47, no. 4 (2001): 411 – 427.

[18] As e.g. Bruno Latour stresses, religion does not inform but transform.

[19] If we need to determine a distinction between science and religion, then it could be this: science informs, religion transforms. A philosophy that recognizes its religious purport is a philosophy that realizes that thinking is never neutral, objective, coldly logical, sterile, etc. Thinking becomes testifying, see Gert-Jan van der Heiden, The Voice of Misery. A Continental Philosophy of Testimony. New York: SUNY Press, 2020.

[20] Nietzsche already warned us for this modern obsession with the ‘novum’ as a reaction to the rejection of the authority of tradition. To be “new” used to become a moral argument. It is new; therefore it has to be better. Anyone who rejects the “new” is reactionary and holds up progress. It has also infected political debate. We are all familiar with the rhetorical exclamation: ‘How is it possible that, in 2022, we still [anything, really].’ You read this also on posters recommending an exposition of a contemporary artist: ‘No-one has ever done this before!’ Then, when I visit that exposition, there always seems to be a very good reason for that.

[21] Remember the Grand Unified Theory.

[22] Dialectics is such a ground. There, thought can only arrive as the momentary result, the necessary outcome of what is already thought.

[23] I could mention Jean-Yves Lacoste, Michel Henry and others, but they are overtly philosophers of Christianity ‘in both genitive senses’: they have Christianity as their research object, but their philosophies also explicitly belong to Christianity. I’m looking here for an unsuspected liaison between philosophy and charity, where Christianity appears as an unsurpassable provenance. American philosophers like John Caputo take an intermediate position. They shift philosophy straight into theology and then refer Christianity back to philosophy. All this goes to show that there is more going on than what 20 years ago, Dominique Janicaud called ‘the theological turn in French phenomenology’. See Dominique Janicaud, Phenomenology and the Theological Turn: The French Debate. New York: Fordham University Press, 2000.

[24] Giorgio Agamben ‘redefines’ secularization as a signature term, meaning that it does not mean anything in itself, not adds any meaning to any ongoing signification. It just refers (political, egal, economical, etc.) notions to their theological provenance, origin. Ariën Voogt, ‘Agamben on secularization as a signature’. International Journal of Philosophy and Theology, 2022. DOI: 10.1080/21692327.2022.2068049

[25] Of course, the history of Christianity is a “shared” history, heavily influenced by other traditions – especially Jewish and Islamic religion.

[26] bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/P-176-LAUDATO SI.pdf (3/11/2019)

[27] Surprisingly, it is Nietzsche who introduced the theological virtues in philosophy. In the preface to the re-edition of his The Gay Science, he testifies of a ‘spirit who has patiently resisted a terrible, long pressure – patiently, severely, coldly, without submitting, but also without hope – and who is now all at once attacked by hope, the hope for health, and the intoxication of convalescence.’ Faith and belief arrive a little later, where Nietzsche in the same vein and style sings of a ‘merry-making after a long privation and powerlessness, the rejoicing of strength that is returning, of a reawakened faith in tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, of a certain sense and anticipation of a future, of impending adventures, of seas that are opened again, of goals that are permitted again, believed again.’ Finally, ‘The trust in life has gone: life itself has become a problem. Yet one should not jump to the conclusion that this necessarily makes one gloomy. Even love of life is still possible, only one loves differently.’ Friedrich Nietzsche. The Gay Science [Fröhliche Wissenshaft]. New York: Random House, 1974, 32; 36 – 37. Of course, these three terms do not refer to God here. They announce the “end” of metaphysics. See Meganck, ‘Ratio est Fides.’

[28] Aristotle’s virtues were canonized later on into what are called the cardinal virtues. They are the virtues that the world and its workings ‘hinge’ upon. As its moral hinges, they belong to the world. Theological virtues do not, they are understood as a divine a gift to the world. They do not allow the world to just continue, they turn the world into heaven.

[29] Charity cannot be confused with solidarity in that the latter is a form of calculation. Solidarity consists in calculating what I can spend, what the other needs, and then finding a formula. Charity is giving without counting the cost. Solidarity is about what I count, economically speaking; charity is about what counts, theologically speaking. See note 8 on the poor widow and the mite.

So, when wisdom takes the form of love, it could become philosophy. ‘Philosophy is the wisdom of love at the service of love.’[2] This entails that such philosophy is not merely a theoretical, analytical matter, providing a definition of love and all its logical implications. ‘Friendship is so closely linked to the definition of philosophy that it could be said that without it philosophy would not be possible.’[3] ‘Friendship is like hospitality. But it is a hospitality whose setting is not a house, but the sensation of existing.’[4]

Reading these last two quotes together, I feel justified in replacing ‘existing’ with ‘thinking’, a Heideggerian move, to open the perspective that started the exploration that I retrace in this article. It explores the way philosophy changes when it takes love, charity, hospitality, and openness as its (main) topic.

First, a note on the (in)famous continental-analytic divide. Without expanding this divide, there is a difference between continental or differential thinking on the one hand, and analytic or Anglo-Saxon thought on the other, no matter how analytic thought may dislike the notion of a difference that reaches beyond epistemology. Whereas analytic thought holds on to its traditional Anglo-Saxon aspirations, including objectivity, neutrality, transparency, and rigid logic; continental and/or differential thought embraces all the risk of contamination by what is despised by analytic thinkers, including the unconscious, unintended and marginal meaning, metaphor, etc.

When the latter considers literature, or the unconscious, it becomes literary, psychoanalytical – unlike analytic thought that always remains analytical, whatever its topic.[5] Here, I will propose how philosophy, when continental and reflecting on Love, becomes itself an act of Love.

What analytic thought tends to ignore rather emphatically, is that it is also “no more” than a register of thought, which is something in between literary style and language game. You can read Plato’s work as a logically coherent system of transparent philosophical concepts, but also as a literary expression of amazed and grateful adoration. You can read Anselm’s Proslogion as a logically coherent system of transparent theological concepts, but also as a prayer and love declaration. In each latter case, “different” meaning appears.[6] Suddenly, metaphors and paradoxes come into play that reveal sense that lies beyond what lends itself to the metaphysical imperative of logical analysis. Actually, Nietzsche convincingly demonstrated how this imperative always threatened to suffocate thought and culture.

The Late-Modern Condition

The modern world, in Heideggerian sense, is labeled ‘technoscience’. While this world was enthusiastically considered the ultimate one, leaving all that was irrational and primitive – religion included – behind, things have shaped themselves in a way that seems to, at least, question this alleged achievement, and even its underlying ambitions. Words that undeniably refer to a religious provenance appear in philosophy, the very philosophy that was supposed to carry science, the whole science, and nothing but science. Indeed, it seems as if the unachieved modern opposition of ratio and fides, thought and faith, world and church, is fading into ‘difference’, without actually disappearing.[7]

Late- or post[8]-modern condition are tricky terms. It defies Cartesian clarity and allows philosophy to be overtly contaminated by broad cultural shifts, mainly in religious or esthetic experience. The condition is also marked by an unresolvable ambiguity. On the one hand, I assume that the dominating elements of current ‘technoscientific’ thought can be summarized in the word ‘planning’.[9] Every form of control, organization, measurement, calculation, analysis, induction, extrapolation, and management comes down to planning. No action or thought within the registers of science and technology requires public justification whereas any other does.

Erik Meganck is a lecturer for FVG Antwerp (Belgium).  He is the author of Nihilistische Caritas? Secula-Risatie Bij Gianni Vattimo (Peeters, 2005) and co-author  of Philosophy and  Polytheism (Walking the Worlds 2016) as well as numerous articles in international journals.


[1] If philosophy is becoming love, it probably does not mean romantic love. This love is where openness, hospitality, desire (eros), friendship (filia), Christian charity (agape) come together. In order to mark this excessive meaning, I have chosen to write Love with a capital letter – without promoting Love to an absolute nonnegotiable principle since then it would not be “lovely” anymore.

[2] Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence. Pittsburg: Duquesne University Press, 1998, 162.

[3] Giorgio Agamben, ‘The Friend’ in What is an Apparatus? Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009, 25.

[4] ‘Friendship and Philosophy: an interview with Giorgio Agamben. A shared sensation. (Leland de la Durantaye). Cabinet (2012) 45: cabinetmagazine.org/issues/45/durantaye_agamben.php.

[5] One might compare this to the way Heidegger’s thinking about the givenness of Being, truth, and thought, actually becomes an act of gratitude: thinking is thanking.

[6] Nietzsche pointed out that Plato’s philosophy largely hinges on metaphorical work. Anselm’s contentions that ‘God is the greatest that can be thought’ and ‘God is greater than what can be thought’ cannot be logically reconciled. Differential thought can deal with this. It just notices an excess on the metaphysical notion of Supreme Being. See Erik Meganck, ‘World without end. From hyperreligious theism to religious atheism.’ Journal for Continental Philosophy of Religion 3 (2021) 1, 65 – 89.

[7] The Church clumsily tried to overcome this opposition by deliberately misunderstanding Vatican II. Priests in jeans started handing out the host from a plastic cup and preaching on socio-economic and political issues. Others fell back on the Latin rites introduced after the Council of Trent (16th century), thereby hardening the opposition. Both the immersion in and detachment from the world were not what John XXIII meant by aggiornamento. Perhaps our days, half a century later, finally start this movement that may be marked by the publication of Laudato si’.

[8] This “post-” is a problematic prefix since it cannot simply mean ‘after’. Post-modernity is still modernity, but at its “end,” yet another problematic term since it cannot be established as such. See Erik Meganck, ‘Ratio est Fides. Contemporary Philosophy as Virtuous Thought.’ International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 77 (2016) 3, 154 – 170.

[9] Planning denotes the world at the “end,” i.e. the summit and transition, of technologically motivated thought since Aristotle. It refers to Heidegger’s Ge-stell. “Summit”, in that it has exhausted its potential – according to Heidegger, Basic Writings, 374 – 377; Off the Beaten Track, 157 – and “transition” into what has not yet arrived and cannot be deduced from current culture and thought. For further elaboration, see Erik Meganck, ‘Spem in Aliud …: What May I Hope For?’ Ethical Perspectives 23 (2016) 3, 473 – 498.

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