Carl Raschke

Despite Jürgen Habermas’ famous suggestion that the violence of history might be mitigated by “the liquidation of unconditional claims,” the issue of whether monotheistic religions and the metaphysical rationality they engender are indeed the hidden source of such violence remains an open one. This essay explores how Derrida with his project “deconstruction” sought to deal in a manner unique to philosophy with the question of the relationship between violence, the unconditional, and the ontological. It proposes that Derrida’s “Jew-Greek” dilemma, which encapsulates the problem of the “violence” of metaphysics, is resolved through Levinas’ project of disrupting Husserlian phenomenology with an alterity that is not simply a heteron that disintermediates the logic of predication, but one that challenges what is normally meant by philosophy itself.

For theorists in search of a political theology that is more responsive to the challenges now facing Western democracies, this book tenders a new political economy anchored in a theory of value. The political theology of the future, Carl Raschke argues, must draw on a powerful, hidden impetus--the "force of God"--to frame a new value economy. It must also embrace a radical, "faith-based" revolutionary style of theory that reconceives the power of the "theological" in political thought and action. Raschke ties democracy's retreat to the West's failure to confront its decadence and mobilize its vast spiritual resources. Worsening debt, rising unemployment, and gross income inequality have led to a crisis in political representation and values that twentieth-century theorists never anticipated. Drawing on the thought of Hegel and Nietzsche as well as recent work by Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Joseph Goux, Giorgio Agamben, and Alain Badiou, among others, Raschke recasts political theology for a new generation. He proposes a bold, uncompromising critical theory that acknowledges the enduring significance of Marx without his materialism and builds a vital, more spiritually grounded relationship between politics and the religious imaginary

Publication of The Alchemy of the Word in 1979 brought the deconstructive philosophy of Jacques Derrida into the arena of theological discourse & marked the end of theology as it had been understood by many. This work, revised & reissued as The End of Theology, is an important contribution to understanding the possibilities of a creative postmodern secular theology. The first chapter examines the aims & the shortcomings of language analysis as used in the examination of religious & theological statements. The second chapter investigates the broader spectrum of modern theories about the nature of language. The third chapter recapitulates the rudiments of Heidegger's thought. The fourth chapter moves out of Heidegger & toward a resolution of the problems of meaning & interpretation in proposing a "radical hermeneutics." The fifth chapter discusses the way in which a radical hermeneutics must undermine conventional theological procedures & secure a view of religious speech that is prior to "God-language" or to the "Word of God." Such a view is directed to what Heidegger takes as the "ordinary" logos that is both a pre-Christian & a post-Christian context of "revelation." The final chapter criticizes Heidegger's own "mystifications" about language & endeavors to take his thought one major step beyond. Carl Raschke is professor of religious studies at the University of Denver & senior editor of the Journal for Cultural & Religious Theory. His major books include The End of Theology, Fire & Roses: Postmodernity & the Thought of the Body, The Engendering God, Painted Black & Theological Thinking.

The efforts of theologians in the last few decades to adapt their discipline to the methodological constraints of the “empirical sciences” have become obsolete. Just as many theologians have reached a tentative rapproachment with the “secular” mentality, the elements of mystery hitherto shepherded by religious thinkers have been appropriated in the cosmological models of the “new physics.” The paper explores revolutionary developments over the last ten years within quantum physics. It points to an imminent convergence between scientific and religious concepts within a larger framework of speculation termed synholism (from Friedrich von Weizsácher), and examines theoretical implications of such hypotheses in high-energy physics as a “cosmic consciousness” and “multiple universes.”