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Virtue against sovereigntyIn James Arthur (ed.), Virtues in the Public Sphere: Citizenship, Civic Friendship and Duty, Routledge Press. 2018.
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17Religion, Science and Magic: Rewriting the AgendaIn Peter Harrison & John Milbank (eds.), After Science and Religion: Fresh Perspectives From Philosophy and Theology, Cambridge University Press. pp. 75-143. 2022.Inherited discussions of ‘science and religion’ too much assume an interaction between two historically constant phenomena in terms of stories of ‘progress’ and ‘conflict’. Instead, it is better to recognise long-term and varying modes of tension between three different approaches to nature, pivoted about attitudes to ‘enchantment’ and to transcendence versus immanence. Within such a perspective, it appears that the dominant model of science as ‘disenchanted transcendence’ is a Newtonian one tha…Read more
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24Paul against BiopoliticsTheory, Culture and Society 25 (7-8): 125-172. 2008.As others have argued, modern liberalism can be seen as dominated by the biopolitical. In both the economic and the political realms, this involves a contradictory notion of how the natural gives rise to the cultural and the cultural both suppresses and advances the natural. On either side of this divide, uncontrollable excesses arise, which ensure that this immanentist model is never immune from the return of the theopolitical in a bastardized form. Antique notions of natural justice to some de…Read more
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7Number and the BetweenIn Dennis Vanden Auweele (ed.), William Desmond’s Philosophy between Metaphysics, Religion, Ethics, and Aesthetics, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 15-44. 2018.This chapter discusses the topic of mediation, number and mathematics. It aims to find a way to think of mathematics as the soul of reality by means of Wittgenstein and Cantor. This chapter reflects on the modern attempts to rethink mathematics in terms of logics. In Milbank’s view, a revision of this could support the ‘third way’ of a theistic metaphysics, which must, after Erich Przywara and William Desmond, be a metaphysics of the analogy of being or metaxology.
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23A Tale of Two Monsters and Four Elements: Variations of Carl Schmitt and the Current Global CrisisTelos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary 2022 (201): 127-145. 2022.IntroductionThis essay is divided into two distinct parts.In the first I shall explore the complex way in which Carl Schmitt’s thought was split three ways: between a Catholic universalism that extends the “law of humanity” to the whole of the globe; a modern defense of the normativity of the absolutely sovereign nation-state; and finally a stress upon the primacy of a more limited civilizational landmass, smaller than that of the whole planet but larger than that of the state. In this third cas…Read more
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Against human rights : liberty in the western traditionIn Costas Douzinas & Conor Gearty (eds.), The meanings of rights: the philosophy and social theory of human rights, Cambridge University Press. 2014.
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13Sequence on modern ontology -- From theology to philosophy -- The four pillars of modern philosophy -- Modern philosophy : a theological critique -- Analogy versus univocity -- Identity versus representation -- Intentionality and embodiment -- Intentionality and selfhood -- Reason and the incarnation of the logos -- The passivity of modern reason -- The baroque simulation of cosmic order -- Deconstructed representation and beyond -- Passivity and concursus -- Representation in philosophy -- Actu…Read more
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4In Triplicate: Britain after Brexit; the World after Coronavirus; Retrospect and ProspectTelos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary 2020 (191): 91-114. 2020.
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5Oikonomia Leaves Home: Theology, Politics, and Governance in the History of the WestTelos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary 2017 (178): 77-99. 2017.
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Theopolitics TodayIn Dominik Finkelde & Rebekka Klein (eds.), In Need of a Master: Politics, Theology, and Radical Democracy, De Gruyter. pp. 253-270. 2021.
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4Being Reconciled: Ontology and PardonRoutledge. 2003.Both a critique of post-Kantian modernity and a new theology that engages with issues of language, culture, time, politics and historicity, 'Being Reconciled' insists on the dependency of all human production and understanding on a God who is infinite inboth utterance and capacity.
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After Science and Religion: Fresh Perspectives From Philosophy and Theology (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2022.The popular field of 'science and religion' is a lively and well-established area. It is however a domain which has long been characterised by certain traits. In the first place, it tends towards an adversarial dialectic in which the separate disciplines, now conjoined, are forever locked in a kind of mortal combat. Secondly, 'science and religion' has a tendency towards disentanglement, where 'science' does one sort of thing and 'religion' another. And thirdly, the duo are frequently pushed tow…Read more
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9Between Catastrophes: God, Nature and HumanityRevista Portuguesa de Filosofia 77 (2-3): 489-500. 2021.Critical responses to the pandemic have divided between the need to control and defeat it and fears of a new medicalisation of human existence. In the short-term the first response is right, but in the long-term the second. The ideological division on this issue on the left roughly correlates with a relative stress on the power of the market on the one hand or the power of the state on the other. But these are two halves of the same picture: the mechanisation of human life and the artificial ren…Read more
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45The Confession of Time in AugustineMaynooth Philosophical Papers 10 5-56. 2020.The apparent contradiction between subjective and objective approaches to time in Augustine can be resolved if it is understood that he regarded cosmic time and the finite things it engenders as being of itself, in some sense, both psychic and self-recording. This interpretation holds whether or not Augustine affirms a world soul. It is justifiable in terms of the continued applicability of his earlier liberal-arts writings to his later texts and his blending of Plotinian vitalism, Porphyrian sp…Read more
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14Tradition as the Future of Innovation (edited book)Cambridge Publishing House. 2015.What is the meaning of the word tradition ? Are there live traditions today? Does tradition clash with innovation? Is it possible to love the proper tradition and look to innovation at the same time? This study brings together a number of insightful contributions that focus on the complexity of the relationship between tradition and innovation and on the forces that could emerge from it, if tradition is seen to represent the cornerstone for future. The volume is subdivided into four sections: I.…Read more
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8History of the One GodHeythrop Journal 38 (4): 371-400. 1997.The article discusses the history of monotheism from the earliest times to the present. It begins with arguments against the notion of monotheists as an evolutionarily early stage in religion and then proceeds to characterize monotheism in the Old testament. The view that there was every a pre‐monotheistic phase of one ‘national God’ is called into question, along with the priority of the ‘God of history’ over the creator God. Association of the divine with social justice is shown to be common t…Read more
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30On “thomistic kabbalah”Modern Theology 27 (1): 147-185. 2011.The Christian Bible was from the outset a dogmatic and Christological conception, which entailed a mystical reading of signs and events, a practise of speculation at once narratological and phenomenological. The trilogy of Olivier‐Thomas Venard OP – Thomas d'Aquin, poète théologien – is proposed as crucial to understanding how Thomas Aquinas preserves the authentic biblical character of Christian theology, proceeding along the diagonal axis of the mystagogical, an axis neither purely vertical no…Read more
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60The Politics of Time: Community, Gift and LiturgyTelos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary 1998 (113): 41-67. 1998.Community and Gift Despite growing uneasiness about the economic and social consequences of the free market, today socialism, like religion, exhibits merely a spectral reality. It no longer seems either plausible or rational, and it has been consigned to the realm of faith. Yet, as with Christianity, socialism still haunts the West because nothing has emerged to replace it. Just as the story of a compassionate God who became a man was seen as the “final religion,” so the hope of a universal frat…Read more
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3Truth in AquinasRoutledge. 2002.Provocative and sophisticated, Truth in Aquinas is a fascinating re-evaluation of a key area - truth - in the work of Thomas Aquinas. John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock's provocative but strongly argued position is that many of the received views of Aquinas as philosopher and theologian are wrong. This compelling and controversial work builds on the amazing reception of Radical Orthodoxy (Routledge, 1999).
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13Divine Logos and Human Communication. A Recuperation of ColeridgeNeue Zeitschrift für Systematicsche Theologie Und Religionsphilosophie 29 (1-3): 56-74. 1987.
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1Afterward: The grandeur of reason and the perversity of rationalism : radical orthodoxy's first decadeIn Simon Oliver & John Milbank (eds.), The radical orthodoxy reader, Routledge. 2009.
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16Sovereignty, Empire, Capital and TerrorTelos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary 2001 (121): 146-158. 2001.
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167Book Review : Die Ethik des Protestantismus von der Reformation bis zur Gegenwart, by Christofer Frey, Gutersloh, Gerd Mohn, 1989. 287 pp (review)Studies in Christian Ethics 4 (1): 108-111. 1991.
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Problematizing the secular: the post-postmodern agendaIn Philippa Berry & Andrew Wernick (eds.), Shadow of spirit: postmodernism and religion, Routledge. pp. 30--44. 1992.
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Nottingham UniversityRegular Faculty