Table of Contents
THE INTIMATE UNIVERSAL
Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture
INSURRECTIONS: CRITICAL STUDIES IN RELIGION, POLITICS, AND CULTURE
Slavoj iek, Clayton Crockett, Creston Davis, Jeffrey W. Robbins, Editors
The intersection of religion, politics, and culture is one of the most discussed areas in theory today. It also has the deepest and most wide-ranging impact on the world. Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture will bring the tools of philosophy and critical theory to the political implications of the religious turn. The series will address a range of religious traditions and political viewpoints in the United States, Europe, and other parts of the world. Without advocating any specific religious or theological stance, the series aims nonetheless to be faithful to the radical emancipatory potential of religion.
After the Death of God, John D. Caputo and Gianni Vattimo, edited by Jeffrey W. Robbins
The Politics of Postsecular Religion: Mourning Secular Futures, Ananda Abeysekara
Nietzsche and Levinas: After the Death of a Certain God, edited by Jill Stauffer and Bettina Bergo
Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe, Mary-Jane Rubenstein
Religion and the Specter of the West: Sikhism, India, Postcoloniality, and the Politics of Translation, Arvind Mandair
Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: Dialectic, Destruction, Deconstruction, Catherine Malabou
Anatheism: Returning to God After God, Richard Kearney
Rage and Time: A Psychopolitical Investigation, Peter Sloterdijk
Radical Political Theology: Religion and Politics After Liberalism, Clayton Crockett
Radical Democracy and Political Theology, Jeffrey W. Robbins
Hegel and the Infinite: Religion, Politics, and Dialectic, edited by Slavoj iek, Clayton Crockett, and Creston Davis
What Does a Jew Want? On Binationalism and Other Specters, Udi Aloni
A Radical Philosophy of Saint Paul, Stanislas Breton, edited by Ward Blanton, translated by Joseph N. Ballan
Hermeneutic Communism: From Heidegger to Marx, Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala
Deleuze Beyond Badiou: Ontology, Multiplicity, and Event, Clayton Crockett
Self and Emotional Life: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, and Neuroscience, Adrian Johnston and Catherine Malabou
The Incident at Antioch: A Tragedy in Three Acts / LIncident dAntioche: Tragdie en trois actes, Alain Badiou, translated by Susan Spitzer
Philosophical Temperaments: From Plato to Foucault, Peter Sloterdijk
To Carl Schmitt: Letters and Reflections, Jacob Taubes, translated by Keith Tribe
Encountering Religion: Responsibility and Criticism After Secularism, Tyler Roberts
Spinoza for Our Time: Politics and Postmodernity, Antonio Negri, translated by William McCuaig
Factory of Strategy: Thirty-three Lessons on Lenin, Antonio Negri, translated by Arianna Bove
Cut of the Real: Subjectivity in Poststructuralism Philosophy, Katerina Kolozova
A Materialism for the Masses: Saint Paul and the Philosophy of Undying Life, Ward Blanton
Our Broad Present: Time and Contemporary Culture, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht
Wrestling with the Angel: Experiments in Symbolic Life, Tracy McNulty
Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglements, Catherine Keller
What Does Europe Want? The Union and Its Discontents, Slavoj iek and Sreko Horvat
Nietzsche Versus Paul, Abed Azzam
Pauls Summons to Messianic Life: Political Theology and the Coming Awakening, L. L. Welborn
Reimagining the Sacred: Richard Kearney Debates God with James Wood, Catherine Keller, Charles Taylor, Julia Kristeva, Gianni Vattimo, Simon Critchley, Jean-Luc Marion, John Caputo, David Tracey, Jens Zimmermann, and Merold Westphal, edited by Richard Kearney and Jens Zimmermann
An Insurrectionist Manifesto: Four New Gospels for a Radical Politics, Ward Blanton, Clayton Crockett, Jeffrey W. Robbins, and Nolle Vahanian
The Intimate Universal
THE HIDDEN POROSITY AMONG RELIGION,
ART, PHILOSOPHY, AND POLITICS
William Desmond
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Copyright 2016 Columbia University Press
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E-ISBN 978-0-231-54300-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Desmond, William, 1951 author.
Title: The intimate universal: the hidden porosity among religion, art, philosophy, and politics / William Desmond.
Description: New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. | Series: Insurrections: critical studies in religion, politics, and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016024208| ISBN 9780231178761 (cloth: alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231543002(e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Universals (Philosophy) | Whole and parts (Philosophy) | Individuation (Philosophy)
Classification: LCC B105.U5 D47 2016 | DDC 111/.2dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016024208
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For Maria
William Shakespeare, King Lear, 5.3.819:
No, no, no, no! Come, lets away to prison:
We two alone will sing like birds i th cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, Ill kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness: and well live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and well talk with them too,
Who loses, and who wins; whos in, whos out;
And take upon s the mystery of things,
As if we were Gods spies; and well wear out,
In a walled prison, packs and sects of great ones
That ebb and flow by th moon.
William Butler Yeats, Politics:
How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet heres a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And theres a politician
That has read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and wars alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms!
Have you understood all this? They said, Yes. And he said to them, Well, then, every scribe who becomes a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out from his storeroom things both new and old.
MATTHEW 13:5152
CONTENTS
T HE NOTION OF THE INTIMATE UNIVERSAL HAS BEEN ON MY MIND for a long time, and made appearances in earlier books like
