The Universe Is on Our Side

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Ledewitz
Keyword(s):  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Process Philosophy ◽  
Bernard Lonergan ◽  
Death Of God ◽  
Martin Luther King ◽  
The Universe

There has been a breakdown in American public life that no election can fix. Americans cannot even converse about politics. All the usual explanations for our condition have failed to make things better. Bruce Ledewitz shows that America is living with the consequences of the Death of God, which Friedrich Nietzsche knew would be momentous and irreversible. God was this culture’s story of the meaning of our lives. Even atheists had substitutes for God, like inevitable progress. Now we have no story and do not even think about the nature of reality. That is why we are angry and despairing. America’s future requires that we begin a new story by each of us asking a question posed by theologian Bernard Lonergan: Is the universe on our side? When we commit to live honestly and fully by our answer to that question, even if our immediate answer is no, America will begin to heal. Beyond that, pondering the question of the universe will allow us to see that there is more to the universe than blind forces and dead matter. Guided by the naturalism of Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy, and the historical faith of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we can learn to trust that the universe bends toward justice and our welfare. That conclusion will complete our healing and restore faith in American public life. We can live without God, but not without thinking about holiness in the universe.

Is the Universe on Our Side?

2021 ◽  
pp. 109-125
Author(s):  
Bruce Ledewitz
Keyword(s):  
Public Life ◽  
Bernard Lonergan ◽  
Constitutional Democracy ◽  
Ultimate Question ◽  
Cultural Entity ◽  
The Universe

America cannot go on this way without risking the end of constitutional democracy. We have already entered post-liberalism. But there is something to be done. We can launch a new story, and thus begin to recover normal public life, by asking the ultimate question bequeathed to us by Bernard Lonergan: Is the universe on our side? Asking an ultimate question restores faith in questioning itself. That kind of questioning ends the Age of Evasion. We ask Lonergan’s question through a loose cultural entity he called “cosmopolis.” As long as we agree to live by our answer to this question, even a no can contribute to the healing of American public life.

The Taste to Come

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 238-262
Author(s):  
Virgil W. Brower
Keyword(s):  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
The Body ◽  
Helene Cixous ◽  
Specific Kind ◽  
To Come

This article exploits a core defect in the phenomenology of sensation and self. Although phenomenology has made great strides in redeeming the body from cognitive solipsisms that often follow short-sighted readings of Descartes and Kant, it has not grappled with the specific kind of corporeal self-reflexivity that emerges in the oral sense of taste with the thoroughness it deserves. This path is illuminated by the works of Martin Luther, Jean-Luc Marion, and Jacques Derrida as they attempt to think through the specific phenomena accessible through the lips, tongue, and mouth. Their attempts are, in turn, supplemented with detours through Walter Benjamin, Hélène Cixous, and Friedrich Nietzsche. The paper draws attention to the German distinction between Geschmack and Kosten as well as the role taste may play in relation to faith, the call to love, justice, and messianism. The messiah of love and justice will have been that one who proclaims: taste the flesh.

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