“All of Us” before God: Phenomenological Contours of the Liturgical Assembly according to Franz Rosenzweig and Jean-Yves Lacoste

This article treats the notion of liturgical experience that was introduced into contemporary philosophy by Franz Rosenzweig at the start of the twentieth century. His original and deep thinking in the Star of Redemption describes, among other things, the liturgical feasts of Judaism and Christianity as ramparts against finitude and as openings onto the ultimate. The article will bring together his descriptions of the liturgical assembly as a dialogical and choral “we” or “all of us” with the work of Jean-Yves Lacoste who has made liturgy the very heart of his magisterial phenomenological work. Putting these two authors into conversation allows us to uncover some salient traits of what makes for a liturgical community, such as the link between the liturgical assembly and the notion of communion. Drawing on both Rosenzweig and Lacoste, we can see, first, that this community is not simply cultural or ideological, but that its core lies in the concrete experience of exposing oneself before God. Next, I take up the idea of eschatological presentiment in Lacoste and the choral response-structure in Rosenzweig and suggest that this eschatological anticipation is manifested in the flesh of the assembly, endowing it with a dimension of responsibility. Finally, the liturgical assembly becomes a concrete body in which the kingdom is able to come near in the density of presence as fraternity within an aura of love. By doing so, a “thinking otherwise” may prove capable of illuminating philosophical understandings of human community more broadly.

Homer ‘Viewed from the Corridor’

This chapter explores how Tippett’s opera, King Priam, retells Homer’s Iliad by fracturing the epic narrative into distinct episodes and patterns which expose to the audience’s scrutiny the internal conflicts of the main characters. This process involves balancing emotional realism with the alienation effect characteristic of Brechtian ‘epic’ theatre. Figures appear in patterns of twos, threes, and larger collectives, all mirroring and reflecting back upon one another. These reflections are highlighted by the requirement that the opera’s singers take on multiple roles, often crossing the divide between the mortal and divine realms or between the action and the choral response to it. Through these fluid groupings, which are masterminded by the strange figure of the god Hermes, Tippett’s protagonists demonstrate different degrees of self-knowledge and of autonomy within the constraints of the drama; this in turn offers new perspectives on the choices and behaviours of the original Homeric characters.