Epilogue: ‘Death to Self’ and Christian Posthumanism
[Previous posts: I. Economics and the Political Imagination; II. Economics and the Vocational Imagination; III. Economics and the Educational Imagination; IV. Economics and the Existential Imagination]
(PREFACE: In my earlier, political writings contra liberalism I tried to make this argument: that individualism and secularism we find in modern, liberal politics are deeply problematic. At the time, I lumped all of modernity into a single liberal history and, in many ways, I still think this view holds true. What I failed to treat in those writings was the radicalization of this individualistic and secular shift that has further disfigured the imagus Dei into an instrumental means to money, capital, and economic power. This shift is what I have called the move from the man of reason—the person of the liberalism—to the economic man—the person of neo-liberalism.)
Making purely critical genealogies is not the hard work. Most people willing to see things as they are can sense the dis-enchantment and alienation that surrounds them. If not, then, as I suggested earlier, reading Tolstoy or watching “Office Space” quickly makes the point I (and many, many others) have been driving at.
The question now becomes: Where are the answers?
‘Phenomenology,’ ‘Psychoanalysis,’ ‘Postmodernism,’ and many other critical traditions of thought have made many of the same assessments of our times. What they have failed to do is to offer a realizable alternative—an alternative that does not simply try to further maim reality. Among their utopias and dystopias they cannot help but be infected—as I personally am—by the very era they are attempting to deconstruct. They cannot imagine an enchanted world because their horizon is itself thoroughly dis-enchanted. This impotence on the part of recent attempts to heal the modern wounds we suffer from leaves very few alternatives. Truth be told, I can only think of one: the Gospel.
Beneath the frustrated and angry—yet unable to act—posture that is all too typical for critical discourse, is the Gospel, always waiting, pregnant with dark truth. What is this ‘dark truth’? That we must die to live. And death comes first. This is the only way to literally model the life-through-death of the Savior. Even God had to die. First.
Here we find a more radical alternative than all the critical claims that modern times have produced: A Christian posthumanism. A rejection of both the rational, self-enclosed individual and the irrational, all-consuming economic man. A rejection of autonomy—that naive idea of self-determination—and economic power. The rejection of the modern ‘God’ as a mere option to man and the arrogance of the pre-modern ‘God’ as an idol carved in the image of man. In place of all these things we find the person as lover, the mad eros of the Cross, and the power of unselfish love.
Humanism and liberalism will always fail because they cannot avoid being anthropocentric. It will always love the human. They are fundamentally selfish. They deny the truth of theosis.
The call to love in the Gospel reveals that we can only realize our greatest hopes under a new order, the order of love—Divine and worldly love. Not the affectionate, hippy-love we have become accustomed to. This love comes in dark shades of death that bring true life.
The end of the age of economics—the age that has heightened the previous age of the secular individual—will only come through this Gospel truth:
In all truth I tell you, unless a wheat grain falls into the earth and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies it yields a rich harvest. Anyone who loves his life loses it; anyone who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. (John 12:24-25, NJB)
THE END
Comments are closed.
One of the things I find is that my exploration of Buddhism helps bring about a better appreciation of the Christian dying to self. I do think Balthasar was onto something when he said the Christianity of the future will be one which engages Buddhism like it did Hellenism, because there is so much there, but of course, for the Christian it must all be seen as “in the rough.” The Buddhists really understand the problems of “the self.”
Simone Weil understood deconstructing the self as a Gospel imperative and believed the “I” was not maintained in the here after. What are the ramifications on eschatology for a christian posthumanism?
Elliot: I am mostly unfamiliar with Weil outside of name recognition. But your question framed by her thought is one I have never thought of, as far as I know. Let me try to begin to think it about here, briefly.
I have serious concerns about eschatological speculations insofar as they are presented as more than fallible possibilities. So, from the outset, I worry about overreaching my bounds. However, speaking about the potential of christian posthumanism for re-imagining the love of God and the relationship between that love and what has been called “the economy of salvation”—a term that, for obvious reasons, I dislike, although it serves me well here—seems like a serious aspect that, now that you bring it to my attention, must be addressed.
I guess the most obvious way, to me at least, that it might begin to adjust how we think about eschatology is that it would de-center the dialectic between the eschaton of now and the one of tomorrow. The “kingdom of God” would no longer be expressed as a duality of time, but would erased as such and resurrected as it is: a mystery.
This de-centered eschaton would not be purely deconstructive or critical it would be productive and fecund for the actual kingdom to come. It would also remove the selfishness in the very concern of the preservation of the “I.” We would desire salvation to always come in terms of “we”: theosis.
This, I think, might be one way that such a thing like ‘christian posthumanism’ might lend resources for imagining eschatology.
Maybe, I will try to write more about this in the future. Thank you so much for such a profound question and opportunity.
Pax,
Sam