Matthew Peterson

PhD Candidate, Divinity School

Please read as much as possible of Matthew’s paper in preparation to engage in discussion and Q&A (see PDF). Please contact us for the password. We hope to see you there!

Abstract:  

This article assesses the politics of the critical phenomenology of religion in contemporary France through a reading of the work of Jean Vioulac. Given that it has been nearly thirty years since the so-called theological turn in French phenomenology, the return to such a nexus could appear at best nostalgic, and at worst regressive. As I argue, however, Vioulac’s concept of apocalypse revitalizes the phenomenological epochē, the critical stance that suspends our everyday way of looking at things. By bracketing the world ordered by the “totalitarian logic” of Greek metaphysics, apocalypse accounts for a negativity that had been suppressed by philosophy. I first show how this perspective is mobilized by way of a materialist phenomenology of technology. I then unpack the ambiguity of an “apocalypse of truth” as both a philosophy of the concept and a philosophy of experience. On the basis of this project, I characterize Vioulac as a communist Cathar for whom the philosophy of religion consists in the archeological demystification of theological concepts. Finally, I consider the ways in which his method of “anarcheology” extends—but also risks reneging on—the insights of Foucauldian genealogy and Derridean deconstruction. On my reading, Vioulac’s project reminds us that philosophy wards off its dogmatic tendencies not by doing away with religion but by critically appropriating it.

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Lucas Depierre

PhD Student, UChicago Divinity School

Abstract: 

This presentation endeavors to excavate Cioran’s metaphysics of time as emerging from a critique of Nietzsche’s doctrine(s) of eternal return. Thereby, I argue against reducing Cioran to a self-contradictory and destructive thinker with stylistic qualities but on the margins of philosophical debates, particularly those on the question of time. To retrieve Cioran’s understanding of time, my innovative method is to assemble his disordered aphorisms under the light of Nietzsche’s angle in order to unearth Cioran’s intimate spiritual journey on the question of time. I conclude that if Cioran’s coherence has eluded scholarly investigation it is because his identified stance is intricately intertwined with his secretive and agnostic theological quest. I introduce and advocate for a “wandering paradigm” on Cioran’s metaphysics in order to deconstruct what I refer to as the “sedentary paradigm” derived from the nihilist and the Nietzschean interpretation. 

Keywords: Time, Cioran, Nietzsche, eternal return, fall from time, eternity, mourning.

The presenter would like to insist on a warning in order to not make any participant uncomfortable. This presentation will deal with topics such as suicide and depression. Some reflections and quotes from the author are provocative and particularly dark.

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Joseph Haydt

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