Transcript for Episode 36
Ryan:
My guest today is Professor Philipp Rosemann. Philipp is chair of philosophy at Maynooth University in Ireland. He is originally from Germany; received graduate education at the University of Belfast, Ireland; his doctorate at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. He taught for twenty years at the University of Dallas and since 2018, has been on faculty at Maynooth University. Philipp is also the editor of the Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations series. That’s one hat he wears as a medievalist. He is a philosopher and also, in the past decade, very much a theologian.
Philipp, when I read early Foucault, I am repelled by crippling, reductive obsession with power. But when I read very late Foucault on conversion and asceticism and truth, I feel like I might as well be reading the Gospel from the nouvelle théologie. So, between Foucault of Discipline and Punish and the Foucault of The History of Sexuality what's happening? And do you think there's more continuity there or is there a major shift?
Philipp:
So, first of all, I, my question would of course then be, where are you getting this from? When I am confronted with this type of question, it is frequent that people will say, “Oh, I'm not interested in Foucault because Foucault just reduces everything to power.” I mean, I do have a two-fold reaction. The first reaction is the one I just talked about. The reaction is: where exactly, what exactly have you been reading?
The second reaction is: perhaps it is already helpful to bear in mind that the English word “power” is an inadequate translation of what Foucault is actually talking about, because he is not talking about power. He's not writing in English. The early Foucault is not writing in English. Later, of course, he is in Berkeley and occasionally produces something in English. But his language is French, and since his language is French, he doesn't discuss power at all. He discusses, rather, “pouvoir.” And what's clear in the word “pouvoir” is that the French, this French word, is derived from an infinitive, which is the same as the noun, “pouvoir,” which means “to be able to.” Pouvoir is the infinitive from which expressions are derived, such as, “Je peux”—"I can, I am able to.” Okay? So, from the very beginning, if you look at this word “pouvoir,” you will see that it does not have in French the simple meaning of an overwhelming, oppressing power, but it combines the idea of a power that in fact, if you will—how shall I put it metaphorically?—comes from above, or that can have these oppressive connotations.
Certainly, you can speak in French also of “le roi a beaucoup de pouvoir”—"the king has lots of power.” It’s clear what that means; it means more or less what the English means. But again, in French, also, with the word “pouvoir” you get this connotation of ability. And so, power is not simply force, but power is the force, which can certainly acquire oppressive connotations, which comes from an ability, which comes from—speaking more philosophically and perhaps now beginning to project something into the French word—it's more potentiality. It is more something perhaps like [virtus? Victus?] in Latin, you know, that's what pouvoir is.
And so, from the very beginning, Foucault is interested not—and that, by the way, is now also clear from the text. If you read, for example, the first French preface, which is now available in the English translation, the new translation, the big one, the complete translation of what used to be called Madness and Civilization, which was the abridged translation, which didn't have the full French preface to the first edition. The way it is very clear already at this early stage, that Foucault is not interested in simply—perhaps not interested at all—in offering an analysis on how oppressive all these power structures are. But, from the very beginning,—and now I'm…well, I’m answering your question all the time, but now I'm also coming to your question regarding the connection between the earlier Foucault and later Foucault—from the very beginning, Foucault is interested in freedom, in freeing us. So, in describing, if you will, power structures (now understood in a more superficial sense) but describing these power structures not because he wants to show that we have no agency, but in order to show that these power structures, because they are historically constituted and because they have a history, therefore they are contingent. And since they're contingent, they are also capable of being challenged. And so, thinking about Madness and Civilization, thinking about procedures of punishment [in] Discipline and Punish, thinking about the hospital, etc., etc.—again, not just ways to describe these kind of unchangeable, oppressive structures to which we simply are subjected, but to rediscover the subject, to rediscover agency. Okay?
That's very clear. That's very clear, even in the early Foucault, and therefore what the later Foucault does very—I, you know, there are obviously these distinctions, you know, the archeological phase and the genealogical phase; I'm not a huge fan of that. Perhaps, you know, scholars like to come up with these terms so that they can situate themselves and can cut Foucault into periods. But, you know, the concern of the earlier Foucault continues in the later Foucault—the Foucault with whom you find more interested, or whose work you find more interested—the Foucault who very clearly tries to carve out a space for a subject who is capable of shaping him or herself. Right?
And so, I’ll end this perhaps over-long answer to your question by quoting a famous, a famous quote that actually comes from Deleuze, which Deleuze is—I read it in a Foucault biography, I suppose it's true—that, a quote that Deleuze is supposed to have uttered on the occasion of Foucault’s death. And he said that what is interesting about Foucault is that he studied history so that, so as to be able to imagine oneself differently, studying history, studying historical structures, to be able to imagine oneself differently. That's and that is what Foucault is about. Again, as I know, I'm just repeating myself, Foucault is not just describing power structures in order to show, in a kind of almost Marxist fashion, that human subjectivity can be reduced to these material or economic or social or whatever substructures. But rather, you know, let's see how punishment was done before the modern time. Again, not just to return to that, but in order to see it doesn't have to be done the way in which it's done now.
Let's look at, you know, of course, you know, you know, History of Sexuality. I'm having discussions about Foucault here also with, you know, my colleagues in Ireland, who are reading a very different Foucault from the one I'm reading. They are finding, let's say in The History of Sexuality, the philosophical foundations of a kind of gender theory agenda. Well, I don't find that there at all, you know, at all. And I think that Foucault actually would be appalled by gender theory because, you know what gender theory does is attempt to define human beings through their sexual preferences. So, sexual preferences become identities. They kind of congeal into identities. That's what Foucault was describing as the problem of the twentieth century, which he challenged us to think about critically, by saying it wasn't always this way.
And so when Foucault says that sodomy was an isolated sin, homosexuality is an identity, he didn't mean this in the sense of, “Oh wonderful. Now we have sexual liberation.” But he meant it in the sense of, “Well is that really a good thing to define our identity through who we are, what we prefer to do sexually?” And his answer would be, “No. No.” You know, and now, off course, you know, Foucault is not engaged in a Christian discourse regarding sexuality. I think that's also quite clear. But neither is he engaged in this attempt to, as I just said, reduce human identity—of course he wouldn't have talked about human identity at all—reduce who we are to skin color or to sexual preference or to some such biopolitical characteristics. He was trying to question that.
And so, so therefore, you know, now I’ll stop because, you know, I'm talking at much too great length. Foucault would be a critic of what's going on in terms of gender theory. He, you cannot really, if you read Foucault properly and in a scholarly way, you can't invoke him for that kind of approach.
Ryan:
What difference did America make to Foucault and maybe to that generation of French philosophers who spent significant time in New York and California?
Philipp:
Hmm. You know, I recently read a book about that. You know, it's…what difference did it make to him? Yeah, you know, it's a slightly tricky topic, but, you know, I’ll mention it anyway. He tried LSD in California and apparently…
Ryan:
[laughing] I didn’t know that.
Philipp:
Well, he did. There's a whole book on that. That's, it's not a scholarly book. It's written by the people who accompanied him to the desert, where he tried it. And, apparently, it led to something like an opening of his mind and a spiritual experience, and he was a changed man. So, that's something it did for him. Did it do anything else? I mean, look, Foucault was a very French thinker in the, in the, you know, a thinker belonging…he comes out of a French tradition of thinking and never left that. He, you know, lecturing in Berkeley, but also he gave lectures at the University of Vermont at one point. That did not, I think, have a deep impact on him. For that, he was much too much rooted in a continental, but a particularly French tradition, of thinking. So, I don't think that Foucault became in any kind of significant extent, to a significant extent, an American thinker. You see, the French intellectual tradition is so strong, and so idiosyncratic, that even Americ…er…French thinkers who begin to live in the United States for an extended period of time, do not become American thinkers. Look at Jean-Luc Marion, who has now had an appointment in Chicago for, I don't know, twenty years or something like that. It has not Americanized him one bit. [laughter] No, it just hasn't. It just hasn't.
Ryan:
And what about you? What about you? So, you're, you're a German, by birth. Partly, your education was in Germany, but then, in Ireland, right? And then you taught at the University of Dallas for twenty years. Did America, how did America change you?
Philipp:
America changed me completely, in ways for which I'm eternally grateful. And now, I became an American citizen, a fact of which I'm very proud. So, it changed me in that I came from a European educational background. Now, Europe, when I received my education in the late 1980s and 1990s, wasn't quite as crazy as it is now. [laughter] So, European universities were to be more mainstream, and they placed significantly greater emphasis on mainstream scholarship as opposed to ideological fashions. So, on the other hand, even then, European universities did not—well, European universities. There are a lot of them. So, I, I never completed my degree in Germany. I immigrated. I moved to England for one year, then to Belfast, got an MA in Belfast. My PhD is from Louvain in Belgium. Then I spent a year in Africa, and then I received my appointment at the University of Dallas. So, the European universities I know—not to talk about European education. I mean, that's much too broad, much to generalized.
The European education I knew was not sufficiently broad. It didn't give me a sufficient grounding in the Western and Christian intellectual tradition, even then. And I think that comes from the fact that European universities at that point had not yet caught up to the reality that the opening up of education, which had occurred in the 1960s, had required, would have required a fundamental change about how even university education is approached. In the German gymnasium, traditionally, you would have received the foundations of an education in the Western intellectual tradition. You would have studied Greek. You would have read Homer. You would have studied Latin, read some Virgil, read some, etc., some of the great texts. And, as a German, you would have been introduced to the tradition of German literature, Goethe, Schiller, and all that. And you would have had, at least you would have dipped into, people like Shakespeare and Moliere. I'm talking about, let's say, the education of my father. That's the kind of education he would have had. Then you came to the university and then almost immediately you specialized. But you could specialize because, you know, when you concentrated on Aristotle, let's say you attended a seminar on Aristotle, you already knew Homer from the gymnasium, so. Now, that's no longer the case. And so, and so when I, my gymnasium was quite good, but it was no longer this kind of classical thing. So, I attended the university and my education was very—what should I say?—spotty. There were strengths here, strengths there. No, really, picture of what the Western intellectual tradition was, let alone it was not a Christian intellectual tradition at all. So, when I then was appointed—although, you know, my own kind of quest regarding the faith started at that point. And then, of course, you know, at Louvain, I wrote a dissertation on Thomas Aquinas under the direction of, you know, a well-known Irish scholar who was also a priest, etc., etc.
What the University of Dallas has done for me is that it’s shown me what a truly liberal education is, what it means to study the great books, and what it also means to read individual works of the Western tradition against a larger background. So, let's say, I can now read Heidegger or I can read Foucault—but not just reading Heidegger and Foucault, but knowing what they're doing—but then, also, perhaps being able to judge more critically what they're doing. I can admire Heidegger, but when he says, for example, you know, he talks about “the failure of Western metaphysics,” I know enough about Western metaphysics to say, “Well, I mean, that's very brilliant what you're saying there, but is it really true?” And that's, so, what I…yeah…so, what I owe to the University of Dallas and to that American tradition, because it's not a European tradition anymore, is an understanding of the value of an education, which—well, one way of saying it—is truly liberal. That is to say, which takes this ancient ideal, which of course was highly—well, you know, we would say elitist, really. I mean, liberal education meant education for the free Romans, certainly not the slaves, not the women, etc., etc. But, take that and offer everyone who makes it to a university like that this type of liberal education that is appropriate for a free person. And that's what I still believe in, and now what I’m trying to do in Ireland is, on a very small scale, reproduce the ideal of such an education in the classes that I'm able to teach.
Ryan:
You've written a great deal about French philosophy and, of course, about medieval theology and philosophy, and nearly all of your published writing is in English. Was there a path not taken? A more German path? What would Philipp Rosemann the German philosopher look like?
Philipp:
Well, it wouldn’t so much be a German path. You see, it would have, it would be a French path. I, you know, I left Germany when I was, was it 22 or 23 or something like that. And, you know, of course, I still have tires in Germany. I have, I have relatives in Germany. However, if, if I had had an academic career outside of the English-speaking world, it would have been in the French speaking world because my, my doctorate was, well, in a French-speaking university, Université catholique de Louvain. I couldn't really make a contribution to French discussions. They’re very different; they really are very different.
So, I'm now contributing to American—and now, more deliberately, also, to Irish discussions. I'm trying to kind of reinvent myself in a small way as someone who is, an intellectual who is making a specific contribution in an Irish context, which is a very particular context. It's the context of—well, as you, as you know, but not firsthand as I now do—it's the context of a collapse of the Catholic church that must be unique. I mean, Germany is already somewhat problematic. In America, you have a flourishing Catholic church and Catholic intellectual tradition. In Germany there is still something and in France there is still something. In Ireland it's collapsing.
And so, it’s, for me, almost like a sense of a vocation that I'm coming to Ireland—stop the collapse? Not sure. But, I mean, I'm certainly, so, for example, in the students who come to me who are religious illiterates, illiterates; they don't even—I mean, the vast majority of them. I'm not talking about the small minority, but the vast majority—for them, faith is so far removed that they don't even have a sense of what it might be. And just awakening a sense, you know, keeping a door open in their minds to the possibility of thinking in terms of faith is something that I sense as a kind of vocation.
Ryan:
Well in, in your recent work, in the past decade or so, you've developed this dynamic understanding of tradition according to which traditions are, they may at one period be in a consolidation phase, and then at other times, they have to be, kind of, broken apart. Transgression is a key word for you there. Taking that understanding, how would you describe the phenomena that you're, that you've just identified in Ireland? Or, or, or is that, is, is this a kind of secularization that's happening completely outside of a context of tradition—what Alasdair MacIntyre would call a traditioned discourse?
Philipp:
No, I mean, you know, I mean, I'm, I'm…No, the secularization that's occurring in Ireland is not occurring outside of the Christian tradition, at all. You know, I've been thinking a lot—by the way, also together with a student of mine—about the sources of secularization. And now, you might say, “Well, so here's another theory of secularization. We have enough of that.” Of course, you know, loads and loads has been written about that. And I just dropped a term, you know, the immanentization of the eschaton, which, again, of course, is not mine. It's, it's Voegelin. It's very, very well-established. Nonetheless, you see, also if something's well established, if it's valuable and interesting, that's, it's not a bad idea to rearticulate it. And that's what I've been trying to do, also, in order to understand Ireland the last few years. And, also, together with a former doctoral student of mine and an Anglican priest by the name of Matthew Boulter, who got his PhD recently in Maynooth with a dissertation on Ratzinger and Bonaventure. And you see, secularization—I think this is true, you know, actually—secularization is itself, John Milbank would probably say, a Christian heresy. So, secularization is not something that is opposed to Christianity, but it is, if you will, something like a development of Christianity in the wrong direction.
And again, so, you know, based on my own reading, but also conversations with my doctoral student—and he has a book forthcoming, not me advertising the book, now—but at any rate, Ratzinger’s habilitation, which is the second PhD that’s necessary in Germany to teach at the university level, was devoted to Bonaventure's theology of history. It was very controversial and almost cost him his academic career, perhaps you know this or perhaps people listening to this interview know this. What he tries to do in this second PhD is to show how Bonaventure reacts to the heresy of Joachim of Fiore and brings it into the Christian mainstream. Joachim of Fiore is this thinker who said that we are at the end of times, in the sense that there is an Age of the Father, an Age of the Son, and now we've entered the Age of the Spirit. And so, this Age of the Spirit is a harbinger of something like the millennium, something like the incipient Kingdom on earth. Okay. Now, that's not orthodox Christianity, but Bonaventure bends it in such a direction that he makes it orthodox. And what he does is essentially he says that Christ is not at the end of time, Christ is at the center of time, so that we as Christians have, kind of—it sounds crude, but—we have more time to realize the already incipient Kingdom. See, if we are at the end of time, what should we…at the end of the time, really, in the sense of the Second Coming is tomorrow, well, are we, you know, why take out a mortgage or try to, you know, embark on a career as professor? We should be praying. And if it's next year, quickly enter the monastery in order to really pray and prepare ourselves. But, in the thirteenth century, this kind of intellectual shift occurs in which Christianity adjusts to the reality that the Second Coming has not yet occurred. So, perhaps Christ is not the end of time, but is the center of time. And if he is the center of time, there may be more room for development. That's what Ratzinger, that's essentially what Ratzinger says in his book. But then, that becomes, you see, you take that a little bit further and what you get is the immanentization of the eschaton, so that people like the Enlightenment thinkers, people like Hagel only have to take up so much Bonaventure. They have to take Joachim of Fiore, who is already a Christian heretic, or—well, you see, Joachim of Fiore actually wanted—that was horrible, actually. I should retract that. One shouldn't say that about a person. His personal intentions were completely orthodox, and there was only one of his works was ever censored. So, I actually want to take that back that—one shouldn’t talk about people like this. It's too flashy, particularly if it's not true. It would be true about Hans Kueng.
[laughter]
It's not true about, no, Joachim of Fiore is much, much closer to orthodoxy. But, nonetheless, there is a dangerous edge in his thought. This dangerous edge gets actualized this idea that, well, the Kingdom—see it's in Christianity itself—the Kingdom is something we expect, but in an incipient, inchoate way, it's already there in that God became man. And so, the King…so, all you need to do now is to say, “Well, the King[dom] is actually here and there’s nothing to hope for.” And then you get secularization. I think that's the key to it. I think that's it. And that's certainly what, for example, I'm currently living in Ireland. I live in a society that has no transcendent horizon, at all, with all the consequences that follow from that, including very dangerous political consequences, such as: “Look, my entire happiness has to be realized in this life. I can't bring it about. So, who can bring it about? Well, of course, the State.” So, I, so the State becomes, you know, this huge administrative state, which tries to make sure that, to look after me, you know, when I get sick; to make sure I have a good retirement; to protect me from any kind of hate speech to which I may be subject because there's nothing to look forward to, so everything has to happen in the here and now.
Ryan:
It was interesting to hear you, earlier, describe the United States in comparison to Ireland as, as still having a strong, you know, Catholic tradition, as…so, what resources does the United States have, now, that would give it a different path that, that would mean that the United States isn't just lagging twenty years behind the EU?
Philipp:
Well, I would say that, that, you know, there is a stronger tradition of, first of all, Christian faith. It's not all Catholic, of course, you know, lots of Protestant is around as well, but there's a much stronger tradition of Christian faith in the United States and a much stronger sense of liberty.
I mean, let's not, I'm not a, I'm not a political scientist and don't want to analyze American politics. But, so for example, the strength of the defenders of liberty and of Christian people in the United States is incomparable in relation to Europe. In Europe, people, you know, for example, like myself, would be, would be, would be, would be a minority, now, I'm not sure tiny.
Ryan:
Well, speaking, speaking from, from what you do, where you are an expert as a theologian and just your own experience as a lay person, what does the United States have going for it? You know, you say they're more religious. Well, what about that? A lot of, a lot of commentators look around and they, and they see religious participation declining precipitously; they see, even for people who are continuing to attend church, communities are no longer being formed in those churches, and so on. So, there are all these trends, but I think you have a unique perspective, comparatively, that there may be something that, that, that Americans who are themselves thinking apocalyptically and wringing their hands might not be seeing.
Philipp:
So, I would say that there are a lot of communities in the US. Are they a huge majority? No. A lot of influential, very committed communities in the United States, across the United States, where the kind of thinking about which we've been talking, a Christian thinking, a thinking that takes tradition seriously, a tradition that takes human heteronomy seriously. You know, we're not totally autonomous, you know, masters of our own lives, etc., etc. That is very strong. In terms of percentages, look, I couldn't discuss that, even, with you. I'm not a sociologist. But, it seems to me that, you know, for example, in the academic world, there are these very, very strong pockets, really, all over the United States, you know, not just in Texas—Irving, Texas—but in other places as well. So, that's what makes me hopeful.
Plus, you see, one thing is also interesting. The whole question, for example, of how powerful the State should be. That's a discussion. In the United States, that's a discussion. And even, let's say I read the New York Times, I get these discussions. In Ireland, you wouldn't even have the discussion. For example, what is the role of the State in the life of its citizens? In the United States, that's a discussion. The New York Times will run articles about that. You know, that are not just totally one sided; some of them, you know, are. But, but you know, you would see, “Aha, this is not a question that has been settled.” In Ireland…in Ireland the question is currently settled, not forever settled, currently settled.
One thing that I've started doing—look, I mean, I don't what to talk about too much about myself, but you see, we haven't been able really to go to Mass here since last March. Over the summer, last summer, there was a period of, well, I would say between July and early December, we could actually go to Mass again. But it was…but…So, I was exaggerating a little bit. But, for example, I could tell you it's not been possible to go to Mass since Christmas. That's an actual fact. You would be breaking the law. There was controversy in Ireland over this. The government has become stricter and stricter. There is now a penalty of up to six months in prison for attending Mass, and indeed, for attending confession outside, you know, with a priest hearing the confession, you know, while you are in the car or something like that. That's now illegal.
Ryan:
What did living in Texas teach you about Protestantism that you would not have understood from living in Europe?
Philipp:
Well look, there I would answer slightly differently. See, I gained more respect for Protestantism when I lived in Belfast in the 1980s during the time of the civil war. [laughter; something inaudible] It's kind of, it was an interesting experience. I learned that there were these two communities, which were obviously hostile. Not every individual from this community hated every…that's not the case. But there was civil war, so there was significant hostility. And yet, the Catholics were as committed to their faith and as devout and genuine as the Protestants. You know, you would come into the house of a Protestant, as I did on occasion, and there was this genuine—my gosh—Protestant ethos, very genuine and very committed, but also open, and hospitable, but also this sense, “Okay. I'm not like you, you know. I'm a Protestant.” But I respected it a lot. I found, wow, I mean—also its genuineness, at the genuine commitment. And so, so I learned to [look] perhaps more…
Then, of course, you see, one thing that is interesting, more interesting, about Protestantism. There there's something positive. I said some negative things about Europe. One of the, one of the interesting aspects about reading German theologians is that they developed—even people like Ratzinger—they developed their theology in dialogue with Lutheranism. You would say, “But, they’re not Catholic theologians.” Well, they are. But, you see, the German academic arrangements where such and, in fact, are still such, that at many universities you would have a faculty of Catholic theology just alongside the faculty of Lutheran theology. And, of course, they were talking to each other. And that means that Lutheranism in German theology became a very powerful force in Catholic theology and not for the worst, but always a foil for dialogue, etc. That, for example, I didn't see in the United States. In the United States, Catholic theology is insulated from Protestant theology to a very large extent. So, that makes it a little bit more insular actually. I don't know if that was a satisfactory answer to your question there.
Ryan:
Fascinating.
When I lived in Germany many years ago, my friends, when they would fantasize about traveling abroad, their ideal places were deserts in the US or in Australia—the Australian Outback or the American desert. Was this something peculiar about my friends or does the desert West hold a special place in the German imagination?
Philipp:
Oh, is it the German imagination? I thought it was the American imagination also. Well, you see, when I lived in Texas during the last, I don't know, five or six years, I developed this real love of West Texas, in a particular, an area called, around Fort Davis, where there is a small, actually not national park but it's a, it's a Texas state park—the Fort Davis Mountains. And it, you know, and I developed a particular love, well, because it's, you, you have this American experience, first of all, the American experience of space, which simply you don't have in Europe. I would drive from Dallas to Fort Davis and it would take seven hours—six and a half—and you would still be in Texas. You wouldn't even have left Texas. You would just drive on the highway, turn the music on loud, go over the speed limit, and enjoy a kind of sense of freedom, simply coming from the, coming from the space. And then, of course, the wonderful mountains, the solitude. You've already discovered, I'm a little bit of a perhaps kind of monastic soul. I mean, I don't mind being—solitariness is not something that bothers me. Almost kind of the contrary. So, it was an ideal environment. Very attractive. And something you definitely wouldn't, that you don't get in Europe because we do not have the space. If I were to drive anywhere from Ireland for seven hours, I would be in the ocean, probably already at the bottom of it.
[laughter]
Ryan:
So, I get that you appreciated the solitariness immediately. What about just the visual and natural aesthetics of the desert. It's so bare. I mean, in some places it's flat. Was that something that you also got right away or did you have to acclimate to it? Did it have to kind of grow on you?
Philipp:
No, no, no, no, no. You see it also, it emphasizes, what it brings home is the, you could say the gift of life. I mean the fragility of life, but also the gift of life. The fact that life is not something to be taken for granted. And there you have a striking contrast between something like an, you know, the Metroplex, as Texans call Dallas-Fort Worth, with seven million people, where you lose a sense of the contingency of life. Except recently, when all the, when the power broke down for two days, but I didn’t live there anymore. But I got it from friends and from the newspapers and so forth. But normally, you just take everything for granted because it is this machine that organizes life around you in a hyper-efficient way, you know, from the water supply to the gas that comes to your house to the mail that is delivered to the supermarkets to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then you drive into the desert and you have, for example, these succulents that are just trying to hold on while for six months they're not getting any water. Or, when you walk in these environments in the summer, I mean, for example, the Fort Davis state park—Davis Mountain State Park is what it's called—and I would go there perhaps in April or May. You would set out for your hike early in the morning, lots of sunscreen, hat. You know, I certainly, you know, be, and try to complete the hike before something like 11:00 AM, because after 11:00 AM, you might die, if you find yourself in the wrong spot. [laughter] I mean, it just gets too hot. It gets too hot. And there were moments that I remember I would set out for a hike, even in May, and return. I’d just say, “No. No, no, no. I mean, it's already 95 and I just started my hike. This is not possible. You know, I don't want to be found in the desert, you know, in a skeletal state.”
So, but fascinating. And, you know, you have the plants that hold on. And I mean, it does show you that life is a gift, that it's not to be taken for granted. It teaches you gratitude. It's, it's quite, it's, it's some place. You know, if I hadn't been called to Ireland, I would have tried to organize my life around the University of Dallas, but then with increasing periods of time spent in West Texas, perhaps with, with then eventually the plan of moving there.
Ryan:
So, if Bob Dylan deserved the Nobel Prize for literature, would Leonard Cohen also be a deserving candidate?
Philipp:
I thought so, you know, at the time when it happened. Now, I certainly don't want to say anything negative about Bob Dylan. I mean, I own lots and lots of CDs by him. Well, I would perhaps—I mean, no, nothing negative about him at all—but I would, perhaps, have said that the quality of Leonard Cohen as a poet—again, I’m not a literary, you know, it’s not my field. But, I mean, the certain, the depth, the depth of religious longing in Cohen, the ability also to write credibly and deeply in kind of different traditions, come out of the Jewish tradition. And there is a very clear Christian strand. Then there is something like, you know, like he's like a Troubadour. You know, that's a polite way of talking about, you know, his erotic quest as it becomes obvious in his lyrics. He weaves so much together. So I, I certainly thought when, I certainly thought that he would have been at a deserving candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Yeah.
Ryan:
The science fiction novel Dune takes place twenty thousand years in the future. And it imagines a synchrotized interstellar religion that retains strong elements of Buddhism and Hinduism and Islam and Christianity and Judaism. Another science fiction novel that I love, A Canticle for Leibowitz, imagines the Roman Mass more-or-less unchanged ten thousand years in the future. But, assuming that syncretism is not the future and assuming that there will be cycles of doctrinal development and destruction or what you've called transgression, what will remain recognizable about Christianity twenty thousand years from now?
Philipp:
Look, I have no ideas about twenty thousand years from now. My current impression is that there will be no human race in twenty thousand years. But, I’ll try to answer your question in a second. I read an article a few days ago. It was either in the Frankfurter Allgemeine or in the New York Times. And I confuse them because I read them both every day. And this article discussed a recent research, which had been, which was undertaken in collaboration between Chinese and US American scientists, that had created chimeras. They had combined the genetic material of human beings and of monkeys and had been able to get a fetus to grow for twenty days. It was only at the time when this would have been, would have had to be transplanted into a uterus that currently they were facing insuperable difficulties. But of course, you know how science works. They’re facing these difficulties, that means they're working to overcome the difficulties. And so, it sounds so horrible that it’s almost unspeakable. And so, what? In fifty years, when, you know, the sheep outside of my house will be greeting me and saying, “Oh, Philipp, what's up?” And, you know, they’ll have human heads or what? That is not unthinkable anymore. I mean, it's un…so, if that's the direction in which things are going, that's not going to last twenty thousand years. I mean, if that's the direction in which it's going, the apocalypse is much earlier than that. I mean, I’m serious.
Ryan:
Interestingly, at the end of Canticle for Liebowitz, ten thousand years in the future, a new race is born, born of, of, born of a woman, but, but, not to spoil it for anybody, born in a way that seems like it might, might have, might remain human, retain the imago Dei, and retain that analogical relation to the incarnate Son of God, but having been conceived without original sin.
In any case, there, even, even if the human race does not continue, there are ways of imagining a continuity in which Christianity could still, could still continue as a distinct tradition. So, if that's the case, I mean, I guess this is more a question about, about just the dynamics of, of, of tradition and the way that traditions develop and the way that they need to break? Because I, you're, you're, you are one of the only voices thinking about the breaking of traditions as a dynamic and ultimately necessary process.
Philipp:
Sure, sure. Look, I mean, absolutely. I mean, yes. Look, I mean, the Christian tradition. So, look, I hope I'm responding to your question in an intelligent way or in a way that has a recognizable connection with the question that you're attempting to ask there. What I have found, and that that's why I wrote the book, Charred Root of Meaning, is that, despite the fact that in the twentieth century, there was so much—well there is—was, was, the twentieth century is over—so much reflection on the dynamics of tradition. Surprisingly, there was really no emphasis on this element of rupture, both within the unfolding of tradition but even at the beginning of tradition. My book, as you know, begins really—well, it has a chapter on Foucault at the beginning, but then it talks about Moses on Mount Sinai and the way in which already the biblical narrative represents the relationship between, well, the people of Israel and Moses and God as this rupture, as this cataclysmic event, as this eruption.
So, therefore, to, to imagine tradition as this just smooth flowing of doctrine as it enriches itself over the ages, I think that's a bit too facile. It's much more dramatic. And then, there are also dramatic moments of discontinuity, among which I count the Reformation. Now, in its effects, the splitting off of various Protestant denominations, not positive, but I think what had to, what was occurring there—and, of course, it was occurring on the Catholic side as well—was necessary. That is to say, a kind of, a kind of concentration again on the biblical revelation itself. So, the Scholastic tradition had spent centuries and centuries elaborating and explaining and commenting and proving God's existence and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then, both Catholic, and then ultimately people who became—so, Protestants—reformers said, “No, no, no. At the, at the center of the Christian tradition there is, first of all, the Word but, both the Word in scripture but then also the Word in canon.” So that was a necessary kind of, if you will, contraction of the tradition. So, tradition certainly is dynamic. And I would also say just, I think personal opinion sometimes can just be a little bit trivial. I'm not at all opposed to the idea that tradition picks up new elements and is reformulated. The way in which I look at Thomas Aquinas—you know, I think that's pretty standard these days—I mean, Aquinas was a revolutionary, bringing Aristotle into the Christian tradition. And that's, that’s why the famous condemnation of 1277 did also aim at Thomas Aquinas because he was seen as going too far in bringing Aristotle into the Christian tradition. And so, this whole idea of the tradition being renewed, being rethought, being rearticulated, being—to use MacIntyre's language—being translated into a new idiom, a kind of postmodern idiom. That, no, that doesn't bother me at all. But, of course, it has to remain—and, now to return—it has to remain the Christian tradition; it has to remain the Christian faith. And there are certain tenets that are non-negotiable.
Ryan:
You often come back to this image of the charred root. But, I think there's, that's very specific to this desert context, right? Where, where these periodic brush fires come through. Life was already struggling to grow, even in the best of times, in the desert. And yet, after these brush fires come through, there's something is, new possibilities open up, and there's actually a kind of a new spring of life among these desert plants. Does that analogy give you a kind of special hope for what you're experiencing, say, in the Irish situation?
Philipp:
Absolutely. Absolutely. So, first of all, I have the advantage of currently living in Ireland with—now, that sounds perhaps a bit conceited, but knowing that the Catholic church is broader because I've lived in other countries. So, if there is something like a collapse occurring here, that doesn't mean the Catholic church is collapsing. It means that the Catholic church is collapsing in Ireland. So that's the first perspective point. The second point is this: absolutely, yes, there could be a period—and some Irish theologians would argue, and I mean conservative theologians would argue—that the Irish church was really ultimately so mediocre that it had to implode. I mention here a, you know, a well-known conservative Catholic theologian from Ireland called Fr. Vincent Twomey, who was actually a student of Pope Benedict’s in Regensburg, wrote a book called The End of Irish Catholicism?, who would say, “What we’re currently living had to occur.” Because he would not actually defend the church before its current implosion. He would say it was not what it needed to be. The theological education was much too…wasn't, wasn't, wasn't…wasn't critical enough, wasn't querying enough. It was too much, you know, learning by heart of stuff from textbooks, etc. So, which also means that the moral life was not sufficiently rooted in, it was more a matter of convention and following conventions, etc., etc.
So, perhaps what's currently—it's true—what's currently happening may well need to happen. And so, then now, as far as Ireland, I mean, certainly it's not the end. It's not the end of the Catholic church in Ireland. It could continue on two paths. You see, the shortage of vocations is now such here—I don't want to go into detail—but it's such here that you can see that within the next ten years so many older priests are going to simply die that it will become impossible to run the parochial system as it currently exists. It will become impossible. So, then you can imagine a couple of scenarios. One is more of a medieval scenario. This sounds shocking, but you know, the Eucharist isn't received every Sunday, but it's received once every six months. That was standard in Europe in the Middle Ages. And confession, for those who wish to go to confession, isn't, you know, weekly or monthly, but it occurs once a year. But, that's, that’s a possibility. But, of course, you know, will there be lay people who will actually be living the faith? Who will, after the year, want to go to Mass? Then there’s the possibility of simply shrinking. Small, committed communities. Now, those already exist. The small, committed communities exist, and they are not going to lose their faith. They exist. Another possibility is, there will a resurgence of—a resurgence not to former levels—but, you know, there will be a resurgent, a level of vocation such that the church can continue more or less with the current parish system as it's established itself over the last few hundred years. It will be up to, it will be up to the Lord to decide which of these possibilities will, will actually occur, you know.
Ryan:
Pope Francis’s favorite novel was this 1906, I think, novel by Robert Hugh Benson, who was son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who then converted, became a Roman Catholic priest himself. And it's Lord of the World. It's an apocalypse and a dystopia. It imagines the advent of antichrist and the end of the world.
Philipp:
My gosh, I do have to read it!
Ryan:
Well, it's good. It's good. I, I recommend it, but he also wrote what is to me a much more interesting companion novel several years later, and it's a Christian utopia called The Dawn of All. And it is a kind of integralist story of science, politics, and culture all converging in Catholic Christianity. So, you know, the progress in science leads to, leads to empirically affirming many of the, the doctrines and teachings of the Catholic church, likewise for politics, likewise for cultural development. And so, you actually get in this novel a vision of the immanentization of the eschaton. And, I guess what, so, one question would be, if you had to write a Christian utopia for the twenty-first century, what would that look like? Or are you just going to give it a flat refusal because of the danger of utopian thinking.
Philipp:
My gosh, I mean, that's an interesting, that's a very interesting question. No, I wouldn't refuse. I wouldn't refuse. No. I mean, because you know, as we, as we know and, you know, so there is the legitimate ideal of, well, I mean, the legitimate ideal of following Jesus’s message. And then, the way in which the Catholic tradition of the church has expanded on that into things like social teaching, you know, ideas of justice, anthropology, etc., etc. And of course it is legitimate to develop an ideal of, an ideal of human living, human thriving, a Christian state on the basis of that. And so that's what my, yeah, utopia would be based on. What would it look like? I mean, look, you could always write a utopia. I mean, the problem is, I mean, is that original sin and the fallenness of the human being is so strong that the utopia, you know, ends up just being a literary genre and ends up not being realizable. You know, sometimes I think, you know, we, we, we both have scholarly interest, strong interest, in the Middle Ages. And there is much about the Middle Ages that is completely admirable. Just look at a Gothic cathedral, look at the writings of Thomas Aquinas, look at the writings of Bonaventure, and it's easy to say, “Oh, that was a wonderful time.” And then you look at the practices of everyday life in the Middle Ages and the torture in the marketplace, which was considered totally normal, and the fact that, you know, medieval serfdom, that's essentially slavery. You know, it just, it wasn't called slavery, but it was a feudal system; it’s actually slavery. So, it was a horrible time. I was just awful. I mean, who would want to live there? Let alone talking about being a woman? Horrid. So. Yeah. So, I mean, of course you can dream about ideal structures, but perhaps then the idea of structures also have to have—that would be very, very important—come up, you know, imagine utopian structures of, for example, a Christian type of social market economy, as Germans thinkers have been trying to develop. Perhaps one of the most important things would be to bear in mind that there's a high, high likelihood of it going wrong. [laughter] So, you have to put in, you have to put in these safeguards. What do we do if people become totally corrupt, whether they do that or this other thing? Because they are. This is going to happen. So, that would be a very strong element in the utopia, you know, building in these safeguards.
Ryan:
Last question. Last of what could be many, many more. What makes a good academic friendship?
Philipp:
Ah, what makes a good academic friendship? Ah, well. Well, I mean, first of all, and that's just a traditional Aristotelian theory. It means there has to be, the friends do have to have common interests. You can't have a friendship that's not based on, that’s not, you know, that just comes out of thin air. And then academic friendship obviously would be characterized by academic shared interests. I think that, well, a good friendship generally, I would find it difficult to become friends with somebody who didn't have a sense of humor, myself. [laughter] I mean, you have to, I mean, for example, you’re surrounded by a lot of real nonsense, and you know, you could despair. You could look at all kinds of developments and, you know. But much of it is also, I mean, it is tragic but also kind of absurd. You can't take it completely seriously. I mean, many things. I mean, look, Ireland currently as a minister of higher education who never completed his undergraduate degree. So how, so, how am I going to react to that? I could, I could bemoan the end of Western civilization. Or, I could say, “Well, that's pretty absurd.” [laughter] And my, my reaction is to say, “Well, that's pretty absurd.” Laughable, laughable. Can’t take that situation seriously. So, I think, you know, common shared interests. I mean, you know, I think a sense of humor would be—now, I think, I can imagine a Christian friendship, but I could certainly also imagine a non-Christian friendship, simply based on, you know, shared academic interests. Certainly, you know, there has to be interests—and Aristotle talks about that. I mean, there has to be an integrity of character. It's difficult, it would be difficult to be friends with a crook. Not, it would not be difficult to be friends with somebody who is flawed. I’m flawed. But, you know, if you see extreme character defects, well, you know, it would be a little bit difficult to imagine it kind of deep friendship. Yeah.
Ryan:
Well, Philipp, I am grateful for your friendship and grateful for you making the time for this wonderful conversation.
Philipp:
Many, many, many thanks, Ryan. Thank you for your friendship as well, for spending the—well, I wanted to say evening, but of course, on your side it's early afternoon?—for spending the afternoon with me. Thanks for having me. I enjoyed the conversation and I hope that before too long we’ll have the opportunity to meet in person.
Ryan:
I would love that.