The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic? (Short Circuits) [Hardcover]

Slavoj Zizek (Author), John Milbank (Author), Creston Davis (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 20, 2009 | Series: Short Circuits

A militant Marxist atheist and a "Radical Orthodox" Christian theologian square off on everything from the meaning of theology and Christ to the war machine of corporate mafia.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In this dazzling dialogue, Zizek and Milbank change words and cross swords, until the point where both recognize that Christ and Hegel, in their monstrosity, look very much alike. A phenomenal achievement!"--Catherine Malabou, Maître de Conferences, Philosophy Department, Université Paris-X Nanterre

About the Author

"What matters is not so much that Žižek is endorsing a demythologized, disenchanted Christianity without transcendence, as that he is offering in the end (despite what he sometimes claims) a heterodox version of Christian belief."--John Milbank"To put it even more bluntly, my claim is that it is Milbank who is effectively guilty of heterodoxy, ultimately of a regression to paganism: in my atheism, I am more Christian than Milbank."--Slavoj ŽižekIn this corner, philosopher Slavoj Žižek, a militant atheist who represents the critical-materialist stance against religion's illusions; in the other corner, "Radical Orthodox" theologian John Milbank, an influential and provocative thinker who argues that theology is the only foundation upon which knowledge, politics, and ethics can stand. In The Monstrosity of Christ, Žižek and Milbank go head to head for three rounds, employing an impressive arsenal of moves to advance their positions and press their respective advantages. By the closing bell, they have not only proven themselves worthy adversaries, they have shown that faith and reason are not simply and intractably opposed. Žižek has long been interested in the emancipatory potential offered by Christian theology. And Milbank, seeing global capitalism as the new century's greatest ethical challenge, has pushed his own ontology in more political and materialist directions. Their debate in The Monstrosity of Christ concerns the future of religion, secularity, and political hope in light of a monsterful event--God becoming human. For the first time since Žižek's turn toward theology, we have a true debate between an atheist and a theologian about the very meaning of theology, Christ, the Church, the Holy Ghost, Universality, and the foundations of logic. The result goes far beyond the popularized atheist/theist point/counterpoint of recent books by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and others. Žižek begins, and Milbank answers, countering dialectics with "paradox." The debate centers on the nature of and relation between paradox and parallax, between analogy and dialectics, between transcendent glory and liberation. Slavoj Žižek is a philosopher and cultural critic. He has published over thirty books, including Looking Awry, The Puppet and the Dwarf, and The Parallax View (these three published by the MIT Press). John Milbank is an influential Christian theologian and the author of Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason and other books. Creston Davis, who conceived of this encounter, studied under both Žižek and Milbank.

John Milbank is an influential Christian theologian and the author of Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason and other books.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (March 20, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262012715
• ISBN-13: 978-0262012713
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #481,726 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

"The most dangerous philosopher in the West," (says Adam Kirsch of The New Republic) Slavoj Zizek is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His books include "First as Tragedy, Then as Farce;" "Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle;" "In Defense of Lost Causes;" "Living in the End Times;" and many more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hegel, Jesus, Paradox and Dialectic, July 23, 2009

By 

Jeremy Garber "urbanmenno" (Denver, CO United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic? (Short Circuits) (Hardcover)

Interesting conversation between a committed Marxist atheist and a committed orthodox theologian about what parts of Hegel and Christianity they hold in common - and which they do not. Zizek starts with an essay where he outlines how Hegel has the most to contribute to contemporary theology - namely, the frank admission that God is dead and is now incarnated in the community of radical believers that work against modernity and global capitalism. Milbank agrees, but argues that a paradoxical view of reality - one that recognizes that opposites exist precisely at the same time without resolution - is both more faithful to how reality works and to the vision of Christianity itself, as opposed to Hegelian dialectics. Zizek returns and clearly outlines his commitment to materialism and to the Protestant principle of negation which Milbank eschews. Both thinkers' commitments are clearly and unapologetically evident, and yet their respect for the other person's thought is evident. A fascinating - if philosophically dense - resource for anyone concerned about the runaway abuse of ultra-modern capitalism and the reality of religious resurgence in 21st century society.

39 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Monstrosity of Christ, May 12, 2009

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cytokine (Sewanee, TN USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic? (Short Circuits) (Hardcover)

In reviewing any book, the first question that should be answered is, "Is this book worth reading?" My answer is, "It depends." If one is perfectly comfortable in one's theology, believes Christianity is on the right track and that all is well with the world other than a few blemishes and rough spots here and there, and one is intellectually lazy besides, then I recommend skipping the hard work that this book demands.

Maybe a book with the catchy title, The Monstrosity of Christ, already warns the reader that this will not be a simple apologetic or `isn't Christianity nice' tome. `Monstrosity' comes from Hegel's use of the word to mean something so outlandish, so beyond the normative, consensual reality of everyday as to constitute a break, a schism, so to speak, that invites a renewed apperception of `The Real' - the fabric of Reality (all there is) - as opposed to that portion of Reality that is apprehended through empirically derived data (e.g. scientific experiment that is performed on just a portion of all there is). Thus, for both Zizek, an avowed `Christian' atheist and for Milbank, an avowed `Orthodox' Christian, theology must start with the monstrosity of Christ. This is the foundation of Christianity.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Via Negativa (Zizek) vs. Via Positiva (Milbank), March 12, 2010

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Mounard le Fougueux (Rochester, New York USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic? (Short Circuits) (Hardcover)

Great book - Z and M lay out their positions so clearly a confessor couldn't ask for more. I shall not recap the debate but throw in some of my own thoughts, for what they're worth, in the hope that they help clarify for those who has already read the book. If you haven't read the book - do so - it is well worth the small effort.

1. Dialectic involves resolving analytic contradictions. Thesis X - and antithesis (not X) form a classic analytic contradiction that resolve themselves through the process of the dialectic to a larger perspective of the world. This activity is strictly within the Kantian Idealist framework - the movement involved is the processes of the empty cogito - and hence firmly Cartesian.

Paradox is NOT an analytic contradiction but empirical facts or events that the cogito trips over and must take account of. As such it is NOT purely analytic or Kantian Idealist. This is my understanding as to why Milbank considers Zizek's Hegelianism to be "too conservative and Cartesian".

2. The Zizekian "abyss" is the end point of the "Via Negativa" process of Theology, which predates modernism, late-stage-modernism or post-modernism (whatever you want to call it) by centuries but yet is the basic, though unrecognized, program of modernism. The Milbankian conception, for me is closely related to the "Via Positiva".

In the Via Negativa, the main activity to show what god is NOT; to separate the sacred from the profane, to prove how things and customs and traditions and people are NOT divine or sacred but in fact their opposite. It casts god out of the world, out of our souls and ultimately the universe itself. God becomes distinct from all things, beings and attributes and becomes "just a word". So the correct attitude of one engaged in Via Negativa when confronted with a painting or music or any art is the iconoclastic one - to deny the religious aspect of such things and in fact to place them in opposition to the sacred or the transcendent. Thus all things become "merely human" and trapped in the concreteness of the pragmatic, finite world - and as such - simply objects of economics for exchange.

This impenetrable wall between the secular and the sacred set up and sustained by the Via Negativa marks the world of both the atheist and the fundamentalist. For the atheist, the only thing in the sacred domain is the empty-set - a void - an inexpressible which pragmatically, therefore, does not exist. Similarly for the fundamentalist - since the sacred is inaccessible, the only way the sacred exists is in a concretized and static human artifact form - as words on paper. All three monotheisms have their "sola scriptura" - which rather than identifying god beyond words - in fact codifies and constructs god within the human Lacanian Symbolic realm. That's why atheists and fundamentalists are sometimes both referred to as "a-gnostics".

In Via Positiva, there is no separation between the secular and sacred. Here the correct attitude of being human is not commerce but worship. In recognition of our finitude, all things are viewed not as obstacles but as pointers or invitations to the transcendent. Art becomes sacramental rather than an ironic stance. The world and everything in it contains a unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let us wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring us back to the transcendent with a twitch upon the thread.

3. For me, its also a simple matter of aesthetics. Zizek advocates that since god is not, but an abyss, an unfathomable void - that only the person qua abyss is truly in the image and likeness of god.

Now I'm not opposed to "the abyss" or The Real, or whatnot. In fact I'll pay good money on tickets to see a really good abyss. I'm even dutifully grateful for the freedom that the pure contingency of the abyss gives us.

Its just that Zizek's "the Abyss" can only be viewed as the final point of collapse of an exhausted late-stage modernism, having reached its final dialectical and deconstructive omega point. It can go no further - RIP.

Conversely, I delight in the green shoots and renewed life of the return of philosophy to theology, Augustinian in particular - to a univocal understanding of the lived-in world. In their rejection of the "supernatural", late-stage modernism has denied us the world as it is and only left us with the "subnatural" - a few mathematical equations here and there - and the abyss.