Div 3351/Religion 3351			William Franke
Fall 2012                                        		Office:  203 Furman
T 4:10-6:00					Hours:  R 4-6, and by appt.	 
G - 27                                         		

           Postmodern Religious Thought in the Wake of the Death of God
This course serves as a general introduction to recent theory and philosophy of religion.  
If modernism is understood to be the age of the subject, the age that begins when self-consciousness says, “I think, therefore I am” (Descartes, 1638), making itself the foundation of its very existence, postmodernity begins when this postulate of the autonomous, self-grounding subject enters into crisis and collapses.  Without the individual subject as secure foundation, the presumably stable values of modern tradition since the Renaissance are undermined in all domains from market economies based on the free choices of independent individuals to aesthetic styles of subjective self-expression familiar, for example, in Romantic and Expressionist art.  The new sense of a lack of foundations, of no tangible or knowable reality underlying and grounding the flux of appearances in experience, opens thought and praxis in the diverse directions that have come to be characterized as “postmodern.”  Simulacra, inauthenticity, lack of origins or originals, hence proliferating pluralities which nevertheless evince no real distinctions from one another in a consumer society of mass production are some of the typical manifestations of this postmodern milieu.  
We will undertake to survey important theoretical responses to this predicament particularly from philosophers of religion, primarily those in the continental tradition writing currently.  We will also inquire into the limits of postmodern thinking and to alternatives to it that may be appearing on the scene today.  We will explore in what senses postmodernism can be comprehended as the era of the Death of God, but also follow its consequences to the contemporary “return of religion.”  A particular theme will serve us as guiding thread, that of transcendence.  In what ways does transcendence become a dead letter or perhaps rather the new spirit of the postmodern age?  

TEXTS
Jean-Luc Nancy, Dis-Enclosure. The Deconstruction of Christianity, vol. 1 	             (Fordham UP, 2008)  ISBN 9780823228362  
Gianni Vattimo, The Ends of Modernity: Nihilism and Hermeneutics in Postmodern Culture or Belief (Johns Hopkins UP, 1988) ISBN 0-8018-4317-0
Vattimo and Caputo, ed. Robbins, After the Death of God (Columbia UP, 2007)                    ISBN 13-978-0-231-14124-6
Vattimo and Rorty, The Future of Religion, ed. Santiago Zabala (Columbia UP, 2005) ISBN 0-231-12494-0   [Il future della religion: solidarietà, carità, ironia Garzanti, 2004]
Milbank and Zizek, ed. Creston Davis, Paul’s New Moment: Continental Philosophy and the Future of Christian Theology (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, 2010)                   ISBN 978-1-58743-227-9 (pbk) 
Merold Westphal, Transcendence and Self-Transcendence: On God and the Soul                                                          (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004)	ISBN 0-253-34413-1
Regina Schwartz, ed., Transcendence: Philosophy, Literature, and Theology Approach the Beyond (Routledge, 2004)   ISBN: 0-415-96704-X (pbk)
John Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon, eds., Transcendence and Beyond: A Postmodern Inquiry (Indiana UP, 2007) ISBN 978-0-253-21903-9
Glenn W. Olsen, The Turn to Transcendence: The Role of Religion in the Twenty-First Century (Catholic Press of America, 2010) ISBN 978-0-8132-1740-6 
Graham Ward, ed., The Postmodern God (Blackwell)  ISBN 0-631-20141-6 (pbk)

The books are all available on reserve in the divinity library as well as at the bookstore.

SCHEDULE OF READINGS
8/28  	The Postmodern Theory Revolution: From Modernism to Postmodernism
Nietzsche, “The Madman” from Gay Science + 
Nietzsche, “The Transcendent World,” Twilight of the Idols
	
9/ 4  	Glenn W. Olsen, The Turn to Transcendence: The Role of Religion in the Twenty-First Century, pp. ix-xi, 1-39
	Jürgen Moltmann, “Theology in the Project of Modernity” in God for a Secular Society, pp. 5-23
9/11 	Vattimo, The End of Modernity: Nihilism and Hermeneutics in Postmodern Culture or 
          	 Belief (translator’s introduction will be helpful)

9/18 	 Vattimo and Caputo, After the Death of God
	Vattimo and Rorty, The Future of Religion, pp. 29-41 (Rorty) and 43-54 (Vattimo)

9/25	Nancy, Deconstruction of Christianity, pp. 1-88  
10/2	Nancy, Deconstruction of Christianity, pp. 89-174
10/9	 Lacan, Derrida, Certeau, Kristeva in Ward, The Postmodern God
10/16   Transcendence: Philosophy, Literature, and Theology Approach the Beyond                                                                                                                                                                            (Taylor, Kosky, Levinas, Marion, Ward, Milbank, Zizek)
10/23 	Paul’s New Moment: Continental Philosophy and the Future of Christian Theology                                 Introduction + Parts I & II (Milbank, Zizek, Pickstock)
	Negri and Hart, Empire, Part 1, pp. 1-66                                                                                                      + Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Part I)
10/29 	Paul’s New Moment: Continental Philosophy and the Future of Christian Theology                                 Parts III (Zizek, Milbank) 
11/6 	Westphal, Transcendence and Self-Transcendence: On God and the Soul 
11/13	Transcendence and Beyond (Marion, Kearney, Schrag, Caputo)
11/20    	THANKSGIVING BREAK
11/27	Transcendence and Beyond (Keller, McFague, Fiorenza)
12/4   		FINAL PAPERS DUE

Course Requirements and Evaluation
Each participant for credit is required to turn in a research paper (15-20 pages) and to give an oral presentation in class (about 15 minutes) on a topic of their choosing.  The paper and presentation may be on the same or on different topics.  Active participation in discussions, helping to advance dialogue, can serve the instructor in evaluating performance in the course.  The final assessment is based, in any case, primarily on the research project.

Supplemental Reading
Carl Olson, Zen and the Art of Postmodern Philosophy: Two Paths of Liberation from the Representational Mode of Thinking (SUNY, 2000)  ISBN 0-7914-4654-9 (pbk)
Giorgio Agamben, The Sacrament of Language: An Archeology of the Oath                    (Stanford UP, 2011)        ISBN 978-0-8047-6898-6 (pbk) 	
Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death (University of Chicago Press, 1995)  ISBN 0226143066
Graham Ward, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Postmodern Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001).