This article explores the use of the concept of “faith” in three non-Christian philosophers. The study begins with Nietzsche, who, while deeply critical of Christian belief throughout his work, offers a positive reformulation of the term in a few key texts. From here, the discussion proceeds to two authors who are deeply influenced by Nietzsche, François Laruelle, and Nishitani Keiji. Laruelle’s recent turn to non-theology sees him engaging directly with Christian theological material and presenting a distinction between a positive form (...) of “faith” in contrast from standard religious “belief,” a distinction I suggest bears close resemblance to Nietzsche’s approach, especially in relation to the Apostle Paul. Finally, Nishitani offers his own account of faith, one inspired primarily by the Buddhist notion of faith, but also referencing Christian theology and specifically the practice of Paul, while also connecting with Nietzsche. The connecting theme for all three thinkers is rooted in Zarathustra’s encouragement to be “faithful to the earth,” a non-transcendent, immanent formulation of faith. Faith, in Nishitani and Laruelle especially, is non-doctrinal, non-dogmatic, and non-intellectual; it is, instead, practical, an immanent existence, a way of life resulting in a different form of connection with the world around us. (shrink)

There is an aporia to finitude: if I am limited as a finite being, I cannot know what the limits of my finitude are, because if I knew what those limits are, then I would have transcended them. I refer to this aporia as the "hard problem of finitude," interpreted through Graham Priest's work on inclosure paradoxes. Here I offer an interpretation of François Laruelle's theory of the Philosophical Decision in terms of his attempt to resolve this aporia through his (...) suspension of standard philosophy's form of ontological dualism. Next, I apply non-standard philosophy to the problem of religious pluralism, presenting a novel theory of "standard religion" and the "Hierophanic Decision" through a non-standard reading of Mircea Eliade's philosophy of religion, and end by pointing towards what a consistently performative and finite form of religious pluralism might look like from within the "democracy-of-thought," here rendered as the "parliament of religions.". (shrink)

The present article is a contribution to a particularly urgent issue that is unfolding in Buddhist circles in North America andEurope. Although this issue is framed in various ways, it revolves around a single question; namely, what form will contemporary reconfigurations of Buddhism take in the twenty-first century West? The most influential groups in this discussion to date are those that style themselves secular-, progressive-, atheist-, agnostic-, liberal-, and post-traditional Buddhist. As these groups gain adherents in the West, traditional organizations, (...) such as the various Zens, Tibetans, Vipassanas, etc., are stating their claim to “Buddhism” with increasingly vehement proprietorship. The present article, however, is not yet another attempt to reformulate or reform (in any sense of the term) “Buddhism.” Neither is it concerned with ameliorating traditional Buddhism's relationship with contemporary western secular values. In performing its first task, however, my emerging theory, called “speculative non-buddhism,” can contribute to the current debate in a decisive way by showing that all forms of Buddhism are identical. What makes them so is that they are all governed by what I call “buddhistic decision:” the syntactical structure that constitutes all things, discourse, and people, “Buddhist.” Decision thus constitutes both the ideological nature, and the ideological constant, of “Buddhism.”. (shrink)

This paper addresses the capacity of François Laruelle's non-philosophy to evade the difficulties produced by the mediation of religion. Specifically, it looks at how religion is mediated through philosophy under the heading of ?philosophy of religion.; While such a heading indicates a gesture seeking to unify what is divided ; namely philosophy and religion ; it actually depends upon and thus maintains this division. The philosophical mediation of religion amounts to the division produced by the thought of religion. Conjoining this (...) claim to a brief genealogy of the concept of religion, I argue that the modern, secular gesture of philosophizing about religion continues a much longer tradition of religion's divisive mediation. What Laruelle's non-philosophy offers, I contend, is a means of escape from the conceptual architecture on which the mediation of religion depends. This is the case specifically insofar as he enables us to conceive a One that would be outside any divisive or mediatic relation to the many. Furthermore, the fact the Laruelle's thought makes use of (what gets named as) religious material enacts a refusal of the division between religion and philosophy. In this regard, however, I argue that his use of religious material still remains imbricated in the division between Christianity and Judaism. Hence, even as Laruelle escapes the conceptual divisions that enable the mediation of religion, his peculiar use of religious material leads him to redeploy divisions central to religion's genealogy. (shrink)

This essay examines animality through an analysis of Les Chants de Maldoror, an obscure but influential nineteenth-century text by the Comte de Lautréamont. Drawing upon the work of Gaston Bachelard as well as the apophatic tradition in Christian mysticism, Les Chants de Maldoror can be read as a text that complicates the boundary between animality and spirituality, producing an “apophatic animality” that ultimately impacts the poetics of the text itself.

Article is devoted to ethical aspect of a performativity which usually remains beyond the scope of esthetic, political, linguistic aspects. In modern performance studies are usually combined the private and exact entered by Ostin definition of a performativity as the word making action, and widespread Marxist idea of the critical, changing the world theory potential. In article the main rate becomes on the heterodox reading of a performativity following criticism of violence of metaphysics of Levinas. If the theory is output (...) from ethics, then the performativityt is thought as radical passivity of the theory. In that case, crucial importance for conceptual model of the subject is gained by not epistemological, but ethical measurement, namely ethics of a categorical imperative. The categorical imperative is arranged as a performatory contradiction between desire and a will, it fixes a situation of a gap, an akrasia, otherwise, of the decision. Two modern interpretations of value of a concept of the subject of the decision are given in article. One of them - positive, belongs Badiou, it is the subject of fidelity to an event. It will be coordinated with the subject of practical mind of Kant as it is supported by the pure and formal movement of will. However this model, according to Meillassoux, can be considered transitional as the exclusivity of the decision undermines a correlation circle. The criticism of the Philosophical Decision as distributions of transcendental and empirical functions, offered by Laruelle appears really fresh course. Non-philosophy thinks of itself as the only performatory theory because it registers this initial decision and refuses to go on a speculative circular way of philosophizing. The main problem connected with non - philosophy, consists that its performativity remains rather declarative, conditions of a solution of the problem of an akrasia, a gap between desirable and possible are not clear. (shrink)