Satan and Apocalypse , livre ebook

Satan and Apocalypse
SUNY series in Theology and Continental Thought
Douglas L. Donkel, editor
Satan and Apocalypse
And Other Essays in Political Theology
Thomas J. J. Altizer
Cover print by William Blake / Jerusalem, Plate 39, “Satans Watch-fiends..…” (1804–1820).
Relief etching printed in orange with pen and black ink and watercolor, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2017 State University of New York
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Altizer, Thomas J. J., author.
Title: Satan and Apocalypse : and other essays in political theology / Thomas J. J. Altizer.
Description: Albany : State University of New York, 2017. | Series: SUNY series in theology and Continental thought | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016051107 (print) | LCCN 2017039322 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438466743 (e-book) | ISBN 9781438466736 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Apocalyptic literature–History and criticism. | Philosophical theology. | Postmodernism–Religious aspects–Christianity. | Political theology. | Devil.
Classification: LCC BS646 (ebook) | LCC BS646 .A48 2017 (print) | DDC 220/.046–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016051107
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Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments Chapter 1 Satan and Apocalypse: A Renewal of Milton and Spinoza Chapter 2 The Transfiguration of Christianity Chapter 3 The Absolute Heterodoxy of William Blake Chapter 4 Nietzsche and Apocalypse Chapter 5 America and the Death of God Chapter 6 Joyce and the Christian Epic Tradition Chapter 7 Revolutionary Apocalypse Chapter 8 Political Theology: An Apology
Epilogue
Index
Preface
A s a theologian committed to apocalyptic theology, and being virtually alone as such, my quest has been to integrate modern revolutionary apocalyptic enactments with the apocalypse originally enacted by Jesus and primitive Christianity. This is an apocalypse that has been wholly lost apart from our most revolutionary movements, but renewed in such movements, even if wholly transformed in all given or established Christianity. Revolution, or an absolute revolution, can be understood as a renewal of apocalypse, as deeply enacted by Blake and Hegel, and this is the revolution that is reversed in a uniquely modern counter-revolution, one dominating the world today.
There have been revolutionary movements throughout our history, and their absence now is an ultimate void for us, one filled by truly pathological movements, although we have little understanding of this pathology. One decisive way into this pathology is through the uniquely Christian epic, as most profoundly given us by Dante, Milton, Blake, and Joyce, no fully critical understanding of this epic has yet been given us, but this has been the arena of my most fundamental work.
It is odd that there is so little investigation of epic in our literary scholarship, and virtually none of the Christian epic, it is as though this is a forbidden topic, and one harboring truly subversive forces, forces discovered by both Blake and Nietzsche. Blake and Nietzsche can be identified as our greatest modern prophets, but only if prophecy itself is given a new meaning, and even a genuinely revolutionary meaning. Nietzsche could know the prophetic revolution as the slave revolt in morality, and perhaps it is our deepest slave revolt, one absolutely reversing everything whatsoever.
Yet only such a reversal makes apocalypse possible, an apocalypse that is an absolute reversal, and an absolute reversal of a totally fallen world. Hence an absolute Yes and an absolute No are inseparable in genuine apocalypticism, as can be observed not only in the canonical prophets, but in the New Testament itself.
Our given establishments were not foolish in once forbidding a reading of the Bible, or a reading of the Bible apart from all established interpretation, a reading that led not only to the Reformation, but to an initiation of modern revolution itself. This can most concretely be observed in the English Revolution of the seventeenth century, one that initiated modern revolution, releasing forces that all too decisively transformed the world. Milton is the greatest spokesman of that revolution, giving us in Paradise Lost our greatest revolutionary epic, an epic that is profoundly enlarged by Blake and Joyce.
Satan and Apocalypse attempts to understand this revolution, and while this can only be an all too partial attempt, it is nonetheless a genuine venture. It is sustained not only by a lifetime of work in this arena, but by numerous friends and associates, too numerous to name here. There is a vast literature in this arena, far more than I could possibly master, but there is an enormous potentiality here, which hopefully will continue to be explored.
Acknowledgments
G rateful acknowledgment is made to the original publishers for their permission to reprint the following material: An earlier version of Chapter Three was published as “The Revolutionary Vision of William Blake” in The Journal of Religious Ethics, 37 , 1 (March 2009): 33–38. Chapter 4 appeared in New Nietzsche Studies, 4 , 3/4 (2000/2001): 1–14. Chapter 5 appeared in This Silence Must Now Speak: Letters of Thomas J. J. Altizer, 1995–2015 (London, UK: Palgrave Macmillian, 2016), 233–241.
The author would also like to offer his deep gratitude to Andrew Kenyon, Christopher Ahn, and Diane Ganeles of State University of New York Press for their excellent and professional editorial assistance in bringing this book to its final form. I would also like to thank Jean Middleton for compiling such a comprehensive index.
Chapter 1
Satan and Apocalypse
A Renewal of Milton and Spinoza
P erhaps the most famous judgment of the political theorist, Leo Strauss, published in the Preface to the second edition of his book on Spinoza’s Tractatus , is that Spinoza’s refutation of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch dissolved the deepest foundation of order and authority in the West. Spinoza was the most hated philosopher in history because he was commonly apprehended as our deepest and purest atheist, and even today we know him as the first powerful assailant of what Heidegger knew as ontotheology. Spinoza is the only great philosopher to whom Heidegger never refers, just as Spinoza is only engaged by our most radical thinkers. So, too, and despite his sacred and canonical status, Milton is perhaps our most radical theologian, and the one who most fully conjoins Biblical and systematic theology, and who without any question is our greatest Biblical or sacred poet and visionary.
Although it may appear to be impossible to conjoin or unite Milton and Spinoza, their very pairing evokes a revolutionary power that is overwhelming, and above all calls forth the possibility of a total revolutionary enactment. This is a possibility that has again and again been called forth by apocalyptic traditions, and if at this point they are widely understood to be wholly illusory, this is nonetheless an enlivening illusion, and one embodied in much of our greatest art. Spinoza is seemingly the most anti-imaginative of all thinkers, but his radical thinking ungrounds everything that is not absolutely necessary, and thus opens the way for an imaginative totality, or the very totality realized in our greatest art.
“Totality” is an alien and oppressive word to a great many, as witness the very word “totalitarian,” but Spinoza can be understood as the most ultimate opponent of such totality, and as that philosopher whose thinking is purest in this perspective. Milton, on the other hand, would appear to be that poet who is most polluted by totality, or who most embodies an alien totality, as so decisively manifest in a uniquely Miltonic Satan. Yet the conquering of that Satan is an ultimate victory otherwise impossible, just as the horror of Milton’s Hell is inseparable from the ecstasy of his Heaven, thus Milton along with Blake is a genuinely dialectical visionary. This is very rare, indeed, and is apparently limited to our very greatest art. Here, Milton can be conjoined with Shakespeare, and if that is not possible for Blake, it is the Miltonic Blake who is our greatest visionary of Satan.
Perhaps Blake is that artist who is most distant from Spinoza, which itself is illuminating of Spinoza, who can be known as our most iconoclastic thinker, and precisely thereby a Biblical thinker. If Milton appears to be the very opposite of an iconoclast, he is nonetheless the most Biblical of poets, and so Biblical indeed as to be beyond our Biblical theologians. It is fascinating that Milton has been accepted as such by so many devout Christians, thus giving Milton a sacred status shared by no other poet or visionary, and if this has occurred far more in America than in England, this is evidence of a Christian America that is otherwise invisible.
Nothing is more elusive or more baffling or more mysterious than the death of God, just as nothing so challenges biblical hermeneutics as does the Crucifixion, here ensues that absolute paradox that so fascinated Kierkegaard, and that he could know as the deepest center of Christianity. Paul is the primal theologian of the Crucifixion, and the original Paul is the apocalyptic Paul, who could celebrate