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Partial Transcendence, Religious Pluralism, and the Question of Love*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2010
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Near the center of Anselm Kiefer's watercolor, Everyone Stands Under His Own Dome of Heaven, stands an inverted half-globe in the middle of a field. We know that it is winter, for patches of snow partially obscure the bare ground, which is itself marked by receding, interrupted lines of exposed roots and clumps of dirt where crops once grew and could, one imagines, grow again. Within the clear blue dome a small human figure in a dark green military uniform raises his right arm. His apparent salute is directed at no one in particular, since he is utterly isolated.
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Footnotes
*
My thanks to Jonathan Bruno, Sutopa Dasgupta, Jon Levenson, Sally Livingston, Kevin Madigan, David Owen, Margot Stevenson, and Luke Taylor for their comments on this article.
References
1 1970. Watercolor, gouache, and graphite pencil on joined paper, 15-3/4, W. 18-7/8 inches (40 × 47.9 cm.). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Denise and Andrew Saul Fund, 1995 (1995.14.4). Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Gagosian Gallery on behalf of Anselm Kiefer.
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6 Interview, July 1997. As quoted in Nan Rosenthal, Anselm Kiefer: Works on Paper, 20. In taking note of Kiefer's rejection of the common interpretation of the painting as a comment on totalitarianism, Daniel Arasse observes that “This is confirmation, if any were needed, of the way that past works are retrospectively reworked” in Kiefer's oeuvre. Anselm Kiefer, 316 n. 24.
7 On the significance of the “dome of heaven” in different contexts, see the seminal article by Karl Lehmann, “The Dome of Heaven,” Art Bulletin 28 (1945) 1–27; see also Hautecœur, Louis, Mystique et Architecture: Symbolisme du Cercle et de la Coupole (Paris: Picard, 1954)Google Scholar; Grabar, Oleg, Islamic Art and Beyond (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Variorum, 2006) 87–102Google Scholar, and 225–38; and Stephenson, David, Visions of Heaven: The Dome in European Architecture (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005)Google Scholar.
8 Many different formulations of the notions of vertical and horizontal transcendence exist, none of which have exactly the same connotations as those I employ here. See, for example, Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Signes (Paris: Gallimard, 1960) 88Google Scholar; Irigaray, Luce, “Fulfilling Our Humanity,” in Luce Irigaray: Key Writings (New York: Continuum, 2004) 189–90Google Scholar; and Paul, Pope John II, The Acting Person (trans. Potocki, Andrzej; Boston: Reidel, 1979) 19–38.Google Scholar
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45 Nan Rosenthal, Anselm Kiefer: Works on Paper, 20.
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47 Ibid.
48 Ibid.
49 Eliade, Mircea, The Sacred and the Profane (trans. Trask, Willard R.; New York: Harcourt Brace, 1987) 178Google Scholar. On the concept of “shattering the roof,” see also Eliade, Mircea, “Briser le toit de la maison: Symbolisme Architectonique et Physiologie Subtile,” in Studies in Mysticism and Religion: Presented to Gershom G. Scholem (ed. Urbach, E. E., Werblowsky, R. J. Zwi, and Wirszubski, Chaim; Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1967) 131–39Google Scholar. See also, in a different context, Coomaraswamy, Ananda K., “Pali Kaṇṇikā: Circular Roof-Plate,” JAOS 50 (1930) 239Google Scholar.
50 The refusal of the possession of definitive truth has political implications as well; in many different contexts, the philosopher has been envisioned as a cosmopolitan traveler, a participant in “a tradition of inquiry and knowledge which transcends religious and cultural boundaries … and also transcends ‘ecumenism,’ for this implies prior notice rather than disregard of religious boundaries.” Esmail, Aziz A. and Nanji, Azim A., “Philosophy in the Islamic Context,” in A Companion to Philosophy of Religion (ed. Taliaferro, Charles, Draper, Paul, and Quinn, Philip L.; 2d ed.; Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) 70Google Scholar.
51 An especially dramatic version of the direct relationship between study and peace is expressed in the frequently repeated thought that there shall be “No peace among the nations without peace among the religions. No peace among the religions without dialogue among the religions. No dialogue among the religions without investigation of the foundation of the religions.” Hans Küng, Judaism (trans. John Bowden; London: SCM Press, 1992) xxii. Theo Sundermeier suggests that mutual learning is one of the norms that should govern a community made up of religious others; see “Konvivens als Grundstrukstur Ökumenischer Existenz Heute,” in Ökumenische Existenz Heute (ed. Wolfgang Huber, Dietrich Ritschl, and Theo Sundermeier; Ökumenische Existenz Heute 1; Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1986) 66. Wilfred Cantwell Smith's proposal for the transformation of the study of other religious traditions is especially important in this context; see his “Comparative Religion—Whither and Why?” in The History of Religions: Essays in Methodology (ed. Mircea Eliade and Joseph M. Kitagawa; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959) 31–58.
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60 Kogan, Opening the Covenant, 75. In this account, pluralism requires transcendence of others, but to what extent it stands in need of transcendence itself—as well as by what means and towards what end—is not apparent, since pluralist principles are already in accord with the “essence of applied religion.”
61 It makes a difference, for instance, whether one approaches questions out of a love of wisdom or merely a desire to “do justice” to a given topic or problem.
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68 Smith, “Thoughts on Transcendence,” 44.
69 Ibid., 48.
70 On the role of friendship in acquiring knowledge of other religious traditions, see Smith, “Comparative Religion—Whither and Why?,” esp. 34–39, including n. 18. On the potential of study to yield insight into the faith of one's friends and neighbors, see Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion, 188–92. In contemplating the possibility that a great scholarly work on multireligious consciousness might be written in the future, Smith concludes that “[i]f the great religions are true, or even if any of them is, then such a work is possible; and if it is written, it will be essentially true. For have we not been told that all men are brothers…. And that the two matters of supreme importance are the relations of persons within that total community, and the relations between men and God?” “Comparative Religion—Whither and Why?,” 58.
71 Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion, 195. Smith views the term “theology” as similarly problematic, because its implied acknowledgement of a deity as the locus of concern renders it unfit for the comparative study of religion. He asks if “transcendentology” might not be a better option; Towards a World Theology, 183. On this point, see Hick, John, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (2d ed.; New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004) 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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73 Diana L. Eck, Guide for Teachers, 17. On this point, see also Eck, Diana L., “Dialogue and Method: Reconstructing the Study of Religion,” in A Magic Still Dwells: Comparative Religion in the Postmodern Age (ed. Patton, Kimberley C. and Ray, Benjamin C.; Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2000) 131–49Google Scholar. See as well Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion, 199. On the concept of paths and ways through the wilderness in Buddhism, see Batchelor, Stephen, “The Other Enlightenment Project,” in Faith and Praxis in a Post-Modern Age (ed. King, Ursula; New York: Cassell, 1998) 113–27Google Scholar. For a comparative discussion of Batchelor's work on paths and ways with reference to the tradition of Augustinian Christianity, see Barnes, Michael, “Way and Wilderness: An Augustinian Dialogue with Buddhism,” in Augustine and World Religions (ed. Brian Brown, John Doody, and Kim Paffenroth; Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2008) 115–40Google Scholar. Concerning his comparison of religious traditions to rivers, theologian Raimundo Panikkar observes that “the rivers of earth do not actually meet each other not even in the oceans … they meet in the skies—that is, in heaven…. ‘They’ meet in the form of clouds, once they have suffered a transformation into vapor.” Panikkar, Raimundo, “The Jordan, the Tiber and the Ganges: Three Kairological Moments of Christic Self-Awareness,” in The Myth of Christian Uniqueness (ed. Hick, John and Knitter, Paul; Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1987) 92Google Scholar.
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77 Ibid., 36.
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79 Hick suggests that the norms of other-regarding behavior found in a number of different religious traditions are fully consonant with what he regards as “the fundamental moral claim,” which is “to treat others as having the same value as myself” (149). He adds that “[t]his is in effect a transcription of the Golden Rule found in the Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, Taoist, Zoroastrian, Jain, and Christian scriptures and in the Jewish Talmud and the Muslim Hadith … and is likewise a translation of Kant's concepts of a rational person as an end and of right action which our rationality, acknowledging a universal impartiality transcending individual desires and aversions, can see to be required” (149).
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82 Ibid., 300.
83 Ibid., 300–1. This lends considerable weight to consensus (in this case, as regarding the “fruits of the spirit” that merit recognition and respect).
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90 Ibid.
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98 Rambachan, “A Hindu Perspective on Moving from Religious Diversity to Religious Pluralism,” 178.
99 Heck, Paul L., Common Ground: Islam, Christianity, and Religious Pluralism (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2009) 1.Google Scholar
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101 Eck, Diana L., “Prospects for Pluralism: Voice and Vision in the Study of Religion,” JAAR 75 (2007) 745Google Scholar.
102 Eck, Dialogue and Method, 139.
103 Ibid., 140.
104 On objectivity in the natural sciences, see Shapin, Steven, The Scientific Revolution (2d ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996) 162–65Google Scholar, and Daston, Lorraine and Galison, Peter, Objectivity (New York: Zone Books, 2007).Google Scholar On knowledge and virtue, see Shapin, Steven, The Scientific Life: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Ch. 4 of Smith, Towards a World Theology, is also relevant here.
105 Pieper, Josef, “Justice,” in The Four Cardinal Virtues (trans. Coogan, Daniel F.; Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1965) 54Google Scholar, 55.
106 As Jonathan Bruno points out, “this would seem to get us back to a narrowly legal ‘toleration.’ ” Personal correspondence, May 26, 2010. On objectivity as an attempt at transcendence, see Rorty, Richard, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (vol. 1 of Philosophical Papers; Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1991)Google Scholar esp. 1–22.
107 David Griffin, Ray, “Religious Pluralism: Generic, Identist, and Deep,” in Deep Religious Pluralism (ed. Griffin, David Ray; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2005) 10.Google Scholar
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109 Griffin, David Ray and Smith, Huston, Primordial Truth and Postmodern Theology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989) 41.Google Scholar
110 Smith, Huston, The World's Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions (2d ed.; New York: HarperCollins, 1991) 307.Google Scholar
111 Ibid., 308.
112 Ibid., 308. Yet see Smith's additional remark that while it is possible to resent particularism, “one must ask whether in doing so we would be resenting the kind of world we have. For like it or not, this is a world of particulars, and human minds are tuned thereto” (309) [italics in original].