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Entering into Otherness: The Postmodern Critique of the Subject and Karl Rahner's Theological Anthropology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Kevin Hogan
Kevin Hogan*
Affiliation:
The Catholic University of America
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Abstract

The critique of the subject and subjectivity in postmodern theory serves also as as critique of the modern turn to the subject in theology. After reviewing that critique in contemporary literary and rhetorical theory, this article examines the concept of the subject in Karl Rahner's theological anthropology. This article argues that both postmodern theory and Rahner's anthropology suggest alternatives to the autonomous subject, and that Rahner's view can provide a description of an authentic, semi-permeable, and historically mediated subject.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , Fall 1998 , pp. 181 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1998

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References

1 Lonergan, Bernard, “The Subject” in Ryan, William F. J. and Tyrrell, Bernard, eds., A Second Collection (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975), 69–70.Google Scholar

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3 Différence, as uniquely spelled, is used by Derrida to assert simultaneously that the meaning of language is unavoidably characterized by difference and deferral. With such polysemy and instability in meaning, “différance is thus no longer a concept, but rather the possibility of a conceptuality, of a conceptual process and system in general” (Derrida, Jacques, “Différance” in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Bass, Alan [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982], 11).Google Scholar

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5 This article, therefore, represents a kind of critical correlation of the kind described by David Tracy as “the dramatic confrontation, the mutual illuminations and corrections, the possible basic reconciliation between the principal values, cognitive claims, and existential faiths of both a reinterpreted postmodern consciousness and a reinterpreted Christianity” (Tracy, David, Blessed Rage for Order: The New Pluralism in Theology [Minneapolis: Winston-Seabury, 1975], 32Google Scholar).

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7 Another perspective is that of theologian Mark Taylor who sees in Augustine, a significant progenitor in Erring: A Postmodern A/theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 35.Google Scholar

8 Cahoone, , Dilemma of Modernity, 42.Google Scholar

9 Frank, Manfred, “Subjectivity and Individuality: Survey of a Problem” in Klemm, and Zöller, , eds., Figuring the Self, 11.Google Scholar In a later section of this article I will address Frank's view of the problematic of locating subjectivity primarily in the theory of reflection and the need to shift that location in a recovery of subjectivity.

10 Zöller, Gunter, “An Eye for an I” in Klemm, and Zöller, , eds., Figuring the Self, 85.Google Scholar

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14 I will use the terms postmodern and postmodernity with the realization that they lack specificity, a lack viewed as appropriate by Ian Angus and Lenore Langsdorf. “That the term postmodern is itself lacking in positive content is instructional, and even more so when that lack is criticized. It designates discourse that comes after modernity, but it recognizes that it cannot name itself without falling into modernity's presumption of an external vantage point that delimits and designates—that is, that limits even as it gives a sign by which discourse will be known” (Angus, Ian and Langsdorf, Lenore, “Unsettled Borders: Envisioning Critique at the Postmodern Site” in Angus, Ian and Langsdorf, Lenore, eds., The Critical Turn: Rhetoric and Philosophy in Postmodern Discourse [Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993], 14Google Scholar).

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17 Ibid., 135.

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21 McNay, Lois, Foucault: A Critical Introduction (New York: Continuum, 1994), 52.Google Scholar

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23 Derrida, Jacques, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” in Newton, K. M., ed., Twentieth-Century Literary Theory: A Reader (New York: St. Martin's, 1988), 225.Google Scholar

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26 See, e.g., Carr, Anne E., “Starting with the Human” in O'Donovan, Leo, ed., A World of Grace: An Introduction to the Themes and Foundations of Karl Rahner's Theology (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 17–30.Google Scholar

27 Rahner scholar Thomas Sheehan has described self-presence as “the presupposition of Western philosophy” (Sheehan, Thomas, Karl Rahner: The Philosophical Foundations [Athens: Ohio University Press, 1987], 164).Google Scholar

28 Quotations from the Summa are from Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London: Benziger, 1947).Google Scholar Text available online, accessed February 1, 1998 from http://knight.org/advent/summa/108407.htm.

29 These issues are treated in Aristotle's On the Soul, especially chap. 3 in which the outer senses, inner senses, and active and passive intellect are discussed.

30 Rahner, Karl, Spirit in the World, trans. Dych, William (New York: Continuum, 1994), liii.Google Scholar

31 Ibid., 136.

32 Ibid., 137.

33 Vorgriff has its own history of translation at least since Macquarrie and Robinson's translation of Sein und Zeit in which it is translated as “fore-conception” (Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie, John and Robinson, Edward [San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1962]).Google Scholar Others include pre-apprehension (Rahner, Spirit in the World), and anticipation (Sheehan, Karl Rahner). While I will retain the original German, it will become clear later that I find the sense of anticipation more consistent with Rahner's thought than any sort of foreknowledge.

34 Rahner, , Spirit in the World, 142.Google Scholar

35 Ibid.,408.

36 Another treatment of the relationship between knowledge and being in Rahner's thought is found in Reno, Russell, The Ordinary Transformed: Karl Rahner and the Christian Vision of Transcendence (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 176–84.Google Scholar Reno argues that while Rahner does not logically conflate being and knowing, they are related existentially in a fashion analogous to nature and grace in Rahner's thought.

37 Rahner, , Spirit in the World, 68.Google Scholar

38 Ibid., 69.

39 Ibid., 229.

40 Ibid., 228.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid., 406.

43 Andrew|Tallon puts it epigrammatically, “Man's being comes from otherness” (Tallon, , “Personal Becoming: The Concept of Person in Karl Rahner's Transcendental Anthropology,” Thomist 43 [01 1979]: 11).Google Scholar

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45 Ibid., 42.

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55 Ibid., 94.

56 Ibid., 106.

57 Phan, Peter, Eternity in Time: A Study of Karl Rahner's Eschatology (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1988), 46.Google Scholar

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59 Rahner, , Foundations, 40.Google Scholar

60 Ibid., 41.

61 Rahner, , Hearer of the Word, 76.Google Scholar

62 Ibid., 93.

63 Ibid.

64 Ibid., 132.

65 Ibid., 133.

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67 Rahner, , “Behold This Heart!” 322.Google Scholar Rahner's division is seen as not being a priori because it refers to their destiny rather than their origin in two separate classes.

68 An interesting question that will not be explored in this essay is the relationship among word, symbol, and concept in Rahner's thought. For example, should Rahner's understanding of language as a mediator of reality to the subject be subsumed under his category of symbol? See Rahner, Karl, “Theology of the Symbol” in Theological Investigations, vol. 4 (Baltimore: Helicon, 1966), 21–252.Google Scholar

69 Rahner, , “Priest and Poet” in Theological Investigations, 3: 295.Google Scholar

70 Ibid., 302.

71 Ibid., 309.

72 Descombes, Vincent, “Apropos of the ‘Critique of the Subject,’ and of the Critique of This Critique” in Cadava, Eduardo, O'Connor, Peter, and Nancy, Jean-Luc, eds., Who Comes after the Subject? (New York: Routledge, 1991), 121.Google Scholar

73 For a discussion of this from the point of view of contemporary rhetorical theory, see inter alia, McKerrow, Raymie, “Critical Rhetoric and the Possibility of the Subject” in Angus, and Langsdorf, , eds., The Critical Turn, 51–67.Google Scholar

74 Foucault, Michel, “What Is an Author?” in Bouchard, Donald F., ed., Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 137.Google Scholar

75 McNay, , Foucault, 79.Google Scholar For further discussion of the subject at the intersection of feminism, poststructuralism, and cultural studies, see inter alia, Caughie, Pamela, “Let It Pass: Changing the Subject, Once Again,” PMLA 112 (1997): 26–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Fulkerson, Mary McClintock, Changing the Subject: Women's Discourse and Feminist Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1994).Google Scholar

76 Frank's works are numerous, but several helpful essays both by and regarding Frank are in Klemm and Zöller, eds., Figuring the Self; Ameriks and Sturma, eds., The Modern Subject; see also Frank, Manfred, What Is Neostructuralism? trans. Wilke, Sabine and Gray, Richard (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989).Google Scholar

77 Frank, , What Is Neostructuralism? 10.Google Scholar

78 Ameriks, Karl, “From Kant to Frank: The Ineliminable Subject” in Ameriks, and Sturma, , eds., The Modern Subject, 218.Google Scholar Frank himself describes this understanding of reflection in referring to Husserl as “think[ing] of subjectivity in terms of the model of reflection: an intentional experience (or even the egoity which carries all experiences) folds back upon itself and becomes its own intentional object” (Frank, , What Is Neostructuralism? 248).Google Scholar

79 See, e.g., Fiorenza's, Francis Schüssler treatment in “Systematic Theology: Tasks and Methods” in Fiorenza, and Galvin, John, Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives, vol. 1 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 36–43.Google Scholar

80 Kerr, , Theology after Wittgenstein, 8.Google Scholar

81 Ibid., 14.

82 Taylor, , Erring, 138.Google Scholar

83 Rahner, , Foundations, 40.Google Scholar

84 Rahner, , “Foreword,” 2.Google Scholar

85 Cahoone, , Dilemma of Modernity, 69.Google Scholar

86 Rahner, , Foundations, 24–25.Google Scholar

87 Kerr, Fergus, Immortal Longings: Versions of Transcending Humanity (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 170–84.Google Scholar

88 Rahner's, term for this, borrowing Heideggerian language, is the supernatural existential (Foundations, 126–33).Google Scholar

89 Kerr's revision owes much to Russell Reno's The Ordinary Transformed. Although this article was originally written without knowledge of Reno's work, it has been helpful in my revisions of it. As the title suggests, Reno sees Rahner as engaged with the ordinary. Although arguing this point is not germane here, I would have reservations about the necessity of interpreting Rahner à la George Lindbeck to achieve these conclusions.