How Did We Get Here? Reflections towards a Philosophy of the Present

Abstract

How Did We Get Here? Reflections towards a Philosophy of the Present Philipp W Rosemann Explaining the present has always been one of the preoccupations of philosophy, and of modern philosophy in particular. Kant, in his celebrated essay, ‘What is Enlightenment?’; Hegel in his speculative metaphysics of history; Nietzsche in his declaration that ‘God is dead’; Heidegger in his reflections on ‘the end of philosophy and the task of thinking’ – all these philosophers, and others, have attempted to offer an account of their present conditions. This essay takes up the same task, but with the precise goal of shedding light upon the intellectual substructure (one could say) of Irish life in the 2020s. This essay will not talk about the state of the Irish Church, at least not centrally. A lot has been said about this question by writers far more qualified than myself.1 Nevertheless, my remarks will, I hope, help elucidate what the fundamental challenges are that the Christian faith faces in the intellectual constellation of our day. I am going to suggest that the present is, in fact, still deeply Christian, because Christianity has undermined itself from within. The present is, in essence, a Christian heresy.2 *** Christian life has a characteristic temporal structure. While our Jewish ancestors are still waiting for the Messiah, for Christians he has arrived, in the person of Jesus Christ, Son of God. The Kingdom is already here – but only inchoately, as we await the Second Coming where all that we now see but ‘through a glass darkly’ (1 Cor 13:12) will reveal itself in its fulness. The Christian present, then, combines the realisation of a past promise – God’s covenant with the people of Israel – with the expectation of an even more glorious future. Furthermore, that future is, in some sense, a return to the past (namely, to the harmonious communion with God in paradise); yet it will be a fuller version of that past, a version enriched by God’s history How Did We Get Here? Reflections towards a Philosophy of the Present Studies • volume 110 • number 439 279 with his people. Most notably, this history includes the Incarnation, of which the Eucharistic celebration is our most palpable daily reminder. It is through constant ‘repetition’ of the past – the Eucharist, but also the reading of the Psalms in the Divine Office – that we move into the future. And again: that future is here already – the body of Christ is real – while its pleroma still awaits. Christian temporality can be distorted in two ways. For a long time, the tradition focused on the risk of slipping back, so to speak, into Judaism, by not embracing the New Testament as the fulfilment of the Old, by emphasising law over spirit, works over faith. For this tendency, the New Testament even invented a term, ‘to Judaise’, which occurs, just once, in the context of the ‘incident at Antioch’ where Paul clashed with Peter (Gal 2:14). While ‘Judaising’ may be a risk to the integrity of the Christian faith, the critique of this risk became the point of departure for a highly problematic current of anti-Judaism within the Christian tradition – a forerunner to modern antisemitism .3 Just as Christian temporality can be distorted in relation to the past, so its specific rhythm can be misunderstood by a misconception of the future. One could say that the Christian future, properly understood, reaches into the present, but does not coincide with it. St Paul conveys this point beautifully by his use of the phrase ‘as though not’, hōs mē (1 Cor 7:29–31; NRSV): 29 I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none, 30 and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, 31 and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away. Paul’s ‘as though’ or ‘as if’ suspends our life in the present...