Category Archives: Our current Lebenswelt

07/5/17

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.3 DE

Summary of text [comment] page 82

[Today, certain semiotic scholastics may be labeled post-modern.

In the same way, I call certain enlightenment and modern thinkers post-religionist.

Schoonenberg is not a post-religionist (enlightenment) thinker.

He is a modern who witnessed the horrors of modernism.

He tries to find a way out of the interpellation of the post-religionist (enlightenment) godheads.

Unfortunately, he writes right at the time when a new set of enlightenment gods enter into conflict.

In 1960, the conflict rages between two ideologies of materialism: Soviet Communism and Big Government Liberalism.]

05/5/17

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.3 BQ

Summary of text [comment] page 82

[ The re-ordination of the symbolic order during the first century of Christianity applies to Greek as well.

The original Greek opposition between ‘flesh’ and ‘reason’ had the same drawbacks as the original Semitic opposition of ‘flesh’ and ‘God’s law (that is, what one felt in one’s bones)’.

The drawback, in an age of Empire, was that one’s reason and one’s blood & bones could betray the truth. They were not as reliable as once imagined. One could betray one’s own people, and one’s own God, through reason and blood & bones, just as easily as through flesh and … um … flesh.

Both metaphors were adopted by the ruling elites to fashion idols (of ‘who they were’).

In Greece, the rulers became ‘paragons of reason’.

In Israel, the rulers became ‘the blood and bones of Yahweh’s cult’.]

04/5/17

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.3 AX

Summary of text [comment] page 81

[As the second Temple moved deeper into the Axial Age, the entire language of Israel shifted in response to this re-application of the flesh and bones metaphor to Society (as well as other usurpations of character-building metaphors).

The Party of the Sovereign changed the meaning of the words.

The Party of the Sovereign destroyed the language.

Paul’s opposition between ‘flesh’ and ‘spirit’ is evidence of a shift in the symbolic order of language.]

04/3/17

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.3 AV

[What happens when the metaphorical ‘bones of a person’ are usurped by elites into an ideology where ‘the elites are the metaphorical bones of society’.

Here, I tip my hat … er … electronic tablet to Slavoj Zizek.

‘The bones (that are the elite)’ embody ‘a higher power’.

Even though the elites become the scaffolding for ‘the flesh of society’, they are persons. They are composed of flesh and bones.

So they have two sets of bones.

The first set justifies sovereign power.

‘The bones that are the elite’ scaffold ‘a flesh that are the subjects’. These bones operate as cruel and perverse instruments of a higher power. Manipulation and thuggery are the right things to do when ‘the bones are the sovereign elites’. What else can the elites do to achieve their organizational objectives?

The elite bones support – no, they command – the flesh of the unworthy and lazy subjects. The flesh must be anchored by the organized goals attributed to a higher power (available only to the elites).

The second set belongs to the person who is ‘an instrument of the higher power’. There is a person behind ‘the bones that hold up society’. The bones of that person are complaint. They bend with the political winds.]

02/28/17

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.3 AA

[In our current Lebenswelt, all word reference is socially constructed.

This poses a hidden weakness for people who think they are rational, sensible, practical, pragmatic, and so on. These are the people who think that they are right because they make sense.

What is their weakness?

Their stance does not allow them to see below their feet.

They cannot see (or even admit) that they stand on a social construction.

These are the useful idiots of every revolution.]

02/13/17

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.3 Q

[In our current Lebenswelt, an adult encounters a diversity of symbolic orders unmoored from a clear sense of reference.

This poses a question:

What if we were adults in a world with a clear sense of reference?

What if we were adults who never saw a symbolic order that differed from our band’s symbolic order?

Would we be like children, as innocent as Adam and Eve?

Would our minds operate smoothly according to evolution’s manual?]

02/9/17

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 2.3 O

Summary of text [comment] page 80

[When religious institutions look at the person, they see a person who needs to be repaired. Two normal contexts and two potentials intersect in a single actor.

When religions interpellate the actor, they provide a symbolic order (or specialized language) through which the person may construct “himself”. This construction may build character (as in a suprasovereign religion) or impose organization (as in a infrasovereign religion).

Either way, conversion reduces contradictions between human thought and action.]