The midwinter sacrifice: A sequel to can morality be christian?

Angelaki - Journal of the Theoretical Humanities

Volumn 6, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 49-65

  Milbank, John ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61949144757     PISSN: 0969725X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09697250120076394     Document Type: Article

References (42)

1. John Milbank, "Can Morality be Christian?," Studies in Christian Ethics 8. 1 (1995)
2. reprinted in John Milbank, The Word Made Strange: Theology, Language, Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).
3. Jan PatocÏ ka, Essais hérétiques sur la philosophie de l'histoire, trans. E. Abrams (Paris: Verdier, 1981). Jacques Derrida, "Donner la mort" in L'Éthique du don, eds. J.-M. Rabaté and Michael Wetzel (Paris: Metailié-Transition, 1992).
4. Emmanuel Levinas, "Time and the Other" (Extract) in The Levinas Reader, ed. Sean Hand (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989)
5. Autrement qu'être ou au-delà de l'essence (Paris: Kluwer, 1990).
6. Bernard Williams, "Moral Luck" in Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973-80 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981) 20-39.
7. Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge UP: 1986).
8. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1109-1110.
9. See Robert Spaemann, Glück und Wohlwollen: Versuch über Ethik (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1989) 85-95: "Die Antinomien des Glücks. "
10. As seems to be affirmed by Jean-Luc Marion. See "Esquisse d'un concept phénoménologique du don," Archivio di Filosofia 62. 1-3 (1994): 75-94.
11. See Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord vol. V, The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age, trans. Oliver Davies et al. (San Francisco: Ignatius P, 1991) 451-597.
12. See Spaemann, Glück und Wohlwollen, for this characterization, esp. "Vorwort" 9-11.
13. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978) 279-312.
14. Derrida, "Donner la mort" 64-65.
15. Spaemann 85-95: "Die Antinomien des Glücks"
16. 110-22: "Vernunft und Leben"
17. 123-140: "Wohlwollen. "
18. Spaemann 89.
19. Marion, "Esquisse d'un concept phénoménologique du don. "
20. For the arid pursuit of such conundra to their bitter end without aufhebung, see Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1984).
21. Jacques Derrida, Given Time I: Counterfeit Money, trans. Peggy Kamuf (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1991).
22. Bernard Williams, "Moral Luck. "
23. Jacques Derrida, "Donner la mort" 54 ff. , 64 ff.
24. Spaemann 110-22: "Vernunft und Leben," esp. 114-15.
25. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1975) III; VI, 44-47; V, 1-8.
26. Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993). These magical aspects are very well brought out in Agnieska Holland's film of this novel (1994).
27. See, especially, Derrida, "Donner la mort. " And for a critique of this, Catherine Pickstock, Seraphic Voices: Language, Death and Liturgy (Oxford: Blackwell, forthcoming), chapter 3: "Signs of Death. "
28. John Milbank, "Can a Gift be Given?" in Rethinking Metaphysics, eds. L. G. Jones and S. E. Fowl (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995) 119-61.
29. Jacques Derrida, Given Time. However, it might be contended here that there is no real contradiction between being truly disinterested and a virtuous satisfaction at a meta-level of awareness that we are disinterested. The unilateral gift is not so much impossible as objectionable as a final telos, even if in a fallen world it is normally an inescapable imperative. Marion's attempt to regard gratitude as a "meta-level" awareness that does not cancel the gratuity of the gift by returning it will not, however, work, because there is an imperative to display generosity and to do this in a delightful manner: gratitude is a counter-gift.
30. See Milbank, "Can a Gift be Given?"
31. Diogenes Laertius, Lives VII, 13, 22 and see Marcel Detienne, The Gardens of Adonis (New York: Hassocks, 1975).
32. I am indebted to Villiers Breytenbach for this point.
33. Detienne, The Gardens of Adonis.
34. I am grateful for discussions with Hildegard Canuk-Lindemaier on this point.
35. See Robert Alun Jones, "Robertson Smith, Durkheim and Sacrifice," Journal of the History of the Behavioural Sciences XVIII (Apr. 1981): 184-205.
36. Martin Hengel, The Atonement, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM, 1981) 1-32. I am indebted to Wolfgang Stegemann for the point that Antique texts often use sphagein (whole-offering) rather than plusia in this context. It should be said, however, that Hildegard Canuk-Lindemaier thinks Hengel and Stegemann exaggerate lightly metaphorical usages.
37. See Pickstock, Seraphic Voices, chapter 2.
38. John Milbank, "Stories of Sacrifice," Modern Theology 12. 1 (Jan. 1996): 27-56.
39. John Buchan, Midwinter: Certain Travellers in Old England (Edinburgh: B & W Publishing, 1993) 229-30. The "Sacrifice to Diana," which Buchan has, of course, derived from reading J. G. Frazer and Margaret Murray, is here deployed typologically (a) as a figure for genuine Christian sacrifice (a trope used also in the equally remarkable Witchwood) and (b) to suggest that since the foretype is still included, there can be an integration of a Platonic erotic and romantic moment in Christianity. (Again Witchwood conveys the same message and suggests that a "catholic" and "Platonic" Christianity holds the balance between a bleak uncharitable puritanism and a demonic neo-paganism; in the latter novel, it is Calvinist "justified sinners" who are also devil worshippers, implying that a fatalistic construal of grace, where our "return" of love is irrelevant and the divine decree is impersonal and arbitrary, is dialectically identical with an equally "returnless" love for the powers of darkness and destruction. )
40. See Hendrik Bolkestein, Wohltätigkeit und Armenpflege in Vorchristlichen Altertum (Utrecht: A. Oosthoek, 1939)
41. and Willem Cornelis van Unnick, "Eine Merkwürdige Liturgische Aussage bei Josephus (Jos. Ant 111-113)" in Josephus- Studien, eds. O. Betz et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1974) 362-69.
42. See Willem Cornelis van Unnick, "Die Motivierung der Feindeshebe in Lukas VI, 32-35," Novum Testamentum VII (1966): 284-300.