Speculative Reason and Public Theology: Explorations.

Things have to be gathered again (Latour) Can the world exist without us (or without our knowledge of it)? Can we exist without the world? Two brutal questions, the answers to which will shape our understanding of the relatedness or gathering of human and non-human life and indeed our ethical (and religious) responses to practical issues that we face. For instance, when notions such as the efficient markets hypothesis and homo economicus as a rational utility maximizing individual, shape economic and political responses to the global financial crisis, some of us would want to argue that these are inadequate and reductionist interpretations of the gatherings of human and non-human and that what is needed is a new language to better describe the way things are. My instinct is that some of the new language flowing from the work of Speculative Realists and their allies might just provide a more adequate gathering of those things. So where does Public Theology currently stand in this debate? One could argue that UK Public Theology has followed 5 main routes over the last 25 years: That influenced by Liberation Theology until it fell out of fashion The Roman Catholic Natural Law and Common Good tradition Christian Realism as represented by the Manchester tradition of Ronald Preston, John Atherton, and recently Chris Baker, Elaine Graham and John Reader Radical Orthodoxy of John Milbank, Graham Ward and other offshoots, sometimes related to the Christian communitarianism of Hauerwas, Bretherton and Wells. A more consistent postmodern approach taking on board the linguistic turn drawing on philosophers such as Richard Rorty It is Radical Orthodoxy that has become the mainstream in terms of strictly academic coverage and also has an influence beyond academia with an obvious appeal for Rowan Williams amongst others. Despite its claims for a new theological imperialism (theology as queen of the sciences etc) it has drawn heavily on philosophy, if only to argue against it and employ it for internal theological ends. Recent engagements have been with the work of Zizek and Badiou ( Theology and the Political: The New Debate edited by Davis, Milbank and Zizek; Pauls New Moment by Milbank, Zizek and Davis). One possible critique of this position is that it is a form of non-realism (see Cupitt on his former pupils
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in an article in Modern Believing, 1989). (See also for a critique of Zizek and his recent interest in Christianity Zizek and Politics by Sharpe and Boucher). Christian Realism (in Manchester/Chester mode) by contrast has tended to be more pragmatic, empirically based, drawing rather on sociology, economics, feminism and cultural studies and has ignored the philosophical dimension until recently (Entering the New Theological Space eds Baker and Reader begins to open up this territory, also Christianity and the New Social Order, Atherton, Baker and Reader, SPCK forthcoming 2011) There is now, however, a new and developing movement within philosophy known as Speculative Realism (SR), identified with the works of Meillasoux, Brassier,Hamilton- Grant and Harman, each in their different ways rejecting the correlationism between the human and non-human which has dominated Continental philosophy and which has lent itself to theological appropriations. (see The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism eds Bryant, Srnicek and Harman, re.press downloadable as an open access text, notably Chapter 1 which introduces the development and key ideas of SR) A group of Philosophers of Religion have responded to this by examining the possible impact of SR upon philosophy of religion. (see After the Postsecular and the Postmodern eds Anthony Paul Smith and Daniel Whistler, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010). We now intend to explore the further territory of how SR might contribute to a new and deeper self-understanding of Public Theology, with the ambition of securing an alternative philosophical base for a Christian Realism that presents a different approach from Radical Orthodoxy. Possible areas to be explored are: Whether a realist philosophy coheres with the realism of public theology How a greater respect for the autonomy of non-theological disciplines contributes to a more effective public engagement with political and economic issues Whether the thinkers now emerging such as DeLanda, Latour, provide helpful tools for social analysis What can be learnt from SR and its engagement with Philosophy of Religion about the nature of the Postsecular

The suggestion, is that trying to work out what the implications for an ethical system of Spec Realism might be, may provide a bridge or connection to Public Theology. So here are some initial thoughts drawing together key ideas gleaned from some of the Spec Realists and related philosophers. From Ray Brassiers Nihil Unbound, where he argues that Meillassouxs use of ancestrality to undermine the correlationism of recent Post-Kantian philosophy is not adequate, he talks about the concept of extinction as supplementing this and presenting the view that senselessness and purposelessness represent a gain in intelligibility (P238). The objective reality (the real) is that the whole cosmos will cease to exist and that it is this which should convince us that a philosophy which insists on viewing the nonhuman through its correlation with the human is mistaken. To argue this he goes through the work of Badiou, Meillassoux, Deleuze, Nietzsche, Levinas, Freud etc. If one were to take this as a starting point for ethics where would it lead us? To turn to Meillassoux himself in After Finitude, we encounter the argument that the strong correlationism that refuses to think the absolute has allowed religion back into the philosophical frame by denying reason any role in evaluating faith positions. An obvious conclusion from this is that reason does need to be granted a role, both when it comes to ethics and indeed religion. This would be an argument against the position of Radical Orthodoxy and in favour of the sort of approach I tried to work out using Habermas and Derrida in Blurred Encounters et al. Drawing then on Graham Harmans work on an object-oriented philosophy in Towards Speculative Realism, one can further establish the argument for an independent external reality unrelated in any intrinsic way to human consciousness and take the position I suggested was one possibility in The Dark Side of Public Theology on the WTF website, that there is no relationship and no encounter between humans or between humans and the nonhuman. Hence the independent reality of both objects, other humans, and indeed other (non-theological) disciplines has to be respected. This again would be against the arguments of Radical Orthodoxy who insist on subsuming everything under a theological banner. Taking this further and using Harmans work on Bruno Latour which argues that Latour is one of the most important realists, one can develop this argument for the autonomy of the non-human and for other disciplines and examine Harmans own categorisation of
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different philosophies as either radical, conservative or in polarity, the latter being his version of Spec Realism, in which absolute gaps/dualities are respected but also described according to human relationships another type of blurred encounter or gathering then. Hence what is required is an ethics based on realism rather than non-realism in its various forms AND that eschews the forms of communitarianism (Christian and otherwise) that posit a final purpose or grand narrative of human community or development characteristic of Radical Orthodoxy. Public Theology, basing itself upon such an ethical approach must be of the realist variety, respect the autonomy of other groups and disciplines whilst drawing upon them when appropriate, avoid setting up arbitrary vision and goals, and acknowledge its limitations using reason in the deployment of what is best from its own traditions.

Some gatherings suggested by Bruno Latour According to Speculative Realist philosopher Graham Harman (Prince of Networks: Latour and Metaphysics, re.press 2009), Latour is the closest figure to what he calls an object-oriented hero (P156). By this he means that Latour is a believer in the reality and the independent existence of the plurality of concrete objects. Given that the central problem of metaphysics (according to Harman), is the interplay of objects and relations (P159), then Latour sheds more light on both of these than any other contemporary thinker. This, in itself, is justification for taking Latours work as a prime example of a new form of realist philosophy, and one which raises important questions for the related concerns of ethics and the critique of current practices in other disciplines. Latour on Matters of Fact and Matters of Concern In a paper published at the end of 2004, Latour sets out his own particular understanding of critical inquiry. His basic argument is that the nature of critique itself has become divorced from its original path and intention and that we are now being encouraged to fight the wrong enemies. The problem is that we try to get away from facts whereas the real aim should be to get closer to them. What I am going to argue is that the critical mind, if it is to renew itself and be relevant again, is to be found in the cultivation of a
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stubbornly realist attitude to speak like William James but a realism dealing with what I will call matters of concern, not matters of fact (P231). What critique has been doing is to move away from matters of fact in order to identify the conditions that made them possible, and the best way to correct this is to focus instead on matters of concern. Matters of fact are only partial and often very political renderings of matters of concern, and only a subset of what Latour terms states of affairs.This requires, amongst other things, a change in terminology. Rather than talking about facts, Latour suggests that we adopt the word THING, in the sense of a thing being a gathering, and thus able to represent more fully the complex matters of concern that should now demand our attention. This builds upon but also extends the usage of this term by Heidegger who talked about it as the fourfold, but Latour will not limit the meaning in this mathematical way, but wants to use it to refer to all the various factors and components that go to construct any particular state of affairs. Thus, for instance, the discussions surrounding the decision to go to war against Iraq in 2003 was this gathering a tribunal, a parliament, a commandand-control war room, a rich mans club, a scientific congress or a TV stage? At times it felt as though all of these played a part in that decision. And that is the way it so often is an investigation that tried to coalesce, in one unifying, unanimous, solid, mastered object, masses of people, opinions and might (P235). There are invariably multiple components in any such situation and it is a challenge to identify them all let alone know how they fit together. Using the examples of both the Second Gulf War and indeed 9/11, Latour shows how current approaches to critique descend into views that these events did not really happen but were just staged for the TV, or perhaps that they were part of some conspiracy perpetrated by the CIA and the US government. We are now trained to be so suspicious of every event and the motives behind it that we lose sight of the complex and contingent nature of human and non-human activity. Nothing is what it seems, so the idea that we can access a trustworthy reality has disappeared. Latour argues that, instead of this, things have to be gathered again, and that we have to be aware of this before we can begin to set facts apart and start to analyse. So critique has to involve construction before one can think about deconstruction. One of the difficulties we all face in this though, is our own lack of consistency when it comes to interpreting different aspects of our lives. As Latour says: we explain the objects we dont approve of by treating
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them as fetishes; we account for behaviours we dont like by disciplines whose make-up we dont examine; and we concentrate our passionate interest on only those things that are for us worthwhile matters of concern (P241). So we are realists when it suits us and non-realists when it doesnt suit. I think this is a major problem for any form of critical inquiry. In order to counter this, Latour proposes that we revive a realist approach, somewhat along the lines of Whitehead (a link to Process thought and Process Theology therefore), who argued that we need to get closer to facts and treat them with a respectful realist attitude. We tend to reduce facts to what is immediately given in experience whereas what we should do is to realize that matters of fact are totally implausible, unrealistic, unjustified definitions of what it is to deal with things (P244). Latour also introduces into the discussion two further terms: association by which he means all the objects of science and technology, and Pickerings mangle of practice, both of which point towards the required multi-disciplinary inquiries that are required to detect how many participants are gathered in a thing to make it exist and to maintain its existence. So objects are simply a gathering that has failed a fact that has not been assembled according to due process. Once again, Latour makes it clear that the critic is not one who debunks, but one who assembles. All participants, all voices both human and nonhuman, must be taken into account when considering matters of concern. It seems to me that this is not simply an empirical requirement but also a moral one, and could be linked to the ethical approach of someone like Habermas and his notion of Discourse Ethics, which requires that all those affected by a particular issue should have the chance to participate in the ensuing debate and decision. Latour does refer to Habermas in this context (Politics of Nature, P171). The final implication of this that needs to be noted is that we will always be dealing with more rather than less. Instead of reducing facts, subtracting from them in order to simplify and analyse, we are more likely to be adding to them, acknowledging that it is very difficult to know where to stop and draw the line when it comes to encountering matters of concern. Latour quotes Turing, responsible for the early computers, and suggesting that we are in for many surprises and unexpected consequences over which we have a limited control and mastery. We will get more out of this process of creation and technical innovation than we, as humans, have put in. Once again, one might argue,
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a very realistic statement, and one with moral implications. In order to cope with this multiplication of possibilities, Latour argues that what is needed is an experimental metaphysics, one that continues to allow for the unforeseen, unexpected, and which goes beyond what we think we know and understand.

Latour on the fact-value distinction One of the major divisions of labour that dominates the relationship between ethical and practical concerns is that between fact and value. Part of Latours attempt to critique existing practice and to show that other possibilities need to be taken into account is his questioning and reconfiguring of this relationship. As is consistent with the rest of his work, Latour is attempting to show that the reality of dealing with matters of concern is that separating out apparently different concerns and approaches to them is artificial and misleading: they are all part and parcel of the human and non-human enterprise of working out how to respond to circumstances and to move matters forward. The tidy way in which we have become accustomed to doing this is by drawing a firm distinction between matters of fact and matters of value. We have already seen that Latour recommends abandoning the notion of matters of fact and replacing them with matters of concern, so it is to be expected that this will have implications for the old notion that facts are the realm of scientists or researchers, and that values are to be left to the politicians or moralists. Latour argues that establishing the facts of a case is only the final stage in a long process of argument, research and discovery, and that many different people and indeed things are involved in the earlier stages. Apart from the recognized matters of fact, we now know how to identify a whole gamut of stages where facts are uncertain, warm, cold, heavy, light, hard, supple, matters of concern that are defined precisely because they do not conceal the researchers who are in the process of fabricating them, the laboratories necessary for their production, the instruments that ensure their validation, the sometime heated polemics to which they give rise in short, everything that makes it possible to articulate propositions (P96). As a result of this, to use the word fact without making it clear exactly where the boundaries between fact and value might be in a particular
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stage of the process, is to freeze this dynamic activity and to ignore all the complex stages that are involved. It also has the effect of blurring the boundary between facts, theories and data, but that is an additional complication that is of less interest in this case. Parallel difficulties arise in the way that we normally refer to values in this equation. Values always come too late into the process. If, in order to bring about what ought to be, values require rejecting what is, the retort will be that the stubbornness of the established matters of fact no longer allows anything to be modified (P97). How familiar and how frustrating is that to those of us who do wish to question and challenge and indeed to suggest that there are real alternatives? In the wake of the global financial crisis, for instance, how often is genuine debate quashed by the response that we have no choice but to make cuts and thus this is taken as the accepted presupposition of all subsequent action? Latour is surely correct that, once the facts of the case are supposedly established, then proposed values can only intervene in a very limited and predetermined direction. If it is the case that the harsh reality of market forces is set in stone before one even begins, then no values are likely to have much impact upon the decisions to be made! Latours New Models of Change and Action. Instead of making a distinction between subjects and objects, Latour says that we should speak of associations between humans and non-humans. This term would then cover both the old natural sciences and the old social sciences. Embedded in this are a number of redefinitions central to Latours argument, most notably the replacement of subject and object by human and non-human. The realist position, as it has normally been presented, is based on the distinction between human beings (as subjects) and everything else ( as objects). The one thing that the Speculative Realists have in common is that they object to what they call postKantian philosophy in its various forms, that assumes any external reality can only be mediated through some version of human consciousness. Thus if the idea of a world-in-itself, of a realm of phenomena subsisting independently of our relation to it, is intelligible at all, it can only be intelligible as something in-itself or independent for-us (Brassier, Nihil Unbound, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, P50). What Latour attempts to do, by changing the language of subject-object to human non-human, is to get beyond this particular distinction which has hampered philosophical progress for too long, and enable us to talk
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about different forms of relatedness. This discussion takes us deep into the realms of metaphysics and the newly emerging Speculative Realism. Religious beliefs and practice can then be acknowledged as a part of this gathering, not though in the imperialistic mode of Radical Orthodoxy, but with humility and integrity, as we struggle with others to respond to the matters of concern that we currently face. Spec Realism makes it clear that the gathering is a permanent and unending task.