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Species and Salvation: Theology of History in the Anthropocene?
Part of:
Forum: History's Religion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 August 2021
Abstract
In this article I will discuss various thoughts of a few recent representatives of the tradition of the philosophy of history—Heinz Dieter Kittsteiner, Ulrich Beck, and finally Karl Rahner—and bring them into a conversation with Dipesh Chakrabarty's work on the problems of human species history and the Anthropocene. The aim of this undertaking is to gain greater clarity on the question of the work that theology continues to do for historical thought. I argue that Rahner's notions about “inclusivism”—according to which the possibility of salvation is vested in the species history of humanity rather than in the history of Christian revelation—and his related notion of an irresolvable tension between “anonymous” and what one might then call “onomastic” histories signal the continuing significance of a theology of the baptismal sacrament for historical thought. Rereading Rahner's thought sheds light on certain quandaries of the Anthropocene discussion, regarding the way in which species history can be related to other kinds of history writing, and the novel opening for theodicy generated by the breakdown of the culture–nature divide.
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References
1 As developed in Heinz Dieter Kittsteiner, Naturabsicht und unsichtbare Hand: Zur Kritik des geschichtsphilosophischen Denkens (Berlin, 1980). The most stable textual basis for this reading is in Giambattista Vico, The New Science (3rd edn, 1744), trans. Thomas G. Bergin and Max H. Fisch (Ithaca, 1948), the discussion of “principles” and “method” in §§330–60 and in the Conclusion, §1108. Kittsteiner reformulated the basic argument without paying much heed to the theological conclusions about divine providence that Vico sought to draw from his insight into the manner in which the human-made failed to align with the human-intended.
2 See e.g. DChakrabarty, ipesh, “The Climate of History: Four Theses,” Critical Inquiry 35/2 (2009), 197–222CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Heinz Dieter Kittsteiner, “Geschichtsschreibung im Dienst des Lebens: Nietzsches ‘souveränes Individuum’ in seiner ‘plastischen Kraft’,” in Kittsteiner, Listen der Vernunft: Motive geschichtsphilosophischen Denkens (Frankfurt am Main, 1998), 132–49.
4 Perhaps it is opportune to mention Hans Blumenberg's well-known (counter)attack on Löwith in The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (Cambridge, 1983; first published 1966), 27–35.
5 Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London, 1992; first published 1986).
6 Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” in Henry Hardy, ed., Liberty (Oxford, 2002), 166–217.
7 Karl Löwith, Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History (Chicago, 1949).
8 As spelled out in in Immanuel Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties, trans. Allen W. Wood and George di Giovanni (Cambridge, 1996; first published 1798), Part II. The concept of “abderitism” connotes Wieland's Geschichte der Abderiten (1774), the “history” of the inhabitants of the ancient Thracian city of Abdera, which figured as a polis of fools in ancient literature.
9 The question whether Beck modeled his stance after Theodor W. Adorno's, who, e.g. in Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life, trans. E. Jephcott (London, 1974), or in Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments (with Max Horkheimer), trans. E. Jephcott (Stanford, 2002), had developed what one might call a Marxist version of “terrorist” philosophy of history, remains a worthwhile topic of discussion.
10 Franz Overbeck, Über die Christlichkeit unserer heutigen Theologie: Streit- und Friedensschrift (Leipzig, 1873), 10–11.
11 Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Anthopocene Time,” History and Theory 57/1 (2018), 5–32. See now also Dipesh Chakrabarty, The Climate of History in a Planetary Age (Chicago, 2021).
12 Reinhart Koselleck, “‘Space of Experience’ and ‘Horizon of Expectations’: Two Historical Categories,” in Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, trans. Keith Tribe (New York, 2004; first published 1979), 267–88.
13 Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 1 (Chicago, 1984; first published 1983), Ch. 1.
14 See Jason W. Moore, ed., Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism (Oakland, 2016); and Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham, NC, 2016), esp. Ch. 2.
15 Chakrabarty, “Anthropocene Time,” 30.
16 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, “Humanities in the Anthropocene: The Crisis of an Enduring Kantian Fable,” New Literary History 47/2–3 (2016), 377–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
17 For a brief survey see Henning Schmidgen, Bruno Latour in Pieces: An Intellectual Biography (New York, 2014), 11–24.
18 Immanuel Kant, “Über das Mißlingen aller philosophischen Versuche in der Theodicee” (1791), in Kant, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Königlich Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften, series I, vol. 8 (Berlin 1912), 253–71; Kant, “On the Miscarriage of All Trials in Philosophical Theodicy,” in Kant, Religion and Rational Theology, ed. and trans. Allen Wood and George Di Giovanni (Cambridge, 1996), 20–37. On the historical context of theodicy see Jonathan Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture (Princeton, 2005), esp. Ch. 6; Sami Pihlström and Sari Kivistö, Kantian Antitheodicy: Philosophical and Literary Varieties (Basingstoke, 2016).
19 Kant, “Über das Mißlingen aller philosophischen Versuche in der Theodicee,” 255.
20 This comes close to what Hans Blumenberg discusses under the label of metaphysical Gewaltenteilung (separation of powers) as a primary function of myth; see his Work on Myth, trans. Robert M. Wallace (Cambridge, 1985; first published 1979).
21 E.g. Odo Marquard, “Die Krise des Optimismus und die Geburt der Geschichtsphilosophie,” in Marquard, Skepsis in der Moderne (Stuttgart, 2007), 93–108.
22 In the terminology of Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, 1993; first published 1991).
23 The pioneering contribution that discussed the presences of gnosticism in modern understandings of historicity was Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity (Boston, 1958). Heinz Dieter Kittsteiner also continuously emphasized this point; see especially his Mit Marx für Heidegger – mit Heidegger für Marx (Paderborn, 2004).
24 François Hartog, Regimes of Historicity: Presentism and Experiences of Time (New York, 2015; first published 2003).
25 On Rahner in general see Herbert Vorgrimler, Karl Rahner: Gotteserfahrung in Leben und Denken (Darmstadt, 2004); Declan Marmion and Mary E. Hines, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Karl Rahner (Cambridge, 2005).
26 See Edwards, Denis, “Teilhard's Vision as Agenda for Rahner's Christology,” Pacifica 23/2 (2010), 233–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
27 For an appraisal of the doctrine see Jeannine Hill Fletcher, “Rahner and Religious Diversity,” in Marmion and Hines, The Cambridge Companion to Karl Rahner, 235–48.
28 For instance, Karl Rahner, “Atheismus und implizites Christentum” (1967), in Rahner, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 21, part 2, ed. Karl-Rahner-Stiftung (Freiburg im Breisgau, 2013), 885–903.
29 The inclusivist doctrine remained highly contested and was revised in the 2000 constitution Dominus Iesus issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then headed by Joseph Ratzinger.
30 Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. William V. Dych (New York, 1978; first published 1976), 142–52.
31 See e.g. Rahner, “Atheismus,” 902.
32 Rahner, Foundations, 41.
33 Ibid., 39.
34 Daniel Lord Smail, On Deep History and the Brain (Berkeley, 2008).
35 Karl Rahner, “Evolution – Freiheit – Erbsünde,” in Rahner, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 30 (Freiburg im Breisgau, 2009), 483–96, at 488; originally in Karl Josef Narr and Wolfgang Böhme, eds., Freiheit in der Evolution (Karlsruhe, 1984), 74–87.
36 Ibid., 488–9. Unless otherwise indicated, translations are my own and emphases are in the original.
37 The lecture is similar to others that address cognate topics; but the radical assertion of the openness of the question is dissimilar; compare e.g. from the same period Karl Rahner, “Profangeschichte und Heilsgeschichte” (1983), in Rahner, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 30, 137–47; or Rahner, “Naturwissenschaft und vernünftiger Glaube” (1983), in Rahner, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 30, 399–432.
38 See Karl Rahner, “Warum lässt uns Gott leiden?” in Rahner, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 30, 373–84.
39 On this dichotomy see also Trüper, Henning, “Depth and Death: On History, Humanitarianism, and Mortuary Culture,” History of the Present 11/2 (forthcoming 2021)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
40 See e.g. Febvre, Lucien, “Sur une forme d'histoire qui n'est pas la nôtre,” Annales: Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 3/1 (1948), 21–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
41 As Zoltán Boldizsár Simon argues in his History in Times of Unprecedented Change: A Theory for the 21st Century (London, 2019).