Philip Goodchild

Capitalism and religion : the price of piety

Our global ecological crisis demands that we question the rationality of the culture that has caused it: western modernitys free market capitalism. Philip Goodchild develops arguments from Nietzsche, Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marx, to suggest that our love of Western modernity is an expression of a piety in which capitalism becomes a global religion, in practice, if not always in belief. This book presents a philosophical alternative that demands attention from philosophers, critical theorists, philosophers of religion, theologians, and those in ecological politics.

What is Wrong with the Global Financial System

In the global credit crisis of 2007–08, the financial system escaped human control and became unstable, with near-catastrophic consequences. The underlying processes driving this instability may be traced to: positive feedback between asset price inflation and increasing leverage; increasing inequity leading to insufficient consumer demand; and the clash between exponential economic growth and the scarcity of primary commodities. These expose fundamental dilemmas that structure economic activity. Since credit is a newly-created contractual relation, while debt must be repaid with money, the global economy is caught in an ever-expanding spiral of debt which, when it reaches its limits, will result in default, devaluation, and inflation.

Deleuze and Philosophy of Religion

While Deleuze’s philosophy is not ostensibly religious, he is not overtly hostile either to religion or metaphysics. While these subjects do not feature prominently in his reflections, he provides an impetus to explore temporal existence within an immanent frame that both celebrates life and encourages expressions of beauty. Such a perspective has the potential to inform a revision of the understanding of both religion and ethics.

SPIRIT OF PHILOSOPHY - derrida and deleuze

“spirit”: its very process consists of visibly heading the march at the moment of its “disappearance” and its “putting in the ground,” it consists of leading its own funeral procession and of raising itself in the course of this march, of hoping at least to right itself again so as to stand up (“resurrection,” “exaltation”). This wake, this joyous death watch of philosophy is the double moment of a “promotion” and of a “death of philosophy,” a promotion in death. Here is philosophy – and is this absolutely new? – becoming its own revenant ... Jacques Derrida, Spectres of Marx 36

Debt, finance and social justice: the enduring relevance of William Temple

Abstract Debt plays a central role in shaping contemporary social and economic life, whether in austerity policies pursued by governments, in households financing their acquisition of homes as well as their daily spending, in students paying for their studies, or for those who struggle to meet their basic commitments who turn to payday lenders. Debt also plays a central role in financing private enterprise, and in the financial sector itself. Debt carries a curious ambivalence: on the one hand, it is an investment in a business, a home or a career, a source of prosperity; on the other, it carries the moral danger of ‘living beyond one’s means’. What does justice mean in a society shaped by debt? Does it mean the repayment of debt, increasing the wealth and power of creditors? Can repayment of debt return us toward a just society? Or is the overall increase of debt unlimited, with its control over life ever more pervasive? Does social justice require the forgiveness of unpayable debts? This article will explore such issues from a theological perspective, drawing on the thought of William Temple.

Death and the Enlightenment in Twelve Brief Episodes

In the famous passage of the Phaedo, Socrates tells his followers that those who really apply themselves to philosophy are preparing themselves for dying (Phaedo 64a): philosophy is practising death (80e). For Socrates, death is simply the release of the soul from the body (64c). Philosophy has a similar role: the soul can become independent and free from interference by concentrating on that which is pure and everlasting and immortal and changeless (79d). It liberates the soul from contamination by the body, for the soul is a prisoner of the body, and this imprisonment is effected by the prisonerÕs own active desire (83a), its longing for temporal and corporeal things. The worst calamity of all is when a soul supposes that whatever causes the most violent emotion is the plainest and truest reality (83c). Then we may infer that that which evokes the most violent emotion, the calamitous and untimely death of others, has little significance for philosophy. Upon the gathering of philosophers around SocratesÕ death-bed, Xanthippe, SocratesÕ wife, is led away crying hysterically (60a). It is practising for oneÕs own death, not the suffering of others, that matters. What is most striking in this account of philosophy is the unexamined nature of death itself. Socrates merely asserts his conception, and gains the agreement of his interlocutor. Alternatives are later discounted on the basis of the theory of recollection. This neglect of death, in spite of its central role for philosophy, is, however, quite consistent. For, as Adriana Cavarero has identified, life here has undergone a semantic shift (In Spite of Plato 25). The body has no life of its own; its life comes from the soul that unites with it. The immortal soul does not die, but is merely released; even the mortal body does not die for it has no life of its own; it is merely corrupted upon losing the life that had been united with it. There is no true death to examine. Death does not exist. Then why should philosophy practise death, if death does not exist for the rational soul? Philosophy does indeed rely upon death: Val Plumwood remarks how militarism is not excluded from PlatoÕs ideal republic (Feminism and the Mastery of Nature 97Ð100). For war is necessary to obtain slaves, and so serves the needs of the body. The threat and execution of

Job as Apologetic: The Role of the Audience

Abstract A key to interpreting the Book of Job, following from the general methodology for the human sciences set out by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, is to regard the field in which the text is embedded as the beliefs of its audience rather than its explicit content of story and characters. Bourdieu has shown the extent to which belief and practice involve elements of uncertainty and strategy, allowing inconsistencies to be interpreted as rhetorical effects. Several conclusions follow: the main focus of the Book is honour and wisdom; belief in divine transcendence may be produced as an effect of discontinuity and uncertainty in the narrative; piety may appear as an ideological effect of a pre-monetary economic order; and the principle of temporal retribution is shown to be reinforced by the text. At the same time, the Book is shown to furnish its own critique of conventional piety and to articulate an alternative piety grounded in critique itself. Religion is not purely ideological, for piety is portrayed as a critique of the ideological effects of the symbolic order.

The logic of sacrifice in the book of job: Philosophy and the practice of religion

Abstract The relation between truth and violence is explored through the logic of sacrifice presented in the Book of Job. Job, as an arbitrary sacrificial victim, learns the truth of the violence perpetrated against him. Such violence is also shown to be constitutive of Western reasoning, including its practices of the truth.