Limbo Reapplied: On Living in Perennial Crisis and the Immanent Afterlife

KRISTOF K. P. VANHOUTTE

LIMBO REAPPLIED

On Living in Perennial Crisis and the Immanent Afterlife

RADICAL THEOLOGIESAND PHILOSOPHIES

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Radical Theologies and Philosophies

Radical Theologies and Philosophies is a call for transformational theolo-gies that break out of traditional locations and approaches. The rhizomic ethos of radical theologies enable the series to engage with an ever-ex-panding radical expression and critique of theologies that have entered or seek to enter the public sphere, arising from the continued turn to reli-gion and especially radical theology in politics, social sciences, philoso-phy, theory, cultural, and literary studies. The post-theistic theology both driving and arising from these intersections is the focus of this series.

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Kristof K. P. Vanhoutte

Limbo ReappliedOn Living in Perennial Crisis and the Immanent

Afterlife

Kristof K. P. VanhoutteUniversity of the Free StateBloemfontein, South Africa

and

Pontifical University AntonianumRome, Italy

Radical Theologies and PhilosophiesISBN 978-3-319-78912-5 ISBN 978-3-319-78913-2 (eBook)https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78913-2

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To you twoValentina and Sofia

Always

vii

Preface

In 1947, the famous French publishing house Gallimard issued the remarkable book Exercises de Style by Raymond Queneau. That this book, which reminds of Erasmus’s rhetoric textbooks De duplici copia rerum ac verborum commentarii duo from the beginning of the sixteenth century, is remarkable can be deduced from the simple fact that it con-tains 99 different versions of the same story. The plot consists of a hum-drum encounter between a man, the ‘main character’, and a stranger, whom he meets a second time that same day; the first encounter is on a bus and the second one at the Saint-Lazare station. Besides it having probably been a rather fun accomplishment, it is above all a masterly exploit and ‘an experiment in the philosophy of language’ (Queneau 1981, 14) by the hand of Queneau. He, as Barbara Wright so correctly remarked in her introduction to the original English translation (1958), ‘pushes language around in a multiplicity of directions to see what will happen’ (Queneau 1981, 14). ‘Pushing around to see what will happen;’ few combinations of words (bad as they might sound—and probably will also be interpreted by some) could have better described the chore attempt of this book.

The noun ‘exercise’ used in Queneau’s title is, however, not applicable to the type of text that you, reader, are holding in your hands. For this particular type of text, the French language has another precise word (a word that is considered in French as a synonym of exercise—but that is more than anything merely a closely related word). This word is essai, an essay, and it derives from the verb essayer which means to try, or to

viii PREFACE

attempt. The Larousse, the famous French dictionary/institution, defines the essay as a book (a text) containing various ideas regarding a specific subject that it does not pretend to exhaust. That an essay does not pre-tend to exhaust the ideas it treats is simply because it attempts to test this or that quality of this or that specific subject—pushing it around to see what will happen. Basically, the essay, and thus this study as well, is a written non-exhaustive check and control of the functioning of the pre-cise subject at hand that, as an attempt, allows the author of the essayistic feature, to return to its topic further along her/his life’s road (to give it another go) if he/she so desires. The attempt might fail, but if the author brings it to a conclusion that generally means he/she is convinced that it has not. For as much though as it will be brought to a fruitful conclusion, the nature of the essay does not exclude that other and very diverse attempts on dealing with the same specific subject can succeed as well.

As can be seen, what is at stake in an essay, and as such also in this work, is a rather fragile integrity that—probably contrary to what is gen-erally considered and understood—does absolutely not allow for the minimum of relaxation or lack of attention and strictness. Furthermore, being precisely something ‘incomplete’, it also requires full participa-tion, and even in-depth participation, from the reader. That the nature of the essay is so highly demanding of author (and reader) is not only related to its fragile nature. It also regards the fact that, more often than not, essays turn out to become easy ‘victims’ of partisan judgments. Rendering explicit from the very beginning that a text will not treat its subject in an exhaustive way—while acknowledging also immediately that a similar text can never be considered as finished and that the author might even come back to it in the future, maybe even to say that he was wrong all along—can and will easily be misunderstood (even by the brainy scholar). This was also already the case with Queneau’s Exercises. From the very beginning were they considered by some as ‘an attempt to demolish literature’ (Queneau 1981, 15) which was neither the author’s intention nor the actuality result of the Exercises. That this can occur is, however, mostly known by the author.

This acknowledgment should, however, not necessarily be considered as a lack or deficiency of a text. In fact, the exact contrary can and should be argued for. If anything, recognizing these aspects is a rendering explicit of the awareness that a text based on study can never truly finish or end. St. Thomas, the Angelical doctor and one of the greatest minds

PREFACE ix

humanity has ever brought forth (he will also help us to understand the concept of Limbo), seems to be hinting at something similar when he confided to his secretary that everything he had ever written and taught was but pure foolishness. And a similar realization is phrased by an old Sigmund Freud in his melancholic acknowledging that therapy and edu-cation (study) are interminable. Considering these affirmations, and the many others one could bring forth, as gloomy thoughts that accompany the process of dying or could even constitute cases of false humility is missing the point. Texts, maybe all but certainly essayistic ones, will always remain exercises and attempts. Some will be good, others less, but avoiding the delusion of having offered ‘a finished product’ can but be considered, at least that is what we feel, as a very good and honest point to start. (It is also a registration into a certain philosophical tradition—ready to betray it—but we are certain the reader will discover this on her/his own in due time.)

This text finds its origin in a presentation given back in 2014 at the University of St. Gall in Switzerland. The lecture was given during a symposium organized by the Swiss Philosophical Association that had as its theme: Kritik und Krise (Critic and Crisis). The basic ideas that gov-ern the pages that follow were already present in their embryonic state in the original text. The ‘embryo’, however, has since passed various grow-ing phases and prangs, becoming a muscled adult. And as it goes with all births, some ‘original’ parts get lost along the road while others come along to change what was considered originally as the direction to take.

A number of people have been directly or indirectly involved in a vari-ety of ways in the process of realization of this book; I am, obviously, the only person responsible for all the possible remaining weaknesses. These people are, first of all, my philosopher friends and friends in philoso-phy. The first to mention is necessarily Carlo Salzani, whose continuous dedication to this project has been truly humbling. Thank you Carlo! Second, there are the group of people with whom I share the research adventure called The Small Circle; they are Christo Lombaard, Iain T. Benson, and Calvyn du Toit (Carlo is also a part of this exciting enter-prise). I have also received very helpful assistance, references, or stimula-tion from too large a number of colleagues to name them all. Some need to be mentioned by name, however, and they are: Jackie Du Toit, Father Gianluca Montaldi, Lancelot Kirby, Jonathan Rée (who got me think-ing about the spatial implications of what it was I was writing about), Fra. Ernesto Dezza (you have safeguarded the medieval scholars), Fra.

x PREFACE

Stéphane Oppes, Benjamin McCraw, Christopher Beiting, and Father Johannes Maria Schwarz. The first person who published me and who has ever since remained a driving force, Marco Cardinali, also needs a special mentioning. Katrin Meyer and Hubert Schnüriger from the University of Basel also need explicit thanks. They allowed me to pres-ent a series of chapters at the seminar in political philosophy they organ-ized. Jan Müller, Domink Renner, and Dominique Haab, who offered critical comments during and after the seminar, also need thanks. The two nameless reviewers from Palgrave also need a special mention as they did offer very helpful comments. Great gratitude also goes to my edi-tor Philip Getz, who believed in this project from the very beginning—thanks. Philip’s right hands, Alexis Nelson in the beginning and Amy Invernizzi afterward, have always been there to help, thanks for your professionality. Sofie Vanhoutte needs to be mentioned as well, thanks soeure, you know why. Finally, Udo and Geinsson need a very special mentioning. Without their willingness to sell their little paradise, half of this book would not have been written in one of the most beautiful places I have ever worked.

Basel, Switzerland Kristof K. P. Vanhoutte

xi

contents

1 Introduction 1References 9

2 Visual Anteprima 11References 32

3 Limbo 353.1 Pope Benedict XVI and the Cancellation of Limbo 353.2 Limbo’s (Pre-Christian) Genealogy and Geography 423.3 The History of Limbo 49

3.3.1 No Third Place: Saint Augustine and His Legacy 503.3.2 Original Sin Becomes Privative: Gregory of Nyssa

and Gregory Nazianzen 603.3.3 Lacking Punishment: Anselm and Abelard 653.3.4 The Birth of Limbo: Albertus Magnus and

Alexander of Hales 703.3.5 From Neutral to Joyous Limbo: Saint Bonaventure

and Saint Thomas 743.4 Poetic Limbo in Dante and Milton 863.5 Prolegomena to Any Translation of Limbo 99References 110

xii CONTENTS

4 Crisis 1154.1 Interesting Times 1154.2 Taking It Seriously 1324.3 What’s in a Meaning 1424.4 The Crisis of Crisis 151References 164

5 Modernity: A Limboic Fool’s Paradise 1695.1 Time Is Out of Joint 1705.2 Exhausted Space 1945.3 Limbo as Perennial Crisis 215References 225

6 Extraduction: Ascent Out of Limbo 229References 237

Bibliography 239

Index 253

xiii

about the author

Kristof K. P. Vanhoutte is a Research Fellow of the International Studies Group at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa, and an Invited Professor of philosophy at the Pontifical University Antonianum, Rome, Italy. He started his studies in philoso-phy at the Higher Institute for Philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, and obtained his Ph.D. in philosophy at the Pontifical University Antonianum, Rome, Italy. He studied spiritual theology at the Pontifical University Gregoriana and was Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities of the University of Edinburgh. In 2010, he was awarded the ‘European Philosophy from Kant to the Present Prize’, issued by the University of Kentucky. He has published on topics ranging from continental philosophy, patristics, the-ology-philosophy-politics interdependencies, educational theory, to foot-ball.

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List of images

Image 2.1 Andrea di Bonaiuto, Salita al Calvario, Crocefissione e Discesa di Cristo al Limbo, Firenze, Museo di Santa Maria Novella, Capellone degli Spagnoli 13

Image 2.2 Andrea di Bonaiuto, Discesa di Cristo al Limbo (detail), Firenze, Museo di Santa Maria Novella, Capellone degli Spagnoli 18

Image 2.3 Anish Kapoor, Descent into Limbo, 1992, © 2017, ProLitteris, Zurich 25

Image 2.4 Anish Kapoor, Descent into Limbo, 1992, © 2017, ProLitteris, Zurich 26

1

Language, if we can ‘radicalize’ the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, is not just a historical but also a living ‘being’ (cf. Agamben 2016, 25). Not only should the human being be considered as the ‘animal’ that has language—man is not just homo sapiens, according to Agamben, but, above all, homo sapiens loquendi, the living being that can talk (cf. Agamben 2016, 27–28)—but language itself should be consid-ered as a living ‘being’ (language has a history that does not coincide with human’s history). However, not always does human language and languages being coincide. These are (at least philosophically speaking) the most interesting moments. They constitute the limit-moments of insanity, when pure language is being spoken through a language-less human or when a human being is speaking non-language (not always is this reducible to nonsense). This non-coinciding is also the cause of the more common phenomenon where not the whole of language ‘goes missing’, but merely words. Very few people, in fact, have not directly or indirectly experienced moments or events that are considered to go ‘beyond words’. Love, hate, joy, evil, but also art (beauty) seem to all be categories that vouch for and can produce ‘beyond word’ experiences. Although more often than not these ‘beyond word’ experiences can be reduced to wordy-experience suffered by people who lack the adequate vocabulary, this is not always the case. Certain ‘beyond words’ experi-ences are, in fact, merely caused by the lack of a vocabulary (still) in use.

Let me try to make this rather enigmatic statement somewhat clearer by turning to the example of evil as it was presented in the text that

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

© The Author(s) 2018 K. K. P. Vanhoutte, Limbo Reapplied, Radical Theologies and Philosophies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78913-2_1

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2 K. K. P. Vanhoutte

constituted a major influence in the coming about of this book: Gordon Graham’s Evil and Christian Ethics (2003). In the fourth chapter of this very provocative book, Graham, daringly, corners the topic of the great evils. These evils are great violent excesses of war, the atrocious crimi-nal murders of the likes of Charles Manson, and the more recent school massacres in the USA. What strikes Graham, is that when these mas-sacres happen, or when more general judgment is offered on the per-petrators of past warlike atrocities, is that the first thing that is done is ‘to condemn the perpetrators as evil; the second is to declare them mad or mentally ill’ (Graham 2003, 122). As Graham correctly remarks, for these particular cases of ‘mental illness’ ‘there is virtually no theoreti-cal understanding of the physical basis of these, and … there is neither effective drug therapy nor even the beginnings of a neurophysiological explanation’ (Graham 2003, 125). If all of this did not suffice already, as the anthropologist Elliot Leyton put it, ‘if the killers are merely insane, why do they in fact so rarely display the cluster of identifiable clin-ical symptoms’ of those few mental diseases of which the ‘psychiatrists agree’ (proposed in Graham 2003, 127)? For as much as these atrocious evils almost oblige one to auto-protectively judge them as ‘abnormal’, it has to be acknowledged—even by the fiercest positivist or advocate of exclusivist scientific research—that ‘scientific sensibility lacks an ade-quate explanation of evil’, and ‘[H]umanism cannot explain the evil of evil, and naturalistic science, even of a well-informed psychological kind, cannot explain its occurrence’ (Graham 2003, 154). What does have an adequate sensibility of evil is not scientific language but religious lan-guage. In fact, when confronted with these cases of pure evil, it was, at least in the past, the language of the daemonic that took over. And this language would have offered explanations both of ‘the degree of evil’ and of ‘the sense of compulsion’ with which the perpetrator would have acted (Graham 2003, 138). Graham postulates from this, and we think correctly, a hypothesis of the supernatural in which our (moral) lives are set in. This would then provide us with a much better explanation of evil than the purely scientific one that clearly fails in these cases of evil.

This (the conclusion) is obviously not what is of interest to this book. What is, however, of absolute interest to us, as Susan Sontag phrased her encounter with a very similar problem, is that ‘we have a sense of evil but no longer the … language to talk intelligently about [it]’ (Sontag 1978, 85). Said differently and more generally, and this is where we wanted to arrive at, regarding certain problems we no longer have the language to

1 INTRODUCTION 3

talk intelligently about them. We have all kinds of intelligent theories and (pseudo-)scientific explanations that at times fail to live up to their prom-ise of being the most accurate or most appropriate to turn to regarding certain phenomena. And even when they are worthy candidates for the ‘throne’ of explanation and clarification, sometimes they would (and we are appositely changing the time of the verb) have been easily passed over, were it not that we no longer have that particular type of language anymore. On many occasions, the type of language that has gone missing is religious or even philosophical language, overpowered as it has been by the secular language of the secularized world. Also regarding the case that is of interest to this book, it is religious language that has gone miss-ing. And the ‘case’ that would have befitted so much by the usage of a certain type of religious language is nothing other than the interpretation of the times, ‘our times’, we live in. The aim of this volume is, first of all, to bring back to life this particular religious discourse (something we will do in the Visual Anteprima Chap. 2 and the third section of this book) and, secondly, to read ‘the signs of our times’ with it (to which section four and five are dedicated). The religious discourse we will bring back in the pages that follow is that regarding one of the more enigmatic realms of the afterlife, namely Limbo. As we will attempt to demonstrate, it is not sociology, not economy, not politics, but religion—that is, the par-ticular religious discourse about Limbo—that is best at explaining and making us understand our modern epoch.

*

In an interesting little booklet called Living in Limbo: Life in the Midst of Uncertainty (Capps and Carlin 2010) a variety of types of situations in our daily lives are described as ‘Limbo-experiences’. According to the two editors of this volume, there are two different types of these ‘Limbo-experiences’ (cf. Capps and Carlin 2010, 3). On the one hand, there are the chronic and very basic Limbo-experiences where one’s life is sensed or understood as being indeterminate or also intermediate. These experiences mainly involve wait-ing: waiting in line, waiting for e-mail, etc. On the other hand, there are also times in our lives where a much more acute form of ‘Limbo’ is experi-enced. This second category can, according to Capps and Carlin, be further subdivided into five different categories. They regard cases of acute Limbo-experiences that relate to youth, relations, work, illness, and immigration. And even though the scope of this book is on a completely different plane, and we disagree with a number of aspects of the understanding of Limbo as introduced by the editors—they, for example, consider ‘transition’ as a

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good synonym for Limbo (Capps and Carlin 2010, 8–9), something which, as we will come to see, it is not—the idea that Limbo is not just something related to the afterlife but is intertwined with our life now, here, today, in an immanent way is something we agree with and will investigate in the pages of this book.

*

We are, obviously, not the first to try to re-introduce older (religious) concepts into an explicative discourse foreign to it while claiming its highly productive contribution in the understanding of that particu-lar discourse. We already referred to Gordon Graham’s work, but other examples, such as Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben (among others), can be brought forward. Toward the end of her The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt thus presents us with the intriguing analogy of the division of the concentration camps as corresponding to three types of realms of the afterlife: Hades, Purgatory, and Hell (cf. Arendt 1973, 445). Arendt even adds intriguingly that ‘[S]uddenly it becomes evident that things which for thousands of years the human imagina-tion had banished to a realm beyond human competence can be man-ufactured right here on earth, …’ (Arendt 1973, 446)—confirming, as such, the thesis we are trying to establish here. Giorgio Agamben—whose influence on the pages that follow cannot be ignored—has made of these more isolated events in Arendt a more consistent characteris-tic of his work. For Agamben, to offer only one, but very significant, example (which also evinces the divergence of the thesis of this book from Agamben’s main political thesis), it is Hell, characterized as it is by eternal government, that is the true paradigm of modern politics (cf. Agamben 2011, 164).

For as much as we are offering a reading, through Limboic glasses, of our modern epoch, this reading does not claim to be an all-encom-passing one (something which is far beyond our capacities and which, more than probably, is not even possible). The proposed reading of the ‘signs of our times’, an expression that will return and be explained in the course of this text, will focus on what has become the quintes-sential characteristic, the cipher, of our times. This characteristic is the ‘crisis’. As we are all familiar with, the past decade(s) have been char-acterized ever more frequently by this word crisis. Crisis is everywhere and everything is in crisis; all types of crisis have been reported, going from political, financial, climatic, social/societal, cultural, intellectual,

1 INTRODUCTION 5

and educational crisis, to even an anthropological crisis. However, crisis is, as we will demonstrate in due course, not just a ‘recent’ phenomenon or qualifier of the times we live in. It was from the very beginning of our modern period considered one of its main features. The focus of our reading will thus be our modern times, understood as times of a crisis which, as we will discover, will have taken on the features of lastingness, of being a ‘perennial crisis’. In fact, as Michel Serres, the French philos-opher and member of the Académie Française, wrote recently in a small booklet on the crisis that struck the Western world some years ago: the current crisis ‘not only touches the financial markets, work and industry, but the whole of society and all of humanity’. Serres goes even so far to claim that what is at stake is ‘the essential relation of humans to the world’ (Serres 2014, Chapter 1, Sect. 2). It seems as if Serres’s friend, the French scholar Bruno Latour, was correct when he denounced, already more than two decades ago, our ‘morose delight in being in per-petual crisis’ (Latour 1993, 114). What if being in a perennial crisis was, however, not some dour glee but a structural feature of modernity?

As can be deduced from the just-mentioned orientation on the con-cept of (perennial) crisis, the Limboic reading we propose will not engage or participate in what can be considered the monotonous or even trite ‘existential’ question regarding a crisis—something which has characterized the recent literature on ‘crisis’. Whether or not there is a crisis is not the question that will be asked in this book. In fact, we con-sider the question regarding the actuality of a crisis or not (something which is almost impossible to ‘objectively’ verify during its course, and which is even afterward difficult to establish once and for all due to its extreme sensitivity to partisanship) as a redundant duality that needs to be surpassed if one wants to take the concept of crisis truly seriously and understand what is at stake in its usage (for too long has this concept been among us for it not to have become suspicious, but this does not seem to be the case). What we intend to do, and this is the quest into which we thus embark in this volume, is to discover whether the bino-mial of the perennial crisis and the concept of Limbo could in some way be related. And if so, in what way and what that could or would mean for the times we are living in.

From all of the preceding comments, it will already be clear that this book is to be considered as containing a rather high dosage of ‘specu-lation’. It does, and some speculations are also rather risky—but maybe for that very reason they are also much more productive than any old


form of cold reasoning. We do realize, however, that this also implies that maybe not all of what we have written will hold up to extremely specialized research. This, however, worries us not too much and is a risk we gladly take. First, because we obviously do hope that most of what we claim will hold (or, at least, be recognizable) and, secondly, because the tidy white-painted sterilized vacuum laboratory room has very little to offer to philosophy anyhow (we highly prefer the dirty wandering cloak [the famous pallium] and knapsack of the philosopher than the white laboratory overcoat).

Limbo Reapplied, then, is divided into three main chapters, each treating one of the three main aspects of this book: Limbo, crisis and its lastingness, and the reading of our modern times. These three chap-ters are, respectively, subdivided into five, four, and three sections. The first Chap. 3, which is dedicated to the concept of Limbo, begins with a brief treatment of Pope Benedict XVI’s (hope of) cancellation of Limbo in 2007. Following this first section, we turn to the past and start by considering Limbo’s pre-Christian genealogy and the discourse on its whereabouts, its geography. This is followed by a more detailed inter-action with some of the main players in the formation of Limbo in Christianity. We start this historical study with Saint Augustine. After the bishop of Hippo come Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory Nazianzen, who are followed by Peter Abelard and Anselm of Canterbury. Starting to come closer to Limbo’s ‘birth’, we treat Albertus Magnus and Alexander of Hales and reach the apex of Limbo’s theorization in the Christian world with Saint Bonaventure of Bagnoregio and Saint Thomas of Aquinas. A study into the nature of Limbo could not be con-sidered complete without a look into some of the poetic interpretations of this intriguing concept. We will fulfill this task by considering Dante Alighieri’s treatment of Limbo in his Divine Comedy and John Milton’s in Paradise Lost. A short detour will also be taken into Ludovico Ariosto’s Paradise on the Moon from his Orlando Furioso. We will con-clude this first chapter by focusing on the necessary requirements (that is, if there are any) to ‘translate’ what we will have discovered in our research on Limbo. Can this discourse on Limbo have any repercussion at all on the understanding of our times, and what is the peculiar nature of the cancellation of Limbo as a region of the afterlife by Pope Benedict XVI with which we began this chapter?

The second main Chap. 4, which deals with the concept of crisis (in its normal as well as in its ‘pimped’ version as a perennial phenomenon),

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starts by offering a first delineation of this concept. Although it has, con-trary to what has been occasionally claimed (cf. Bauman and Bordoni 2014, 3), a negative undertone, the inauguration of a period of crisis or the state of perennial crisis does not imply the arrival of the apocalypse or the (final) catastrophe. For as much as a state of (perennial) crisis should not be considered as the beginning of the end of the world, neither can a crisis simply be argued away as being solely a linguistic activity that pro-duces meaning without ever referring back to an actual state of affairs (second delineation and second part of this chapter). A crisis, even if it can result into something innocuous or totally irrelevant post-factum, should always be taken seriously as a crisis, even the mere linguistically produced crisis. Having reached this ‘middle ground’ in our position regarding the crisis, we then go on to study the history and etymology of the concept of crisis. We will consider the medical, theological, and polit-ical understandings and applications of the concept. This will bring us to realize that the nature of a crisis lies in its time-space structure. If we thus really intend to understand this concept and how it operates, we need to study how its temporality and spatiality function. This realization and study, of which consists the final section of the second chapter, will be concluded by the full disclosure of the effects of the addition of the qual-ifier of ‘perennial’ to both the spatial and temporal structures of a crisis.

Having discovered the fundamental quality of both the temporal and spatial structuring of the perennial crisis’s operation, the third main Chap. 5, begins with an investigation into the deployment of modernity’s time. More precisely, what has been described as the main temporal characteristic of modernity, namely ‘acceleration’, will be studied. We will turn to Hartmut Rosa’s quintessential study on the theory of accel-eration: Social Acceleration (Rosa 2015). The second section will, logi-cally, concentrate on modernity’s particular spatial organization. Marshall McLuhan’s theorization of the ‘global village’ will function as the start-ing point of our investigation. This will be followed by a close reading of a discussion between Alain Badiou and Jean-Luc Nancy on the (crea-tion of the) world. The chapter, and the argumentative part of this book, ends with the unification (the summarizing) of the results from the two preceding sections on modernity’s time and space deployment and its confrontation with both the structural aspects of the perennial crisis and the operationality of the Limbo discourse that resulted from the research of, respectively, the two previous chapters.

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The book comes to an end with some meditation on the possible road(s) to embark upon when faced with the reached conclusions. These will only be meditations, not solutions or answers—we are, in fact, not convinced that somebody who has identified a problem should also always already propose a solution to that problem (at times, discovering a prob-lem is much more ‘valuable’ than any possible solution could ever be). The Portuguese Nobel laureate, José Saramago will be our main interlocutor in our Extraduction Chap. 6.

Two final considerations before we can start our investigation into our crisis-ridden Limboic world. First, the main body of the text is at times interrupted by either cursive text that stands in-between two asterisks (*) or plain written text in-between —O.D.—. The cursive text in-between asterisks consists of minor further elucidations of the text directly preced-ing the interruption. The text that is englobed by —O.D.— with O.D. standing for Obiter Dictum—which is a legal or judicial term that literally means ‘by the way’—regards more general reasoning and argumentation about the argument of the text in general. We consider these interrup-tions important as they can help the reader to understand some elements of the thinking process that would otherwise have been left hidden, underneath the words themselves.

Second, our reverting to the concept of Limbo has one more meaning than the one we described at the beginning of this introduction. In fact, not only do we think that a renewed taking up of the discourse of Limbo can help us in reading the ‘signs of our times’, but it also allows us to be actively part in an attempt to ‘re-enchant’ the world a little. Time has come to understand that the disenchanted world—which is basically nothing more than a myth, as has been demonstrated so accurately, most recently, by Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm (2017)1—is but a sad, mono-lithic and monotone (yes, very much like Limbo) world. It is time to

1 Josephson-Storm is obviously not the first, nor will he hopefully be the last to denounce the myth of the disenchantment of the world by means of modern science. Already C. S. Lewis in his The Abolition of Man (2009), to give just one example, clearly reveals that ‘something … unites magic and applied science’ (Lewis 2009, 77), and although it ‘might be going too far to say that the modern scientific movement was tainted from its birth:… it was born in an unhealthy neighbourhood and at an inauspicious hour’ (Lewis 2009, 78), only the ‘fatal serialism of the modern imagination’ (Lewis 2009, 79) can convince itself of the falseness of this fact.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78913-2_6

1 INTRODUCTION 9

overcome the repetitive and single-sided representation of the world in favor, once more, of a more enchanted and vibrant one. And although the Limboic world we will paint in the coming pages has a rather sharp negative undertone (enchanting is by no means obligatorily a positive operation), it constitutes a (good) start.

references

Agamben, G. (2011). The Kingdom and the Glory. For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Agamben, G. (2016). Che cos’è la filosofia? Macerata: Quodlibet.Arendt, H. (1973). The Origins of Totalitarianism. San Diego and New York:

Harvest Book.Bauman, Z., & Bordoni, C. (2014). State of Crisis. Cambridge and Malden:

Polity Press.Capps, D., & Carlin, N. (Eds.). (2010). Living in Limbo: Life in the Midst of

Uncertainty. Eugene: Cascade Books.Graham, G. (2003). Evil and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.Josephson-Storm, J. Ā. (2017). The Myth of Disenchantment. Magic, Modernity,

and the Birth of the Human Sciences. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Latour, B. (1993). We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Lewis, C. S. (2009). The Abolition of Man: Or Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools. New York: HarperCollins. Kindle edition.

Rosa, H. (2015). Social Acceleration. A New Theory of Modernity. New York and Chichester: Columbia University Press.

Serres, M. (2014). Times of Crisis. What the Financial Crisis Revealed and How to Reinvent Out Lives and Future. New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Sontag, S. (1978). Illness as Metaphor. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

11

We probably all have a vague understanding of the meaning of the word ‘Limbo’. For some, I am aware, the term is solely related to a type of exotic ‘dance’ from the West Indies (Trinidad, to be more precise) which requires people to bend backward to pass under some sort of bar which is continuously lowered to make the exploit of passing under that stick ever more complicated (after which a whole lot of shouting and scream-ing needs to emphasize the joy in having overcome this arduous task). For those who know that Limbo is more than just a dance (and related song from the sixties), they probably are aware that it is a region in the afterlife/afterworld, mainly in Roman Catholic Theology. They probably also know the saying ‘being cast into Limbo’ means being cast into a state of undecidedness or in some state of oblivion. When one has been cast in Limbo, one has been cast aside and there is darn little hope of some sort of help coming at any foreseeable moment.1

In order to get a better take on what is at stake in the concept of Limbo, it is interesting to start by looking at some images that have vis-ually reproduced what the Limbo that stands at the center of this text is about. We will start with a medieval fresco after which a contemporary take on Limbo will be proposed. Describing the more important aspects

CHAPTER 2

Visual Anteprima


1Limbo, the dance, does seem to have a distant relation with the afterlife as well. At least according to http://www.tntisland.com/limbo.html, the Limmm-Bó was originally a ritual dance performed at wakes or funeral ceremonies. We have not found any confirmation of this fact.

http://www.tntisland.com/limbo.html



of these pictorial takes on Limbo will be our first move, after which these aspects will be discussed and interpreted. This first take on Limbo will already allow us to start considering Limbo as a good candidate to offer a new and intriguing understanding of our current precarious contem-porary state of affairs which is ever more often described as a ‘perennial crisis’. Without anticipating too much, let us, however, immediately turn to the first image we will study.

In the Florentine museum complex named Santa Maria Novella, on the right side of the ‘Chiostro dei morti’, you can find the Cappella Spagnolo (sometimes also called the Cappellone degli Spagnuoli or just simply the Chapter House), the Spanish Chapel with an impressive fresco by the Italian artist Andrea di Bonaiuto entitled Salita al Calvario, Crocefissione e Discesa al Limbo (The Ascent to Calvary, Crucifixion, and Descent into Limbo).2 This rather unique and grandiose fresco, which can hardly be rendered justice to by any photographic representation, depicts what are known as three of the more salient moments of Christ’s Passion. Not subject to the rules of perspective—they would only come to rule the world of painting centuries later—which makes the first moments of observation somewhat awkward, the fresco stands out by the vibrant colors used and the attention for detail that di Bonaiuto has been able to produce with the little time at disposition—he was given only two years (1365–1367) to paint the entire chapel. Most remarkable, however, is the wide and varied presence of Biblical symbology which we need to consider a bit more in detail (Image 2.1).

As mentioned, the main fresco at the back wall of the chapel (the only one that is of interest to us) depicts three scenes of Christ’s Passion. The first, at the lower left side of the arch-shaped fresco, depicts Christ, who has just exited one of the gates of the fortified city of Jerusalem, ascending to the place where he will be crucified: Golgotha, the place of (the) skull as all the evangelists define it (Mt 27:33; Mk 15:22; Lk 23:33; Jn 19:17), or, as Golgotha has also been named (translated?—both concepts refer to

2 There is very little Spanish about this chapel. The only reference or link to the Iberian Peninsula is the fact that this chapel was used by Eleanor of Toledo, her retinue, and other members of the flourishing Spanish colony in Florence. A further and more distant ‘Spanish connection’ is the fact that the chapel was also used for several important gen-eral chapters of the Dominican Order (which, as is known, was founded by the Spaniard Domenico de Guzmán). di Bonaiuto’s Salita al Calvario, Crocefissione e Discesa al Limbo is, in fact, accompanied, as a reminder of this, by two fresco’s that depict Dominican scenarios.

2 VISUAL ANTEPRIMA 13

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the kranion), Calvary. At the center of this first scene, we discover Christ still personally bearing his cross—there seems to be no trace of Simon the Cyrenian who was obliged to help Christ carry his cross up the hill. Christ is followed by Mary (characteristically dressed in blue) and another woman, who is probably Mary from Magdala, and a (young) male closely follow Christ’s mother. The young male, who has his hands folded as in prayer, is probably the disciple who Jesus will ‘assign’ to his own mother when already on the cross (cf. Jn 19:26). All three can be clearly distinguished as their head is surrounded, just like Jesus’, by what is known as a halo—‘the [absolutely in-essential] supplement added to perfection’ (Agamben 1993, 54) as Giorgio Agamben interestingly explains Saint Thomas’s discussion on halo’s. A lot of other characters are present in this first scene: Roman soldiers and other inhabitants of Jerusalem, but no other member of the first group of Christ’s first followers seems to be present.

The largest section of the fresco, the top and rounded part of the arch, depicts Christ’s crucifixion. Jesus, who can be seen at the center, is depicted on the cross and is surrounded by angels (also all of the angels have halo’s). Following the gospels, he is surrounded by the two crimi-nals or revolutionaries (depending on what gospel) who were crucified together with him. di Bonaiuto seems to have followed the Gospel of Luke (23:39–43) on this occasion, as it is evident that one of the criminals is saved while the other is damned (in none of the other three gospels are the criminals/revolutionaries qualified—they are simply the one on the left and the one on the right, and, according to the Gospel of Matthew (27:44), both kept on abusing him in a similar way as the crowd). The criminal on his right has a little devil with some sort of spear sitting on his cross. Clearly, he is waiting to capture the criminal’s soul which will then be placed in the container the three other devils are holding nearby. Below, on the left of this criminal there is a soldier dressed in black who has a blunt object in both his hands. He is in the act of breaking the crimi-nal’s legs as John tells in his Gospel (Jn 19:31–32). Death would thus come sooner, and the bodies would not remain hanging on the solemn day of the Sabbath. The criminal/revolutionary on his left has a small group of six angels waiting close by and, contrary to the non-repented criminal/rev-olutionary on Christ’s right, has a halo as well. He will, as Christ will soon promise to him, travel with him to the hereafter and be saved.

di Bonaiuto has also depicted a huge crowd. This crowd consists of various soldiers, Jewish scribes and priests, and ordinary spectators that had gathered on Golgotha to assist the spectacle of the multiple cru-cifixions. Some of these bystanders can also be clearly identified. For


example, the Centurion from, once more, the Gospel of Luke (23:47)—Matthew tells the same story (Mt 27:54)—who realized that Christ was innocent and did not deserve to die on the cross, can be seen directly below Christ on the left (he is dressed in black as the bone-breaking sol-diers and seated on a white horse; he too has a halo). Below him we see the bystander responsible for not clenching Christ’s thirst as he gave him wine mixed with gall (Mt 27:34). The sponge is still sticking on his spear and in his other hand is the pitcher with the ‘corrected’ wine (Mark tells the story a little bit different (cf. Mk 15:23); in fact, for Mark the wine was not mixed with gall but with myrrh, making it as such into some sort of narcotic that would have helped Christ against the blunt pain). Another familiar scene has been depicted on the extreme right of the fresco. Four soldiers are discussing what to do with Christ’s tunic ‘which was seamless, woven in one piece from the top down’ (Jn 19:23)— a similar account is given in the Gospel of Mark (15:25) and the Gospel of Luke (23:34). In the very front of this main section of the fresco, on the immediate right of Christ, we can individuate (most probably) the Gospel character known as Joseph of Arimathea (he is sitting on a black horse). This ‘distinguished member of the council’ (Mk 15:43), as Mark describes him, who was most probably a secret disciple of Christ, had obtained from Pilate (the Roman prefect of the province of Judaea) the possibility to bury Christ. Joseph too has a halo surrounding his head. Maybe he is looking at who could be Nicodemus (sitting on a red-brown horse holding something in his right hand) who, according to the Gospel of John (Jn 19:39), brought myrrh (it could perfectly be that what this character behind Joseph is holding in his right hand are myrrh branches) and helped Joseph take Jesus down from the cross when dusk sets in. Finally, at the front of the scene, at the left, there is a small group of people that stand out because of the fact that all of them have halo’s. Andrea di Bonaiuto seems to have wanted to play it safe, and instead of choosing one gospel version, he simply assembled all the possible disci-ples together who have been told as being present in the various gos-pels (this could explain the fact that the group consists of six people and not the three or four as generally recounted). The Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Mark, and the Gospel of John name the group of faithful at the site of the cross, but in all three versions the group consists of differ-ent people. Matthew says that ‘Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and John, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee’ (Mt 27:56) were present; Mark claims that ‘Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of the younger James and of Joses, and Salome’ (Mk 15:40) were present;


and John claims that ‘his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala’ where there together with the ‘disci-ple… whom he loved’ (Jn 19:25–26)—it is not clear if Jesus’s mother’s sister is to be identified with Mary the wife of Clopas or whether this regards two different women.

For as much as recognizing familiar gospel presences is of inter-est, what is of primary importance to this book is the third scene pres-ent on this fresco. In fact, at the bottom right of the arch, Andrea di Bonaiuto has painted Christ’s descent into Limbo. Before we ven-ture into a discussion of this third scene of di Bonaiuto’s fresco, a cou-ple of words are necessary to explain this descent and its historical and religious sources. First of all, it needs to be said that Christ’s descent into Limbo originates as Christ’s descent into Hell. In the original ver-sions of the descent, the place where Christ went to was Hell and not Limbo (the concept of Limbo, as we will see, will emerge at the end of the twelfth century). Secondly, once the place in the afterlife into which Christ descended became Limbo, Christ’s descent always just consisted into that specific Limbo known as the ‘Limbo of the Fathers’ (at times also known as the ‘Limbo of the Just’). Never has any mention been made of Christ descending into the other Limbo known as the ‘Limbo of the (unbaptized) children’ (I will return to this differentiation in the next section). Thirdly, according to certain traditions, the place occu-pied by the Fathers before it became the Limbo of the Fathers was not Hell, but the so-called bosom of Abraham to which Luke alludes in his Gospel: ‘When the poor man died, he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried’ (Lk 16:22). Although the transformation of Abraham’s bosom into the Limbo of the Fathers is not to be ignored, our main focus will not be on this process of transformation.

Saint Paul is historically the first to mention the possibility of this descent. He writes, for example, in his letter which has become known as the Letter to the Ephesians (Paul had actually spent time in this community and so the very formal tone of the letter and the absence of any sort of greeting in the beginning of the letter can make one doubt that this com-munity was actually the addressee of the letter—or even that Paul in person did write the letter): ‘[W]hat does ‘he ascended’ mean except that he also descended into the lower (regions) of the earth’ (Eph 4:9). Paul had already hinted at this event in his earlier Letter to the Romans where he wrote: ‘But the righteousness that comes from faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will go up into heaven?’ (that is, to bring Christ


down) or ‘Who will go down into the abyss?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead)”’(Rom 10:6–7). A much more easily understandable ref-erence to Christ’s descent into Hell is found in the Gospel of Matthew: ‘Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights’ (Mt 12:40). Occasionally also the rather enigmatic sentence that Christ also ‘went to preach to the souls in prison’ (1 Pet 3:19) from the First letter of Peter is understood as a reference to this descent into Hell. There is, however, hardly unanimity among New Testament scholars on this account. Also an event told in the Acts of the Apostles has, at times, been invoked as a fortification of this descent-theory. It regards a reference to an otherwise unconfirmed prophesy attributed to King David who had foreseen Christ’s resurrection: ‘He foresaw and spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, that neither was he abandoned to the netherworld nor did his flesh see corruption. God raised this Jesus; of this we are all wit-nesses’ (Acts 2:31–32). Friedrich Loofs, somewhat speculatively, also sees in another couple of Matthew’s lines ‘an incomplete and coarse reminis-cence of the descent-story’ (Loofs 1908, 299). These verses go as follows: ‘[A]nd behold, the veil of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth quaked, rocks were split, tombs were opened, and the bodies of many saints who had fallen asleep were raised. And coming forth from their tombs after his resurrection, they entered the holy city and appeared to many’ (Mt 27:51–53). The New Testament is, however, not the only source for possible references to Christ’s descent into Hell/Limbo. In fact, those who have (occasionally) participated in Western Christian reli-gious services might be familiar with the phrases of what is known as the Apostle’s Creed, a liturgical statement of one’s belief first mentioned at the end of the fourth century. The recitation of the Creed goes as follows: ‘I believe in God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. Under Pontius Pilate he was cru-cified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again. …’ (Catechism, Part 1, Sect. 1, Chapter 3, Art. 2, The Credo—emphasis added).3 It has to be said, however, that the idea of the descent was not present in the first versions of the Creed.

Let us now turn to the third section of Andrea di Bonaiuto’s fresco that deals with Christ’s descent into Limbo and discover the different elements present in this last scene (Image 2.2).

3 Available: http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P13.HTM.

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P13.HTM


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At a first glance, we can immediately notice, while considering the general construction of the two regions of the afterlife that are depicted, that the Limbo-region, although separated by what seems like a wall of rocks, is indeed at the very edge, the border, of Hell. Devils are standing and are even inserted in the rock-wall that separates Limbo from Hell. The four devils that are standing at the threshold of Hell (the darkest one is actually hiding in a little niche in the dividing wall between Limbo and Hell) can be recognized, considering their color (black, red, white, and yellowish-pale), as the four ‘horsemen’ of the apocalypse. At the extreme right of the fresco, appearing from another tiny niche, a single inhabitant of Hell can be seen as well (he seems to be being eaten by a horned creature and nibbled upon by some kind of feral in his face). If we are to believe Dante, this sole figure is probably Judas who is embed-ded in Satan himself and perpetually being chewed upon and scratched with Satan’s scraping claws (cf. Dante 1996, XXXIV, 55–63; 537).

Focusing our attention exclusively on Limbo now, we can discover, returning once more to a theme upon which we have already insisted, that all the inhabitants of Limbo have halos. In the other two scenes we already discussed, the halos were only present with Jesus, his mother Mary and Mary of Magdala, and with those that he forgave or that understood who he truly was. The halo was, in fact, the way, and not just in Christian iconography, of rendering explicit the sacred or holy nature of the persons embraced by the circular light that is oft under-stood as representing God’s divine grace that suffuses the soul of sanc-tity (one recalls Saint Thomas’s supplement of the already perfect, from a couple of paragraphs ago). All the Fathers—and, to be honest, also some Mothers—whether they be patriarchs, prophets, or Greek phi-losophers, or simply just, are surrounded by the halo. The halo is also the reason why, contrary to the complete black darkness in Hell, there is some light in Limbo. Albertus Magnus, who was the first to make a distinction between the two Limbos (one for the Fathers and one for the unbaptized dead infants), already mentioned that, although the limbus sanctorum patrum was characterized by darkness, it did have some light because of the great faith of the inhabitants there.

Besides Limbo and the entrance to Hell, this third section of di Bonaiuto’s fresco has another important visual part as well, namely the one that portrays a victorious Christ. When considering this section a bit more closely, we can quite easily notice—but maybe in inverted order—that Christ is standing on top of a door that was violently pulled open (the sign of Christ’s triumph is rendered more explicit by his carrying


the banner of victory, that features a red cross over a white background). The strength with which Christ must have forcefully opened the gates of the border of Hell that Limbo is, must have been extreme as even the brickwork that stood as protection came completely down on one side. Some kind of creature, a devil holding a key, is trapped under the door mounted by Jesus. Christ’s victorious towering on top of Hell’s gate is a very important aspect of the iconography related to Limbo as it is pres-ent in almost all the versions of the descents into Limbo painted in these centuries. One thinketh, for example, of Fra Angelico’s or Benvenuto di Giovanni’s Christ in Limbo (in Fra Angelico’s case the door is even made out of iron), Hieronymus Bosch’s and Duccio di Buoninsegna’s homonymous Christ in Limbo, Bartolomé Bermejo’s Descent of Christ into Limbo, Jacopo Bellini’s Christ’s Descent into Limbo, Gerolamo di Romano’s Descent of Christ to Limbo, and so many more. There are obvi-ously examples of ‘descents’ where Christ is not standing on top a door he has Himself violently opened (Domenico Beccafumi Christ in Limbo is one example, and the depicted Descent into Limbo that can be found in Berlin’s Marienkirche is another one), but these examples are very few.

------------------------------------- ---O.D.----------------------------------------

Di Bonaiuto’s Descent is, like most of the medieval figurative reproduc-tions of, and literary references to, this theme and event (highly) influ-enced not only by the gospels, but especially by a text from (most probably) the fourth or the sixth century. The text is the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus (2003),4 also known as The Acts of Pontius Pilate.5 This ‘gos-pel’ is of interest to our project in a revelatory way—especially the sec-ond section known as the Descensus Christi ad infernos (Chapters 17–27), which recounts of Christ’s descent into Hell—so it seems propaedeutic to hold still with it for a while in this introducing section.

4 In what follows we will refer to the Gospel of Nicodemus in the following way (GN date, chapter paragraph; page of the edition of Schneemelcher’s volume I used).

5 As the historian Friedrich Loofs accurately remarked: ‘[T]here can be no doubt that the fancy of the medieval painters and theologians arose from the so-called “Gospel of Nicodemus”, an apocryphon perhaps of the fourth century which was widespread in the Middle Ages’ (Loofs 1908, 292). Furthermore, as Hack Chin Kim states: ‘[T]he influence of the Gospel of Nicodemus in general and of the Descensus story in particular on medieval belief, on medieval art of every kind, and above all on medieval literature was so great that it cannot be easily summarized’ (Kim 1973, 7).


According to the words of Zbigniew Izydorczyk, who edited the impressive collection of essays that treat the medieval legacy of this apoc-ryphal gospel (Izydorczyk 1997), the Gospel of Nicodemus is one of ‘the most successful and culturally pregnant among the daring narratives’ (Izydorczyk 1997, 1) that focus on Christ’s Passion. That this text is not only daring but also intriguing—notwithstanding its acknowledged apoc-ryphalness—can be highlighted by revealing the authority it once pos-sessed6 in the last centuries of the first millennium and during the first centuries of the second millennium. Even Albertus Magnus—who must have known of it absolutely not being a canonical gospel story—made frequent references to it alongside nothing else but Scripture and the Apostles’ Creed (cf. Beiting 2004, 494). Let us thus have a look at this Apocrypha.

The gospel begins not with Christ’s birth or his angelical concep-tion, but with the Jewish high priests and scribes, and their arrival before the court of Pilate asking him to condemn Jesus to death. This event (recounted with much more detail than in any of the canonical gospels), is followed, first, by the saving of Barabbas and then by the Passion itself. The last two parts are very similar to (and probably based on) the four canonical gospels. One of the few differences is that in this gospel Joseph of Arimathea is captured and thrown into jail for having buried Jesus—he then miraculously escapes and returns to Arimathea. When the word of Jesus’ resurrection starts to spread, the high priests and scribes imme-diately sent out scouts to track him down. They, however, fail in their search but do find Joseph who they bring in. Joseph tells them of his escape from prison by means of the hand of a risen Christ and reveals that not only did he, Christ, rise, but he also raised many others from the dead. Two of whom (Leucius and Carinus, the sons of the former high priest Simeon, who had circumcised little Jesus decades before), so Joseph reveals, could be found in the same town of Arimathea. It will be the story of these two brothers that will form the main narrative of Christ’s descent and harrowing of Hell in GN.

6 In this sense, it is similar to the mid-second century text known as The Shepherd of Hermas. This text, just like the Gospel of Nicodemus, was once accredited as highly author-itative—it was actually present in one of the first versions of the list of canonical books that would end up constituting the official New Testament—but then almost vanished into complete forgetfulness.


Simeon’s two sons start by revealing that they were in the darkness of Hades (in Hell, Hades here is understood as the personification of the ‘prince’ or proprietor of Hell) and they were there with ‘all who have died since the beginning of the world’ (GN 2003, XVIII, 1; 522). Among those present in that realm of the afterlife were Abraham, the patriarchs and the prophets. From this latter group, Isaiah and John the Baptist are the only ones mentioned in this first part of the story, and King David is the only patriarch mentioned (cf. GN 2003, XXI, 2; 524). Adam, the first man, was there as well with his son Seth. The two proph-ets thus reveal how they foretold that which was taking place, namely the coming of a stark light, strong as the sun, that was the Son of the Father. Seth too reveals how an angel had announced him Christ’s descend into Hell and subsequent savior of those present.

The joy of the patriarchs and the prophets seems to be contagious as also Satan is joyous—Satan has not yet evolved in GN to the all-power-ful character he would become in the high Middle Ages, here he is still somewhat of a lesser demon who needs to give accounting to Hades. We find Satan, in fact, in the coming section bragging to Hades how he had finally been victorious over Jesus, who proclaimed to be the Son of God. He, in fact, had been able to put him to death with the help of the Jews. This Jesus character had caused Satan a lot of grief when he was still among the living. Now, however, he was dead and on his way to Hades just as all the other simple mortal beings. Satan thus spurs Hades to secure Jesus and not let him slip away. Hades is not so convinced of Satan’s move to kill Jesus. In fact, not so long ago Hades had a certain Lazarus among those who dwelled in his sad place, but by a mere word from this Jesus did he, Hades, lose all powers over Lazarus. So Hades pleads with Satan not to let Jesus descend into Hell.

But it was already too late. The first calls to open the gates of Hell were already heard. Hades thus gathers his demons to ‘[M]ake fast well and strongly the gates of brass and the bars of iron, and hold my locks, and stand upright and watch every point. For if he comes in, woe will seize us’ (GN 2003, XXI, 1; 524). As the story of the two brothers continues, shortly after the demands to open the gates resounded for the second time, ‘the gates of brass were broken in pieces and the bars of iron were crushed and all the dead who were bound were loosed from their chains, and we with them. And the King of glory entered in like a man, and all the dark places of Hades were


illumined’ (GN 2003, XXI, 3; 524). Before Jesus frees the Fathers, starting with Adam, he seizes Satan and delivers him to Hades who reveals his future as full of punishment and pain. Satan is thus confined to the lowest of the regions of Hades, and it is here that the nature of Hell (it being a place of eternal punishment and pain) comes clearly to the fore. The idea of confining Satan to a region of Hades is one of the first implicit affirmations of there being various regions in Hell, one where there is no punishment and one where punishment would be present.

The story continues revealing how Jesus blessed Adam with the sign of the cross, after which he did this to ‘the patriarchs and prophets and martyrs and forefathers, and he took them and leaped up out of Hades’ (GN 2003, XXIV, 2; 525). Upon their entrance into Paradise, they encounter two old men who had already been saved (Enoch and Elijah the Tishbite) and the good thief who had been crucified together with Christ. As such the story ends. The two brothers con-clude that—after they, together with all the others that had been saved by Christ from Hell, had been baptized in the river Jordan—their mis-sion had been to reveal Christ’s resurrection which could now be con-sidered concluded. Upon this they vanish, and the Gospel of Nicodemus abruptly ends.

Although GN contains some highly fantastic elements and mate-rial, it has to be admitted that it is far less fabulous than many other Apocrypha. Furthermore, the whole story is put in a coherent narrative whole—also something which is not always the case with other similar ‘narratives’. The addition of particularly pregnant scenic imagery did nothing but add to its already existing attraction. The violent bursting of the gate to Hell and the trampling of the devil, as we already discovered, were like manna falling from the sky for all those who desired some-what more extravagant elements to put in a homily, a play for Easter, or an artistic representation—all means that were far more important and effective in communicating the Christian faith to the common man than any book could do at that time. And in the end, and notwithstanding its imaginative elements and aspects, it has to be admitted, GN consists of clean orthodox narrative material—Kim goes even so far as to claim that it was actually composed to complete and document that which was already present in the Creed (Kim 1973, 2). It should, thus, not surprise


that GN had the fortune it had, and the fresco of Andrea di Bonaiuto we have been studying up until now is a clear sign and proof of this fortune.

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Returning to di Bonaiuto’s Descent into Limbo, some further char-acteristics of the fresco could be highlighted. They would, however, only be but minor ones. It might be more interesting to confront di Bonaiuto’s Descent with a much more recent artwork, namely the homo-nym work Descent into limbo by the British artist, sir Anish Kapoor. This ‘installation’ dating from 1992 is of importance for our visual under-standing as it can be considered as having stripped Limbo down to its essential parts. Only the most essential elements have remained, and they underscore the importance of the aspects we have already men-tioned. Before we look at Kapoor’s installation or sculpture (a symbol-ically not to be misunderstood 6 × 6 × 6 m stucco and concrete cube [cage/box] first shown at Kassel’s Documenta IX of 1992), two minor comments need to be made on the fact that Kapoor dedicated an art-work to the idea of (Christ’s) descent into Limbo, a topic that was ‘en vogue’ in the Middle Ages but not in 1992. First, if we are to believe Marshall McLuhan’s statement that artists ‘know that they are engaged in making live models of situations that have not yet matured in the soci-ety at large…In their artistic play, they discover what is actually happen-ing’ (McLuhan 1994, 243), then Kapoor, who has always been working around the central issues of space and emptiness, did seem to find in his Descent a very spatial contemporary aspect at work. Secondly, and as will become fundamental in the chapters that will follow, it is essential to real-ize that Kapoor sees in the series of work to which his Descent belongs a thorough examination of ‘that condition that seems to be abidingly static and at the same time dynamic’.7 This condition that Kapoor attempted to put in his sculpture will be the returning condition of what we will call the contemporary operativity of, on the one hand, acceleration and deceleration/rigidification and, on the other, expansion and contraction. Without wanting to run too much ahead of ourselves, let us have a look at Kapoor’s take on the Descent into Limbo (Images 2.3 and 2.4).

7 For the reference of Kapoor, see the very conspicuous observations reported by Homi Bhaba in his ‘The True Sign of Emptiness’. Available: http://anishkapoor.com/185/mak-ing-emptiness-by-homi-k-bhabha; last accessed September 2, 1997.

http://anishkapoor.com/185/making-emptiness-by-homi-k-bhabha

http://anishkapoor.com/185/making-emptiness-by-homi-k-bhabha


At first glance, one might think to be confronted with a simple, appo-sitely badly painted, cubical structure with a black circle in the mid-dle. However, upon a closer look, a lot of aspects that were present in di Bonaiuto’s fresco are present in Kapoor’s installation as well, albeit in a more abstracted way. We could start with what I have just dubbed the ‘appositely badly painted walls’. Kapoor did not put much attention in painting the walls immaculately white. It is not a shining white, and some of the coloring has come off. Even though this might just be a coincidence, the bleak white, at moments turning into gray (muffled old-ness), does seem to be in continuance with di Bonaiuto’s fresco where

Image 2.3 Anish Kapoor, Descent into Limbo, 1992, © 2017, ProLitteris, Zurich


it is very clear that there is some light on the walls of Limbo—espe-cially compared to the complete and utter blackness of Hell (both of the neighboring cave in di Bonaiuto’s mural and in Kapoor’s circle in the middle of the floor)—produced, as we saw, by the halos of the patriarchs, prophets, and just.

Secondly, one also immediately notices the presence of the door—a characteristic, the violently opened door, which was discovered to be present in almost all of the medieval representations of Christ’s descent into Limbo. True, in Kapoor’s installation the door is not violently opened, nor is there a Christ figure standing on top of the remnants of

Image 2.4 Anish Kapoor, Descent into Limbo, 1992, © 2017, ProLitteris, Zurich


a door that has been pulled out, but, at least to us, this hardly seems detrimental in stressing the importance of the presence of a door also in Kapoor’s work (there could simply have been some kind of opening).

Thirdly, and something which we indicated only sideways, the abstracted and emptied space created by Kapoor allows us to understand the importance of the walled space that Limbo represents. Already in di Bonaiuto’s fresco, we discovered how Limbo consisted of a clearly cir-cumscribed space. Whereas we then only insisted on this as function-ing as a separation from the limit of Hell, by taking into consideration Kapoor’s four walls, we can understand how its character of limit should not overshadow its being a walled space, that is, a space that is clearly and accurately confined.

*

That the religious(/geographical) concept of Limbo is related to walls and doors/gates should not surprise. Walls and doors/gates are important in reli-gious traditions (especially the Christian religious tradition to which the con-cept of Limbo belongs). A manifold of prophecies are dedicated to walls and gates and even half of a book of the Old Testament is dedicated to the con-struction of the walls and gates of Jerusalem. The book in question is the sec-ond volume of the last four books of the Hebrew canon, namely the book of Nehemiah. Nehemiah lived in the period known as the Restauration which followed the period of the Babylonian exile. He was a man of importance as he is defined as the ‘cupbearer’ of the King (of Persia). Upon hearing about the state of Jerusalem—the ‘wall of Jerusalem lies breached, and its gates have been gutted with fire’ (Neh 1:3)—Nehemiah became utterly depressed and wept and ‘continued mourning for several days’ (Neh 1:4). After having asked the permission of the Persian King Artaxerxes, he is appointed governor in the land of Judah (Neh 5:14) and sets out to rebuild the wall and restore the gates so that ‘we may no longer be an object of derision’ (Neh 2:17). But (avoiding) derision is not the sole purpose nor meaning of the rebuilding of the wall and gates of the Holy city. The crumbled and breached wall and the burnt gates are not only signs of the political defeat and exile (of—a lack of—military power). They represent, first and foremost, the breach in the protec-tion of God (which caused the exile). The walls and gates express a theological power. As the prophet Isaiah already clearly proclaimed: ‘You shall call your walls “Salvation” and your gates “Praise”’(Is 60:18). Just like the Temple is the dwelling place of the Lord, the wall and its gates, their standing tall or being destroyed, respectively mean the faithfulness (and salvation and protec-tion) or the unfaithfulness (punishment and destruction) of the chosen people.


*Kapoor’s depiction of (the entrance to) Hell as the black blotted circle

in the middle of the confined space of Limbo also finds a parallel in di Bonaiuto’s cave-like entrance to Hell. But whereas di Bonaiuto’s work seems to allow the speculation that also Hell seems to be a walled sur-rounding, Kapoor allows us to understand that what lies below is only unconfined and vast plains of torture. Hell and Heaven, in fact, don’t have walls. Limbo, on the contrary, has walls. Limbo is the enclosed and walled surrounding in the afterlife by antonomasia.8

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The presence of walls, brass gates, bars of iron, and bolted doors gives us a first indication that a possible reading of Limbo as applicable to our contemporary times can be considered as not totally out of place. Contemporary political debates and promises of walls, even the actual and physical construction of walls in multiple countries all over the world, as well as the reintroducing of closed, locked by frontier, doors/gates, and iron fences do seem to allow a similar reading.9 This, how-ever, not only seems to be the case for temporal reasons, but even for structural ones. In fact, already Rousseau (one of the founding Fathers of social contract theory—which is still our governing political para-digm) phrased the relationship between politics and enclosing in the well-known phrase at the beginning of his Discourse on Inequality: ‘[T]he

8 This difference between Limbo (confined) and Heaven and Hell (vast and unconfined) will return later in this book (Sect. 5.3) under a different guise. Heaven and Hell will be considered as eternal while Limbo will result as being endless.

9 Although talking about war (state appropriated war machines, as Deleuze and Guattari would specify) and not ordinary day politics—but what is the difference? Isn’t there a par-ticularly close, in the understanding of extension, relationship between war and politics as Foucault already claimed through his inversion of general von Clausewitz’s saying that ‘[W]ar is nothing but the continuation of policy (politics) with other means’ (Clausewitz 2007, 7) into ‘politics is the continuation of war by other means’ (Foucault 2003, 15)—it seems that the late Zygmunt Bauman was not very prophetic when he wrote that what was really at stake in contemporary new war is ‘not the conquest of a new territory, but crush-ing the walls which stopped the flow of new, fluid global powers; beating out the enemy’s head the desire to set up his own rules, and so opening up the so-far barricaded and walled-off, inaccessible space …’ (Bauman 2000, 12).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78913-2_5


first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, to whom it occurred to say this is mine, and found people sufficiently simple to believe him, was the true founder of civil society’ (Rousseau 2003, 161). So accord-ing to Rousseau, a courageous imperialist and some simpletons was all that it took to start (our) society. For as much as Rousseau’s affirma-tion might seem nothing but a provocation, his idea is, centuries later, still re-proposed. Enclosure is also for Carl Schmitt, for example, still one of the founding stones of society. We can thus read in his Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum, that ‘land appropriation is the primary legal title that underlies all subsequent law’ (Schmitt 2006, 47). Schmitt goes even further and states that land enclosure and appropriation is ‘the reproductive root in the normative order of history’ (Schmitt 2006, 48).

But putting up iron fences, building walls, and having bolted gates do not only have the constitutive powers that inaugurate civil society.10 Our contemporary walls and locked (frontier) doors/gates signify something else as well—something that seems to be rather specific to our times. In fact, besides being—walls and gates that is—clothed with constitu-tive powers and, as the book of Nehemiah revealed, being a theologi-cal remainder (and reminder), walls are, as Wendy Brown so accurately observes, ‘icons of erosion’ to the weakened (nation) state and its sover-eignty (Brown 2010, 24). In fact, while walls are constructed under the heralds of resolving certain issues (violence, crime, uncontrolled and ille-gal immigration, etc.) the walls actually intensify these issues—“[M]ore than simply failing, however, walls often compound the problems they putatively address” (Brown 2010, 112). Or, said differently, the walls ‘do not merely border, but invent the societies they limn’ (Brown 2010, 90). Zygmunt Bauman argues similarly when he writes in his Liquid Modernity, a book that will feature numerous times in the pages that follow, that ‘borders do not acknowledge and register the already exist-ing estrangement’ but they actually create the estrangement: they ‘are drawn, as a rule, before the estrangement is brought about’ (Bauman 2000, 177).

10 These walls and fences don’t even have to be actual walls or fences as Edward Said has rendered evident. Peoples will have or create a certain number of territorial boundaries that will function as means of separation between ‘us’ and ‘them’. This is what Said named ‘imaginative geography’ (cf. Said 1979, 54).


The importance of the image of a wall, iron fences, and gates (so important in the imaginary of Limbo as we came to see) is, however, not just important for our present-day (nation-)state. Walls and fences also have repercussions on the individual, that is, on personhood, and this not just because the (city-)wall can and has been considered as an exten-sion of our skin—as McLuhan interpreted Lewis Mumford (McLuhan 1994, 47). The influence of walls has, according to Greg Eghigian, cre-ated a whole new type of men which he has given the conceptual name of ‘homo munitus’ (Eghigian 2008, 41). Homo munitus is understood by Eghigian as the sheltered, the defended, or the protected (by walls) individual—munitus derives from the Latin verb munire which means, according to Eghigian, to fortify, guard, and protect, and it also relates to moenia which, in its turn, means ‘defensive and city walls, or fortifi-cations’ (Eghigian 2008, 41). Through a study of East German person-ality and subjectivity, Eghigian comes to the surprising conclusion that ‘[T]he figure of homo munitus … is not solely the concoction of patroniz-ing Wessis [the name given by Eghigian, following the existing tradition in popular language, to inhabitants of the reunited Germany who belonged to West Germany (GDR) from before the fall of the Wall, K.K.P.V.]. It is an image of the East German propagated by East Germans as well’ (Eghigian 2008, 59). This means that, as Wendy Brown understood so well, that which the walls intend to block out is actually produced by the walls themselves (cf. Brown 2010, 41). One can thus wonder or ques-tion whether this ‘conformist, passive, paranoid, and predictable creature’ (Brown 2010, 41), this homo munitus or walled-in person, is not being recreated in our walled contemporary societies as well—simply because of the presence of the walls.

What is, however, of utmost importance for our discourse on Limbo is not the erosion of the nation-state as indicated by Brown and Bauman. Nor is it the creation of estrangement or diversification between two social groups, and neither does it regard the paradox of the creation of the homo munitus. All of these elements are obviously of great signifi-cance and indicators that the paradox has become the governing para-digm of our contemporary times (something which will obviously return continuously in the coming sections and chapters). However, what, above all, helps us in understanding what is at stake in what follows, and what these walls thus indicate, regards the implications of this erosion for the operating of these walls, fences, and gates. In fact, as Brown’s treatise renders clear, they (the walls and fences and gates) don’t actually


work or function as they are supposed to work or function. While they appear to have a functionality, they, in actuality, do absolutely nothing (cf. Brown 2010, 93). What these walls do, or perform, is, the para-doxical contemporary operativity of two opposite powers, they exclude what their walling-excluding operation includes (creates). As Kapoor said about his Limbo-installation, it is the condition of being abidingly static and at the same time dynamic. Or as we will attempt to demonstrate, it regards a functioning that proceeds along the lines of a double paradox-ical condition that enables the contemporary operativity of, on the one hand, modernity’s acceleration and deceleration/rigidification and, on the other, modernity’s expansion and contraction.

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There is one more fundamental characteristic that, unfortunately, is not present in neither di Bonaiuto’s fresco nor Kapoor’s installation, or at least only indirectly. That this aspect is only to be found after deep meditation is not caused by the explicit desire of the artists, but by the very essence of that which is missing, namely Limbo’s particular expe-rience of time (and time-experiences are, obviously, particularly hard if not impossible to render with certain styles of art). The traces of the particular experience of time of Limbo can be discovered in the warm, seemingly dense, white light, of which one cannot find the origin, in Kapoor’s installation, or in the serene expression on the faces of the just in di Bonaiuto’s fresco. It is a serenity not solely caused by the patriarchs’ and prophets’ being just or finally salvaged. A similar utterly composed expression can only be caused by the full awareness of the complete pur-poselessness of waiting. If, as Jacques Le Goff so accurately remarked, l’attente, the characteristic of the ‘awaiting’, is the attitude that defines the Christian in this life as well as in certain realms of the afterlife (cf. Le Goff 1986, 153), then an ‘eternal awaiting’—the aspect typical of Limbo as we will discover in the coming chapters—has no sense whatsoever (cf. Le Goff 1986, 173). (As we will discover in Sect. 3.3, there are only two time-modes in the afterlife: timeless everlastingness or transient tempo-ralities. Only Purgatory belongs to the latter category, while Heaven, Hell, and the Limbo of the children clearly belong to the timeless everlasting. The only exception seems to be the Limbo of the Fathers. However, more than an exception, Christ’s descent is simply the violent

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78913-2_3


irruption, and interruption, not solely into the walled space of Limbo, but also of the timeless everlastingness of this section of Limbo as well.)

In fact, the particular time experience of Limbo indirectly expressed by Kapoor’s embracing cushioning light or the expression of yielded acquiescence of the Fathers or the just can be described as an eternal present, but a present in a time outside of time. More than anything, it regards an eternity where there is no time for the present (which is absent). Said differently, it is like the time of ‘no time’ or similar to what Manuel Castells calls the ‘timeless time’. This ‘timeless time’ is a time where ‘there is systemic perturbation in the sequential order’ (Castells 2010, xli; 494), that is, a time where the sequence of time is disturbed or (as is the case with Limbo) even lacking. And as Castells correctly remarked: ‘[E]limination of sequence creates undifferentiated time, which is tantamount to eternity’ (Castells 2010, 494) or, as we will claim in Sect. 5.3, which is tantamount to end-less-ness. According to Castells, this timeless time is the time typical of our age, and as such we are once more brought directly from Limbo into our contemporary epoch. However, before we start to investigate deeper into these possible rela-tions (and their nature) between our time and Limbo, let us investigate in a more theoretical way the nature of Limbo. The specific characteris-tics that we have already been able to individuate by means of this brief study of di Bonaiuto’s fresco and Kapoor’s installation/sculpture will hopefully allow for a much easier entry into these more technical aspects.

references

Agamben, G. (1993). Infancy and History. Essays on the Destruction of Experience. London and New York: Verso.

Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid Modernity. Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press.Beiting, C. (2004). The Nature and Structure of Limbo in the Works of Albertus

Magnus. New Blackfriars Review, 85(999), 492–509.Brown, W. (2010). Walled States, Waning Sovereignty. New York: Zone Books.Castells, M. (2010). The Rise of the Network Society. Malden and Oxford:

Wiley-Blackwell.Dante, A. (1996). The Divine Comedy, Vol. 1 Inferno. New York and Oxford:

Oxford University Press.Eghigian, G. (2008). Homo Munitus. In Paul Betts & Katherine Pence (Eds.),

Socialist Modern: East German Everyday Culture and Politics (pp. 37–70). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78913-2_5


Foucault, M. (2003). Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France 1975–76. New York: Picador.

Gospel of Nicodemus. (2003). W. Schneemelcher (Ed.), New Testament Apocrypha. Vol. 1 Gospels and Related Writings (pp. 505–526). Cambridge and Louisville: James Clarke & Co.–Westminster John Knox Press.

Izydorczyk, Z. (1997). The Medieval Gospel of Nicodemus. Texts, Intertexts, and Contexts in Western Europe. Tempe: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies.

Kim, H. C. (1973). The Gospel of Nicodemus. Gesta Salvatoris. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies.

Le Goff, J. (1986). Les Limbes. In Nouvelle revue de psyhanalyse, XXXIV, 151–173.

Loofs, F. (1908). Christ’s Descent into Hell. In Transactions of the Third International Congress for the History of Religions (Vol. II, pp. 290–301). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

McLuhan, M. (1994). Understanding Media. The Extensions of Man. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press.

Rousseau, J.-J. (2003). The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Said, E. W. (1979). Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.Schmitt, C. (2006). Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus

Publicum Europaeum. New York: Telos Press.von Clausewitz, C. (2007). On War. Oxford and New York: Oxford University

Press.

35

3.1 PoPe benedict XVi and the canceLLation of Limbo

On Friday 20th of April 2007, the world woke up to a series of strange newspaper headlines. The pope had canceled—buried, abolished, aban-doned, scrapped, depending on the newspaper one picked—Limbo.1 Limbo, that place (space?) in the afterlife where the virtuous pagans (who had lived before the birth of Christ) and the unbaptized children who had died went had stopped to exist. Nobody knew very well where these infants would end up now (the Fathers had already been liberated, as we saw in the previous chapter). There was, however, good hope (as there was no certainty) that they would not go to Hell or Purgatory, but, at last, Heaven… or not?

The document that sealed Limbo’s fate was entitled The Hope of Salvation For Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized,2 and it had been approved by the then Pope Benedict XVI (who is probably one of the greatest ‘conservative’ theologians of the past half a, if not full, century). It had been prepared by the International Theological Commission

CHAPTER 3

Limbo


1 The pope had approved the end of Limbo already in January (January 19, to be pre-cise), but the document that literally signed the deal was only made public in April.

2 This document by the International Theological Commission is freely available online at: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_ doc_20070419_un-baptised-infants_en.html—Accessed April 30, 2015. We will refer to this document in the following way (HoS 2007, § chapter nr. when possible).

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20070419_un-baptised-infants_en.html




upon a request made by the late Pope John Paul II.3 The International Theological Commission itself is a section of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—the former Sant’Uffizio, or, as it was known in a distant past, the Inquisition. At that time, it was guided by Joseph Ratzinger’s successor (Ratzinger had, in the meantime become Pope Benedict XVI), the American William Joseph Cardinal Levada—but Ratzinger himself had, up until his election to pope, been at the head of this group of theologians and as such had been responsible for the pro-ject itself. By entrusting this research-project into the nature of Limbo to the International Theological Commission, the Catholic Church placed the question on Limbo once more in the Doctrinal lights—what is at stake, thus, is nothing less than Church Teaching.

The whole idea of Limbo has had a very intriguing history and com-plex relation with official Church Teaching. Paradoxically, or better, dou-ble paradoxically, the idea and theory of Limbo has always been in the spotlight of Doctrine, but it has never entered it itself. Limbo, although, as we will see, profoundly discussed, has never entered or become part of the Magisterium’s Dogmas. In fact, for as much as it was widely dis-cussed, up until The Hope of Salvation For Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized the word ‘Limbo’ had only been mentioned once in an official ecclesiastic document (written/signed) by a pope, namely the papal Bull Auctorem Fidei from 1794—a Bull that HoS is very quick in describing as ‘not [offering] a dogmatic definition of the existence of Limbo’ (HoS 2007, §38) (we will return to this bull in the concluding lines of our historical research on Limbo in Sect. 3.3). Its history with other official

3 As is written in a preliminary footnote of the document: ‘The theme “The Hope of Salvation for Infants who Die Without Being Baptized” was placed under the study of the International Theological Commission. In order to prepare for this study, a Committee was formed which consisted of the Most Rev. Ignazio Sanna, Most Rev. Basil Kyu-Man Cho, Rev. Peter Damien Akpunonu, Rev. Adelbert Denaux, Rev. Gilles Emery, OP, Msgr. Ricardo Ferrara, Msgr. István Ivancsó, Msgr. Paul McPartlan, Rev. Dominic Veliath, SDB (President of the Committee), and Sr. Sarah Butler, MSTB. The Committee also received the collaboration of Rev. Luis Ladaria, SJ, the Secretary General of the International Theological Commission, and Msgr. Guido Pozzo, the Assistant to the ITC, as well as other members of the Commission. The general discussion on the theme took place during the plenary sessions of the ITC, held in Rome, in October 2005 and October 2006. This present text was approved in forma specifica by the members of the Commission, and was subsequently submitted to its President, Cardinal William Levada who, upon receiving the approval of the Holy Father in an audience granted on January 19, 2007, approved the text for publication’.

3 LIMBO 37

ecclesiastic documents is not less problematic either. For example, the topic of Limbo and the question of what happens to the unbaptized chil-dren after they died did not leave the preparatory level of the Second Vatican Council, never making it thus to the official Council’s delib-erations. As The Hope of Salvation For Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized admits: Even in the 1960s was ‘the theological reflection on the issue not mature enough’ (HoS 2007, §28). The idea, concept, or even the theory of Limbo will, furthermore, not even be mentioned in the last edition (1992) of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.4 And also this time, in this 2007 document, and although the document that treats Limbo was prepared by a section of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, no doctrinal definition or decision will be made by the Magisterium of Rome. What is expressed is only a mere ‘hope’. Limbo, remaining faithful to its own conceptual understanding, was and will remain on the edge and border, that is, the limb, of doctrinal teachings as well.

A quick scroll down this ecclesiastical document into the realm of Limbo can give us somewhat of a better understanding of the com-mission’s and the pope’s reasons into the hopeful abolition of Limbo. Considering that the following chapters will be dedicated to the critical assessment of the historical development of the idea of Limbo (in a more detailed way than is provided in this Church document), these aspects of Hos can be left aside. Some more basic quasi-doctrinal affirmations on Limbo (both the Limbo of the Fathers and the Limbo of the children) are required though. As the opening sentences of the document reveal, Limbo needs to be understood as the ‘state which includes the souls of infants [and Fathers] who die subject to original sin and without bap-tism, and who, therefore, neither merit the beatific vision, nor yet are subjected to any punishment, because they are not guilty of any personal sin’ (HoS 2007, Premise). Basically, the state of Limbo stands for the paradoxical combination of missing out of the supreme divine reward

4 The 1992 edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church is freely available online (http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM). The notion of Limbo used to be present in some earlier editions of the Catechism. For example, it was very present in the Catechism prepared by the famous Jesuit Cardinal Robert Bellarmine upon the request by Pope Clement VIII at the end of the sixteenth century. As the publication of this Catechism happened on the eve of the Jansenist controversy (a controversy to which we will return), it did arouse a whole world of contestation in the decades, and century, that followed.

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM


and ultimate goal of every human life (the beatific vision) while not being submitted to any sort of physical or intellectual punishment. In a certain sense, and to state it in its most rash way, being in Limbo is like being in a state of Hell (the main punishment of Hell is, in fact, missing out of the beatific vision) while not feeling the pain that is normally and necessarily associated with this supreme punishment. We will discover how this theory is described and argued for in Sect. 3.3, for the moment we have to halt with and remember this paradoxical state.

The reason, as it turns out that there is only one good reason for this (new) hope, the International Theological Commission offers for hope-fully eliminating Limbo, results to be that of some sort of ‘development’, a better understanding, a coming to age of the Church’s teaching. This ‘development’, or better understanding, can obviously be considered very slight a motive, but, on the other hand, it could also be considered as quite a progressive or even humble stance. Even though the Church considers its teaching inspired by divine revelation, it does allow that its own understanding of these teachings is not flawless and can undergo changes from the very first phrasing of them.5 This, furthermore, is not just a positioning to be taken merely with reference to our contemporary times, it also applies, according to HoS, to our understanding of certain positions taken up during the long history of the Church with which one would disagree (cf. HoS 2007, §37). Regarding this ‘development’, we can read in the document on Limbo that:

[T]he Second Vatican Council called the Church to read the signs of the times and to interpret them in the light of the Gospel (cf. Gaudium et spes 4, 11), “in order that the revealed truth may be more deeply pene-trated, better understood, and more suitably presented” (Gaudium et spes 44). In other words, engagement with the world for which Christ suf-fered, died and rose again, is always for the Church, which is the body of Christ, an occasion to deepen her understanding of the Lord himself and of his love, and indeed of herself, an occasion to penetrate more deeply the message of salvation entrusted to her. (HoS 2007, §71)

5 This stance is, for example, proposed by John L. Allen, the journalist and Vatican watcher in his The Catholic Church: What Everyone Needs to Know (Allen 2014). Allen, fur-thermore, indicates exactly the theory of Limbo as one of the paradigmatic cases where the Church has shown that its teaching (Allen writes ‘doctrine’) can ‘develop’ (Allen 2014, 95–96).

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This, however, is not just some general or generalizing statement. As the text continues:

[I]t is possible to identify various signs of our modern times that prompt a renewed awareness of aspects of the Gospel which particularly bear upon the question under consideration [that is Limbo; K.K.P.V.]. In some ways, they provide a new context for its consideration at the start of the 21st century. (HoS 2007, §71)

Confronted with warfare and disorder, a crescendo in the temptation to despair of the individual person, a growing awareness of global suffer-ing, particularly that of children, has encouraged the Church to develop ‘an ecclesiology of communion, a theology of hope, an appreciation of divine mercy, together with a renewed concern for the welfare of infants and an ever-increasing awareness that the Holy Spirit works in the lives of all’ and ‘constitute a new context for the examination’ of the question of Limbo (HoS 2007, §77).

The answer of the Church to the world’s growing suffering is one of ‘renewed hope for the world at large and, with particular regard to our question, for unbaptized infants who die’ (HoS 2007, §78). And although the Church ‘does not have sure knowledge about the salvation of unbaptized infants who die’ that which is ‘positively known of God, Christ and the Church gives us grounds to hope for their salvation’ (HoS 2007, §79). The mercy of God and his grace, as the document states in its attempt to ground the hope of salvation of the unbaptized children it just expressed, reaches all people, and, more importantly, God’s power is not limited to the sacraments. ‘God’, as we can read, ‘can therefore give the grace of Baptism without the sacrament being conferred’ (HoS 2007, §82). Furthermore, and an extra reason in favor of the hope of salvation for the unbaptized dead infants, for too long has man’s rela-tionship with Adam—and, as such, with the question of original sin—been at the center of attention. It is, now, necessary to re-establish Christ at the center of attention. As the commissioners write: ‘[W]e wish to stress that humanity’s solidarity with Christ (or, more properly, Christ’s solidarity with all of humanity) must have priority over the solidarity of human beings with Adam, and that the question of the destiny of unbap-tized infants who die must be addressed in that light’ (HoS 2007, §91). From all these reasons (more are mentioned in the document), the mem-bers of the International Theological Commission, in concordance with


pope Benedict XVI, thus conclude that ‘many factors … give serious theological and liturgical grounds for hope that unbaptized infants who die will be saved and enjoy the Beatific Vision’ (HoS 2007, §102). And although there are no absolute certainties or grounds for certain knowl-edge, there are very good reasons for ‘prayerful hope’ (HoS 2007, §102).

So much for the International Theological Commission’s pontifically approved argumentation regarding the hope of salvation for unbaptized dead infants. However, this is not all that is to be said, let alone, that can be said regarding this hope. Some remarks need to be made regard-ing this document. First of all, emphasis needs to be put on how the ‘reading of the signs of the times’, as first and innovatively claimed by the Second Vatican Council and repeated here in this document by the International Theological Commission, is being employed as a means to improve knowledge of the geographical structuring of the afterlife. We have claimed elsewhere (Vanhoutte 2017), and we will repeat this claim in Sect. 5.2 of this book, that between (the representation of) the after-life and (the representation of) the world here-below there is a relation-ship of geographical mirroring. The significance and importance given by the Second Vatican Council and this document to the development capacities of theological knowledge (of the afterlife) by means of a bet-ter and more discerning reading of the signs of the times, seem to be a strong confirmation of our previous claims.

Second, and intrinsically correlated, these same documents deriv-ing from the Second Vatican Council that have inaugurated, and wish for, a renewed and ‘developed’ interaction between the world and the Church by means of a better reading of the signs of the times, also seem to reduce the afterlife (and, correspondingly, thus also the here-below) to a rather simplistic dualistic form:

[T]he actual order is supernatural; channels of grace are open from the very beginning of each human life. All are born with that humanity which was assumed by Christ himself and all live in some kind of relation to him, with different degrees of explicitness (cf. Lumen Gentium 16) and accept-ance, at every moment. There are two possible ends for a human being in such an order: either the vision of God or Hell (cf. Gaudium et spes 22). (HoS 2007, §95)

Considering the geographical mirroring at work between the hereafter and the here-below, this renewed reduction of the afterlife to a mere

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78913-2_5

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binary opposition is very problematic. As will later become clear to the reader less familiar with patristics, it is very hard not to feel some sort of haunting phantasmagoric presence of Saint Augustine at work in this operation of reduction. Although Augustine’s harshness regard-ing the fate of the unbaptized dead infants—which we will encounter in Sect. 3.3.1—is not supported by the document of the commission (it should, in fact, be subjugated to the ‘development’, the better under-standing facilitated by today’s reading of the signs of our times, just like Limbo itself), a sharing of Augustine’s insisting on the tertium non datur can be strongly felt. Considering this, the (invisible) hand of Joseph Ratzinger the theologian6 is strongly felt (his presiding over the Commission in its initial phases as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith seems to have been more than just ceremonial).7

Thirdly, and conclusively, that in the first decennia of the twenty-first century, two popes, an International Theological Commission (a com-mission that is even a section of the fundamental—for the Catholic Church at least—Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) had com-missioned, written, and signed a similar extensively elaborated document on the cancellation of Limbo (a rather, literally, liminal topic that has had much more ‘success’ with the faithful than with official Institution) seems to be somewhat exaggerated. Especially since, as the document intended to demonstrate, Limbo … never existed in the first place. Or maybe there is more at hand?

If anything, the text itself seems to indicate, not the importance of Limbo’s non-existence, but the remaining importance of Limbo’s par-ticularly complex and, especially, still pertinent nature. Even if the pope is (could be) correct in hoping for Limbo’s non-existence, the theologi-cal reasoning and argumentation behind Limbo seems to have lost noth-ing of its relevance in the contemporary Church. And, as we will attempt to demonstrate in the pages that follow, neither has its reasoning lost any of its importance in the wider immanent world of cultural and religious relativism as well, which signs we propose to read very accurately in the coming sections, starting from Sect. 4.1.

6 One often forgets the influence exercised by the Bishop of Hippo on Ratzinger, who, in fact, wrote his PhD—The People and the House of God in Augustine’s Doctrine of the Church—on St. Augustine.

7 In the end, it seems that this document is a statement of a sort of neo-Augustinianism, and its wind was (is still?) blowing rather freely inside the walls of Vatican City.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78913-2_4


3.2 Limbo’s (Pre-christian) geneaLogy and geograPhy

This second section is dedicated to a whole range of possible understand-ings of the concept of Limbo. All of these understandings intend to offer further help in our attempt to grasp this concept in its fullest possible way. In our desire to be as exhaustive as possible, we will, first of all, cover the etymological, hermeneutical, and geographical understanding of the concept of Limbo. We will conclude with what we believe to be a necessary sidestep, namely one into the search for possible similarities of Limbo in pre- and non-Christian contexts.

The concept of Limbo itself, to start by offering some words on its etymology (although there is great uncertainty regarding its etymologi-cal origins), derives from the Latin Limbus which means border or edge. Although this understanding of Limbus/Limbo as border or edge is an almost exclusive religious understanding, it is also present in a non-re-ligious more general understanding, as, for example, in the English expression ‘going out on a limb’. And, just as a curiosity, also our eyes have an area known as the corneal limbus. And this corneal limbus is the border between the cornea (the frontal part of the eye globe that is lightly elevated above the eye lens) and the sclera (the white of the eye). Understood in a broader sense, Limbo can also cover the under-standing—although there is a clear echo of the religious meaning pres-ent in this broader understanding as well—of a state of oblivion where things are cast aside. Limbo can also signify something similar to a mid-dle state—also here, as we will discover, there is a clear connection to the religious understanding of Limbo. Finally, at times, Limbo is also under-stood as meaning a ‘transitional state’ (as already mentioned, we believe this to be a highly inaccurate understanding; the whole idea of Limbo is exactly that there is no natural leaving available).

Let us now turn to the strictly religious understanding of Limbo. The religious Limbus/Limbo is the region in the afterworld that is located on the edge, the border, of Hell. Before Limbo became a place of its own, it was considered to be the upper part(s) of Hell—for example, Gregory the Great, as Jacques Le Goff accurately reports, wrote in his Moralia in Job about the ‘very higher regions of hell’ (reported in Le Goff 1990, 89–90). It was said that these upper regions (they were generally con-sidered as being plural) housed two Limbos: the Limbo of the Fathers, the limbus patrum (or even limbus patriarcharum)—which at times has

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also been named the Limbo of the just (limbus iustorum)8—and the Limbo of the children or limbus puerorum. The Limbo of the Fathers (which we already encountered in the Visual Anteprima) was known as the dwelling place of the Fathers of antiquity, the so-called righteous [be they Jewish or pagan], who had lived before Christ was born and died on the Cross—a death which was (and is) considered to have consti-tuted the liberation act of original sin and through which, as is believed, the faithful participate in baptism. These Fathers are supposed to have been liberated by Christ in the days between his death and Resurrection (the Triduum) when he descended into Hell/Limbo (according to some, the Fathers entered Heaven immediately, others voiced the opin-ion that they remained in their limbus until Christ was resurrected, and others still were convinced that the Fathers and the pagan just had to remain in Limbo until his Ascension, when Jesus took them with him to Heaven). The limbus patrum is now generally supposed to be empty and locked down (this, too, was an opinion first voiced by Gregory the Great in his Moralia in Job and would be considered as a fact by Saint Thomas of Aquinas—Dante, however, considered it still inhabited by the pagan just). The Limbo of the children, on the other hand, a region that was still considered as active before Pope Benedict XVI closed it off as well, was supposed to be the dwelling place of newborns or very young children who had died without having received baptism. These children died too young to accumulate any form of actual or personal sin (the rea-son for which they were not sent straight to Hell), but having died with-out baptism, they were just like the Fathers weighed down into Limbo because of original sin. Contrary to the limbus patrum, which had known an end, the Limbo of the Children was considered as one of the three eternal places in the afterlife (the other two being Heaven and Hell).

So how should we consider Limbo to be spatially ‘organized’? As we just came to see, Limbo is generally considered as consisting out of two different sections. And although the Limbo of the Fathers has a different history and genealogy than the Limbo of the children, not always have these two Limbos geographically been separated. In fact, as we will see in the next section (especially when talking about Alexander of Hales in Sect. 3.3.4), the desire to keep the two Limbos together was, at times,

8 Throughout this work, I will refer to this Limbo as the Limbo of the Fathers or the limbus patrum.


great. On these occasions, the singular region in the afterlife named Limbo was located on the fringes of Hell. As such, we had a quadru-ple division of the hereafter, where on the lowest level we could discover Hell, then Limbo (divided into an empty section where the Fathers used to be and a well-inhabited one reserved for the unbaptized infants), Purgatory, and on the highest level Heaven or Paradise. When Limbo was considered as consisting out of two different spheres, the allocation of the diverse realms differed according to the author. Hell would always be considered at the lowest of the low, and Heaven would always be considered at the highest level, but in between all possible options were tested and defended. Albertus Magnus, for example, let Hell be followed by the two Limbos and then came Purgatory and finally Heaven. Saint Bonaventure, on the other hand, had Hell followed by Purgatory and only then came the two Limbos and finally Heaven. And still another geography of the afterlife was proposed by Saint Thomas of Aquinas who situated Purgatory in between the two Limbos. He, thus, ended up with the following categorization: Hell, limbus puerorum, Purgatory, limbus patrum, and finally Heaven.

Even though the concept of Limbo as a specifically Christian concept was coined for the first time at the end of the twelfth century, it did have a history well before this date. As we have already been able to discover, the idea of the Limbo of the Fathers had its first traces in some New Testament writings (which, according to some, even found confirmation in certain texts of the Old Testament). As we will see in the following section, also the idea of a Limbo of the children goes back to well before the twelfth century. First traces of it can be found in the Pelagian her-esy that was fought by Saint Augustine. But well before and outside of the Christian tradition are we able to find cultures that played with ideas about regions of the afterlife that could be considered as similar to our two Limbos. Let us explore these traditions somewhat, and we will start with the extra-Christian ideas similar to our Limbo of the children and end with the Limbo of the Fathers.

A first example of something similar to a Limbo of the children in a pre-Christian tradition can be found in the famous Myth of Er from the last book (10th) of Plato’s Republic (2003). In this celebrated myth, we find a single trace that a special place, or at least special provisions, was/were made for infants who died at birth or only shortly thereaf-ter. Er was a hero from Pamphylia and the son of Arminius, as Socrates recounts, and he had been killed in battle. However, when his body was

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finally recovered, they found that it was still in perfect state, and soon after, Er even came back to life. That Er had come back from the dead was because he had been chosen by the gods (the judges of the afterlife) to act as a messenger for mankind to let them know what happened in the hereafter (Plato 2003, 10:614d; 337). The Myth of Er can, thus, be considered as one of the first examples of the narrative that would later spread and reach aesthetic perfection with Dante’s Divine Comedy, and that offered detailed accounts of the rewards or tortures in the afterlife.

According to Er, after having traveled for an unknown amount of time, he arrived at a place of judgment where there were openings below, in the ground, and above, in the heavens. After judgment, the just were allowed to turn right and went up, while the unjust went left and down beneath the earth. The unjust wailed and wept because of all of the ter-rible things they saw and experienced, whereas the just marveled by all the wonderful and beautiful things they, in turn, saw and experienced. After insisting on the righteousness of the rewards and punishments—it was, in fact, important for Plato to stress that the penalty was propor-tionate to the crime committed (cf. Plato 2003, 10: 615a-b; 338)—there is a sudden interruption where we can read: ‘[A]nd he said something, though nothing of note, about those who died at birth or lived only a short time’ (Plato 2003, 10:615c; 338).

Even though we are not revealed anything about what was said about those who had died at birth or lived only shortly (so no real compari-son can be made with what will become the Christian limbus puerorum, the Limbo of the children), it is striking that a special mention is made to this category in a myth that gives so much emphasis on the right-eousness of reward and punishment of the afterlife. One could specu-late that the question of good or bad, of justice and mercy—questions that will characterize, as we will see, the Christian discourse about the Limbo of the children so thoroughly—was also cause of concern for Plato and Socrates. There were only two directions to go for the souls in the hereafter, up or down, so there seems to be no escape from dual-ism. However, the special attention to the children who died at birth or immediately after is something that is noteworthy, and we will discover a similar problematic with Saint Augustine.

Another interesting example of a narrative of the hereafter is Virgil’s Aeneid (2007). Virgil—who will, as we all know, become on his turn Dante’s travel guide in the Divine Comedy—recounts of Aeneas’s trav-els through the underworld in book six of the Aeneid. Interesting


to underscore is that with Plato and Virgil we have with us the two great cultures (the Greek and the Roman) of antiquity that preceded Christianity.

Turning our attention to the sixth book of the Aeneid, we discover that immediately upon his arrival at the cavern of the underworld—after having made the obligatory boat ride on the river Styx in the com-pany of the most famous of all ferryman: Charon—Aeneas encounters five groups of dead. [The reason Aeneas is allowed to disembark upon the shores of the underworld without having to deal with its terrible guardian dog Cerberus, is because Sybil drugs him so he falls asleep and Aeneas can quietly go on shore (Virgil 2007, 419; 141).] The five groups are characterized primarily by their adverbs of place. The first group is to be found ‘in limine primo’ ‘just over the boundary’s thresh-old’ (Virgil 2007, 427; 142), the second group is ‘next’ (Virgil 2007, 430; 142), the third ‘are the neighbors’ (Virgil 2007, 434; 142) of the second group, and so forth. Whereas this special categorization is of little importance from the second group onwards, that the first group is found on the ‘boundary’s threshold’ (in lim-ine primo) is of importance as this group consists of the infants who had died at birth or shortly thereaf-ter—the other four groups consist of those executed for crimes they did not commit, suicides, those who died out of love (love for another per-son or love for one’s country), and, finally, those distinguished by feats of arms. As Virgil writes:

Instantly voices are heard: massed wailing, the weeping of children:Souls never able to speak, just over the boundary’s threshold,Stolen by death’s dark day, ripped away from the breasts of their mothers,Plunged in the grave’s bitter sourness without any share of the sweetnessLife brings; …. (Virgil 2007, 426–430; 142)

Although the children are wailing and weeping, their part of the under-world (shared with the other four groups) is basically a neutral land. There is consciousness of being dead, of having been ripped away of life and not being able to share in its sweetness (at least in the case of the infants), but there is no blame let alone torture. Torture is reserved for the wicked in Tartarus. And although there is no pain, there is, however, also no joy. Joy is set apart for those in the Elysian Fields.

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Also in Virgil’s account, we thus find that there is special atten-tion given to children who died at birth. Although there is crying and sadness, there is neither torture nor blame for anything whatsoever. Aeneas’s travel also reveals more than Er’s as we know that these infants, together with other groups of the dead, are kept in a special place. And although that place did not receive a special name, we know that it is at the border (in limine). Children who died at birth or shortly thereafter thus went also in the Roman tradition to a place at the border.

The future limbus puerorum is, however, not the only part of Limbo that finds some parallelism in pre- or non-Christian traditions. Something can and also needs to be said about the idea of a descent into the underworld, even about the rescue of a select number of people in the underworld (that which would become known first as the harrow-ing of Hell and later as the limbus patrum). There seem to be mainly three cultures where a myth exists that tells of a descent into the under-world of a ‘divinity’.9 Obviously, there is the story of Orpheus and his descent into the underworld. Secondly, there is the Babylonian myth of Ishtar and his similar descent into Hell. Lastly, there is the Mandaeismic myth (Mandaeism or Mandaeanism being a Semitic gnostic sect from the last centuries bc) of Hibil-Ziwa, who is the visitor and the vanquisher of Hell. Besides these more distant religious cultures, according to some early Christian writers, the descent was also a part of the Judaic tradition. In fact, Irenaeus of Lyon attributes a prophesy first ascribed to Isaiah and later to Jeremiah that goes ‘[A]nd the holy Lord remembered His dead, who had slept in the land of burial; and went down to them to preach the good tidings of the salvation which is of him, that he might save them’ (Irenaeus 1872, book III, Chapter 20, §4; 286). Similar affirma-tions can be found in Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian, and Justin Martyr claims to know Irenaeus’ reference to Jeremiah and reports it in his Dialogue with Trypho. There is, however, no such reference to be found in the biblical books of Isaiah or Jeremiah—Justin claims it has been expurgated of the Scriptures by the Jews.10 The idea of a descent into the underworld of a/the divinity to free some of those enclosed in

9 My main source for these three traditions is Loofs (1908, 300).10 ‘Similarly’, Justin writes, ‘have they removed the following words from the writings of

the same Jerimiah: The Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, remembered his dead that slept in their graves, and he descended to preach to them his salvation’ (Justin Martyr 2003, Chapter 72, §4; 112).


it is thus just like there being a special place for children who died very early if not immediately after their birth, not an original Christian tradi-tion. However, and although there are some aspects that Christ’s descent into Hell shares with other cultures and traditions, we believe Loofs was probably closest to the truth when he said that these elements only ‘may remind us of old myths; but that its origin was influenced by myths can-not be said’ (Loofs 1908, 292). That we cannot claim that the Christian stories of Limbo find their origin in these pre- and non-Christian myths is basically simply ‘because we cannot suppose that these [other] tradi-tions were known to Palestinian Christians’ (Loofs 1908, 300).

To conclude this second section, something needs to be said also about the intricate paradoxical state that we will discover at the outcome of our account of Limbo. This is not the moment to run ahead of the facts, so at this time a request of indulgence needs to be put forth to the reader. I will not explain the complicated paradox of Limbo just yet—we will get to that in due time, but we will see the similar situation in Plato—as we will turn once more to Plato. It will be up to the reader to judge, in the sections to come, up to what degree the comparison we are about to make is accurate.

Everybody who has a little familiarity with philosophy knows about the Symposium: Plato’s famous dialogue about love (during a nice drinking party). This dialogue is composed of six odes to love and one (Alcibiades’s one) to Socrates. The section that is of interest to us apper-tains to Socrates’s speech. Love (Eros), for Socrates, is, because of his kinship—he is the son of Poros and Penia, power and poverty—always midway between wisdom and ignorance (for that reason, he is not just the quintessential but also the very first philosopher). He is not a God because a God does not pursue wisdom as he is already wise. On the other hand, he is not ignorant either as the ignorant—and this is the phrase that is of interest to us—does not ‘desire what he does not think he lacks’ (Plato 2008, 204a; 40). The ignorant is thus, for Socrates, not somebody who ignores or simply does not know. No, the ignorant is the person who does not know that he ignores. He does not think he lacks (wisdom in this case). This state of lacking, of not being aware of not having in possession, we will discover, is also characteristic of those being present in Limbo (at least mainly for the unbaptized children who will reside in the limbus puerorum, for the Fathers present in the limbus patrum, although it differs from medieval master to master, there is a sort of awareness of a lack). But the simple state of ignorance we have

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just discovered in Plato will be radicalized. What is at stake is, in fact, not a state of simple ignorance (to remain faithful to the Platonian lan-guage), but something that can be considered as its exponential limit. Not ignorance, but the utter unawareness of one’s being ignorant is what we will discover as being at stake in Limbo.

3.3 the history of Limbo

If the scriptural evidence for the possible constitution of Limbo is, as we have already been able to discover, rather scarce, a look at history seems more necessary than ever to understand its coming about. Considering we do not aspire offering any new historical insight, only a rather brief resume of some of the more important phases in the process of com-ing about of the construction of (the concept of) Limbo will be offered. We will greatly draw on the pathbreaking scholarly work done on this topic by George Dyer—Limbo. Unsettled Question (Dyer 1964) and The Denial of Limbo and the Jansenist Controversy (Dyer 1955)—and, above all, Christopher Beiting, whose work and personal comments have been of great help.11

In the following pages, we will thus briefly treat some of the Church Fathers who were most important for the ‘creation’ of Limbo. They will be Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory Nazianzen, Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Abelard, Albertus Magnus, Alexander of Hales, and finally Bonaventure of Bagnoregio and Thomas of Aquinas. We only treat singular authors because the case of Limbo is one of those typi-cal cases where history shows itself to be not particularly accumulative. There is, in fact, no true continuum in the ‘development’ of Limbo but a skipping about and around of ideas that, when they all came together in the twelfth century, would let the concept of Limbo emerge. This should not surprise because, as the ancient saying goes, ‘that which precedes the event is not necessarily its cause’. George Dyer offers us a wonderfully visual image of how we should understand the ‘evolution’ of Limbo over the centuries: ‘like smooth stones skipping across a pond. Leaving traces of their passing’, and the further the stone is away from shore ‘the influ-ence grows less marked and the ideas less distinct’ (Dyer 1964, 35).

11 Not only is the research on Limbo very scarce, but also the medieval sources are rarely available in English translation. Beiting’s correct translations of Albertus Magnus’ and Saint Bonaventure’s fragments on Limbo have rendered our work a lot easier.


Much of what the Fathers taught (and thought) is too subtle and too complex (and probably also complicated)—especially when confront-ing the Fathers of the so-called Scholastic period—for us to be able to expound it in full in just some small sections. What we will offer will be concise summaries of their major reasoning and argumentation that will be of importance in the coming about of Limbo. Although the idea of Limbo cannot be understood without some necessary reference to, for example, original sin or God’s grace and mercy, we will only unveil the absolute necessary basics of these theological concepts.

3.3.1 No Third Place: Saint Augustine and His Legacy

As can be evinced from his Confessions (2006a), Saint Augustine of Hippo is an intricate and complex person who lived in intricate and complex times. Regarding the latter, it suffices to remember that the fourth century was the scene of two fundamental battlefields. First of all, the final showdown was taking place between paganism and Christianity. After more than three centuries of slow undulating progress by Christianity, it finally became a fully licit and lawful religion of the Roman Empire in 311. As a result of this, paganism entered into an ever increasingly rapid downfall in the fourth century. And after a short, but very energetic and frantic, resurgence of paganism under the trashing push of Julian the Apostate (361–363), paganism would finally collapse under Theodosius’s anti-pagan laws from 391 to 392 which were tanta-mount to a complete proscription of paganism throughout the Empire. Although there would remain single pagans for centuries to come—especially outside the larger cities—paganism itself, as an organized and structured system of cults, would completely disappear. Augustine who converted to Christianity in 386 found himself in the middle of this bat-tle. Secondly, the Western parts of the Roman empire were ever more sensitive to incursions by all type of ‘barbaric’ tribes. The beginning of the fifth century would even see these incursions arrive in Italy by the Visigoths. And these same Visigoths would, under Alaric, sack Rome in 410. The Visigoths will be followed by Vandals and later Huns, and the Vandals once more. By the time Augustine was dying, there were barbar-ian hordes outside of the town of Hippo where he remained as bishop for more than 30 years. Only forty-six years after his death (430), the year 476 would see Rome experience its final fall.

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As if the complexity of the times in which Augustine lived did not suffice already, also the Tagaste born (in today’s Algeria) future saint—his sanctity was installed by popular acclaim—did himself as well pos-sess an intricate and complicated nature—a ‘dazzling piece of origami’ (O’Donnell 2001, 10) as James J. O’Donnell describes it interestingly. As Adolf von Harnack already wrote, ‘[A]nyone who seeks to give effect to the ‘whole’ Augustine [and the ‘whole’ Luther] is suspected of seek-ing to evade the ‘true’ Augustine [and the ‘true’ Luther]; for what man’s peculiarity and strength are fully expressed in the breath of all he has said and done?’ (von Harnack 1997, P. II, B. II, Chapter IV, I). If the researcher into the life of Saint Augustine is thus always already sus-pect, it has to be added that the bishop of Hippo himself had a hand in making the search in his life suspect as well. In fact, Augustine was very careful in shaping his own historical memory and legacy. Why else did he write a confession in the first place and a book entitles Retractiones (reconsiderations) that listed and catalogued his own written work and added after each some corrections or explanations of the most contro-versial or difficult sections each work contained? Furthermore, he was also probably one of the first historical figures in Christendom who had an ‘authorized’ biographer—his colleague bishop and lifelong friend Possidius of Calama. All of this would allow one to say that there are multiple Augustine’s. And great caution is thus needed when writing about Augustine. All too harsh statements will be very unlikely to be greeted as historically accurate.

Having cleared these necessary preliminary remarks, let us now imme-diately turn to our topic of Limbo in Augustine. As the great historian Jacques Le Goff correctly remarked:

Augustine’s importance in shaping the doctrine of Purgatory [and we want to add of shaping the non-doctrine of Limbo as well, K.K.P.V.] has often been stressed and rightly so, …, yet it seems clear to me that the question did not really excite Augustine and that, if he alludes to it frequently, the reason is that it was of great interest to his contemporaries. (Le Goff 1990, 62)

Basically, as Le Goff summarizes, there was a seriously great ‘lack of interest in the fate of the soul between death and the Last Judgment’ (Le Goff 1990, 62) in Augustine. On a manifold of occasions does it seem that if he could have avoided discussing the topics related to the hereafter, he would have done so wholeheartedly. This, however, was


not because of any sort of materialism, let alone a hubris-related reason. It simply regarded the fact that for Augustine we couldn’t understand the things that are bound to happen in the hereafter. As he wrote in his tractate on the care to be given to the dead (De cura pro mortuis gerenda): ‘for it is a great gain if it should become clear that we should not even try to understand some obscure and uncertain facts which we are not able to understand’ (Augustine 2010, 382). Furthermore, not only was Augustine’s voice on the hereafter colored by a lack of inter-est, the fact that the issue of the afterlife almost always arose in close relation with some orthodoxy–heterodoxy battle to which he had been called to help did not raise Augustine’s desire to moderate his tone—this will become very clear in his treatment of ‘Limbo’ as we will dis-cover soon. In fact, just as his considerations on Purgatory, which Le Goff treats, are to be seen in concomitance with him battling the lax-est ideas expressed by the so-called misericordes (the merciful), also his confrontation of the idea of ‘Limbo’ is to be seen in close relation with his distancing himself from Manicheaism in his earlier writings and, in his later writings, with his harsh fight with the Pelagian heresy. As Christopher Beiting correctly remarks, ‘[I]t is entirely possible that, but for the Pelagians, he [Augustine] would never have considered the question [of Limbo]’ (Beiting 1998, 18). Before we can start discuss-ing Augustine, let me thus quickly offer a summary of the Pelagian her-esy as our understanding of it will be fundamental to cover Augustine’s position.

*Pelagian thought took its name from its ‘founder’ Pelagius. Pelagius was a monk from the British Isles (his exact nativity has not been established with-out doubt, most of the evidence however seems to point in the direction of Pelagius being Irish) who lived during the second half of the 4th century and the first half of the 5th. A large part of his life was spent in turbulent Rome. Pelagius was, considering the standards of the period he lived in, a highly edu-cated man, and was known for his ascetics (which earned him the esteem of Augustine as well). Two of his more interesting followers were Celestius (a much more explicit character than Pelagius who took the Pelagian doctrine to its extreme) and Julian of Eclanum.

In order to understand Pelagianism it is important to realize that Pelagius’ teachings originated as a reaction against the fatalism, the indif-ference, and the moral lassitude that surrounded him in Rome. Especially

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fatalism—the goddess Fatum—had grown, over the centuries, to enormous proportions in the Roman empire. Pelagius, on the contrary, sang with great enthusiasm the song of liberty (stressing the importance of free will) and of the essential goodness of mankind. As George J. Dyer accurately summarizes: for Pelagius ‘man stood at the pinnacle of creation, capable of ruling both him-self and the world’ (Dyer 1955, 11). Man was able to do good, just as he was able to not do good, but all this depended solely from himself. Pelagius strongly believed in the supremacy of the human will. However, in order to uphold this supremacy of the human will and the fundamental goodness of man as well he had to deny the idea of original sin. ‘Men die’, as Beiting recaps well, ‘because they follow the ‘example of form’ of Adam, not because of any spiritual inher-itance’ (Beiting 1998, 6). For man to be able to be free there could be noth-ing inherently sinful in human nature. It was this denial of original sin that would be the main cause for Pelagianism to be condemned as a heresy and that also brought the issue of the fate of the dead unbaptized children to the forefront of the discussion.

For as much as the denial of original sin could be kept generally silent, it did run into a problem when faced with the habit, well encultured by the end of the fourth century, of the sacrament of (infant) baptism. If men were not guilty at birth of original sin, then there was no reason to baptize children. However, this meant that, considering the absence of original sin, children who died at birth would gain heaven. This in turn meant that baptism lost its sacramental nature and the words of the Lord in John’s gospel that ‘unless a man be born again of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God’ (Jn 3:5) were simply untrue. This could obviously not be the case.

Pelagius and his followers were obviously aware of this problematic (there was good reason why Pelagius never literally denied original sin, even though his theory came down to exactly that as his followers, especially Celestius and Julian of Eclanum, made explicitly clear). In fact, in order to salvage this heinous dilemma, the Pelagians ‘invented’ a new ‘place/state’ in the hereafter named ‘Eternal Life’. This ‘Eternal Life’ was the Pelagian solution to salvage children who had died without the burden of original sin but who had not received the sacrament of baptism. Sending unbaptized newborns to ‘Eternal Life’ and not directly to Heaven allowed them to safeguard the impor-tant and elective sacrament of baptism (it being, in fact, the only means through which access to the kingdom of Heaven is supposed to be granted in Christianity). This ‘Eternal Life’, this middle place/state between Heaven and Hell, where there is no hellish punishment but neither the perfect reward only available in Heaven, can be considered—even though it would need another six to seven centuries—as the actual ‘birth’ of Limbo.

*


Pelagius’ temeredness and acclaimed holiness made for it that at first this new theory did not stir suspicion. Furthermore, Celestius’ radi-calness was kept at bay while being still under the protective wings of his master. However, with Rome becoming an unsafe place because of the Visigoth’s incursions and the presence of other barbarian tribes at the doors of the Empire, master, and disciple chose to follow the lead of many Romans who sought safety in North Africa. Once arrived, the road of Pelagius and Celestius, however, separated. The latter remained in Carthage while Pelagius continued his travels to Palestine. Being sep-arated from his master, Celestius seemed to have no longer felt the need of moderation and started to champion, rather noisily and very explic-itly, the Pelagian doctrine. Soon enough, word of his teachings reached the ears of the bishop of Carthage Aurelius who seemed to have been all but impressed. And when Aurelius demanded a series of retractions, Celestius refused and was quickly excommunicated. The trial(s) of Pelagianism had begun.12

Augustine did not take part in this first controversy (Pelagius had even intended to meet Augustine in Hippo, but the latter was in Carthage at the time, and the two would miss each other—Augustine did send Pelagius a letter [Epistle 146] wishing him well and thanking him for a previously received letter). However, once he entered the controversy—upon the request of his colleague and friend Aurelius and the tribune Marcellinus who were debating the ‘trial’ of Celestius (cf. Keech 2012, 38)—Augustine’s response to Pelagius and his disciples immediately focused on the main issue at hand, namely the refusal and denial of orig-inal sin and, what can be described as, the weakest link in the Pelagian logical chain of thought: infant baptism. Although Augustine’s interven-tions against Pelagianism can be divided into two sections—a first reac-tion against Pelagius and Celestius, and a second one against Julian of Eclanum—for the sake of brevity we will treat them together.

Pelagians, as Augustine’s main argument went, don’t deny baptism nor that it has some purpose. Augustine says so much himself, for exam-ple, in his Sermon (294) from 413, where he indicates where the prob-lem is to be found regarding the Pelagian baptism: ‘[T]hey grant that babies should be baptized; but the question is about the reason, why they

12 Retelling the ecclesiastical and legal trials of Pelagianism is not part of the scope of this section. For further information, George J. Dyer’s first section of his The Denial of Limbo (Dyer 1955, 1–37; especially 4–10) offers a good starting point.

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are to be baptized’ (Augustine 1994, §294, 2; 180). In fact, whereas the main purpose of baptism in Christ was to liberate men from the claws of the Devil (understood as original sin), the Pelagians considered bap-tism served a different purpose. What that actual purpose was, was, how-ever, not very clear. Some claimed it was an act of consensus between Christians, while others claimed it cleansed present or past sins that had been freely and willfully committed (never original sin), while oth-ers still held that it conferred a state of holiness (cf. Dyer 1955, 14; 22). But this meant, as Augustine wrote in a section dedicated to the baptism of infants in his book against the Pelagian Julian of Eclanum, his Contra Julianum (1957), ‘…, yet in your remarkable wisdom you say such extraordinary things as: they are baptized in the sacrament of the Saviour, but not saved; they are redeemed, but not delivered; they are bathed, but not washed; they are exorcized and exsufflated, but not freed from the power of the Devil’ (Augustine 1957, III, 3, 8; 112). At the same time, as Augustine continues, ‘you are afraid to hear: if they are saved, what was sick in them? If they are delivered, what held them in bonds of slavery? If they are washed, what unclean thing lay hidden in them? If they are freed, why were they under the power of the Devil when they were not guilty of any wickedness of their own’ (Augustine 1957, III, 3, 8; 112–113). ‘Unless’, as he brings home his argument, ‘it is because they contracted original sin, which you deny’ (Augustine 1957, III, 3, 8; 113). So, either baptism was what it was supposed to be (liberating from original sin) and then unbaptized children could not be saved from Hell, or baptism was what the Pelagians made out of it and then theirs was a heresy as it implied the denial of original sin.

The Pelagian concept of ‘Eternal Life’ which they had ‘invented’ to house the unbaptized dead children—the Pelagians have never offered a precise description or definition of the nature of this ‘Eternal Life’—did receive a series of harsh critiques from the bishop of Hippo as well. Regarding this ‘middle place’, Augustine had, however, an easier task in criticizing. It sufficed for him to turn to Scripture. Did Matthew not portray Christ separating the good from the wicked during the Last Judgment (cf. Mt 25:33–46)? Augustine follows this very strict and legal separation between two neatly distinguishable alternatives: the wicked ‘will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eter-nal life’ (Mt 25:46). ‘It does not do’, wrote Augustine in his De Libero Arbitrio (On the Free Will), ‘to believe that it is possible to have a middle life between vice and virtue, not, on the part of the judge, that he can


have a middle decision between chastisement and recompense’ (reported in Beiting 1998, 10).

Furthermore, an aspect that will become of great importance in the development of Limbo in the centuries to come, the ‘Eternal Life’ or ‘middle place’ of the Pelagians did imply a double state of separation (an aspect on which the Pelagians did keep understandably rather quiet). On the one hand, keeping the saved unbaptized children outside Heaven but in an eternal afterlife meant a possible eternal separation from the parents or loved ones who might dwell in Heaven (or Hell—but certainly not in the ‘Eternal Life’). But if these children were without sin, that would seem as a pointless and tormenting separation. Secondly, and much more detrimental to the children in the ‘Eternal Life’ was their separation from God. How could this be a place worth living if one is separated from the Lord—again, especially so considering the fact they were considered as sinless? Augustine was quick to address these issues to Julian:

[B]ut you, also, who contend they are, as it were, free of any condemna-tion, do not wish to think about the condemnation by which you punish them by estranging from the life of God and from the kingdom of God so many images of God, and by separating them from the pious parents you so eloquently urge to procreate them. They suffer these separations unjustly, if they have no sin at all; or if justly, then they have original sin. (Augustine 1957, V, 11, 44; 286)

As can be evinced from the above, and as accurately summarized by Bernard Piault, the very notion of a third place is nonsensical to Augustine (cf. Piault 1956, 504). Although it could be considered at first hand as somewhat of a merciful idea (although the state of separa-tion from God can make one seriously doubt upon this mercifulness), it also did not take into account one of the greatest mysteries of all: divine grace (to which man has no claim at all, let alone does he possess the capacities to understand it). For Augustine, no third alternative was thus operational and unbaptized children who died (unfortunately) went to Hell. And although this seems to be an extremely hard position that the bishop of Hippo defends, one can and should invoke mitigating cir-cumstances. As Christopher Beiting correctly remarks, ‘[I]t is important to remember that he [Augustine] entered into the question [of infant baptism and of the destination of the unbaptized dead children] to com-bat the Pelagian heresy, and the positions they adopted conditioned the

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responses he made’ (Beiting 1998, 18). In fact, the harshness demon-strated by Augustine against Pelagianism and his clean-cut refusal of whatever might be considered as a third way, stands in contrast with his more lenient attitude toward the unbaptized dead infants as (mainly) explained in non-accusatory texts. At times, this greater mildness of Augustine has been considered as vacillations of the saint, but, as has to be admitted, Augustine clearly denied that he had ever changed his mind on the destination of unbaptized children. Although they were destined to Hell, for Augustine only the mildest13 punishment of all would befall them as they had not added actual sin on top of their share of original sin with which they were born. ‘[W]ho can doubt’, Augustine wrote, for example, ‘that non-baptized infants, having only original sin and no burden of personal sin, will suffer the lightest condemnation of all?’ (Augustine 1957, V, 11, 44; 286).

Even though, as we have just come to disclose, Augustine’s views are clearly against any type of Pelagian ‘middle place’, his thoughts and argu-ments have, as Christopher Beiting observes, ‘critically shaped the devel-opment of Limbo’ (Beiting 1998, 9). His thoughts, in fact, would have had no part in the development of Limbo if his ideas were as ‘open and shut’ as they had been presented in the Pelagian controversy (cf. Beiting 1998, 17). Besides the fact that, as we have already come to see, occa-sionally his views on the fate of the unbaptized children are much more lenient, at times he even seems to leave the door open for something as a third state or place in the afterlife. In his Enchiridion, for example, Augustine makes the following distinction regarding what is called the suffrages for the dead:

[F]or there is a mode of life that is neither so good as not to need such helps after death nor so bad as not to gain benefit from them after death. There is, however, a good mode of life that does not need such helps, and, again, one so thoroughly bad that, when such a man departs this life, such helps avail him nothing. (Augustine 2006b, XXIX §110; 405)

13 Dyer tells of the almost comic comment made by the Augustinian seventeenth- century cardinal Henry (Enrico) Noris who, while pondering the mildness of punishment into which the unbaptized infants would incur according to Augustine, wrote that ‘he did not believe that the infants were consumed by the flames; they were rather heated to a point where they were in real discomfort’ (reported in Dyer 1955, 106).


And this corresponds to the following categories in the afterlife (albeit that these categories are solely for the baptized): ‘the very good, … the not-so-very-bad, and, … the very bad’ (Augustine 2006b, XXIX §110; 406). As can be seen, the purely dichotomized vision Augustine upheld in his argument with the Pelagians is no longer operational.

Most importantly, Augustine will be fundamental for the develop-ment of the idea of Limbo for the following two final aspects which will close this section. Even if Augustine thus refuses the triple partition pro-posed by the Pelagians—a refusal that is obviously understandable con-sidering the intricateness of the Pelagian middle place and the refusal of original sin—one cannot but underscore that Augustine himself organ-izes the afterlife in a somewhat tripartite way as he assigns a different sort of punishment to the unbaptized dead children. They receive, as we saw, a much milder punishment than the other Hell-dwellers. So we have in Augustine’s thought the reward of heaven, the mildest of pun-ishments for the unbaptized infants and the harshest of punishments for the demons and the evildoers. Secondly, and probably Augustine’s main contribution to the further development of the idea of Limbo—especially considering the nature and scope of this study—, is his understanding that the middle place proposed by the Pelagians—which will be similar to the theory of Limbo proposed by the Scholastics14—will need, or consists essentially, of a paradox. We have already seen how Augustine accuses the Pelagians—especially Julian—of proposing a double cruel separation for these unbaptized children. On the one hand, they were kept separate from their parents, but above all, the necessary distinction (i.e., necessary

14 Dyer offers an interesting schematic summary of the Pelagian Eternal Life, Scholastic Limbo, and Augustine’s refusal that is worth to re-propose here:

Pelagians Augustine LimboUnbaptized children are born in a state of innocence and sentenced to neither Heaven nor Hell but rather a middle ground (eternal life) which is a state of innocence involving neither the pain of sense nor the pain of loss but a measure of happiness (Dyer 1964, 18)

Unbaptized children are born in a state of original sin and attain not to Heaven, nor any middle ground but are rather sentenced to damnation in which they suffer the pain of sense and the pain of loss

Unbaptized children are born in a state of original sin and sentenced to neither Heaven nor Hell but rather a middle ground (limbo) which is a state of damnation involving not the pain of sense nor the grief of exile but a measure of happiness

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for the Pelagians) between Heaven and ‘Eternal Life’ meant that these infants were separated from God. How could, Augustine correctly asks, this being separated from God—being, as it is, mankind’s true destiny—be considered as offering some sort of happiness (as the Pelagians sus-tained)? It will, however, be this combination of tripartite (quadruple, as we should consider Purgatory as well) division and paradoxical state of separateness from God while being (impossibly) happy that will form the backbone of the idea of Limbo as we will see it come into existence in the coming sections. As Beiting accurately notes: ‘[T]he Limbo of children thus depends paradoxically as much on the Pelagian heresy as it does [on] Augustine’s orthodoxy’ (Beiting 1998, 21).

*

Two more words need to be said about Augustine. They regard some of his con-siderations on two other closely related ideas to Limbo, namely the emptied place of the Limbo of the Fathers and the highly confusing ‘bosom of Abraham’ that is found in Luke’s Gospel (16:22–23). Let me begin with the latter.

In his Confessions, Augustine admits that he has no clear idea what is meant with the bosom of Abraham. He, however, is pretty sure that a good friend of his (Nebridius) is dwelling there and it seems to be a pretty darn paradisiacal place (cf. Augustine 2006a, IX, III, 6; 181). But not always did Augustine equate the bosom of Abraham with Paradise. In fact, in Epistle 187 we can read the following thought:

[B]ut if both of the regions of those who are suffering and that of those at rest, that is, both where that rich man was tormented and where that poor man was happy, should be believed to be in the underworld, who would dare to say that the Lord Jesus came only to the penal parts of the under-world and was not present with those who were at rest in the bosom of Abraham? (Augustine 2004; §187 2, 6; 237)

So here the bosom of Abraham is no longer situated in, or is it compared to, Paradise, but is it to be found in the underworld.

And this situating of the bosom of Abraham as some sort of resting place where Christ descended, obviously brings us to that other Limbo, namely the Limbo of the Fathers. Also regarding the Limbo of the Fathers was Augustine aware of treading on very thin ice, and he doesn’t expound himself all too much. In a different letter than the one just mentioned (164), he isn’t even so sure of the comparison made between the bosom of Abraham and the place into which Christ descended after His death. It isn’t paradise, but it certainly can’t be found in the underworld either: ‘if Sacred Scripture had


said, without naming Hell and its pains, that Christ when he died went to that bosom of Abraham, I wonder if anyone would have dared to say that he descended into Hell’ (Augustine 2004, §164 3, 7; 66). Augustine was one of the strongest defenders of soundly grounding his argumentation in Scripture, and regarding the Limbo of the Fathers (as well as the bosom of Abraham), Scriptural sources are very meager. However, that Christ descended into ‘Hell’ to save some of the souls that were kept there was not something Augustine had doubts about. During a sermon (67) of the year 412, to give just one example, Augustine, in fact, said that ‘Christ [had gone] in the underworld, rescuing some of the dead’ (Augustine 1991, §67, 7; 218). But regarding the how and the why, Augustine remains very uncertain.

It seems that the opinion he upheld most was that of a subdivision of regions in the underworld (Hell). This was a vision he subscribed to regard-ing the unborn children and it is repeated here once more regarding the ‘loca-tions’ of the bosom of Abraham and the future Limbo of the Fathers (whatever the relation between these two concepts is). But basically, Augustine did not shy away from saying that, in the end, he simply did not know. Thus to come full circle (returning once more to Augustine’s conviction that we could not understand the things that are bound to happen in the hereafter), he ended his letter to Evodius that treats these matters of the afterlife with the following words: ‘If anyone can solve those problems by which, as I mentioned, I am dis-turbed, so that he removes all doubt about them, he should share the solution with me’. (Augustine 2004, §164 7, 22; 72–73)

*

3.3.2 Original Sin Becomes Privative: Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory Nazianzen

As George J. Dyer remarks: ‘[T]he man who finally broke with the five-century-old idea of St. Augustine was one quite accustomed to chal-lenging the accepted way of doing things’ (Dyer 1964, 38). This man was the eleventh- to twelfth-century French scholar Peter Abelard. However, what Peter Abelard did was ‘simply’ to bring an existing ensemble of thoughts and ideas to their logical conclusion. So, in order for us to understand Abelard’s ‘small step’, it is necessary to first sketch these pre-existing thoughts and ideas. Let us thus turn back in time to the Eastern part of the former Roman Empire, more specifically to the Fathers of the Greek tradition writing almost simultaneously as Augustine.

Starting where we left off in the previous section, a little bit more than a decade before Augustine destined unbaptized children to mild

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punishments in Hell, in a small town in Cappadocia (today’s Turkey), Nyssa, its local Bishop Gregory (brother of Basil the Great) was sug-gesting something quite different regarding the same topic. Toward the end of his life (some say it was written in 381, others in 384), Gregory wrote a short treatise on the topic of early death of infants entitled De infantibus praemature abreptis libellum (On Infants’ Premature Death) (Gregory of Nyssa 2007), a work that is considered by the great patris-tic scholar Jean Daniélou as Gregory’s ‘most prestigious work qua litera-ture’ (Daniélou 1966, 161) that masters ‘the most important themes of his thought’ (Daniélou 1966, 167). Two aspects are essential in under-standing why this Cappadocian Father will prove to be fundamental for the development of the idea of Limbo.

----------------------------------------O.D.----------------------------------------

A fundamental methodological point needs to be made clear at this point. Although it might seem that what is being written here is a pro-gressive, evolutionary, tale of how the idea and theory of Limbo came into being, it is necessary to truncate this thought with its roots and all. No such thing is offered in this historical research we are providing here. If anything, this historical dig (some sort of archeological epistemol-ogy) is akin to Le Goff’s history of the concept of Purgatory (1990). We thus also underwrite Le Goff’s methodological delineations in full. Limbo and Purgatory not only appeared almost simultaneously on the scene of history as Le Goff acknowledges (cf. Le Goff 1986, 163), they also appeared in a very similar way. As such, when Le Goff writes that ‘Purgatory did not emerge automatically from a “diachronic” series of beliefs and images’ but that it was the result of ‘a history in which chance and necessity both played a part’ (Le Goff 1990, 17–18), we can only but exclaim that also the concept and theory of Limbo did not emerge automatically from a diachronic series of beliefs which finally accumu-lated in Limbo. Furthermore, also regarding Limbo do we have to insist on the fundamental contribution of chance in its emerging.

I conclude the last sentence with the word ‘emerging’ for a very pre-cise reason. The stressed reference to the concept of emergence is a (not so hidden) reminder of a precise understanding, or hermeneutics, of his-tory which can be linked to a very precise proper name, namely the name of the contemporary French philosopher Michel Foucault. Foucault’s


insistence on the concept of ‘emergence’ can be pinpointed to, what has been described as, his ‘passage’ from his archaeological phase to his genealogical phase which coincided with a re-discovery of Nietzsche. This ‘passage’ finds in his Nietzsche, Genealogy, History (Foucault 1984) an almost programmatical text.15

The preference for Entstehung or Herkunft (emergence) against Ursprung/origin has a manifold of reverberations to which we can-not refer—for Nietzsche it regards a profound critique on metaphysics, something which, by simply mentioning it, can be seen as going well beyond the scope of this text. It suffices here to consider the main his-toriographical repercussions of this priority given to Entstehung/emer-gence and which indicates ‘the moment of arising’ (Foucault 1984, 83). The main, and major, implications of Foucault’s understanding of Entstehung is that: (1) we should not think of emergence as some sort of conclusion, as ‘a final term of a historical development’ (Foucault 1984, 83); (2) ‘it is produced through a particular stage of forces’ (Foucault 1984, 83); and (3) it always occurs in the interstice, and its occurrence is always just as a single drama (Foucault 1984, 85). To summarize, pri-oritizing ‘emergence’ as historical concept is, on the one hand, counter-ing the reconciliatory nature, or undermining the singular and necessary continuity and monotonous finality, of history, and, on the other hand, to put synchrony on the forefront of understanding and knowing.

And it is along these lines that the historical summary we are provid-ing regarding Limbo needs to be read.

----------------------------------------O.D.----------------------------------------

Let me return now to the two aspects that are essential in understand-ing why this Cappadocian Father will prove to be fundamental for the development of the idea of Limbo. A first aspect is Gregory’s answer to what happens to a child that dies almost immediately after birth—in a very poetic manner he, in fact, asks what happens to a ‘human being’ that ‘enters on the scene of life, draws in the air, beginning the process of

15 Gary Gutting is quite accurate in insisting that this text was written along the lines of the typical explication de texte-style which Foucault must have used a manifold of times when studying under Jean Hyppolite—to whom this text was dedicated. This means that we should not consider this text as containing Foucault’s manifesto of what genealogy is (Gutting 2011, 92). However, regarding the distinction that interests us, this consideration can somewhat be left aside.

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living with a cry of pain, pays the tribute of a tear to Nature, just tastes life’s sorrows, …; still loose in all his joints, tender, pulpy, unset; …’, in short what happens to such a child that has only ‘seen the air, so short-lived, dies and goes to pieces again?’ (Gregory of Nyssa 2007, 373–374). Will such a soul be judged before the tribunal, and will it be put on trial and even be purged in the fire? Interestingly, Gregory answers no: ‘I do not see how we can imagine that …’ (Gregory of Nyssa 2007, 374). However, also upon the question upon whether these children will be admitted to the life of the blessed does Gregory answer negatively: ‘the acquisition of the Kingdom comes to those who are deemed worthy of it … But in this case there is no act of doing or of willing beforehand, and so what occasion is there for saying that these will receive from God any expected recompense?’ (Gregory of Nyssa 2007, 374). Although Gregory does not pose any solution—he certainly does not refer in any way to the word Limbo—and also for Gregory, like for Augustine, the destiny of these children is a ‘mystery, as ostensibly too great for human conjecture to be employed upon’ (Gregory of Nyssa 2007, 373), the fact that these unbaptized children will neither be punished nor rewarded in the hereafter is an idea that will stick and receive following in the centu-ries to come.

The second aspect of importance of Gregory’s teaching for the history of Limbo is his understanding of original sin. We have already seen that the notion of original sin is in a very intricate way connected to the idea of Limbo—the Pelagian heresy Augustine combatted was a clear indica-tor of this. One could think that also Gregory, with his insistence on the fact that unbaptized children would not be punished by the fires of Hell, could be considered as a quasi-Pelagian, but that would be incorrect16 (the battle of the Pelagian heresy did not concern the Greek tradition of the Church—the battles to be fought there was with the Gnostics). Gregory came up with a solution—that he hardly elaborated—that will become fundamental for Limbo. As this aspect will be studied closer in a short while, we will just mention it now. As Manfred Hauke accurately remarked: ‘[W]hen Gregory characterizes the fallen state as a ‘privation’ of good, he approaches the Catholic doctrine of original sin as it will be

16 If anything, as Dyer correctly remarks, there is a remnant of Origen’s, by the Church, repudiated Apokatastasi theory—the theory of ‘universal restauration’—present in Gregory. At times, it is as if all beings will once return to the bosom of the Father, even the Devil in person will be, eventually, purified by the Word and saved for the rest of eternity (cf. Dyer 1964, 28).


later formulated’ (Hauke 2010, 557–558). Original sin is thus for the first time not considered primarily as a burden to bear, but as something that is missing, is lacking, in the human being, which baptism restores. The aspect of original sin as implying a ‘privation’, a lack that needs to be restituted, as was first phrased by Gregory, will also be of fundamental importance to the development of the idea of Limbo.

Gregory of Nyssa was not the only one who considered the fate of unbaptized children not worthy of Heaven but neither destined to burn in Hell. His friend and fellow Cappadocian Father, Gregory Nazianzen, coined a ‘proverb’ on this matter that would be destined to last and become famous. In Chapter XXIII of his Oration (XL) on Holy Baptism (1894), Gregory is discussing those who had not received baptism upon the moment of their death, and he individuates three distinct types of peo-ple. First, there is the group of the truly wicked that is those who disdained or scorned the sacrament of baptism. Then, there were those who delayed baptism for ‘pragmatic’ reasons (so they would not have to struggle too long to keep their innocence intact). These were not wicked or malicious but only stupid according to Gregory. And finally, there were those—for example, the unbaptized infants—who did not receive baptism because of reasons that went beyond their own control. For this group, Gregory Nazianzen claimed something similar as Gregory of Nyssa, namely that they would not be punished but neither would they be allowed into Heaven. According to Gregory Nazianzen, this was because—and this is what would become a famous saying in the later theory of Limbo—‘[F]or not everyone who is not bad enough to be punished is good enough to be honored; just as not everyone who is not good enough to be honored is bad enough to be punished’ (Gregory Nazianzen 1894, XL, XXIII; 367).

So also this second Gregory seems to be offering a solution to the problem of the place where the unbaptized children will spend their time in the afterlife as neither Heaven nor Hell. That the speculations of the two Gregory’s caught on can be clearly established when looking at a somewhat radical character known as Pseudo-Dionysius (or Dionysius the Areopagite), who would, because of John Scotus Erigena’s transla-tion into Latin of his Greek work in the second half of the ninth cen-tury, become of great influence in the scholastic period—the Dionysius dicit are too numerous to count. Pseudo-Dionysius—and although mostly known for the mysticism of his writings—spends a long time dis-cussing the privative, imperfect, nature of evil. And if we are to under-stand original sin—something we obviously can—as the ‘innate frailty’

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of The Divine Names (Pseudo-Dionysius 1987, 728A; 91), then with its description as ‘a deficiency and a lack of the perfection’ (Pseudo-Dionysius 1987, 728A; 92) we find a confirmation of what the two Gregory’s already said.

The exclusion of unbaptized children from Heaven and the punish-ments of Hell by the two Gregory’s and Gregory of Nyssa’s and Pseudo-Dionysius’ speculation of sin as privative will become as influential in the history of Christianity as Augustine’s rebuttal of these same issues. And when these, at first sight, contradicting ideas met, instead of coming head-on into a clash, along came the ‘birth’/emerged the paradoxical state and place we have come to know as Limbo.

3.3.3 Lacking Punishment: Anselm and Abelard

Let us now turn to the century and the men that ‘made’ Limbo. Before we discuss Anselm and Abelard their contribution to the making of Limbo, some words need to be said about the time these men lived in. All too often have the Middle Ages been described condescendingly as ‘Dark’. This is a highly inaccurate appellation, especially when consider-ing the eleventh, twelfth, and a large section of the thirteenth century.

*

Although only referring to the period of Saint Anselm of Canterbury’s life, the words of R.W. Southern can be used to describe this whole period that spans around 2 centuries: this period ‘covered one of the most momentous periods of change in European history, comparable to the centuries of the Reformation or the Industrial Revolution’ (Southern 1990, 4). Or said differently, this period can be considered as a true ‘turning point’ (Caley and Illich 2005, 82), ‘centur[ies] of great advance’ (Le Goff 1990, 130) for Latin Christendom.

Just to give some examples: the 11th century saw the Gregorian Reform, the first crusade, the foundation of the (for that epoch) revolutionary monas-tic movements of the Cistercians and the Carthusians. Geo-politically the 11th century also saw the expansion and the beginnings of the contraction of the Byzantine empire, and intellectually, the first hands were laid to what would become Scholasticism. The 12th century saw a number of crusades, the foundation of another series of revolutionary monastic movements with the Mendicant orders of the Franciscans and the Dominicans as main exam-ples. Geopolitically the 12th century saw the ‘birth’ of the (modern) city,


and intellectually speaking Scholasticism solidified its power in the ‘new-born’ universities (the university of Bologna being the first that was founded in 1088—but its ‘first’ real charter was from around the middle of the 12th century—and the university of Paris, which came forth from the cathedral school of Notre Dame also dates from around the year 1150). The heresy of the Cathars was also from the 12th century, and finally, the 12th century also saw the ‘birth’ of canon law. The late-twelfth and early thirteenth century saw the ‘birth’ (a birth that, obviously, originates far back in time) of the instrumen-tum or sacraments.

All of these changes and innovations were accompanied by a socio-tech-no-communitarian revolution that fundamentally changed the feudal sys-tem that had emerged in the ninth century. Harsh as the feudal system was, its more stable form of government in combination with an almost extraor-dinary agrarian and technological change that took place starting from the 11th century (there was a great expansion of iron production, water-power was used for the first time for mechanical reasons, there was an increase in intensity of cultivation, and ever more land was cleared for agricultural pur-poses, etc.) allowed for an incredible growth of population.17 This stability, growth of population, and technical ‘progress’ in turn allowed for the devel-opment (and the need) of greater craftsmanship, which in its turn allowed for an even denser urbanization, which, on its turn, allowed a greater obser-vance of internal peace18 and a decline in the sense of insecurity, which, once more, allowed for another boost of the economy, and so on. This almost perpet-ual movement of auto-confirmation of the growth of population and of the economic system was what made the medieval city rise and shine and spread very quickly to reach its full maturity during the turning from the 12th to the 13th century.

It will be in this world colored by constant change and revolutions that the idea of Limbo will receive its full understanding.

*

Let us now turn to the first of the two scholars we will discuss in this section, namely Anselm of Canterbury. For as much as Anselm, like all of the scholars we have studied up until now, never pronounced

17 Between the eleventh and mid thirteenth century, the population of Western Europe had doubled.

18 The bellicose needs and desires were obviously not suppressed (it suffices to think of the crusades), the battlefield-lines were simply displaced to the ‘fringes’ of ‘Western European Christianity’.

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the name ‘Limbo’ either, he is important to our cause for two reasons. First, after centuries of silence on the topic of original sin, he restarted the discussion on this fundamental concept for the development of Limbo. Secondly, in Anselm, we find somebody who implicitly, and obviously involuntary, starts the necessary task (for Limbo) of com-bining the opposing theories of Augustine and the two Gregory’s and Pseudo-Dionysius.

For Anselm, man’s original sin is to be found both in his nature (in the human nature as such), as in his person—‘each man’s sin exists in his nature and his person’ (Anselm 1998, I; 359). Original sin is thus not just something general related to mankind, but is present in every per-son singularly as well. It is ‘contracted at [every] person’s origin’ (Anselm 1998, I; 359). This is original sin and importantly, as Anselm immediately adds, ‘not even in the case of infants is human nature excused’ (Anselm 1998, II; 360). Infants are thus burdened with this sin because of their shared nature with Adam. We can thus immediately observe that no trace of Pelagian heresy is present in Anselm, and he is clearly following in Augustine’s footsteps. In fact, Anselm is as strict as Augustine when it comes to the fate of the dead unbaptized children because ‘if what I have called original sin is any sin at all, it is necessary for every man born into it to be condemned …’ (Anselm 1998, XXVIII; 388). There is thus no reason to concede anything to ‘those who cannot bring themselves to accept that children who die unbaptized are condemned on account of that injustice alone [original sin]’ (Anselm 1998, XXVIII; 387).

However, even if Anselm seems to be following Augustine to the let-ter, he does have a very peculiar understanding of original sin that can’t be found in Augustine. We have, however, already encountered a simi-lar understanding of original sin as Anselm holds, namely in Gregory of Nyssa and Pseudo-Dionysius. In fact, Anselm admits that notwithstand-ing the above, he does ‘not think original sin is entirely as grave [as he has represented it in the preceding sections of this text]’ (Anselm 1998, XXII; 378). And this is so because of one group of people, as becomes clear from how he proceeds: ‘I do not think that the sin of Adam descends to infants so that they ought to be punished for it, as if they had each personally acted as Adam did, […]’ (Anselm 1998, XXII; 378). As his reasoning continues, ‘[original] sin is less in infants …’ as it con-sists of a ‘lacking in nature’ (Anselm 1998, XXIII; 382). So original sin, the only sin that is present in unbaptized children who died, is priva-tive in character for Anselm. It does not amount to something positive.


And even if Anselm ended by returning to the Augustinian solution of sending these unbaptized children back to Hell, George J. Dyer observed correctly that ‘[H]e needed but a single logical step to con-clude that the sin should be punished by a privation and by nothing more positive’ (Dyer 1964, 38). If Anselm had taken this single step, we would finally have arrived within the vicinity of Limbo. This step will be made by our next scholar: Peter Abelard.

Better known for his love relation with Heloise, Abelard is important for our research into the nature of Limbo for the very fact that he, and although he tried to appear as Augustinian as he could, broke with the Augustinian scheme of treating the destiny of the dead unbaptized chil-dren without ending up in a Pelagian heresy—even if, it has to be said, the shadow of heresy has often dwelt upon the work of Abelard, and on manifold an occasion has the accusation of Pelagianism resounded in his presence. He was, however, the first to think almost all of the problematics that will be involved in the idea of Limbo through to their logical end. Let us take a closer look at his reasoning. Just like was the case with Anselm, we will dedicate our attention to mainly one work, his Commentaria in epistolam Pauli ad Romanos, his commentary to Paul’s Letter to the Romans (Abelard 2011). In this work, we, in fact, find Abelard’s com-ments that are of most interest to our cause. Obviously, also a lot more detail should have been dedicated to Abelard’s work, but the (summariz-ing) nature of these chapters does not allow us to digress much.

Abelard’s main and greatly important contribution to the devel-opment of the concept of Limbo—although, just like Anselm and the scholars we treated before, he never referred verbatim to the word Limbo—is that he was the first to conclude that just like original sin consists of a privation, a lack, the only punishment for this lack could itself not consist of a positive punishment, but of a lack, or privation, as well. This lack or privative punishment could only be the lack or priva-tion of the beatific vision. God was just, and regarding the punishment of children, that ‘we should not doubt that that happens in the best way’ (Abelard 2011, II, 5, 19; 221) was his conviction. As such, ‘I do not think’, Abelard wrote, ‘that this punishment is anything other than to endure darkness, that is, to lack the vision of the divine majesty without any hope of recovery’ (Abelard 2011, II, 5, 19; 221–222).

Abelard arrived at this conclusion, by means of, fundamentally, two passages that directly involve, in an opposing way, Augustine. The first passage can be seen as Abelard’s (necessary) rupture with Augustine, and

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it consists in the refusal of the Augustinian interpretation that original sin is inherited guilt. For Abelard, original sin is, on the contrary, inherited punishment. We do not share in Adam’s guilt, he acted, but we do share in the punishment of the act committed only by Adam (and Eve)—‘we are assigned to eternal damnation on account of his sin’ (Abelard 2011, II, 5, 19; 223), Abelard writes, and he continues: ‘[A]nd we should note that, although we say that children sinned in Adam, …, we do not there-fore simply declare that they sinned, …’ (Abelard 2011, II, 5, 19; 223). Original sin is thus for Abelard ‘that debt of damnation with which we are bound, since we are made guilty of eternal punishment on account of the fault of our origin, that is, of our first parents, from whom our origin derived’ (Abelard 2011, II, 5, 19; 223).

The second passage consists in Abelard’s interpretation of Augustine’s conviction that unbaptized infants who died could only suffer the mild-est or lightest of all punishments. On this occasion, Abelard remains more faithful to the bishop of Hippo. In fact, according to Abelard, this poena mitissima—which according to Abelard’s reading of Augustine named the ‘torment of conscience’ that consisted of ‘the perpetual fire’ (Abelard 2011, II, 5, 19; 222)—could only be correctly interpreted as consisting in the lack we discussed above—the suffering of exterior dark-ness (cf. Abelard 2011, II, 5, 19; 222). And what would be lacking—considering a negative punishment, not a positive one, was needed—if not the beatific vision.

Abelard is, however, important also for another aspect of the growth of the idea and concept of Limbo. Also for what will become known as the limbus patrum did his voice resound in the future discussions. Considering the nature of the times in which Abelard lived—the twelfth century, as we already indicated, was a sort of Renaissance avant la let-tre—it should not surprise that for some among the more avant-garde writers of that time (like Abelard), the fate of the great classical minds did rouse interest. And although the salvation of these ancient minds who dwelled the earth well before Christ was born did mean a sort of down-grading of the sacrament of Baptism, Abelard is the first author of the twelfth century to propose the possibility and necessity of the salvation of these ancient pagan philosophers so boldly (cf. Weingart 1970, 13).

The fact that Abelard became so important, while the majority of his peers and contemporaries refused or condemned a great chunk of his innovative teaching, is almost exclusively related to one of his stu-dents: Peter Lombard. It was the success of Lombard’s Sentences—which


included Abelard’s thesis that unbaptized children would only suffer exterior darkness in the hereafter—that made for it that this provocative idea by a very controversial scholar became mainstream.

3.3.4 The Birth of Limbo: Albertus Magnus and Alexander of Hales19

Before we turn to the two angelical doctors of the Middle Ages (the Angelical one by antonomasia, Saint Thomas of Aquinas, and the Seraphic one, Saint Bonaventure)—whose contributions to the discus-sion on Limbo will be considered as quintessential and paradigmatic for the rest of this study—two final scholars need to be confronted: They are the angelical doctors’ respective masters: Albertus Magnus and Alexander of Hales.

If there is one medieval scholar who cannot be ignored in the discus-sion of the emerging of Limbo, then it is Albertus Magnus. He, in fact, was ‘responsible for the formulation of the realm [of Limbo] as a bipar-tite one, with a limbus patrum for the Fathers and a limbus puerorum for unbaptized infants’ (Beiting 2004, 492).20 Albertus thus was the first to have distinguished five different places in the afterlife: Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, and the two Limbos. Let us treat each of these two Limbos separately in what follows and let me begin with the limbus puerorum, the Limbo of the children.

Albertus’ argumentation regarding the Limbo of the children is a mix-ture of Anselm and Abelard. He follows Anselm with reference to the ‘why’ and Abelard with reference to the ‘how’. In fact, why the unbap-tized children are in Limbo is, for Albert, because they have not been baptized and are thus tainted by original sin. Original sin is present in all the children because we all share in the nature of Adam. Arrived at this stage, he, however, takes leave from Anselm—who followed Augustine in his reasoning and thus ordered the unbaptized infants to Hell—and takes refuge in Peter Abelard’s theory regarding the nature of the punishment of the children in Limbo. The dead unbaptized children, according to Albertus the Great, thus ‘merely’ suffer ‘the lack of the vision of God

19 The translations reported from Albertus and Alexander were taken, respectively, from Beiting (1999, 2004). We will only refer to the original source in the text.

20 It was more than probably William of Auvergne who coined the term Limbo.

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[the beatific vision]; which is the punishment of damnation and not the punishment of the sense’ (Albertus Magnus, Tract III de resurrec-tione, q. 7, art. 3).

Interesting to add is that Albertus also has a clear idea of the actual geography of this limbus puerorum (and the other spaces of the afterlife). Following the etymology of the word, Albertus notes that Limbo is on the edge, the fringe, of Hell. Although distinct from Hell (!), it is to be found directly next to it. Interestingly, Limbo is thus closer to Hell than that other newly discovered area of the hereafter: Purgatory. Even though the punishment in Limbo is merely a lack of the beatific vision and there are no physical punishments (no punishments of the sense), it is closer to Hell than Purgatory where there are actually physical tor-ments and punitive fires present (which make Purgatory look more like Hell). That this is so, as Albertus explains, is because Purgatory inevi-tably leads to Heaven and to being present to God, whereas the dead unbaptized children who dwell in the limbus puerorum are destined to remain there forever.

Regarding the limbus patrum, Albertus finds very little need to argue ‘why’ the Fathers are present in their Limbo. Even though the Fathers’ lives were examples of rectitude, original sin had tainted them, and they haven’t been saved by baptism. So the weight of the original stain dragged them down to the inferior places of the afterlife. Regarding their punishment, Albertus is also very clear. Just like the unbaptized infants, neither did the Fathers suffer any punishment of sense. No Hellish or Purgative fires were present in the limbus patrum. And although they were mainly surrounded by darkness—albeit only an external and not an internal darkness—some sort of light was present because of their great faith. There was, however, a difference between the privative punishment reserved for the Fathers and the privative punishment for the unbaptized children. In fact, as Christ saved the Fathers when he descended into Limbo, the punishment the Fathers underwent was not a permanently confirmed and everlasting lack of the beatific vision, but merely the post-ponement of that same beatific vision.

Also regarding the location of the limbus patrum did Albertus have something to offer. Because of the merit of its inhabitants, Albertus claims that the Limbo of the Fathers should be located at a very reasonable dis-tance from Hell. However, because of the attestation and the confirmation found in tradition (e.g., the Creed) of Christ’s descent into ‘Hell’, Albertus decrees that also the Limbo of the Fathers shares in the geographical fate


of the Limbo of the children and can be found on the fringes of Hell: ‘[W]e say that the limbus patrum is next to Hell, just as the Creed says, and that it joins the rim of Hell to the limbus puerorum’ (Albertus Magnus, Tract III de resurrectione, q. 8, art. 2). And even though the Fathers are now in Heaven, their original realm remains, according to Albertus, still in existence, although most presumably it is empty.

In roughly the same period, there was another scholar who was look-ing at least as eager as Albertus into the same questions. His name is Alexander of Hales21 and he is the master of the second angelical doc-tor of the thirteenth century: Saint Bonaventure. Alexander is important for at least two aspects in our current discussion on Limbo. Although it was Albertus who divided Limbo into two different regions, Alexander, acknowledging the existence of a limbus puerorum and a limbus patrum, attempted to keep these two Limbos and their respective problemat-ics—the destiny of the unbaptized infants and the harrowing of the dead performed by Christ—together. Secondly, his investigation into that sec-tion of Limbo where the unbaptized children were relegated was more profound than Albertus and offered a series of problematics that would become of great importance for Bonaventure and Thomas. Let us begin with this last aspect after which we will touch upon Alexander’s geogra-phy of the afterlife.

As was the case with Albertus, also Alexander followed Anselm of Canterbury on original sin and Peter Abelard on the nature of the pun-ishment reserved for the unbaptized dead infants: the deprivation of the beatific vision. There is very little novelty in Alexander regarding these aspects, and also the Seraphic and the Angelic Doctors will follow in Anselm’s and Abelard’s footsteps. What is of interest is the series of new and deeper questions that were put forth by Alexander regarding Limbo. These questions, that Alexander is the first to put forth, mainly relate to the effects of the punishment in Limbo. We can thus see how Alexander ponders the fact that if, as was by then widely accepted, the punishment for these infants was a privative punishment, up until what point (if at all) was it indeed the slightest of punishments Augustine had already

21 That Alexander was studying and writing about the same topics should not surprise. It was, in fact, mainly through the insistence of Alexander—who was a little bit older than Albertus, Alexander was born in 1185 and died in 1245, while Albertus was born in 1205 and died in 1280—that Peter Lombard’s Liber Sententiarum was confirmed as the ‘official’ textbook of the universities.

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speculated about. In fact, as had been put forth by a manifold of prom-inent authorities,22 if the fires and torments of Hell (the so-called poena sensus) are far less painful than the (awareness of the) lack of the beatific vision (the poena damni), how can the punishment reserved for Limbo, being exactly the lack of the beatific vision, coincide with the mildest of all punishments? Furthermore, if there is no punishment of the senses in Limbo (there being no fire and no physical punishment), what is one to think about the awareness of these infants regarding the lack of the beatific vision? Do unbaptized infants actually know that they are missing out on what is the true destiny of humankind (as what the beatific vision is)? And if so, is that being aware of missing out on the true destiny of man not in itself some sort of actual punishment (of the senses) as well?

An extended exposé of Alexander’s tortuous (but beautiful) medi-tations on these questions—ponderings which attempt to find an equi-librium between divine justice and divine mercy—is not within the scope of this text. It suffices here to outline some of his more impor-tant responses. Regarding the harshness of the poena damni, Alexander admits that this punishment, albeit privative, is the greatest of all punish-ments. However, some ‘mitigating circumstances’ need to be taken into consideration. First of all, what should not be forgotten is that there is justice in the punishment as the unbaptized children are weighed down by original sin. However, as Alexander explains, it is not because these unbaptized infants lack the direct beatific vision that they have not some indirect ‘experience’ of this same beatific vision. Alexander uses the met-aphor of the sun. Although the infants can’t see the sun directly (unlike the saved), they can see and understand that what is lighted is so by this fount of light (unlike the damned for whom this light is completely absent). And as they found themselves, in ‘a situation where there never was any such union to begin with, lack of that union is not a punish-ment’ (Beiting 1999, 19). There is thus, still according to Alexander, no (direct) awareness of these being a lack—the children ‘neither sense nor discern this’ (Alexander of Hales, In 4 Sent., II, d.33, 9c). In no way could this state of the unbaptized infants in Limbo thus be considered under the label of (actual) punishment for Alexander.

22 §1035 of the Catechism states: ‘The chief punishment of Hell is eternal separation from God [the lack of the beatific vision], in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs’ (part 1, Sect. 2, Chapter III, Art. 12, IV, §1035). Available :http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P2O.HTM#-1C6.

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P2O.HTM#-1C6


Alexander is important also for his considerations on the geography of the afterlife. We already declared that he was the first to have treated the two Limbos and their respective problematics together, and this, obviously, had some different repercussions on the divisions in this geog-raphy. Considering the conditions of the unbaptized children and the Fathers—both the Fathers and the unbaptized children, in fact, share in their state of having died with only the weight of original sin pushing them down—Alexander (greatly relying on Augustine’s distinction of the two Hells, the lower and the higher Hell) concludes that both are (were) kept in one specific place named the limbus inferni, the Limbo of Hell (which, contrary to Augustine, was now a distinctly separate space/state). The only thing that separates them is their ‘epistemic’ condition. In fact, the Fathers, contrary to the children as we just came to disclose, were well aware of their being separated and disconnected from God. Their state was thus one of anxiety and of sadness, but also of hope of being ‘one day’ saved. Instead of a fivefold subdivision of the afterlife, with Alexander of Hales we thus have a quadruple netherworld which consisted of Hell, a subdivided Limbo, Purgatory, and Paradise.

In the following section, we will see how the ideas explored by Albertus Magnus and Alexander of Hales will be further elaborated by their most brilliant pupils. We will also finally discover how the paradox which demonstrated to be the stumbling block for Augustine to be able to think something as a middle place for unbaptized children will be ‘pimped’ with what even Alexander of Hales could not think about: happiness.

3.3.5 From Neutral to Joyous Limbo: Saint Bonaventure and Saint Thomas

We have now finally arrived at the apex of our discussion on the con-cept of Limbo. And, as we already evinced in precedence, it is found in its treatment by the two angelical doctors: Saint Thomas and Saint Bonaventure. Bonaventure and Thomas were, to very shortly sketch the context, contemporaries—Bonaventure was born in 1221 and Thomas was born in 1225, both died in 1274—and somewhat of adversaries. In fact, besides their disagreement on a manifold of points, they also belonged to the opposing, and still ‘conquering’ mendicant orders, respectively, the Franciscans and the Dominicans. Regarding the dis-cussion of our topic, with Peter Lombard’s Liber Sententiarum by now well confirmed as the ‘official’ textbook of the universities it had become

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necessary for all the great (and lesser) Scholastics to confront the topic of the destiny of the unbaptized dead infants head-on. As we have already seen, also Bonaventure and Thomas will mainly follow Anselm of Canterbury’s reasoning on original sin and Abelard’s regarding the pun-ishment for death without baptism. Their main and undeniable contri-bution to the discussion on Limbo will thus not be found primarily in some original new understanding of these aspects but in their attempts to think through the uncomfortable questions that we discovered with Alexander of Hales and which had also been the main stumbling blocks for Saint Augustine.

In this last section of our history of the concept of Limbo—a history that is, as we have already underlined, characterized by interruption, chance, and necessity and that cannot be considered as developing in an accumulating continuum—we will deal first with Bonaventure and end with Thomas. That Bonaventure receives precedence over Thomas is mainly because of the precedence of age, but Bonaventura comes first, and even though their reasoning on Limbo is somewhat in agreement, also because Thomas’s speculations on Limbo are more radical in accept-ing and in thinking the paradox of Limbo through to its bitter end. We can thus begin by turning to Bonaventure’s Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard23 where we find his most detailed examination of the questions related to Limbo.

As will become clear in what follows, Bonaventure’s position regard-ing most topics he dealt with that related to the afterlife (thus, includ-ing his take on Limbo24) can be seen as a clear attempt to phrase or

23 We will use Bonaventure’s Commentary as main reference. At times, though, we will also refer to Bonaventure’s Breviloquium (2005) as this text often offers very concise and accurately formulated summaries, written by Bonaventure himself. To my knowledge, there is no official English translation available of the Commentary. Also, on this occasion, we will refer to Christopher Beiting’s translation (cf. Beiting 1999).

24 Bonaventure does, when talking about Limbo generally not make clear which Limbo he is referring to, be it the Limbo of the Fathers or the Limbo of the children. From this, one should, however, not infer that for Saint Bonaventure Limbo is one place that houses two different groups. In the fourth book of his Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, while he is discussing the different meanings for which the word Hell has been used, we can read the following specification that makes it perfectly clear that also for the Seraphic Doctor there are two different and separate spheres that go under the name of Limbo: ‘Hell is applied not only to the lowest place with the punishment of sense and damnation and also a lower place accompanied by the punishment of damnation alone,


formulate some sort of synthesis between the often opposing positions of the various authorities he had studied.25 Regarding the question of original sin, it should not surprise that Bonaventure holds to Anselm’s understanding (original sin being a lack [of justice]) but attempts to combine it with the more original Augustinian understanding (from which Anselm had taken leave). Original sin thus no longer just com-ports the privation of original justice, but it also includes a disorderly aspect, namely the Augustinian (positive) aspect of concupiscence (cf. Bonaventure, In II Sent., d.30, a.1, q.1). This obviously has some reper-cussions on the punishment reserved for the unbaptized infants who had died. In fact, the purely negative punishment envisaged by Abelard—the lack of the beatific vision (the poena damni)—is now being combined with, albeit in the name of Augustine’s lightest possible of all, some form of actual (positive) punishment (poena sensus). As original sin now con-sists of a combination of a negative and a positive (the lack or privation of original divine justice and the presence of concupiscence), also its punishment requires a negative and a positive, namely: the lack of the beatific vision and the presence of eternal fire (cf. Bonaventure, In II Sent., d.33, a.3).

However, as Christopher Beiting cunningly remarks, ‘[D]espite the seemingly ironclad logic of the preceding interpretation, Bonaventure does not seem convinced by his own argument’ (Beiting 1999, 31). And even though he does not back away from this renewed inclusion of Saint Augustine in the debate on Limbo, it seems that also Bonaventure con-siders Augustine’s harsh tone more related to the Pelagian controversy than to the issues related to Limbo as such. And so, in a piece of extraor-dinary historical reinterpretation, Augustine’s position is considered a necessary but excessively severe standpoint. The sternness of Augustine’s

namely limbo, which is either the limbo of children, or the limbo of the Fathers (or bosom of Abraham)’ (Bonaventure, In IV Sent., d.45 a.1).

25 As the great scholar of medieval thought, Etienne Gilson, put in his powerful volume dedicated to Bonaventure: ‘St. Bonaventure’s thought appears as if bent with all its powers towards the creation of a new synthesis, a synthesis wherein he should find a place for all the philosophical and religious values of which he had had living experience—from the humblest form of faith, rising through philosophy, then through theology, from grade to grade—with no unjust deprecation of any, yet never permitting any to usurp a place not its own—to the very highest peaks of the mystical life wither St. Francis beckoned him’ (Gilson 1965, 33).

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position was thus necessary, but correlated almost exclusively to Pelagianism (cf. Bonaventure, In II Sent., d.33, a.3, q.1).26 Bonaventure thus arrives at a more moderate position where the lack of the beatific vision and the presence of eternal fire are quite intriguingly combined with the unawareness of this physical/positive punishment. ‘Because they [the unbaptized children]’, as Bonaventure writes, ‘do not have in them-selves actual delight in sin, neither in spirit nor in flesh, for that reason they do not feel the sharpness of the punishment of fire’ (Bonaventure, In II Sent., d.33, a.3, q.1). There is thus the lack of the beatific vision and, even though they are in the presence of the eternal fire, the lack of positive pain: ‘[W]hence just as the same fire punishes greater sinners more than lesser sinners, so in the same fire the bodies of those who have sinned in actual sin are punished. But the bodies of children even if they are certainly spun around in those infernal fires, they do not feel suffer-ing, …’ (Bonaventure, In II Sent., d.33, a.3, q.1).

For as much as Bonaventure has thus been able to limit the positive pain of the eternal fire, there remains another question that needs to be resolved. We already encountered this ulterior question when we treated Bonaventure’s master Alexander, and it regards the awareness by these infants of the lack of the beatific vision. Do unbaptized infants actually know, Bonaventure asks, that they are missing out on what is the true destiny of humankind? And if so, is that being aware of missing out on the true destiny of man not a hidden return of some sort of actual pun-ishment? As Bonaventure affirms, ‘the souls of children will lack actual pain and affliction, but’ and here the problem arises very clearly, ‘nev-ertheless will not lack consciousness’ (Bonaventure, In II Sent., d.33, a.3, q.2). To resolve this precarious problematic, Bonaventure takes recourse to an argument very closely related to the despised one by

26 Whereas in his Commentary he does not mention the Pelagian heresy, he does so in his Breviloquium. His argumentation is very illuminating in this short passage that it is worth reproducing in full: ‘Finally, because the absence of justice in the newly born is not caused by an act of their own or by any actual pleasure, it is not fitting that they should be pun-ished in their senses in Hell after this life on account of original sin. This is because divine justice is always tempered by superabundant mercy and punishes us not more but less than we deserve. We ought to believe that blessed Augustine was aware of this, even though on the surface his words seem to state otherwise, because he was reacting so strongly against the errors of the Pelagians, who had granted such infants blessedness in some form. But in his effort to lead them back to a moderate position, he veered too far in the other extreme’ (Bonaventure 2005, III, 5, 6; 111–112).


Augustine, namely that of the middle, the medium. As Beiting resumes Bonaventure’s position:

[T]hey truly fit neither camp, but rather hold the mean place between both: like the blessed, they lack all affliction, both interior and exterior, like the damned, they are deprived of the beatific vision and the bodily light … they know that they are not saved, and as such are in desolation, but they know they are not damned as well, and so are in consolation as well. (Beiting 1999, 35)

Or as Bonaventure himself describes the situation of the unbaptized infants:

[T]he fair-mindedness and immutability of divine justice consolidates them perpetually in the same state both with regard to the body as to the soul, both the cognitive and effective soul, that they neither make progress nor fall short, nor are they made happy nor sad, but they always remain so uni-formly, that they are material for the praising of divine justice, which is so fair-minded and just, that no good remains unrewarded, no evil remains unpunished, and it might hold a middle most perfectly between overabun-dance and decrease. (Bonaventure, In II Sent., d.33, a.3, q.2)

We thus end up with a rather bizarre middle state where, even though there is the presence of eternal fire, there is no actual positive awareness of this pain, and whereas there is the awareness of the lack of the bea-tific vision, there is some sort of consolation as well in a correlated con-sciousness that it could all have been much worse as damnation could have been the final destiny. The limbus puerorum, for Bonaventure, is thus this neither/nor realm where the punishments of Hell are con-trasted with some of the qualities of Heaven. Basically, it is a paradoxical place where both happiness and sadness are eternally present, but where ‘sadness does not weigh them down, nor does happiness restore them’ (Bonaventure, In II Sent., d.33, a.3, q.2).

This much for Bonaventure’s Limbo of the children. The situation was somewhat different for the Fathers who had been held up in the Limbus patrum—which for Bonaventure was the same as the already mentioned bosom of Abraham. Contrary to the children in the Limbus puerorum who did not feel much at all, the Fathers, although being aware of the lack of the beatific vision as well, were consoled because they had foreknowledge and faith in a future glory that awaited them.

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Important to notice from the very beginning is that Bonaventure arrives at the Limbo of the Fathers in his discussion of the, by now well known, trope of Christ’s descent into Hell. Also for Bonaventure Christ did not descend into the lowest or deepest parts of Hell but ‘he descended as much to that part, in which the just were, who were detained by merit of the sin of the first parents’ (Bonaventure, In III Sent., d.22, a.1, q.4). And he, interestingly, adds that this part of Hell is that one ‘which indeed is usually called Limbo’ (Bonaventure, In III Sent., d.22, a.1, q.4). So the Hell into which Christ had descended for such a long time in the tradition of Christianity had now finally been understood as being the Limbo of the Fathers. For as much as the Hell into which Christ had descended had become the Limbo (of the Fathers), it was also cer-tain for Bonaventure—following Peter Abelard—that this realm of the afterlife had not just been populated with the Holy Fathers of the Old Testament. Also others—most probably the heathen or pagan just—dwelled in there.27 And even though Christ had descended during the triduum, Bonaventure argued that the just did not enter immediately into Heaven after he had opened the door of Limbo. They had to wait until his Ascension to join him in heavenly Paradise: ‘the souls of the saints were not led straightaway from Limbo nor placed straightaway in Heaven’ (Bonaventure, In III Sent., d.22, a.1, q.4).

Some words should also be said about Bonaventure’s thoughts on the geography of the afterlife. Like so many of the scholastic writers before him, also Bonaventure subdivided the afterlife in a quintipartite way. Contrary to the majority of his scholastic colleagues, he did, how-ever, have a unique localization of the by now usual five ‘spheres’. For Bonaventure, in fact, the place that was situated immediately above Hell was Purgatory and not the two Limbos. So we have Hell at the bottom, followed by Purgatory, and then there are the two Limbos—with the Limbo of the children (which for Bonaventure was Limbo simplicter) the lowest and the Limbo of the Fathers (which for Bonaventure was the same as the bosom of Abraham) above—and finally, there was Heaven.

27 The condensed formula Bonaventure uses in his Breviloquium summarizes the just described situation accurately: ‘Concerning the effects and fruits of the passion of Christ, the following must be held with unquestionable faith. After the passion, the soul of Christ ‘descended into Hell’ or limbo, to release, not all, but those who had died as members of Christ through living faith or through the sacraments of faith’ (Bonaventure 2005, IV, 10, 1; 164).


This rather original classification of the afterlife came about because of Bonaventure’s intermixing the type of ‘punishment’ with its dura-tion (and type predominating over duration of punishment). So Hell and Purgatory share the type of punishment (the actual positive pun-ishment), but Purgatory is only an ad tempus sort of Hell (a Hell lim-ited in time) for which it can be found above Hell. The same reasoning holds for the classification of the two Limbos. Both Limbos obviously share the same type of punishment, but the Limbo of the Fathers is only a temporal Limbo, and as such, it can be found closer to Heaven than the Limbus puerorum. Interestingly, Bonaventure also endeavored to argue occasionally that only Hell and Purgatory were to be located in the underworld, whereas the two Limbos and Heaven were considered to be ‘above’ the world. In fact, when arguing about the ‘actual’ location of the realms of the hereafter, the ‘just souls … snatched from the power of shadows’, that is the Fathers who were saved by Christ from the limbus patrum, are to be found in the section dedicated to the ‘above’ position, whereas Purgatory is to be found in the section dedicated to the ‘below’ position (cf. Bonaventure, In IV Sent., d.20, a.1, q.6).

Less interested in synthesis, Saint Thomas of Aquinas’ take on Limbo could proceed more freely, and without any of the constraints Bonaventure’s synthesizing nature had put on his argumentation. Before we venture into Thomas’s argumentation about Limbo, let me inverse the general proceeding of the writing done until now and begin with a quick resume of his geography of the afterlife. Also for Thomas there were five abodes in the afterlife, and there was, according to him, a very good reason for this number. The organization and its reasoning are worth reporting in full:

[T]he abodes of souls are distinguished according to the souls’ various states. Now the soul united to a mortal body is in the state of meriting, while the soul separated from the body is in the state of receiving good or evil for its merits; so that after death it is either in the state of receiving its final reward, or in the state of being hindered from receiving it. If it is in the state of receiving its final retribution, this happens in two ways: either in the respect of good, and then it is paradise; or in respect of evil, and thus as regards actual sin it is Hell, and as regards original sin it is the limbo of children. On the other hand, if it be in the state where it is hin-dered from receiving its final reward, this is either on account of a defect of the person, and thus we have purgatory where souls are detained from

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receiving their reward once on account of the sins they have committed, or else it is on account of a defect of nature, and thus we have the limbo of the Fathers, were the Fathers were detained from obtaining glory on account of the guilt of human nature which could not yet be expiated. (Aquinas 1947, Suppl., q.69, a.7)

So also with Thomas we have the, by now traditional, quintuple repar-tition of the afterlife. However, Hell, for Thomas is fourfold, and all realms, with exclusion of Heaven, belong to Hell. In fact, as he writes: ‘it is possible that Hell and Limbo are the same place, or that they are continuous as it were yet so that some higher part of Hell be called the Limbo of Fathers’ (Aquinas 1947, Suppl., q.69, a.5). So Hell con-tains four realms and is organized in the following way: The Hell of the damned can be found at the lowest and is followed by the Limbo of the children. Following the Limbo of the children is, however, not the Limbo of the Fathers but Purgatory. In fact, as Thomas writes in his Commentary to Peter Lombard’s Sentences:

[A]nother is above that one [Limbo of the children], in which are dark-ness with regard to the lack of the divine vision, but not with regard the lack of grace, but there is there the punishment of sense; and it is called purgatory. Another is greatly above it, in which is darkness with regard to lack of divine vision, but not with regard to the lack of divine grace, nor is there sensible punishment there; and this is the hell of the holy fathers …. (Aquinas, III Sent., d.22, q.2, a.1, qcla.3)28

So we have the Hell of the damned, the Limbo of the children, Purgatory, the Limbo of the Fathers, and, finally, Heaven.

Regarding Thomas’ view on the Limbo of the Fathers, we have already seen how he situates it at the outer fringes of Hell. It is the highest place of the ‘under’-world. We have also already been able to discover that the Limbo of the Fathers was a place of detention where ‘the guilt of human nature’, that is, original sin, ‘could not yet be expi-ated’ (Aquinas 1947, Suppl., q.69, a.7—emphasis added). That par-ticular realm was thus covered in darkness because of the lack of the beatific vision, but its status was that of a transitory realm where some

28 As reported in Beiting (1998, 232).


prescience, in the sense of divine grace, was already present under the form of hope—once descended in Limbo, Christ ‘dispelled the suffer-ing which they endured through their glory being delayed: still they had great joy from the very hope thereof …’ (Aquinas 1947, III, q.52, a.5, ad.1). These same Fathers, and contrary to the unbaptized children (and this aspect will return shortly), were also signed by their faith in Christ (Aquinas 1947, III, q.52, a.7, ad.1), as such their being held in Limbo was merely caused by the fact that ‘the approach to the life of glory was not opened’ (Aquinas 1947, III, q.52, a.5—emphasis added). Christ had to die first on the cross—the price of man’s redemption still had to be paid (cf. Aquinas 1947, III, q.52, a.5, ad.2). In fact, it was only Christ’s Passion that could deliver mankind from sin. The moment this happened, he descended into Hell/Limbo and delivered the Fathers who, and this contrary to Bonaventure’s understanding, already entered Paradise after Christ’s resurrection—‘they [the Fathers] did not go out as long as Christ remained in Hell, because his presence was part of the ful-ness of their glory’ (Aquinas 1947, III, q.52, a.5, ad.3). Finally, echoing Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Job (xiii), Thomas also reveals that the Limbo of the Fathers is now a closed and sealed off realm, ‘[S]ince our Creator and Redeemer, penetrating the bars of Hell, brought out from thence the souls of the elect, he does not permit us to go thither, from whence he has already by descending set others free’ (Aquinas 1947, III, q.52, a.8).

Regarding the realm of the Limbo of the children, it needs to be made clear from the very beginning that for Thomas, just like it already was for Bonaventure, Augustine’s argumentation that unbaptized infants should also undergo physical pains (punishment of the senses) was merely an argumentative point in the battle against the Pelagians. As he wrote in his reply to the first objection in his On Evil (2003): ‘the saint used such a way of speaking to make abominable the error of Pelagians, who asserted that infants have no sin and deserve no punishment’ (Aquinas 2003, q.5, a.2, ad.1; 239). And with a brilliant twist Aquinas even claims that Augustine actually argued against those who held that there was any suffering of a penal nature in Limbo (Aquinas 1947, III, q.52, a.5, ad.1). For as much as that may be taking Augustine just a little bit too far (all who died burdened by original sin were destined to the infernal fires according to Augustine), according to Thomas ‘original sin deserves only the punishment of loss, namely the privation of the vision

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of God, not punishment of the senses’ (Aquinas 2003, q.5, a.2; 238). Or, as we can read in the Supplement to his Summa Theologica:

the loss of the vision is the proper and only punishment of original sin after death: because, if any other sensible punishment were inflicted after death of original sin, a man would be punished out of proportion for his guilt, for sensible punishment is inflicted for that which is proper to the person … Hence, as his guilt did not result from an action of his own, even so neither should he be punished by suffering himself, but only by losing that which his nature was unable to obtain. (Aquinas 1947, Suppl., App.1, q.1, a.1)

So there is, for Thomas, no actual or physical—that is, positive—pain involved in the state the unbaptized infants find themselves in their Limbo.

We have, however, already seen that since Alexander of Hales, the observation that there is no pain of the senses involved in the limbus puerorum did not secure the issue that every form of pain was excluded. In fact, as we already discussed—and we can discover how Thomas (i.e., the students who stitched together the Supplementum to the unfin-ished Summa Theologica) confronts this problematic adding even John Chrysostom to the Church authorities who put this problematic in writ-ing (cf. Aquinas 1947, Suppl., App.1, q.1, a.2)—if the fires and torments of Hell (the so-called poena sensus) are far less painful than the lack of the beatific vision (the poena damni), how can the punishment reserved for Limbo be considered as the Augustinian mildest of all punishments? Does this lack not cause some serious spiritual affliction as well (espe-cially in the case there is actual awareness of this lack)?

In his attempt to answer this problematic, Thomas claims that there are three diverse opinions. The first two—that (1) these children will be so much in the dark that they will not know that they lack what they have lost, or that (2) they will be aware of their lack of the beatific vision that this lack will sadden them, but that this sorrow will be mitigated because they did not willingly incur in the sin for which they are con-demned (cf. Aquinas 1947, Suppl., App.1, q.2)—didn’t convince him. The third is the one that he will accept and goes: ‘they will know per-fectly things subject to natural knowledge, and both the fact of their being deprived of eternal life and the reason for this privation, and that


nevertheless this knowledge will not cause sorrow in them’ (Aquinas 1947, Suppl., App.1, q.2). The reason Thomas offers is the rather simple (simplistic29) one that says that ‘if one is guided by the right reason one does not grieve through being deprived of what is beyond one’s power to obtain, but only through lack of that which, in some way, one is capa-ble of obtaining’ (Aquinas 1947, Suppl., App.1, q.2). Since unbaptized infants could not obtain any form of the beatific vision, there is no log-ical reason whatsoever why they should be sorrowful. In fact, Thomas concludes, and this is the culmination of our long voyage on Limbo’s history, ‘they will nowise grieve for being deprived of the divine vision; nay, rather will they rejoice for that they will have a large share of God’s goodness and their own natural perfections’ (Aquinas 1947, Suppl., App.1, q.2—emphasis added).30

Basically, what we thus have is the paradoxical situation where the worst of all punishments—as we saw, the lack of the beatific vision is con-sidered as being far worse than the eternal fires of Hell—not only does not cause any suffering (it is no punishment of the senses, and there is no spiritual affliction involved either) but rather is met with joy. Even though there is consciousness of the lack of the beatific vision, there will be perfect knowledge of the natural world but, contrary to the Fathers in their Limbo, no knowledge regarding or about faith (cf. Dyer 1964, 54–55), which means they will lack any understanding regarding their lack. If this was not the case, they would feel the sorrow that Thomas so wants to avoid. What we are thus dealing with is not just the lack of the beatific vision, but—and it is this that will return in the chapters to follow and will qualify as the cipher that unites Limbo with the perennial crisis—a ‘happiness’, a joy, caused not just by a lack, by a form of missing or privation, but by the absence of the mere understanding of this pri-vation. The unbaptized infants in Limbo were aware of their privation,

29 That Thomas’s argument can be considered as simplistic is related to the examples he offers to sustain his reasoning. In fact, as he states, unbaptized children who will eternally lack the beatific vision should not feel any sorrow just like ‘no wise man grieves for being unable to fly like a bird, or for that he is not a king or an emperor’ (Aquinas 1947, Suppl., App.1, q.2).

30 Thomas repeats this also at the end of his treatment of this second question: ‘[A]lthough unbaptized children are separated from God as regards the union of glory, they are not utterly separated from him: in fact, they are united to him by their share of natural goods, and so will also be able to rejoice in him by their natural knowledge and love’ (Aquinas 1947, Suppl., App.1, q.2, ad.5).

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but their awareness did not include an understanding of it. It was the absence, the lack, of the understanding of the lack (of the beatific vision) that allowed for these poor infants to relish in their Limboic joy.

*The centuries that followed saw the ideas on Limbo, ideas that had found their culmination in Thomas, first, reconfirmed, but later on, especially in the 17th century, once more caught up in battle. We thus, on the one hand, find the great Renaissance Jesuit theologians—f.e. Suarez, Molina, and Leonard Lessius—confirm the mainly Scholastic idea that unbaptized children who had died were not only free from suffering and sadness but were also given great happiness notwithstanding their lack of the beatific vision (cf. Dyer 1955, 44). On the other hand, with the rise of Jansenism, which emerged as an attempt to re-appropriate Saint Augustine from Protestantism, we see the harsh strand of Augustinian anti-Pelagian based condemnation of this idea of Limbo rise once more as well. The situation was highly charged, and Limbo was caught up in a battle between orders (Jesuits vs. Augustinians) and here-tics (Jansenism).

It was also in this period and within the framework of the growing battle between orders over the concept of Limbo that we find the famous papal Bull Auctorem Fidei from 1794 (although pope Pius VI is indicated as author, the sole redactor of the Bull seems to have been the Italian Cardinal Gerdil [cf. Dyer 1955, 72]). This Bull has always been highly controversial as it might regard the possible magisterial acceptance of Limbo. The ‘cornerstone’ of this discussion is Auctorem Fidei’s (in-)famous ‘article 26’ that goes as follows:

On the Punishment of those who die under original sin.On Baptism, §3.XXVI. The doctrine which rejects as a Pelagian fable, that place of the

lower regions (which the faithful commonly designate by the name of the limbo of children) in which the souls of those departing with the sole guilt of origi-nal sin are punished with the punishment of the condemned, exclusive of the punishment of fire; just as if, by this very fact, that these who remove the pun-ishment of fire introduced that middle place and state free of guilt and of punishment in-between the kingdom of God and eternal damnation, such as that about which the Pelagians idly talk;

FALSE, RASH, INJURIOUS TO CATHOLIC SCHOOLS.31

31 Available http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-vi/it/documents/bolla-auctorem-fidei-28-agosto-1794.html.

http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-vi/it/documents/bolla-auctorem-fidei-28-agosto-1794.html

http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-vi/it/documents/bolla-auctorem-fidei-28-agosto-1794.html


The main issue that needs answering here is whether Pius VI (and Gerdil) is attacking the calumny of the Catholic Schools, as if Scholasticism and the Jesuits can be considered as Pelagians or simil-Pelagians—which is also what the 2007 document by the International Theological Commission, we treated in section 3.1, considered—, or if he is underwriting (giving it a doctrinal status) a more general theory of Limbo, as A. Gaudel claimed in his 1926 contribution to the Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique (Gaudel 1926). As George J. Dyer accu-rately reassumes ‘[T]he evidence … indicates’, however, that article 26 of the Bull ‘was directly aimed at a calumny against the Catholic Schools’ and consisted, fur-thermore, in an ‘indirect refutation of the many orthodox theologians who may have been too vigorous in their denial of Limbo’ (Dyer 1955, 163). If anything, the Bull drained the debate of its poison, so it could cause no further harm to the Church relegating, as such, Limbo to a liminal place (cf. Dyer 1955, 180).

No further debates within the Church were held that concerned the con-cept of Limbo. The last mentioning of the concept of Limbo within its cultural context of a place in the afterlife is to be found in the cancellation of Limbo by Pope Benedict XVI.

*

3.4 Poetic Limbo in dante and miLton

Having finished the historical section, one final sphere where Limbo con-stituted a topic of consideration remains to be dealt with. After the picto-rial-sculptural/visual sphere of the ‘Visual Anteprima’ and the scholarly one of the previous section, we now turn to the poetic/aural sphere. Amidst the many that could have been chosen, we opted for proba-bly the two most famous and intriguing poems—particularly intrigu-ing regarding their take on Limbo. These two poems are, first, Dante Alighieri’s three canticles that form The Divine Comedy—respectively, the Inferno (Dante 1996), Purgatory (Dante 2003), and Paradise (Dante 2011)—and, secondly, John Milton’s Paradise Lost (2005). Although some minor notes of comment will be delivered along the texts when necessary, we have opted to let the poems speak for themselves.

Limbo is fast in forming a topic in The Divine Comedy. Already in the fourth canto of the Inferno does Dante find himself in Limbo (which constitutes the first of the nine circles of Hell). The first canto, to quickly describe what preceded Dante’s entry into Limbo so to create at least a little bit of context, had seen Dante (thirty-five years old, symbolizing as such his being in the middle of his life) lost in a dark and wild forest. These are the famous opening lines of the Inferno:

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Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vitami ritrovai per una selva oscurache la diritta via era smarrita. (Dante 1996, I, 1–3; 26)

In the middle of the journey of our life, I came toMyself in a dark wood, for the straight way was lost. (Dante 1996, I, 1–3; 27)

Desiring to climb up a hill that would allow him to oversee the sur-roundings, so he can escape, Dante finds himself blocked by three beasts (which are generally considered as symbolizing the three main kinds of sin that lead to Hell). When the three beasts start to drive him back deeper in the dark and unfriendly forest, Dante is saved by what will become his guide in their trip in the afterworld: The Roman poet Virgil—who, as we already saw in Sect. 3.2, is the author of the Aeneid that itself recounts of a travel through the underworld by Aeneas. Although reluctant at first to follow Virgil, Dante is convinced when Virgil explains how he has been sent by Beatrice who symbolizes not only divine but also Dante’s true love. The voyage can thus begin, and the third canto sees Dante and Virgil passing through the gate of Hell on which the famous sentence, ‘LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA, VOI CH’ENTRATE’ (Dante 1996, III, 9; 54)—‘ABANDON ALL HOPE, YOU WHO ENTER’ (Dante 1996, III, 9; 55)32—is sculptured. Dante and Virgil thus find themselves in a dark, starless, area surrounded by ‘sighs, weeping, loud wailing’ (Dante 1996, III, 22; 55) where ‘[S]trange languages, horrible tongues, words of pain, accents of anger, voices loud and hoarse, and sounds of blows with them’ (Dante 1996, III; 25–27) surround them, making Dante cry. This place, which is located at the shores of the Acheron, is an unclassified place, neither in nor out of Hell. It houses the souls of the undecided, uncommitted,

32 The whole message at the gate of Hell is the following:

THROUGH ME THE WAY INTO THE GRIEVING CITY,THROUGH ME THE WAY INTO ETERNAL SORROW, THROUGHME THE WAY AMONG THE LOST PEOPLE.JUSTICE MOVED MY HIGH MAKER; DIVINEPOWER MADE ME, HIGHEST WISDOM, ANDPRIMAL LOVE.BEFORE ME WERE NO THINGS CREATEDEXCEPT ETERNAL ONES, AND I ENDURE ETERNAL.ABANDON EVERY HOPE, YOU WHO ENTER. (Dante 1996, III, 1–9; 55)


cowardly opportunist men and women as well as the angels who did not take any side in the battle of the Rebellion of the Angels. These souls run around naked, wailing, eternally chasing the banner of self-interest, that scorningly runs in circles, while being tormented by wasps and large flies which ‘streaked their faces with blood which, mixed with tears, at their feet was gathered up by disgusting worms’ (Dante 1996, III, 67–69; 57). Having left these souls behind, they join a group of souls (wicked souls who will soon start cursing God and mankind) that stood waiting on the bank of a grand river ready to be crossed by Charon, the ferryman of the underworld. At first, Charon refuses to take Dante with him as he is not dead yet, but Virgil convinces him. After having been solaced by Virgil, Charon’s refusal to take Dante across the river is, in fact, a sign that Dante’s soul is still good as no bad soul is ever refused by the ferry-man, Dante falls as in a deep sleep.

The fourth canto dramatically opens with a heavy thunder that wakes Dante from his deep sleep. Dante finds himself no longer on Charon’s vessel but standing erect, facing a ‘sorrowful valley of the abyss, which gathers in the thundering of infinite woes’ (Dante 1996, IV, 8–9; 71). Although Dante stands right on top of this valley, he cannot distinguish anything below as it is so dark, deep, and clouded. Upon Virgil’s com-mand, they descend in what Dante’s guide himself calls the ‘blind world’ (Dante 1996, IV, 13–14; 71). They have entered the first circle of Hell, the circle that is ‘girding the abyss’ (Dante 1996, IV, 24; 71—emphasis added). Said differently, they have entered Limbo.

As Dante descends, he immediately discerns a difference between the space he had left behind on the other side of the Acheron and this dark valley he is entering. There is, in fact, no powerful weeping or hoarse wail-ing. Neither are there loud words and voices of pain, nor raging anger, only ‘sighs which caused the eternal air to tremble’ (Dante 1996, IV, 26–27; 71). These quivering sighs which ‘resulted from grief without torture’ are caused by ‘the crowds, which were many and large, of infants and woman and of men’ (Dante 1996, IV, 28–30; 71—emphasis added). Surprised that Dante does not ask who these souls are, Virgilio takes the initiative and reveals:

they did not sin; and if they have merits, it isnot enough, because they did not receive baptism,which is the gateway to the faith that you believe.And if they lived before Christianity, they did notadore God as was needful: and of this kind am I

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myself.because of such defects, not for any otherwickedness, we are lost, and only so far harmed thatwithout hope we live in desire. (Dante 1996, IV, 34–42; 73)

Dante is immediately struck by great sadness. He, in fact, understands that, notwithstanding there is no torture present in this first circle that girds the abyss, men and women of worth are confined and suspended in Limbo. In a rush of hope, Dante immediately asks Virgil if, and who in case the answer is positive, anybody has ever left Limbo, to rise up to Heaven. Virgil then recounts his version of the ‘harrowing of Hell’:

I was still new in this condition, when Isaw a powerful one come, crowned with a sign ofvictory.He led forth from here the shade of our firstparent, of Abel his son, and that of Noah, of Moses,lawgiver and obedient,Abraham the patriarch and David the King, Israelwith his Father, and his children, and Rachel, forwhom he did so much,and many others, and he made them blessed. (Dante 1996, IV, 52–61; 73)

None other have ever left.Strikingly, Jesus thus seems to have saved only the Jewish inhabitants

of Limbo. The only names mentioned by Virgil are in fact those present in the Old Testament. That the great Greek and ‘barbarian’ inhabitants of Limbo did remain enclosed, will also soon be revealed when Dante encounters these great and worthy souls as his wandering in Limbo con-tinues. Virgil is, in fact, quickly recognized—‘a voice was heard by me: “Honor the highest poet: his shade returns, that had departed”’ (Dante 1996, IV, 79–81; 75). They thus encounter four other great poet-shades: Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan (cf. Dante 1996, IV, 88–90; 75). In the company of these four poets and his guide-poet, Dante contin-ues until he reaches the foot of a ‘noble castle, seven times encircled by high walls, defended all around by a lovely little stream’ (Dante 1996, IV, 106–108; 75), which leads, once they have passed through the seven gates, to ‘a meadow of fresh green’ (Dante 1996, IV, 111; 77). On this meadow strolled all the great souls which Dante lists: Electra


with companions, Hector, Aeneas, and Caesar, Camilla and Penthesilea, King Latinus and his daughter Lavinia, Brutus, Lucretia, Julia, Marcia, and Cornelia were also there, just as Saladin—although he kept to him-self. All the great philosophers were present as well: Aristotle, first of all—unnamed, but he is ‘the master of those who know’ and ‘all gaze at him, all do him honor’ (Dante 1996, IV, 13–131 & 133; 77)—then Socrates and Plato, but also Democritus, Diogenes, Anaxagoras, Thales, Empedocles, Heraclitus, and Zeno are present. Dioscorides, Orpheus, Tullius, Linus, and Seneca were there too, just as Euclid, Ptolemy, Hippocrates, Avicenna, Galen, and Averroës (cf. Dante 1996, IV, 121–142; 77). Many more were there, but Dante could not describe them all. And while he is still pondering all the great souls on the green meadow, he suddenly finds himself alone again with Virgil who leads him away into a new place ‘where no light shines’ (Dante 1996, IV, 151; 79). The new place Dante is led to is the second circle of Hell which consists of a much ‘smaller place’ with ‘so much more suffering that it goads the soul to shriek’ (Dante 1996, V, 2–3; 87). With Dante descending into this second circle ends the description of Limbo in the Inferno.

The Inferno, however, is not the only cantica that holds some ref-erence to Limbo. Also Purgatory and even Paradise contain brief, but revealing, descriptive elements of Limbo. In Purgatory, we find the refer-ence to Limbo in the seventh canto. We are still in what Dante calls the ‘Ante-purgatory’, a sort of state or phase that is pre-, before, Purgatory. This ‘Ante-Purgatory’ makes up the two lowest circles of the mountain of Purgatory. Virgil, being himself a dweller of Limbo, does find him-self somewhat at unease in Purgatory. Being a dead soul and not a living human as Dante, he is, however, still in the better position to commu-nicate with the other residents of the afterlife. He thus questions a ‘soul who, sitting all alone, is looking towards us: that one will teach us the quickest way’ (Dante 2003, VI, 58–60; 95). At first, the soul disdains responding to Virgil’s question. However, upon discovering that Dante’s guide is not only from the Italian town of Mantua just like himself—the soul turns out to be the poet and one of the most respected trouba-dours of his time, Sordello—but is none other than Virgil, he (Sordello) happily explains the rules of the mountain of Purgatory. It is precisely in the opening sentences of the seventh canto when Virgil unveils his name—‘I am Virgil, and for no other crime did I lose Heaven than for not having faith’ (Dante 2003, VI, 7–8; 111)—that we find the reference to Limbo. It is this time not Dante’s experience that reveals some more

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details about Limbo but still Virgil who responds to Sordello’s question of where he was coming from, from what cloister in the afterlife:

“Through all the circles of the grievingKingdom,” he replied, “have I come here; a powerfrom Heaven moved me, and by it I come.Not for doing, but for not doing have I lost thesight of the high Sun that you desire and that Iknew too late.There is a place down there, not saddened bytorments but only by darkness, where the lamentsdo not sound as shrieks but are sighs.There I dwell with the innocent little onesdevoured by the teeth of death before they couldbe exempted from human sin:there I dwell with those who were not clothedwith the three holy virtues, but without vice knewthe others and followed all of them. (Dante 2003, VII, 22–36; 111, 113)

A final reference to Limbo can be found in the third part of the Divine Comedy: Paradise. The reference is a very short one and stands almost on its own. In the thirty-second canto, we thus read the following reference to that first circle of Hell33:

But once the time of grace arrived, withoutperfect baptism in Christ such innocence hasbeen detained below. (Dante 2011, XXXII, 82–84; 643)

With this short reference to Limbo in the third and finale canticle does Dante’s take on Limbo in The Divine Comedy end. Just like most of his contemporaries, Dante considers Limbo as a place on the edge of Hell (he had to pass through the gate of Hell and cross the wide river Acheron to reach Limbo). Dante also shares the generally held

33 It might be interesting to point out how the description of Limbo in the three cantiche is one of a progressive simplification. That we can find the more complex and full description of Limbo in the Inferno should not surprise. As the first circle of Hell it is only normal that Limbo is given a good amount of attention. That the few words dedicated to Limbo in Purgatory and Paradise are less and less profound is at least somewhat surprising. Dante scholars have not reached any agreement on the meaning of this progressive simplification.


conviction that there is no physical torment in Limbo. Although there is no literal mention of the ‘beatific vision’, that what is at stake is the ‘sight of the high Sun’ (Dante 2003, VII, 26; 111) that Virgil knew too late and Sordello lost, does confirm the presence of the lack of the bea-tific vision in Dante’s Limbo as well. Furthermore, as Virgil informs, the inhabitants of Limbo had, as was commonly held, not committed any sins. The only reason they were caught in Limbo was that they had not—or could not have had—received baptism (which, although unmen-tioned, has left them burdened with original sin—referred to as ‘human sin’ in Purgatory (cf. Dante 2003, VII, 33; 113)). And although Limbo is a dark place, it is, however, not as dark as the second circle of Hell, a fact which seems to confirm once more what we already identified in the Visual Anteprima about the light of Limbo.

However, Dante has not proposed a mere copy of the scholastic Limbo—not even of Saint Thomas’ or Saint Bonaventure’s Limbo. In fact, he has taken more than some, what one could describe as, ‘poetic liberty’ in his treatment of Limbo. First of all, and even though Limbo is a place devoid of physical torments, there is no place for any Bonaventurian consolation let alone Aquinian happiness. There is no hope in Dante’s Limbo, only desire.34 The first circle of Hell is a dark place not filled with wailing and lamentation but, nevertheless, with sighs. Secondly, Dante seems to return to a singular limbus inferni instead of the double limbus patrum and limbus puerorum. As Virgil claims, he shares his valley with ‘the innocent little ones devoured by the teeth of death before they could be exempted from human sin’; (Dante 2003, VII, 31–33; 113). Dante thus seems to return to a quad-ripartite subdivision of the afterlife.35 Thirdly, and although Jesus’

34 Dante does seem to be closer to Bonaventure than to Thomas. Dante’s description of the four poets as ‘neither sad nor happy’ (Dante 1996, IV, 84; 75), which in Dante’s Italian goes like ‘né trista né lieta’ does remind one of Bonaventure’s description of the children in Limbo as being without tristitia and without laetitia (cf. Bonaventure, In II Sent., d.33, a.3, q.2).

35 There is an intriguing fresco entitled ‘Descent into Limbo’ by Giovanni da Lomazzo in Milan’s town house Palazzo Marino—the fresco is not original to the Palace. At first sight, the fresco might seem a typical representation of the Descent and harrowing theme. Jesus, holding the victorious banner, is standing on top of a violently torn down gate that used to enclose a cave-like ambient, from which he is helping people climb out. What is surprising is the presence in this scene of naked little children (who do not seem to be little angels). If our reading of the fresco is correct, it seems to be one of the rarer representations of a unified Limbo.

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so-called harrowing of Hell was not forgotten by Dante, the liberat-ing enterprise operated by Jesus did conclude only with the release of the Jewish patriarchs and their intimates. As such, if we were to con-sider Limbo once more in its double denomination, the Limbo of the Fathers would not have been left empty by Jesus’ action but would have needed to change names for good. The seriously lesser occupied Limbo of the Fathers would have become only the Limbo of the just. Dante thus seems to be sharing the preoccupation that Abelard and Alexander of Hales already showed for the destiny of the just pagans. But Dante has, however, taken a much further leap than either Abelard or Alexander. The fourth and final Dantesque poetic liberty regards an important positive quality of Limbo—and this is probably the most intriguing aspect of Dante’s treatment of Limbo. Dante’s first descrip-tion of Limbo was, as we recall, that of a dark and clouded valley. Having entered the perimeter of Limbo, however, that vision some-how changed. In fact, after Dante and Virgil had met with the four other great poets of antiquity, they quickly reached the encircled cas-tle, which brought them to a lovely ‘meadow of fresh green’ (Dante 1996, IV, 111; 77). Dante, furthermore, could even take his refuge to ‘a place open, bright, and high, whence all of them [the great minds of antiquity enclosed in Limbo] could be seen’ (Dante 1996, IV, 115–116; 77). The luminous and fresh place reserved for the greatest minds of antiquity, and for the infants who had died before having received their baptism, does seem somewhat surprising—especially considering they are in Hell.

If we were to offer a single interpretation, or stress one single aspect, in conclusion of this visit to Dante’s Limbo, then it would regard this fourth and final ‘poetic liberty’ taken by the Sommo Poeta. In fact, for as much as Dante seems very distant from Saint Thomas’ thinking of Limbo to its extreme—considering the Fathers and infants as being able to experience joy, even a sort of ‘happiness’—Dante’s considerations about the physical condition of Limbo itself do seem to re-propose, on a different plane, this paradox of Limbo. How can one, in fact, combine what seems to be a truly enjoyable and pleasant place with the greatest punishment of all? In the end, also for Dante does Limbo thus seem to constitute the paradigm of the paradoxical place.

With this question in our heads, let us quickly turn to another epic poem, namely John Milton’s Paradise Lost (2005). Before we venture into our treatment of Milton’s Limbo, we need to unveil a little-known


lien of connectedness.36 In fact, for as much as one could think of some sort of proximity between Milton’s poem and Dante’s comedy, a much closer link between Paradise Lost and another epic poem needs to be revealed. And this closeness is of particular interest regarding the object of this investigation: Limbo. The epic poem we are talking about is Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (2009). The closeness between these two poems (i.e., Milton’s banking on Ariosto’s) is already cryptically present in the first lines of Paradise Lost—when Milton is introducing his poem to the reader he claims of his own work that it will pursue ‘[T]hings unattempted yet in prose or rhyme’ (Milton 2005, I, 16; 18), and although this might be an unhumble auto-laudation, it, more than any-thing, refers to Ariosto’s own introductive qualification that he will do ‘what has not yet been told in verse or prose’ (Ariosto 2009, I, 2; 1). The crypticalness of the proximity between the two poems, however, dis-appears when one considers Ariosto’s Terrestrial Paradise on the moon (Ariosto 2009, XXXIV, 70–91; 609–615) and Milton’s Paradise of Fools (Milton 2005, III, 437–498; 91–93). Milton’s Paradise of Fools, or the ‘Limbo of vanity’ (Milton 2005; 79), is, in fact, very similar to the valley on the moon where the world’s wastages are kept and where duke Astolfo—accompanied by his personal ‘holy guide’ who is none other than Saint John the Evangelist—attempts to recollect Orlando’s lost wits, finds only ‘broken vows’ (Ariosto 2009, XXXIV, 75; 611), ‘words of [empty and vain] flattery that we hear all the time’ (Ariosto 2009, XXXIV, 77; 611), but also ‘representations of counterfeiters and thieves’ (Ariosto 2009, XXXIV, 79; 612) and never fulfilled ‘charity and noblesse’ (Ariosto 2009, XXXIV, 80; 612). However, if Ariosto’s trip to the moon can be considered, as John N. King claims, as a ‘parody of Dante’s Purgatorio’, then Milton’s Paradise of Fools is ‘a frontal assault on the sacramental and purgatorial system at the heart of the Commedia’ (King 2000, 89–90). Basically, Milton’s take on Limbo is a satirical and highly critical one.37

36 Somewhat surprisingly, very little has been written on Milton’s interpretation of Limbo. One of the few scholars who has worked on Milton’s Paradise of Fools is John N. King. His work has been of great help to this section (cf. King 1999, 2000).

37 That in particular Milton’s treatment of Limbo can be considered as a fierce critique on, especially, Roman Catholicism is quite an interesting statement and seems to go against C.S. Lewis’ defense of the orthodoxy of Milton’s Paradise Lost (cf. Lewis 1969, 82–93). But maybe, as we will attempt to make clear at the end of our treatment of Milton, the dif-ference between these two positions is not so broad.

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Before any further ado, let us quickly turn to Milton’s third chapter of Paradise Lost where we find the Limbo of vanity. This chapter opens with God seeing Satan fly toward the newly created earth. God, foreknow-ing everything that will happen—even the success of Satan in conquer-ing mankind—involves his Son who freely offers Himself as the liberator of man. God accepts, and the choir of angels break into chanting of praise—‘[T]hey thus in heaven, above the starry sphere, Their happy hours in joy and hymning spent’ (Milton 2005, III, 416–417; 91). Satan has, in the meantime, arrived on earth where he immediately encoun-ters our place of interest: Limbo—‘[M]eanwhile upon the firm opacous globe Of this round world, whose first convex divides The luminous inferior orbs, enclosed From Chaos and the inroad of darkness old, Satan alighted walks: a globe far off’ (Milton 2005, III, 418–422; 91). Limbo, where Satan, the fiend, is wandering and looking for prey, is still empty (remember that at the beginning of the this chapter God had just created the earth). But soon, and in a similar vein to Ariosto’s ironical paradise,

Up hither like aerial vapours flewOf all things transitory and vain, when sinWith vanity had filled the works of men:Both all things vain, and all who in vain thingsBuilt their fond hopes of glory or lasting fame,Or happiness in this or the other life;All who have their reward on earth, the fruitsOf painful superstition and blind zeal,Nought seeking but the praise of men, here findFit retribution, empty as their deeds;All the unaccomplished works of nature’s hand,Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixed,Dissolved on earth, fleet hither, and in vain,Till final dissolution, wander here. (Milton 2005, III, 445–458; 92)

With an even more direct reference to Ariosto, Milton adds that Limbo, however, was ‘Not in the neighbouring moon, as some have dreamed’ (Milton 2005, III, 459; 92) but, similar to Dante, in the ‘first convex’. Like Dante, Milton too adds a list of names and character types that dwell his Limbo. They are:

Translated saints, or middle spirits holdBetwixt the angelical and human kind:Hither of ill-joined sons and daughters born


First from the ancient world those Giants cameWith many a vain exploit, though then renowned:The builders next of Babel on the plainOf Sennaar, and still with vain designNew Babels, had they wherewithal, would build:Others came single; he who to be deemedA god, leaped fondly into Aetna flames,Empedocles, and he who to enjoyPlato’s Elysium, leaped into the sea,Cleombrontus, and many more too long,Embryos and idiots, … (Milton 2005, III, 461–474; 92)

What then follows, after the ‘embryos and idiots’, is, according to John N. King, Milton’s ‘most explicitly sustained outburst of ecclesias-tical controversy’ (King 2000, 89; 1999, 200). And even though Milton is, obviously, not convinced of the monopoly of debauchery by Roman Catholicism, the following verses do consist of a frontal attack on all four of the main mendicant orders and a manifold of religious practices, held mainly by Catholicism. The fierceness of these attacks has upset a mani-fold of readers of Milton, so much so that, as King recounts, it has even been proposed that these verses constitute, according to Richard Bentley, ‘a spurious addition’ by Milton’s editor: ‘[A]ll this long description of the outside of the world, the Limbo of Vanity, was not Milton’s own, but an insertion by his editor…’ (reported in King 1999, 202). But let us read these accusing verses that continue from the ‘Embryos and idiots, …’ where we cut Milton’s verses temporarily off:

…, eremites and friarsWhite, black and grey,38 with all their trumpery.Here pilgrims roam, that strayed so far to seekIn Golgotha him dead, who lives in heaven;And they who to be sure of ParadiseDying put on the weeds of Dominic,Or in Franciscan think to pass disguised;They pass the planets seven, and pass the fixed,And the crystalline sphere whose balance weighsThe trepidation talked, and that first moved;And now Saint Peter at heaven’s wicket seems

38 The four orders, respectively, are: the Carmelites, the Dominicans, the Franciscans, and the Augustinians.

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To wait them with his keys, and now at footOf heaven’s ascent they lift their feet, … (Milton 2005, III, 474–486; 92–93)

It is important to interrupt Milton’s almost rabidly written verses and stress that all the people mentioned, the few referred to by name and the many mentioned only through their stereotype, are convinced they are going to heaven. They are ordained people, or members of the lay community that have obliged with a series of religious practices—pilgrimages, or ‘rel-ics, beads, indulgences, dispenses, pardons, [and] bulls’ (Milton 2005, III, 491–492; 93). And even the bloated vainglorious from before have auto-convinced themselves that, at the moment of their passing, they will directly proceed to the gates of Heaven where Peter will let them pass. However, just as Ariosto already indicated, and Milton will follow him while radicalizing the stakes, the paradise they are directed to is not the Heavenly one. It is the ironical and cynical terrestrial paradise that is situ-ated on the moon for Ariosto, or, the Paradise of Fools, known also as the Limbo of the vain that is situated in the first circle of the sky of the earth for Milton. Thus ‘and now at foot Of heaven’s ascent they lift their feet, …’

…, when loA violent cross wind from either coastBlows them traverse ten thousand leagues awryInto the devious air; then might ye seeCowls, hoods and habits with their wearers tossed.And fluttered into rags, then relics, beads,Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls,The sport of winds: all these upwhirled aloftFly o’er the backside of the world far offInto a limbo large and broad, since calledThe Paradise of Fools, to few unknownLong after, now unpeopled, and untrod39;All this dark globe the fiend found as he passed. (Milton 2005, III, 493–498; 98–100)

39 That the Paradise is ‘now unpeopled, and untrod’ has nothing to do with any sort of harrowing that Christ might have done. Milton is coming full circle and is closing this vision of Satan. Satan, in fact, arrived in Limbo when it was still empty. He was ‘[A]lone, for other creature in this place Living or lifeless to be found was none, None yet, …’ (Milton 2005, III, 442–444; 92). What followed then was Satan’s vision we have discussed, and now, Satan is returning to himself finding it again empty, …, ready to be filled very soon.


A ‘limbo large and broad, since called The Paradise of Fools’ is thus the, and their, final destination—‘Till final dissolution, wander here’ (Milton 2005, III, 458; 92).

If also in the case of Milton’s Paradise Lost, and, in particular, regard-ing his Paradise of Fools, we were to offer one single extra interpreta-tive comment, or stress one single aspect, then it would regard the inhabitants of Milton’s Limbo. A greater difference between Milton’s (but also already Ariosto’s) Limbo and the traditional scholastic and even Dantesque Limbo can probably not be found than in the descrip-tion of its inhabitants. Whereas we find, in Dante’s and the scholastic Limbo, the first human (Adam), ancient prophets, the great Fathers of the Jewish tradition, Greek philosophers, scientists, even some other ‘barbarian’ just, and, finally, innocent newborns, we are contrasted by the Miltonian/Ariostonian vainglorious, narcissistic, haughty arrogant, superstitiously void, and praise-seeking nullities on the one hand, and, on the other, the trumpery-loaded ordained Catholics and their silly super-stitious and almost purely work-oriented lay counterparts.

However, if we were to attempt to leave the parody and critical satire behind or, better, if we were to try and transcend all of this (in other words, if we were to leave out the mere aspect of vanity and emptiness from Milton’s ‘Limbo large and broad’), one could venture out and discover that Milton’s Limbo considered as a Fools’ Paradise is not so very different than the paradoxical Limbo we discovered in Dante and, above all, in Saint Thomas. Reading Milton after we have spent so much time with Dante might have clouded our minds. Dante’s insistence on the great merit of all the inhabitants of Limbo has somewhat biased our reading of Milton. True, Milton’s insistence on the negative characteris-tics of the future inhabitants of his Limbo seems to be hinting at a sim-ilar—although in reverse—primary importance of the Limbo-dwellers. But Milton’s Limbo is, however, primarily about something else. Milton’s Limbo is about the ‘punishment’, about the punishment that reverses all that is expected. It is about the overturning of glory, fame, and supposed happiness. It is about subverting rewards that had been ‘worked’ for in a superstitious way. Does all of this, however, not bring us back to the ‘orthodox’ (whatever that word may mean in this context) understanding of Limbo as that locus where the worst of all punishments is in place but rendered ineffective? And wasn’t this greatest punish-ment of all—because of the lack of awareness of this lack—met also with some type of joy or even happiness? Is Limbo, and we will conclude our

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treatment of Dante and Milton with this provocation, not always also already a paradise of ‘fools’?

3.5 ProLegomena to any transLation of Limbo

The starting point of any attempt to summarize what we have seen up until now about Limbo can only be the consciousness of the fact that it—Limbo—has never reached the status of Dogma. Although at times the Magisterium has made mention of Limbo, as we already indicated in Sect. 3.1, Limbo has never been more than ‘a possible theological hypothesis’ (HoS 2007, premise—emphasis added). If one thus intends to say something about Limbo, it has to be against this background knowl-edge that Limbo has never reached a unifying or even guiding definition of what it exactly is/was nor what it implied. However, that there is no guiding definition or general (historical) consensus on Limbo, should not be considered as implying an impossibility to proceed in the/our attempt to understand Limbo. The preceding chapters, if anything, have exactly shown that very much can be understood and said about Limbo notwithstanding there not being any fixed doctrinal base to start from.

Keeping this in mind, we could continue by stating that when talking about Limbo, there is always more than just one thing at stake. It should thus not surprise that even more than 8 centuries in the discussion of that ‘thing’ named Limbo (almost fifteen centuries if we start with dis-cussions about problems that are (in-)directly related to the topic of Limbo), the Second Vatican Council refused to include the discussion on this problem in the plenary session as it considered the Fathers par-ticipating at the Council not prepared enough. That eight or even fifteen centuries don’t suffice to be prepared enough to discuss Limbo is, how-ever, understandable as the discussion about Limbo ‘… is closely tied to several highly volatile questions: original sin, the necessity of baptism, the salvific will of God’, and each of these topics is a ‘vital nerve in the body of Catholic doctrine’ (Dyer 1958, 32). But Limbo does not even end with these three questions either. Limbo is also about the geography of the afterlife (a geography which, as we saw in the various subsections of Sect. 3.3, consisted in a variety of interpretations and cartographies) and, most of all, about the raison d’être of the Roman Catholic Church itself as well. It suffices to think about the question of the salus extra eccle-siam non est, the impossibility of any saving outside the Roman Catholic Church.


Not all of these problematics are, however, of importance for our pur-pose. It is, for example, not of our interest to decide once and for all if Limbo exists/existed.40 Nonetheless, the ‘suspension’ of Limbo as a place or realm of the afterlife in the hope of salvation, as proposed by the International Theological Commission cannot be our final word as well. Limbo, as we already wrote in the introduction, is not intended to function in this book as a mere analogy. Limbo has, in this work, an active and functional role to fulfill. It might then seem appropriate if not necessary, at this point, to attempt to ‘translate’ Limbo from its purely ‘etherical’ or ‘afterworldliness’ into a purely immanent understanding of the term. However, is this effectively a necessary next step? Is it necessary to ‘translate’ Limbo in order to be able to use it in a ‘here-worldly’ con-text? Our refraining to think it necessary to ‘translate’ Limbo for it to be employable in a purely immanent surrounding is related to the (misuse of the) concept of ‘secularization’. Let us thus first turn to this peculiar concept.

When talking about ‘secularization’, it is necessary to start with some clarifications and demarcations. A first point that needs to be made clear is that although ‘secularization’ and its theory seems to be a derivate from the century-old concept of the secular (and many advocates of the theory of ‘secularization’ hold firm by this view), the current usage made of the ‘secular’ and ‘secularization’ is very different than their (original) mean-ing—we will come back to these diverging meanings in a short while. Secondly, as William E. Connolly correctly disclaims: There are ‘several doctrines [that] walk under the large umbrella of secularism …. But there is also a discernable hierarchy among them’ (Connolly 1999, 5). Thirdly, the theory of ‘secularization’ (and the meaning of secularism) is still a heavily contested theory, even if according to some the ‘period’ of high secularism is already in the past and we have entered an epoch of ‘post-secularism’.

Generally speaking, the ‘theory of secularization’ is, whether this is liked or not, a narrative as it was understood by Paul Ricoeur. This implies that the ‘theory of secularization’ is ‘re-descriptive’ (Ricoeur 1984, xi). That a narrative is redescriptive means that it is not

40 The question of the existence or not of Limbo cannot be understood as a question of primary importance. Even in the case Limbo should be judged as nonexisting, what it pre-cisely was that was considered as not existing should, in fact, have been cleared previously to the decision upon its (non-)existence.

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reproducing in a referential and descriptive way the time-space of the world ‘as it is’, but that it organizes and reconstructs the world ‘as it is’ according to its (often desired) experiences. Said somewhat simplistically, a narrative is not the description of the world but the redescription of how one wants the world to be.41 The redescriptive narrative of secu-larism is, however, often proposed as a descriptive neutral observational narrative, and it goes something like this:

[O]nce the universal Catholic Church was challenged and dispersed by various Protestant sects a unified public authority grounded in a common faith was drawn into a series of sectarian conflicts and wars. Because the sovereign’s support of the right way to eternal life was said to hang in the balance, these conflicts were often horribly destructive and intractable. The best hope for a peaceful and just world under these new circumstances was institution of a public life in which the final meaning of life, the proper route to life after death, and the divine source of morality were pulled out of the public realm and deposited into private life. The secularization of public life is thus crucial to private freedom, pluralistic democracy, indi-vidual rights, public reason, and the primacy of the state. The key to its success is the separation of church and state and general acceptance of a conception of public reason (or some surrogate) through which to reach public agreement on nonreligious issues. (Connolly 1999, 20)

Summarizing this story line a little, the mainstream theory of ‘seculari-zation’ basically claims that the Western world has transited from being a profoundly religious culture (also in its political applications) to a cul-ture (named ‘secular’) where religion is no longer of the same profound importance. In fact, this secular world is to be understood as implying the emptying of the public religiousness. As Charles Taylor correctly remarked in his groundbreaking book on ‘secularization’, understanding the mainstream theory of ‘secularization’ is understanding it in ‘terms of public space’ (Taylor 2007, 2). For accuracy’s sake, that the public space is being emptied of religiousness is not supposed to be under-stood as meaning the entailment of every form of religiousness as such. ‘Secularization’ simply means that religious justification has no longer any particular or prevailing relevance anymore in the public sphere and

41 There is, obviously, nothing wrong with the theory of secularization being a narrative. There is something wrong with a narrative pretending to be something else (that is, even worse than mythology).


basic religiousness is merely an option—an option that is regarded mean-ingful as any possible other option, without it being of any necessary superior importance as it used to be.

Charles Taylor correctly insists that there are actually different accu-mulative story lines in the mainstream theory of secularization (Taylor makes the analogue of different floors of the same house). The first and most plain one is the easiest to discover and regards the retrac-tion of religion from the public space. However, this is only the most basic form of ‘secularization’. There is a second understanding and meaning of ‘secularization’ at work as well. Secularity in the West is, in fact, not just a retracting from the public sphere of forms of reli-gion/religiosity. ‘Secularization’ is also about the ‘falling off of reli-gious belief and practice, in people turning away from God, and no longer going to Church’ (Taylor 2007, 2). So ‘secularization’ is not just a dwindling of the importance of the religious in the public space, but also an ebbing of religious participation and practice on a much more personal level as well. However, if we truly want to understand the phenomenon of ‘secularization’, we need to take into account one more meaning or sense at work (one more floor to the house). A third sense of reading the change brought about by the entry in a ‘secular-ized’ world regards what could be defined as the ‘optionalization’ of belief. In the ‘pre-secularized’ world, it ‘was virtually impossible not to believe in God’, whereas now ‘faith, even for the staunchest believer, is [only] one human possibility among others’ (Taylor 2007, 3). It is this third sense that will be the one traced by Taylor in his impressive volume. This third sense of secularization is, as Taylor correctly claims, the most interesting meaning as it allows one to breach at least a little bit the protective wall of the false evolutionary tale (the narrative) that results from the first two understandings of the theory of secularization. It allows one indeed to underscore that the decline in religiosity (public and private) is not linear and that new forms of religiosity are contin-uously being formed that attempt to counter the effects of the erasing tentative of the ‘secularization’ narrative (cf. Taylor 2007, 436–437). Summarizing these three meanings of the theory of secularization, we could say that a secularized world is a world where religiosity is no longer of importance in the public sphere, where religion has encoun-tered a serious level of erosion in terms of participation, and, thirdly, is a world where religion is being reduced to being an option among other (equally ‘valuable’) ones.

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Two fundamental points need to be made if we want to rise above the ‘ideological’ operation at work in this type of explanation of the ‘theory of secularization’. These two points regard aspects that have been ‘for-gotten’ by this theory. The first forgotten point regards the sphere of activity of the secular and ‘secularization’. The second ‘forgotten’ aspect regards the reversal at work in the theory of ‘secularization’. Turning to the first aspect, it is fundamental to understand, as, for example, Iain T. Benson (2000, 537–538) and Veit Bader (2011, 8) have made clear, the secular and ‘secularization’ are terms that derive from the context of canon law and are almost exclusively used to questions related to the clergy. Secular (saecularis, which meant ‘the world’, ‘the times’, ‘the ages’) referred to a specific type of clerical life, the ‘secular clergy’, who lived ‘in the world’ and was ‘opposed’ to the ‘regular’ clergy (the regu-laris) who were monks who lived ‘withdrawn’ from the world in their monasteries. Secularization (saecularisatio) was the phenomenon of tran-sition from regular clergy to secular clergy (a monk who became a reg-ular priest). The concepts of ‘secular’ and ‘secularization’ are thus not primarily cultural or political concepts, as has so often been claimed, but legal and religious ones. Second, and following from what we have just discovered regarding the legal/religious derivation of the words of sec-ular and ‘secularization’, as Vincent Depaigne so accurately summarizes basing himself on the work of the earlier mentioned Benson and Bader, ‘[T]he secular means the entry of religion ‘in-the-world’ rather than an exclusion of religion from worldly politics’ (Depaigne 2017, 7).42 Now with the secular’s entry, mainly through its derivate ‘seculariza-tion’, in the broader cultural-political universe, the legalistic heritage (be it through an active or passive ‘forgetting’) is, although it is still very

42 That the secular can still mean the entry of religion ‘in-the-world’ can be discovered by the phenomenon of the ‘third orders’. Take, for example, the religious order of the Franciscans (also the Carmelites or the Dominicans would work as an example). Besides the male friars, the priest-friars and ‘simple’ friars (with ‘simple’ friars, I intend the brothers who have been ordained as friars, but not as priest), and the female nuns (the Clarisse), the order has another subdivision. This subdivision, the so-called third order, is known as the secular order of the Franciscans. This group consists of lay people (often married and with children), but as one can imagine, they can hardly be considered as non-religious. It is pre-cisely this group of members of the Franciscan order that has the explicit task (even more than the ‘regular’ friars who already live much more ‘in-the-world’ with their in-the-city-convents as opposed to the often isolated monasteries of, for example, the Benedictines) of bringing the Franciscan message into the world.


much operative, left under the radar. This becomes already evident when one looks at one of the more acclaimed definitions of ‘secularization’. ‘Secularization’, according to Bryan R. Wilson’s definition in Mircea Eliade’s Encyclopedia of Religion (1987), is:

the process in which religious consciousness, activities and institutions lose social significance. It indicated that religion becomes marginal to the oper-ation of the social system, and that the essential functions for the opera-tion of society become rationalized, passing out of the control of agencies devoted to the supernatural. (Wilson 1987, 159–160)

As Iain T. Benson so correctly remarks, the distinction made here in this definition (a distinction between the secular and the religious) is a functional one; said differently, it is still a ‘jurisdictional’ one (Benson 2000, 538). It is a distinction that is not about what religiosity is, but about what it is allowed to do (by another, albeit only implicitly [and never admitted], faith-based constellation—which the secular is). This remark by Benson finds confirmation in William E. Connolly’s remark that ‘secularization’ is the attempt ‘to contain religious and irreligious passions with private life…’ (Connolly 1999, 5). Basically, the theory of ‘secularization’ is thus not just redescriptive in the Ricoeurian sense, but it is also pure ideology.

Before we continue, it needs to be made absolutely clear that we do not intend to deny that religion has not maintained the same status in the public and private sphere as before. It clearly has not. Neither do we want to denounce ‘secularization’ (too much) as an artificial oper-ation that (intentionally) suppresses religion and religiosity and that a return to the good old days where religion was the predominant fig-ure on the public square is required for. What we do claim, however, is, first of all, that secularization is not a ‘natural’ evolution, but the result of the redescribing narrative of the theory of ‘secularization’—this was already clear from Taylor’s research which, with the introduction of his third sense of understanding ‘secularization’, intended to lay this aspect in the open. And, secondly and much more importantly (and here we go further than Taylor’s thesis), that the process of ‘secularization’, in its one-sided understanding of religion combined with its actions against this single-sided and simple-minded conceptualization of religion, has completely missed out on religion’s transformative nature and capacities. Religion and religiosity—even its most traditional expressions so con-tested and fought by ‘secularization’—has thus largely slipped through

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the cracks of ‘secularization’ and continued to be perfectly operative, first of all, not only in the private sphere, but also (and much more trouble-some) within the boundaries of the public sphere as well.

So how does this effect upon our possibilities of ‘translating’ Limbo into an immanent register—as this is what made us take the concept of ‘secularization’ into consideration. As some might have noticed, up until now we have written ‘secularization’ consistently within quotation marks. This has been for a reason. There is, in fact, another possible interpretation that can be given to secularization and that follows a very different line of reasoning than the one we have been disclosing. This other understanding of secularization will stay particularly close to the idea of saecularisatio as understood as a phenomenon of transition from the ‘outer-worldly’ to the ‘in-the-world’ of aspects belonging to the the-ological or metaphysical realm. This different understanding of seculari-zation will also allow us to say something about the requirements for any possible translation of the concept of Limbo.

We find representatives of this different understanding of seculariza-tion in, for example, the already mentioned Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben and his English colleague, who will return a number of times in the coming chapters, Simon Critchley—for Agamben this different understanding of secularization needs to be considered as a critique, whereas for Critchley it is not to be considered as such.43 Both authors do not agree with the ‘secularization’ narrative as it has been told during the past decades. To say it, for example, with the words of Critchley, ‘I do not see the relation between religion and politics in terms of some purported passage or even progress from the pre-modern to the modern, where religion would be that unwelcome pre-modern residue in mod-ern political life’ (Critchley 2012, 10). Religion and/or theology has not been relegated to the purely optional private—that is, it only seems so on a purely superficial way—and if we want to understand anything of pub-lic life, then one has to ‘become aware of its theological roots’ (Agamben 2015, 69). Secularization is thus not a process of a continuous and, in

43 Another philosopher to whom we could have turned is John Gray, who has provoca-tively claimed that ‘[O]f all modern delusions, the idea that we live in a secular age is the furthest from reality’ (Gray 2004, 41)—or more recently, ‘Modern politics is a chapter in the history of religion’ (Gray 2008, 1). As Gray explains, secular societies are ruled by sup-pressing religion, and what results from this suppression is a bizarre and pervert faith what he calls liberal Humanism (cf. Gray 2004, 46).


crescendo, relegation of religion (theology) from the public sphere and a reduction of it to a personal choice of relevance merely in the pri-vate atmosphere, but, for Critchley, it regards a ‘series of metamorpho-ses of sacralization’ (Critchley 2012, 10). For Agamben, secularization is ‘a type of removal which leaves forces intact, and which limits itself to moving them from one place to another’ (Agamben 2007, 77—transla-tion modified44). Basically, secularization regards a displacement of con-cepts from a celestial to a terrestrial sphere—the theological or religious goes as it was ‘underground’, returning in a new immanent or secular form where the basic operativity or economy is, however, still the same and functioning identically.45 Secularization is, according to Agamben on a different occasion (but the meaning given to the concept does not change), a ‘strategic operator that marked political concepts in order to make them refer to their theological origins’ (Agamben 2009, 77).

*

That according to Agamben secularization is a strategic operator that marks political concepts (cf. Agamben 2009, 77) has a specific meaning. In fact, according to Agamben ‘secularization acts within the conceptual system of modernity as a signature…’ (Agamben 2009, 77; Agamben 2011, 4— emphasis added).46 But what does Agamben mean with a ‘signature’? Very briefly and probably somewhat too rashly—a few lines can hardly do justice to this interesting concept—, a signature is ‘what displaces and moves it [the sign] into another domain, thus positioning it in a new network of prag matic and hermeneutic relations’ (Agamben 2009, 40). The signature, using Enzo Melandri’s description, ‘adheres to the sign in the sense that it indicates, by means of the sign’s making, the code with which it has to be deciphered’ (reported in Agamben 2009, 59). Or to say it in Agamben’s own words: ‘the sign signifies because it carries a signature that necessarily predetermines its interpretation and distributes its use and efficacy according to rules, practices,

44 Jeff Fort, the translator, surprisingly translated the Italian ‘rimozione’ (which is rather easily and ‘naturally’ translated as removal) as ‘repression’ a concept that clearly has a very different understanding and changes the meaning of Agamben’s claims.

45 Even though metamorphosis is not synonymous with displacement, both concepts do, however, invoke a very similar operation that stands very much against the more traditional operation invoked by mainstream ‘secularization’.

46 Personal conversation with and the consultation of two of his works, has made Carlo Salzani important in my understanding of Agamben’s idea of secularization as a signature (cf. Salzani 2013, 2018).

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and precepts that it is our task to recognize’ (Agamben 2009, 64). So basi-cally, secularization understood as a signature is ‘not a concept, in which the ‘structural identity’ between theological and political conceptuality or the dis-continuity between Christian theology and modernity…’ (Agamben 2009, 76) can be located. Secularization marks the modern political concepts that are involved in this relationship between modernity and theology, letting them exceed their purely modern understanding as they necessarily refer back to the-ology. In this exceeding by necessarily returning to the origin they, the ‘signed signs’, in a certain sense open up and constitute a new concept or meaning in a very similar vein as paradigms do.47

Agamben’s understanding of secularization, as we already indicated, needs to be considered as a critique. Against secularization Agamben will propose ‘profanation’—we will return to Agamben’s understanding of profanation in our Extraduction—which, contrary to secularization that leaves the efficacy of that which it merely fictitiously leaves behind intact, neutralizes the religious or theological legacy, returning it to use/usage (cf. Agamben 2007, 77).

**

47 Agamben has, on various occasions, underlined the singularity and paradoxical nature of the paradigm. In The Coming Community, Agamben writes the following: ‘[N]either par-ticular nor universal, the example is a singular object that presents itself as such, that shows its singularity. Hence the pregnancy of the Greek term, for example: para-deigma, that which is shown alongside (like the German Bei-spiel, that which plays alongside). Hence the proper place of the example is always beside itself, in the empty space in which its inde-finable and unforgety life unfolds’ (Agamben 1993, 10). So the paradigm is a singularity that, however, can only be considered as such through its relation to what it is the example of, that is, to the group or set it exemplifies. In fact, as Agamben writes in the first chapter of The Signature of All Things. On Method that has the telling title ‘What is a Paradigm?’: ‘[I]f we now ask ourselves whether the rule can be applied to the example, the answer is not easy. In fact, the example is excluded from the rule not because it does not belong to the normal case but, on the contrary, because it exhibits its belonging to it. […], the example is excluded through the exhibition of its inclusion. However, in this way, according to the etymological meaning of the Greek term, it shows ‘beside itself’ (para-deiknymi) both its own intelligibility and that of the class it constitutes’ (Agamben 2009, 24—emphasis added). Of particular importance are the last words of the previous quotation. In fact, the goal of Agamben’s peculiar usage of the example/paradigm is precisely the constitution of a ‘group’ or a ‘class’ of ‘normal cases’ that is exemplified by the example: ‘[…] the paradigm’, as Agamben writes, ‘is a singular case that is isolated from its context only insofar as, by exhibiting its own singularity, it makes intelligible a new ensemble, whose homogeneity it itself constitutes’ (Agamben 2009, 18). The singularity, and the uniqueness of the exam-ple/paradigm, allows, through its constitution of this ‘group’ or ‘class’, the understanding of this ‘group’ or ‘class’, this ensemble, that is, a ‘[…] series of phenomena whose kinship had eluded or could elude the historian’s gaze’ (Agamben 2009, 31).


That Agamben and Critchley can propose similar readings of ‘seculariza-tion’ cannot be understood without making at least a rapid reference to one of their most important sources for this reading: the, for some infamous, German Catholic and legal scholar Carl Schmitt. That Schmitt needs to be seen as an important source for this distinctive reading of ‘secularization’ that does not consider the religious as relegated to the private sphere can easily be discovered by looking at one of his more important thesis: ‘[A]ll significant concepts of the modern theory of the state’, Schmitt claims in his Political Theology (2005), ‘are secularized theological concepts’ (Schmitt 2005, 36).48 However, and more importantly than this almost sloganized claim, Schmitt adds that the most significant concepts of the modern state are secularized theological con-cepts not ‘only because of their historical development…but because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts’ (Schmitt 2005, 36). For Schmitt the nature of the particular type of comparison that can be individuated between theology and the modern theory of state is that of the ‘analogue’. And thus, as another sloganized statement of Schmitt goes: ‘the exception in jurisprudence is analo-gous to the miracle in theology’ (Schmitt 2005, 36). What happens in modern theories (and applications) of (the) state, according to Schmitt, is not to be understood as a mere continuation of medieval ‘theocracies’, no, that would be completely missing the point. What is at stake is the sheer functioning of the modern political state in an analogous way as the divine reigning operativity. In this sense, the saying vox populi, vox dei takes on a rather literal under-standing that few would have imagined, let alone politically defend.49

*

What this different interpretation of ‘secularization’ comes down to is thus the awareness that our world (and the public spaces that can be found in it) is not emptied of its religiousness. In fact, if anything, our

48 A similar statement has been made by the protestant theologian Nathaniel Micklem in 1939 (more than a full decade later than Schmitt’s text was published). Micklem, in fact, claimed that ‘all political problems are, in the end, theological ones’ (reported in Gentile 2007, 161).

49 As the historian Edmund Morgan wrote, what is generally forgotten when comment-ing this saying is that ‘the concept of the sovereignty of the people was not a repudiation of the sovereignty of God. God remained the ultimate source of all governmental authority’ (Morgan 1989, 56).

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world is still profoundly religious. The ‘problem’ is that this persisting religiousness in and of the public domain has been forgotten or goes completely unrecognized. A great deal of blame of this forgetting or not recognizing is precisely to be found in the limits of the mainstream (and even Taylor’s improved) theory of ‘secularization’, a theory which is unable to discern the remaining structural operativity of religion—the metamorphosis of (cf. Critchley) or the marking and exceeding of (cf. Agamben) the (traditional) religious language and operations.

As can be expected, a similar understanding of secularization does have consequences on the necessity of ‘translating’ Limbo. When secu-larization is understood as already being a metamorphosis or a sort of exceeding, then a translation seems to be unnecessary. Limbo itself (as a concept) will obviously have to go ‘underground’ as well, but, in the case a secularized (following the understanding of Agamben and Critchley obviously) analogue of Limbo could be found, then we would also immediately rediscover all its structural functioning and its operativ-ity (in our case, this would be the paradoxical state of Limbo understood as the absence, the lack, of the understanding of the lack—of the beatific vision—which interestingly allowed for there to be—at least some sort of—joy as well).

Having arrived at this point, it seems appropriate to formulate, for the first time, the main claim (maybe the somewhat provocative main claim) of this work. As we already asserted, our goal is not to offer a final con-clusion on the existence or not of Limbo. We are in fact not particularly interested in the existential nature of Limbo. What we are interested in, as will have become evident from the peculiar line of investigation fol-lowed in the various sections we dedicated to Limbo in this first part of the book, is the functionality of Limbo. And it is this functionality, this structural operativity (the lack of the lack leading to joy), that, as we will attempt to demonstrate, is still, or once again, active today. To phrase the main claim of this book in one sentence: Living in a perennial crisis is analogues to living in Limbo; or, to use Agamben’s language of the signature, the concept or the idea of the perennial crisis is the secular sig-nature of Limbo. What if Benedict XVI, to conclude, did suspend Limbo as a category of the hereafter because he had ‘understood’ that it is not a category of the afterlife but the nature of our present life, today, down here on earth?


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4.1 interesting times

The Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek has a quite intriguing tendency—one among many—namely that of turn-ing, or taking refuge, as if it was some kind of literary tic, to rather enigmatic and interesting Asiatic sayings or phenomena.1 One of the most referred to sayings in this peculiar Žižekian genre is attributed to the Chinese communist revolutionary leader and founder of the People’s Republic of China: Mao Zedong. The saying is the following: ‘[T]here is great chaos under Heaven; the situation is excellent’ (or the slightly different ‘[T]here is great disorder under the Heavens; the sit-uation is excellent’ or ‘Everything in Heaven is in utter chaos; the sit-uation is excellent’). Žižek seems to be particularly fond of this saying as he paraphrases and rewrites it in almost innumerable ways and occa-sions. Another quite alluring Asiatic ‘phenomena’ Žižek takes refuge to, in an almost neotestamentarian parable-like style—to give one more example of Žižek’s Asiatic repertoire, this time of a phenomenon—is the ‘struggle sessions’ or ‘Thanzung sessions’. Originating in the Soviet idea of class struggle, these ‘Thanzung’ sessions were the Chinese ver-sion or ‘translation’ of public-obliged self-humiliation2 of supposed

CHAPTER 4

Crisis


1 An almost automatic inclination made me write the word ‘Oriental’ instead of ‘Asiatic,’ but that would have left me in somewhat of a figurative theoretic ‘pickle’ (cf. Said 1979).

2 A kind of Orwellian, from 1984, stratagem of ‘five-minute (self-) hatred’.



counterrevolutionaries—and which was rather cynically considered to be a type of, at times even spectacular, entertainment known by the Chinese under the notion of renao (Thurston 1990, 156).

However, among the manifold of Žižek’s beloved Asiatic expression, there is one specific saying that is of particular interest for this volume. In fact, the afterword to the paperback edition of his Living in the End Times (Žižek 2011a) is intriguingly entitled ‘Welcome to Interesting Times!’. Žižek’s choice of this title is related to the fact that, according to him, there exists an expression in China that goes: ‘[M]ay you live in inter-esting times!’. This expression, which might, at first sight, be interpreted as some sort of ‘blessing’, is, however, used as a curse. The ‘interesting times’, as Žižek’s explanation goes, in which one is wished to be living are dire periods characterized by unrest, or war, from which millions of innocent people will suffer (cf. Žižek 2011a, 403). So in case somebody is wished to live in these interesting times, they are augured to live in unrest, struggle, and, in the case their luck is truly tested, in times of war.3

Interesting and promising as this expression referred to by the ‘giant of Ljubljana’ (as Žižek was once defined) might be, it has to be said that the saying is simply invented (or wrong)—this, by the way, is not the first, nor will it more than probably be the last occasion, that Žižek has been found to be ‘wrong’—4 There is no such curse in China as he reluctantly had to admit in a later text. ‘[w]hen I was in China’, Žižek revealed, ‘they told me that they heard this from Western people. It’s typical how you attribute something to some people and then if you go to them, they don’t know anything about it’ (Žižek 2013, 16).5

3 Žižek does not offer his reader with any reference or source regarding this expres-sion. And although we hope it is not, he has probably just taken it from Terry Pratchett’s novel Interesting Times (Pratchett 1995). This most wonderful novel is, however, not the most reliable source being a comic fantasy. It opens with the following telling sentence as epigraph: “There is a curse. They say: May you live in Interesting Times” (Pratchett 1995). Although there is, obviously, nothing wrong with referring to fantasy novels as such, to take it as a base for ‘facts’ would be similar as taking Christopher Moore’s Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal (Moore 2002)—another most wonderful novel—as source for theological reasoning (it would be fun though).

4 See, for example, my ‘Only the country of the blind will have a king. On Žižek’s non-lucid reading of Saramago’s Essay on Lucidity [Seeing]’ (Vanhoutte 2013).

5 It is quite interesting to note that Žižek is not the only (non-)philosopher who has been found convinced of the existence of this saying and its Chinese origin. The question that needs to be posed is, obviously, whether it was not Žižek who was the actual origin of the

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(The saying of Mao, to which we just referred, can be considered equally shaky. It is, in fact, impossible to find any detailed indication that Mao truly did pronounce these sentences. They do, however, completely appertain to the character.) It seems, in fact, to be one of those strange cases where an ‘exotic’ saying of unknown origin is attributed to a like-wise ‘exotic’ people without that people actually knowing about it, let alone possess a saying of the kind.6

*

When Michel Foucault began the book that would make him famous over-night, The Order of Things. An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (Foucault 2005), with the laughter caused by a passage from ‘a certain Chinese encyclopedia’ mentioned in an unnamed book by the Argentinian author Jorge Louis Borges,7 he felt it necessary to warn his readers immedi-ately against a hidden peril. This peril, which somehow got lost in the trans-lation from French to English, is the apologetic power of the exotic. Ironically, this warning that has been lost in translation, has become an example of the apologetic power of the exotic against which Foucault himself actually tried to warn his reader. ‘In the wonderment of this taxonomy’, as Foucault writes immediately after having listed the members of the rather bizarre Chinese list of animals, ‘the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that’, and as

6 The earlier mentioned Thanzung or struggle sessions are evenly exotic but less ‘mis-taken’. They (unfortunately) truly did exist.

7 Borges’s book is his 1942 El idioma analítico de John Wilkins and the passage, the tax-onomy, from the Chinese encyclopedia went under the title of Emporio celestial de conoci-mientos benévolos.

other references to these ‘interesting times’. Among the other voices who refer to this pre-sumed Chinese saying is Zygmunt Bauman. The British sociologist from Polish origin who is probably most known for his theorizing of a liquid society, wrote in his non-diary on the 12th of February 2011: “Ancient Chinese wisdom considers the wish ‘to live in interesting times’ to be a curse. Contemporary wisdom is of two minds. Many would see that wish as a blessing” (Bauman 2012, 152). Another, and considering the possibility of Pratchett being the ‘origin’ of this saying, much less surprising surfacing of this non-saying can be found in Justin Lee Anderson’s comical novel Carpet Diem (Anderson 2015). When the main character, a multimillionaire hermit, realizes that he is in the midst of a celestial battle between good and evil in which he will more than probably lose his life, it was ‘interesting’ to discover that this peculiar situation had been described by the author as ‘he was living in “interesting times”’ (Anderson 2015, Chapter 4). Whereas with Žižek (and Bauman) we still had doubts of the ‘origin’ of the saying, with Anderson it can hardly be different than finding ourselves with a reference to Pratchett.


he continues in the original French, ‘ce qui, à la faveur de l’apologue, nous est indiqué comme le charme exotique d’une autre pensée, c’est la limite de la nôtre: l’impossibilité nue de penser cela’ (Foucault 1966, 7).

What is at stake in this sentence is not the fabulist nature of the exotic (Foucault doesn’t mention the fable [maybe the translator simple mistook faveur for fable]) as the English translator seems to be hinting at—the English translation goes: ‘… In the wonderment of this taxonomy the thing we appre-hend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, […]’ (Foucault 2005, xvi— emphasis added)—, but the apologetic power of the exotic. The exotic (be it fabulous or not), its charm, hides the impossibility to think that which is impossible to be thought. The exotic, or the ‘icy veneration for all that does not belong to the Modern Western world’ (Girard 1986, 32) of which René Girard wishes us a lot less, is that which does not allow better recognition and understanding.

Žižek seems to have fallen into this always open trap of the ever alluring—but always also eluding—exotic. Not only, however, did this version of the exotic sirens’ song not regard the impossibility to think something, but the sheer fact that there was simply nothing to think in the first place.

**

Being wrong, however, does not necessarily and always imply the exclusion or the impossibility of one to say something (otherwise) interesting, or even accu-rate—the relation between wrong-uninteresting-inaccurate is, obviously, more often than not the case—. However, in a similar vein as Chesterton’s comment that being funny does not exclude one also being serious (Chesterton 2009, 111), one could (somewhat paradoxically) argue that being wrong or inaccurate does not always necessarily exclude one being interesting either. In fact, it is in this context that Žižek’s opening boutade of his ‘Philosophy is not a Dialogue’ needs to be read: ‘[P]hilosophy is not a dialogue. […] Aristotle didn’t understand Plato correctly; Hegel—who might have been pleased by the fact—of course didn’t understand Kant. And Heidegger fundamentally didn’t understand anyone at all’ (Badiou and Žižek 2009, 50).

This should also be considered as the context of the many (often inten-tionally) misunderstood affirmations about the ‘triplet’ tradition-transla-tion-betrayal. What Jacques Derrida or Roland Barthes, for example, state with reference to the couple ‘translation-betrayal’—re-elaborating the Italian proverb ‘Traduttori tradittori’ (translators [are] traitors) that seems to have

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appeared out of nowhere in the 19th century and firstly put down on paper by the Tuscan poet and satirist Giuseppe Giusti—and Giorgio Agamben Giorgio Agamben and Derrida8 extending it to the ‘older’ couple of ‘tradi-tion-betrayal’ (cf. Agamben 2015, 26–29), regards the linguistic kinship of what could have been considered as merely one more logical paradox. The inner relationship of the triplet tradition-translation-betrayal not only leads to what is generally considered as paradoxical, but all three words also derive etymologically from the Greek word … paradosis. More than a paradox, this kinship turns out to be the operativity of historicity as such.9

In his In Defense of Lost Causes (Žižek 2008), Žižek gives a good description of what is at stake. It is worth quoting it in its entirety as means of closure of this excursus.

[L]et us take a great philosopher such as Kant—there are two modes of repeating him: either one sticks to the letter and further elaborates or changes his system, in the spirit of the neo-Kantians (…); or, one tries to regain the creative impulse that Kant himself betrayed in the actualization of his sys-tem (…). There are, accordingly, two modes of betraying the past. The true betrayal is an ethico-theoretical act of the highest fidelity: one has to betray the letter of Kant in order to remain faithful to (and repeat) the “spirit” of his thought. It is precisely when one remains faithful to the letter of Kant that one really betrays the core of his thought, the creative impulse underlying it. One should bring this paradox to its conclusion: it is not only that one

8 Derrida’s philosophical work is emblematic on a double account here. Not only does Derrida treat on a manifold of occasions practically and technically the question of tradi-tion-translation-betrayal, the ‘passing on’ or the ‘handing over’ (the paradoxical paradosis) of deconstruction (becoming, for example, deconstructionism) is an example itself of betrayal—and how at times being wrong does involve making little to no sense; see, for example, the interesting volume of Herman Rapaport entitled The Theory Mess (Rapaport 2001).

9 We could speculatively suggest here that besides the figure of the scapegoat—as studied by Girard (1986)—, another figure that is equally essential in human history, needs to be placed on the forefront of tradition: the traitor (the traitor is, obviously, present in Girard’s work, but not ‘thematized’ as such). In fact, the transformation or evolution of all mythol-ogy (mythologies which contain the tales of the scapegoat at all communities’ origins), as Girard explains, consists of a form of treason. To mythological tradition, or better, the mythological tales, on the verge of becoming mythological traditions, go through a process of disintegration, of distortion and suppression—through an active process of elimination and manipulation, or a ‘process of suffocation and strangulation’ (Girard 1986, 93)— where (all) the traditional rabidly harsh tales are ‘translated’ into the almost purely rational-ist and much less violent myths (cf. Girard 1986, 78–80).


can remain really faithful to an author by way of betraying him (the actual letter of his thought); at a more radical level, the inverse statement holds even more—one can only truly betray an author by way of repeating him, by remaining faithful to the core of his thought. (Žižek 2008, 140)

*

For as much as Žižek’s promising10 Asiatic saying about the interest-ing times was invented, he is, however, right in considering it rather apt for describing the times we are living in. In fact, if there is something as a common denominator of our times it would, we think, come close to some form of interesting times as described by Žižek. Its paradoxi-cal internal relation between blessing and curse is, furthermore, an aspect that will return in the chapters and sections that will follow (and that can make us think of the paradox in Limbo). In a certain sense, it also functions in a very similar way to Marx’s understanding of the crisis as the moment of ‘truth’ of a certain economical system (and this instead of the crisis being merely temporal and adjustable [technical?] defects, as the liberal description of the crisis moments are). And although I will not cash in on this Marxist understanding of a crisis, it has allowed us to arrive at the name of the cipher of our times: crisis. The closest thing to living in interesting times that does not consist of an invented Asiatic saying is more than probably living in crisis, or better, and as will be the focus of the coming chapters, living in perennial crisis.

----------------------------------------O.D.----------------------------------------

As Simone Weil writes: ‘… there is no need of gods or conspiracies to make men rush headlong into the most absurd disasters [catastro-phes les plus absurdes]. Human nature suffices’ (Weil 2005, 241). More often than not, these absurd disasters, these terrible catastrophes, arise, however, in times of crisis. As Norman Cohn’s classical The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (Cohn 2004) evinces: revolutionary apocalypticism or eschatology tends to rise, time and again in response to some sort of disintegration of society, social cohesion or order, and war (basically, in

10 That it was promising can be deducted from the fact that Žižek chose it as title for (embracing as such) the afterword of one of his more provocative works (which Living in the End Times is).

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very similar periods to Žižek’s non-existing ‘interesting times’ of unrest, struggle, and war).

That catastrophic and apocalyptic tales, end-of-the-world narratives, and the various dystopian masterpieces literature has offered us—going from the traditional Orwellian 1984, Zamyatin’s We, or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World over Philip K. Dick, J. G. Ballard, or even some of Iain Bank’s work, to other and more recent work in its renewed upsurge (cf. Blumenfeld 2016)11—are, as the absolutely non-exhaustive list just presented demonstrates, hardly a recent ‘invention’, should then not surprise. However, that literature and religion (where one can find the origin of this type of narrative) are no longer the main genres where the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it song is being sung, and, as John Gray has accurately claimed in his own quasi-apocalyptic book Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, that ‘[A] renewal of apoc-alyptic belief is under way, …’ (Gray 2008, 296) should rouse some sur-prise.12 Especially if we discover, something which Gray does not state, but what his volume renders evident in a direct way, that this renewed belief in the apocalypse has now conquered the world of critique and philosophy as well. Apocalyptic theory has been on the constant rise in the past decade(s) and more and more (critical) theorists and humanis-tic experts see the end of the world coming nearer—some, like the new rising star of international critique Byung-Chul Han, even claim that it is only an apocalypse that can save us today (cf. Han 2017, 3).13 True, Hannah Arendt already brought the paradoxical notion of present or

12 Bernard Stiegler speaks, interestingly, even of an ‘ordinary, everyday apocalyptic feeling’ (Stiegler 2013, 10) that has developed over the past years. The reason for this feeling is, according to Stiegler, not caused by an actual presence or nearness of the end (of time [s]), but from what he calls the ‘addictive turn’—we have become, in the consumerist society all like addicts, and consumption itself is a source of unhappiness, but a necessary, drug-like, addiction (cf. Stiegler 2013, 27). A similar thought to Stiegler’s ‘addictive turn’ can be found in Byung-Chul Han’s (pathological) characterization of the twenty-first century by neurological illness (Han 2015, 1).

13 Jean-Pierre Dupuy, whom I will confront as second example of apocalyptic thinker, makes an even harsher statement when he says that ‘[B]elief in the Apocalypse appears to be more widespread just now, in the early part of the twenty-first century, than ever before. The only difference—an enormous difference, it must be conceded—from earlier, almost forgotten ages is that in our age it is not, or not only, members of gnostic sects who warn that the end of time is drawing near, but also scientists, engineers of various kinds, even a far-sighted statesman or two. So many clouds have gathered on the horizon by this point, it

11 Or my fellow countryman, Joost Vandecasteele and his Opnieuw en opnieuw en opnieuw, his Massa and even, although less (de-)pressing, his Jungle.


even past dystopia—Arendt is, in fact, not discussing a hypothetic neg-ative future, but the effects and affects of historical time and events on the literati and their thoughts in question—in philosophical literature when she coined the notion and pondered about the possibility and the effects of thinking in ‘dark times’ (Arendt 1968), and Derrida could, in 1984, still be saying—to decontextualize the title of a lecture given at Cornell University—No Apocalypse, Not Now (Derrida 2007, 387–409). However, the tone of the argument of the recent dystopian critical and philosophical discourse (like its literate and religious epiphenomena) has changed.

As at times some of the readers of this volume might (start) think(-ing) that what is proposed here proceeds along and will end in similar apocalyptic argumentation or reasoning (and the references to the various sayings by Žižek might seem to confirm these thoughts), it needs to be rendered absolutely clear from the very start that this type of reasoning—although we look sympathetic towards some specific types of eschatological thinking—will not be pursued in this volume. In order to make this clear we will shortly turn to two contemporary Apocalyptic thinkers and explain why this text does not comply with these positions.

Let me begin, once more, with Slavoj Žižek. Besides some of the more revealing titles of his books (like, e.g., the already mentioned Living in the End Times—with its Italian translation (Žižek 2011b) that features the four knights of the Apocalypse on its cover), one of Žižek’s returning stances, as the sayings from the beginning of this chapter probably also revealed, is that we are living ‘in apocalyptic times’ (Žižek 2009, 92). Time and again we can read this affirmation literally or in one of its variations: we are approaching the apocalyptical point of no return (cf. Žižek 2014, 129), ‘we are condemned to catastrophe except for some unforeseen miracle that can save us’ (Žižek 2014, 150), or, whilst evocating and appropriating Jean-Pierre Dupuy’s summary of Günther Anders’s reflection after Hiroshima, ‘the apocalypse is inscribed as a destiny in our future … in some sense we are already dead, since the catastrophe is already here …’ (Žižek and Gunjevic 2012, 70), etc. The

is difficult to say that their pessimism is unfounded’ (Dupuy 2014, 66). One is left to won-der why Zygmunt Bauman made the clearly incorrect observation in his Liquid Modernity that ‘dystopias are no longer written these days’ (Bauman 2000, 61).

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(end) times we are living in is ‘not for those with weak nerves’ (Žižek 2011, 481).

For as much as Žižek seems to insist, at times at least, on the need for action to avoid the apocalypse and the catastrophe14—the catastrophe needs to be postponed (Žižek and Gunjevic 2012, 70) and we need to act against historical necessity (Žižek 2009, 154), etc.—if one starts to dig deeper to look for some content of this action that should postpone the apocalypse (that only at times is also a catastrophe), one is left with very little. In fact, calls to action are, in the end, not what Žižek is aim-ing for. If anything, what is needed is not action, but merely ‘to state what is’, or, even more powerful according to Žižek, is to follow Alain Badiou’s provocative thesis that ‘“It is better to do nothing” … than to make the system run smoothly’ (Žižek 2014, 175).

This call to sit back, relax and enjoy the crash is, of course, already the source of a critique made by Simon Critchley—addressed first in an article in Naked Punch (2009) and later re-proposed in an expanded version in his very fine The Faith of the Faithless (2012). Critchley, responding to Žižek’s accusation in the London Review of Books that he was surrendering to those in power (see Žižek 2007), underscores that the ultimate stance of Žižek is ‘to do nothing in the face of the objective, systemic violence of the world. We should just ‘sit back and wait’ and have the courage to do noth-ing’ (Critchley 2009, 2012, 212).15 After all these years, it seems that Žižek is still convinced, and has in the meantime also found friendly backup of his conviction, that what should be done is … nothing. Whilst Critchley’s critique is accurate, Žižek’s refusal of doing anything is a ‘lack of cour-age’ whilst dreaming of wild ‘dreams of divine violence cruelty and force’

14 At times Žižek insists that his understanding of the apocalypse follows the religious one of ‘revelation’ (which goes back to the original Greek meaning of the word and signi-fies ‘unveiling’ or ‘lifting of the veil’) and not catastrophe. See, for example, his interview with Liz Else in the New Scientist (Žižek 2010). This, however, is also contradicted by his claim that his apocalypse is separated from any eschatological consequence (Žižek 2014, 129: ‘the thing to do is to separate apocalyptic experience from eschatology’) which, on its turn, is contradicted again by his allowing for an ‘eschatological apocalypticism which does not involve the fantasy of the symbolic Last Judgment’ (Žižek 2009, 148).

15 When Žižek reacted to the responses by some of those he criticized in his article for the London Review of Books, he acknowledged that 3 claims had been made against his cri-tique. Whilst he answered (attempted to answer) critique 2 and 3, the first one remained without any comment whatsoever. The first claim was that his message was that ‘all we can do is to “sit at home and with the barbarity on television”’ (Žižek 2007).


(Critchley 2012, 213), Critchley himself, however, seems to be underesti-mating the ‘power’ of doing ‘no(-(t)hing)’—when doing nothing is not the Žižekian refusal to act,16 but the actual decisive doing-not that we find in Giorgio Agamben’s elaborations of Aristotle’s theory of potentiality.17

That the suspicion that Žižek would not mind sitting at home whilst the sky starts falling on our heads is more than just a conjecture takes on more concrete forms when considering some other of his favorite (Asiatic or not) sayings in the context of the future hoped for. If the con-text of this future is truly a kind of revolutionized Leninism (with a new Master figure included), then only the advent of a non-eschatological apocalypse (whatever that may be, as it is impossible to imagine) could give him the change to bring this truly into practice.18 Contrary to what he says (but probably not what he believes), the success of the revolu-tion will not be measured the day after (cf. Žižek 2009, 154). Only the day after the apocalypse will a similar revolution be able to be put into practice. And only the day after the apocalypse will he be able to witness how his beloved slogans of Mao and Beckett, respectively ‘from defeat to defeat, to the final victory’ and ‘try again. Fail again. Fail better’ (Žižek 2008, 362), will begin to unravel. In the end, he might just still be around to discover that what he will get is just one more head of the Baptist (and then one more, and still one more)—no Messiah will come around—all of which will be delivered upon a plate after the request made by Heriodas. Only the first time will he have his hair combed, and the next time will he be winking and who knows what will follow.

In the end, we can’t help but agree with Adam Philips that this type (that is, Žižek’s) of ‘apocalyptic thinking is nostalgia at its very worst’ (reported in Gray 2008, 292) and that, after all is said and done—and we are still sitting on the sofa next to Žižek from where we watch it

16 Žižek is correct in insisting (elsewhere) that one should abandon the ‘misleading opposition of activity versus passivity’ (Žižek 2009, 153), but his final answer, that basically remains the same in all these years and that consists of doing nothing (as it is better than doing something … that is wrong), does not appertain to the spheres of upheaval of the dichotomy of activity vs. passivity.

17 Although Agamben turns time and again to this fundamental Aristotelian theory, a very concise summary of the main lines of what is at stake can be found in his ‘On What We Can Not Do’ (Agamben 2011, 43–45). We will return to this problematic in the clos-ing chapter of this volume.

18 Whatever Žižek may hope for, our present socio-cultural and political systems will not be dethroned by similar, weak and delusionary, yearnings.

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all happen (again and again)—the always hateful line of ‘I told you so’ will be ours. One can, in fact, already predict how things will go, as it has already happened and will happen again. It will, in fact, be that the ‘[A]pocalypse failed to arrive, and history went on as before but with an added dash of blood’ (Gray 2008, 259),19 or said differently, and through another—not less saddened—voice: we will simply ‘be back at square one, after a detour strewn with corpses’ (Bauman 2000, 191).

Let me now turn to a second apocalyptic thinker: Jean-Pierre Dupuy. Dupuy, to whom Žižek refers oftentimes to build his own strand of apocalyptic argumentation (on rare occasions accepting the limits of Dupuy’s reasoning, but mostly appropriating only what suits him at the moment), has distilled in the past two decades quite an interesting apocalyptic theory. By combining, in a Bergsonian-based inversive and invasive time-frame,20 the pregnant concept of counterproductivity (con-treproductivité), that stands at the heart of Ivan Illich’s critique, with an upscaling and translation into metaphysics of the already infinitely demanding ethics of Hans Jonas (Jonas 1985), Dupuy has created what he describes as an ‘enlightened catastrophism’. He has mainly spelled out this major wager (a word carefully chosen) in the volume entitled Pour un catastrophisme éclairé (For an enlightened catastrophism) (Dupuy 2002).

Dupuy argues that we should take seriously and ‘know’ that what lies ahead of us is only one thing: a catastrophic future. We should all

19 Gray had stated a very similar idea already earlier (2004). In the introduction to his collection of contributions to the New Statement—entitled Heresies—he had written in an almost identical vein: ‘[J]ust as Marx’s revolutionary socialism had done, the global free market promised an end to history. As could have been foreseen, history continued—with an added dash of blood’ (Gray 2004, 1).

20 What is at stake in this time-frame is the easy transition into reality of something con-sidered impossible exactly up until its point of becoming reality. It is in Bergson’s descrip-tion of his incredulity at the declaration of war between France and Germany in 1914 that Dupuy discovers an accurate example of this inversive-ness and invasiveness of the catastro-phe and its time. ‘Horror-struck as I was’, writes Bergson, ‘and though I felt a war, even a victorious war, to be a catastrophe, I experienced what William James expresses, a feel-ing of admiration for the smoothness of the transition from the abstract to the concrete: who would have thought that so terrible an eventuality could make its entrance into reality with so little disturbance? The impression of this facility was predominant above all else’ (Bergson 1935, 134).


become doom-thinkers and fatalists,21 albeit the true kind of ‘fatalist,’ that is, not the members of the vulgar and cynical ‘supermarket version’ who believe that the solution lies in more choices yet (cf. Dupuy 2014, xvii; 128). Only if we have convinced ourselves of the ineluctability of the catastrophe to come—not merely ‘believing’ in it as a mere possi-bility amongst others—can we truly attempt to avoid it; can it provide a unique means of salvation.22 Only reasoned catastrophic thinking—which does not lead into a ‘heuristics of fear’ (Dupuy 2002, 93–98) and neither into panic23—can actually discover a way to avoid the ineluctable catastrophe (Dupuy 2002, 141).

Up until now, and even though apocalyptic thinking has never been so present and scientific (all sorts of catastrophes—climate change, atomic/bio-chemic warfare, etc.—are on the table in various scientific institutions), consequentialist doctrines, or the various principles or poli-tics of precaution or prevention are all that has been proposed. But these doctrines or politics don’t suffice. They, in one way or another, don’t take the ineluctability of the catastrophe seriously. Some might even say they ‘believe’ the catastrophe to be possible, but that is rarely the case. As Dupuy admits, the biggest problem is that we do not (even) believe it to be credible (Dupuy 2002, 142): ‘the catastrophe is not credible’ (Dupuy 2002, 143—my translation)24 and this is also why the

21 We should, in a somewhat paradoxical way, become fatalists in order to avoid fatalism. It is in this sense that we should read Dupuy’s call to ‘plead in favor of a < fatalist > interpre-tation of the evils that assail us’ (Dupuy 2002, 50—my translation) whilst affirming that ‘the time of the project is not a fatalism …’ (Dupuy 2002, 193—my translation).

22 It is as with a gambler who always believes that the worst is going to happen. That the worst is going to happen is, however, as Dupuy himself explains, not what the gam-bler ‘believes regarding the actual future’ but regards ‘how [the gambler] thinks regarding future conditionals: if I would do this: then this is what will be produced’ (Dupuy 2002, 117—my translation). It has to be stressed, however, that there is a fundamental difference between the gambler and Dupuy’s catastrophic enlightenment. The gambler’s reasoning is, in fact, a purely subjective (individualistic) and purely psychological based reasoning, whereas Dupuy’s stance regards an ethical and intellectual necessity; said differently, that regards, or at least aspires, universalistic solidity.

23 For Dupuy’s understanding of panic as an inner or interior evil of (a) society, see his La panique (Dupuy 2003).

24 As Dupuy adds a page further: ‘[I]t is not the uncertainty [of the future catastrophe], scientific or not, that poses the biggest obstacle, it is the impossibility to believe that the worst is going to come’ (Dupuy 2002, 142–143—my translation).

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aforementioned ‘heuristics of fear’ have no influence on the catastrophe. In the end people don’t believe, let alone ‘know’, the catastrophe to be ineluctable (cf. Dupuy 2002, 129–145).

The enlightened catastrophic reasoning that Dupuy proposes to com-bat the inevitable catastrophe unravels itself as an inversion of time—Dupuy has given this temporality the name of the temps du projet [the time of the project] (cf. Dupuy 2002, 192)—where the future is to be taken as fixed (cf. Dupuy 2002, 190). Departing as such from the inevi-table catastrophe—and projecting ourselves in thought after the catastro-phe, which enables us, as such, to contemplate the road embarked upon and, above all, the logical certitude of what seemed the surprising event of the catastrophe (Cochet et al. 2012, 35)—we should then retroac-tively insert counterfactuals which regard our present. The final hope of this enlightened catastrophism consists in the ‘thinking of the continua-tion of the human experience as the result of the denial of a [its] self-de-struction’ (Dupuy 2002, 216—my translation); or, to say it in the words of Borges (something which Dupuy himself does over and again): ‘El porvenir es inevitable, pero puede no acontecer’ [the future is inevitable, but it may not occur25] (Borges 1999, 223).26

Although Dupuy’s enlightened catastrophism is much more sophisti-cated than Žižek’s version of apocalypticism, it does pose serious problems on its own. In fact, besides the absolute uncertainty of us being unavoida-bly heading for a wall, or that the four horsemen can already be discerned at the horizon (the intention of this essay is, in fact, to argue that in our

25 I have translated Borges’s phrase directly from the Spanish. The English translation I refer to at the end is slightly different: ‘The future is inevitable and exact, but it may not happen’.

26 In a certain sense, Dupuy’s ‘catastrophism’ can remind one of Baudrillard’s far less elaborated understanding of the catastrophe as well. Also for Baudrillard ‘crisis’ is not the concept to refer to, but catastrophe is the correct one (cf. Baudrillard 1983, 71). Furthermore, also for Baudrillard one should try to avoid applying to the catastrophe that strictly linear vision that is imposed on us. One should reconsider the concept under its etymological understanding as curvature, according to Baudrillard, which leads to its limit of meaning. One should thus attempt to ‘exceed this ultimatum of meaning in order that catastrophe itself no longer appears as the last, nihilistic day of reckoning, such as it functions in our current collective fantasy’ (Baudrillard 1983, 104). ‘Negativity’, in fact, ‘engenders crisis and critique’, whereas, ‘hyperbolic positivity for its part engenders catastrophe…’ (Baudrillard 1993, 106).


present predicament of constant crisis, this is actually not just unlikely but sheerly, and logically impossible), there is a much more troublesome aspect to Dupuy’s catastrophic stance. Dupuy’s enlightened catastrophism does, in fact, not offer the possibility for C. S. Lewis’s most provocative, but also demanding, thesis that ‘[A]ll that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell’ (Lewis 2010, 29).

Let us make this point clear. For Dupuy, if our reading of his enlight-ened catastrophism is accurate, one of the major problems encountered regarding the coming cataclysm, is man’s incapacity to take it seriously as something possible. However, even if that were the case—which one can seriously doubt—nothing vouches for the fact that knowledge of some-thing terrible or devastating, even cataclysmic, necessarily or always pro-duces the incentive to behave against it. If the catastrophe is truly what we are heading for, then the problem of not acting to avoid it does prob-ably not regard the argument of incredulity, but, we believe and fear, the sheer fact that we want it,27 or simply cannot acknowledge anymore that we do not want it.28 Lewis’ thesis might sound hard and harsh, but as his devious devil Screwtape cunningly acknowledged, ‘the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts, …’ (Lewis 2001, 61). It is not necessary to actually desire the arrival of the worst, not knowing anymore how to help in the creation of (the) good suffices for it to come closer and closer.

27 This, for example, is the stance of Naomi Klein’s rather worrisome The Shock Doctrine (2007). Why try to avoid disasters when ‘… responding to emergencies is simply too hot an emerging market to be left to the non-profits …’ (Klein 2007, 13). And a rather long laundry list of other examples can be found in this provocative book of hers.

28 Bruce Chatwin’s unconventional main character Kaspar (von) Utz from his novel Utz (Chatwin 1998) is a good example of what is at stake here. Utz, a wealthy collector of pre-cious Meissen porcelain, is able to preserve his private (!) collection throughout the Second World War and the years of the oppressive Stalinist regime in Czechoslovakia’s Prague. And although Utz’s goal can be considered, up to a certain point, noble (preserving art from destruction by barbaric regimes is a noble cause), the only possible way he was able to achieve this was by compromising himself with both of these totalitarian, destructive, regimes. Utz was not a Nazi neither a Stalinist, but the utter visceral need to preserve his collection made him completely blind towards the other, and absolute, necessity (and the only truly good cause), namely to destroy these totalitarian regimes.

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Whilst still other thinkers could have been proposed who flirt with the nearing of the end,29 we will leave it with these two examples proposed by Slavoj Žižek and Jean-Pierre Dupuy. As already discussed, both theo-ries are confronted with fundamentally detrimental problematics. Žižek’s type of passivity (of in-active passivity) is a cynical stance that, in case he is ‘wrong’ about the separation of apocalypse and eschatology, will actu-ally have resolved in … less than nothing. Dupuy’s rational or enlightened catastrophism, on the other hand, can’t cope with the simple fact that man could actually prefer the worst or, what is probably the case for the major-ity, basically prefers not to actively desire (let alone help in bringing forth) the good. What combines these, and other apocalyptic, perspectives, and one more reason why we claim that the argumentation here proposed does not appertain to apocalyptic/catastrophic or even eschatological thought, is that theirs is a reasoning that acknowledges the presence of a ‘proceeding towards’ something (the apocalypse in their case). What we propose in this volume, as some might already have intuited and as our considerations on Limbo have rendered clear, is the idea—probably counterintuitive, but for that reason not less rational (and maybe an idea that is far more dreadful than the nearness of the apocalypse)—of a sheer lack of a similar ‘proceed-ing towards’. This being the case, the end can’t possibly be nigh.

----------------------------------------O.D.----------------------------------------

So the idea of the perennial crisis will be considered as the cipher of our times. The examples of recent statements or even slogans that regard or refer to a ‘long-lasting’, a ‘drawn-out’, a ‘perennial’, ‘enduring’, etc. cri-sis are too many to even attempt a ‘short’ list. However, and similarly to the paradoxical nature of Žižek’s saying ‘may you live in interesting times’ where what is (seems) a blessing is actually a curse, also a lasting/perennial crisis is, as we will see in what follows, paradoxical. As Janet Roitman, who we will encounter in the following section, correctly remarked: is speaking of a state of enduring crisis not an oxymoron (Roitman 2014, 2)?30

29 We could refer, for example, to Jean-Clet Martin’s interesting speculations (truly revela-tory and non-eschatological end-of-the-world in comparison to Žižek’s only supposedly or claimed revelatory and non-eschatological apocalypse) on the end of the (this) world and the coming about of a plurivers (Martin 2010)—an idea, the plurivers, that was elaborated, albeit slightly differently, also by one of my teachers in those same years (cf. Mascarenhas 2010).

30 Steven Shaviro makes an identical comment in his No Speed Limit. Three Essays on Accelerationism (Shaviro 2015, 9). We will return to Shaviro and his elaboration on this paradoxical nature of an enduring crisis in Sect. 5.1.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78913-2_5


Before we start discussing the concept of crisis and the consequences (impossibility/ies?) of it being lasting or perennial, one final and ungrateful task awaits us in this section. And although happy teleological ‘progressivists’—progress, not being any longer the opium of the people but the ‘Prozac of the thinking class’ (Gray 2004, 3)31—of the kind of the cognitive scientist Steven Pinker or Johan Norberg,32 might accuse me of pessimism (the ‘optimism’ of Pinker and company will, in the fifth

31 By the way, Screwtape, C. S. Lewis’s shrewd Senior Devil we just met had the follow-ing piece of advice for his junior partner in crime Wormwood on progress: ‘You keep him [the human being] well fed on hazy ideas of Progress and Development and the Historical Point of View, …’ (Lewis 2001, 46) as that will lead him straight into to good direction of the underworld.

32 We think his whole progress-argumentation is mono-dimensional, largely superficial and implies a reduction of cognition to calculus. Numbers are not all there is and meas-uring is a tricky business to be handled with care and not so sluggishly as, for example, Norberg does. Furthermore, his tasteless and particularly sad treatment of the Holocaust was already denounced 30 years ago by Vlademir Jankélévich. Jankélévitch wrote in L’imprescriptible (1986) about one of the more abominable pieces of journalism who had, ‘alas!’ discovered how ‘the differences between Hitler’s crimes and other crimes were sim-ply (!) quantitative’ (Jankélévitch 1986, Chapter 1—my translation). One can justifiably wonder whether Norberg (basing himself on Pinker) does not represent another example of abominability when he writes that: ‘[T]he fact that there are many more people in other places, living in peace, does not make the Second World War any less atrocious. But if we are thinking of the risk of being harmed or dying because of war, then we must also think of proportions and rates, just as we think of poverty rates and unemployment rates. In that context, no matter how counterintuitive it might sound, there is actually a case to be made that the twentieth century was the least violent century ever’ (Norberg 2016, Chapter 5). It is not counterintuitive, as Norberg claims, to state something of this kind, it is simply repulsive this downplaying of the Shoah. In fact, there is something deeply problematic, even profoundly troublesome (repulsive, to repeat the word once more), in thinking that it is ‘numbers’ that which is at stake in the Holocaust. What is at stake is the ‘novelty’ of the industrialization of the extermination of the entire Jewish people and culture, and the Gypsy culture, the handicapped and homosexuals would have met the same fate if the time had been made available (to say it rather crude). Its scale, its ‘measure’—if quantification is of necessity to the poor of mind—is beyond any comparative numerology. What probably obliges Norberg to make this horrendous claim is, as John Gray so accurately writes, the awareness (something which he has to downplay as much as possible) that at all the mas-sacres that litter the twentieth century ‘were premeditated for the sake of vast projects of world improvements’ (Gray 2003, 96) or ‘to elevate the human condition’ (Gray 2004, 5); that is, they took place to allow his beloved (imaginary) progress. All this is, in the end, nothing more than another sad example of what Jean-Pierre Dupuy described as the twen-tieth century’s capacity to simply digest the worst abominations without any particular embarrassment (cf. Dupuy 2002, 85).

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section of this book, prove itself to be of further service to our discourse; it will, in fact, turn out to be paradigmatic of modernity’s ideological blinding [and, as such, a fundamental aspect of our living in an imma-nent Limbo])—or of being ‘flat-earth wrong’ as Pinker accused Gray to be (Pinker 2015)33—we will end this chapter by offering a double list. The first was produced by Jean-Luc Nancy in 1995 and the second was written by us some years ago (2015).

*

While we are writing these sentences a list comes to our mind. It is a list writ-ten more than two decades ago (1995) by the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy. The list goes like this: ‘Bosnia-Herzogovina, Chechnya, Rwanda, Bosnian Serbs, Tutsis, Hutus, Tamil Tigers, Krajina Serbs, Casamance, Chiapas, Islamic Jihad, Bangladesh, the Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia, Hamas, Kazakhstan, Khmers Rouges, E T A militia, Kurds (U P K /P D K), Montataire, the Movement for Self-determination, Somalia, Chicanos, Shiites, F N L C—Canal Historique, Liberia, Givat Hagadan, Nigeria, the League of the North, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Sikhs, Haiti, Roma gypsies of Slovenia, Taiwan, Burma, P L O, Iraq, Islamic Front Salvation, Shining Path, Vaulx-en-Velins, Neuhof, ….’ As will be immediately clear, and

33 Pinker’s recrimination of Gray, of being ‘flat-earth wrong’, is quite intriguing and should be considered at full value. In fact, as the late Umberto Eco correctly argued some years ago, the accusation that most of our ancestors, especially the Christian ones, believed that the earth was flat was highly questionable (Eco 2013, 11–23). Some did believe the earth was indeed flat, but the largest majority of Christians, as well as a large part of pagan sages who lived well before the rise of Christianity were already firmly convinced of the earth’s roundness. It regarded a false accusation made by nineteenth century lay (secular) thinkers who were irritated and fed up with Christian doubts on evolutionism. If religious people could have such absurd ideas as believing that the earth was flat, how could one take their doubts on evolutionism serious (Marshall McLuhan voices another interesting theory [which does not rebuke any of the major claims that result from Eco’s observation], where the ‘striking flat’ of the earth is one of the greatest achievements of the sixteenth century and later, mainly based on the innovations of the press [Gutenberg] and the map [Mercator] (cf. McLuhan 1962, 182)). A lie (a ‘lie for the truth’ as pure ideological lies are always) was needed to make the point of these positivist scientists (if we can call them accordingly). The question we thus need to pose before anything else, regarding Pinker’s accusation, is whether his resorting to this same recrimination is not a revelation of his own ideological bias (with its one-size fits all approach so typical of ideology—an approach that, by the way, is also found in Norberg’s volume Progress; it suffices to look at the chapters: food, sanitation, poverty, violence, the environment, literacy, freedom, and equality, all is simply better) and not an argument against Gray. We obviously think it is.


as Nancy concludes this list, ‘[O]f course, it would be difficult to bring this list to an end if the aim was to include all the places, groups, or authorities that constitute the theater of bloody conflicts among identities, as well as what is at stake in these conflicts’ (Nancy 2000, xii).What is more worrisome than Nancy’s list in itself is the fact that almost the complete list can be copy-pasted and included in a new list of theaters of bloody conflicts in 2015 (Chechnya, Rwanda, Chiapas, Islamic Jihad, Bangladesh, Hamas, E T A militia, Somalia, Chicanos, Shiites, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Haiti, Roma gypsies, Iraq) while new countries and political and/or religious entities (but who knows what they are in the end) have worked hard to join it (IS [as ISIS was called in the beginning], Boko Haram, Gaza, Libya, Syria, Mali, Venezuela, Thailand, Egypt, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo [but once one has the urge to put the word ‘democratic’ in the name of a country an alarm bell big as a skyscraper should start ringing], Central African Republic, Nigeria, Tunis, Uganda, Kenya, Yemen, Ukraine). And also at the end of this list we would have to acknowledge the wearisome inca-pacity to bring it to an end.34

*

4.2 taKing it seriousLy

We ended the previous chapter by offering a list of conflicts and crisis. The reason we felt obliged to do this, something we clearly identified as an ungrateful task, was related to the fact that, and notwithstanding the lists produced, a whole series of people (e.g., the ‘progressivists’ of the previous section) claim that there is no crisis. And although we have already spoken against the rude and purely superficial quantitative opti-mism of these ‘progressivists’, other voices too share the idea that all the talk about ‘crisis’ is largely exaggerated. Their conviction is, and for as much as one can firmly disagree with these convictions, however, not so superficial or quantitative, and neither (completely) irrational. There is something, at least so it seems, in the concept of ‘crisis’ that makes it, its usage, dubious. It might be interesting to have a closer look at some of these convictions and their reasoning schemes.

One of the recent and by far more interesting studies on the concept of ‘crisis’ that goes along the just mentioned lines is Janet Roitman’s Anti-Crisis. Without describing or recapitulating her argumentation,

34 It suffices to look at the global peace index to realize that there are still a lot of people living in ‘interesting times’.

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Roitman’s main claim is that the concept of crisis does not refer back to some ‘condition to be observed’, but rather consists of ‘an observa-tion that produces meaning’ (Roitman 2014, 39). Crisis is a ‘non-locus’ (Roitman 2014, 10), a ‘blind spot’ (Roitman 2014, 13) and, as such, it ‘cannot be taken as a description of a historical situation nor can it be taken to be a diagnosis of the status of history’ (Roitman 2014, 49). This already very provocative claim is, however, not all. Through her remain-ing orthodoxically faithful to the German scholar, and founder of the Begriffsgeschichte (the history of concepts), Reinhart Koselleck’s claim that ‘critique and crisis are cognates’ (Roitman 2014, 41)—an aspect in which we differ fundamentally from Roitman—Roitman argues that ‘claims to crisis are the grounds for critique’ (Roitman 2014, 90). So claims of a crisis in politics stand not for an actual crisis in politics but offer the grounds for a critique on politics, and similarly for all the other claims of crisis.

Although Roitman’s conclusions are of importance, and some of its implications will be re-proposed in what follows, they do seem rather reductive. Furthermore, and this second critique is intrinsically related to the first one, there also seems to be something not quite right in the actual reasoning she proposes. Let us start with the last point, after which we will confront the first one by giving a look at another scholar who has insisted on the closeness of crisis and critique: Paul de Man.

The first argumentative move Roitman makes, a move that is essential to her reasoning, is the putting on hold of the reality of a crisis. She does this by ‘suspend[ing] judgment about expert claims to crisis’ (Roitman 2014, 6). There is, in fact, as Roitman claims, ‘no rush to explain cri-sis’ (Roitman 2014, 5). However, and for as much as this putting on hold of the explanation and actuality (or not) of a crisis is essential to her problematization, this suspension seems to be retained in her conclusive formulations. This obviously leaves a rather strong aftertaste of a peti-tio principii. Even though she admits in the final pages that ‘[T]here is no reason to claim that there are no “real” crisis’ (Roitman 2014, 94), the fact that a crisis does not describe a historical situation does allow one to infer that there is also no reason to claim there are ‘real’ crisis in her conclusive remarks. The actual crisis—of which she admits, with-out much interest, the possible existence—remains basically suspended or of no importance to her conclusion. That which is posed as a necessary (preliminary) condition for her reasoning (the suspension of any actual crisis) is also re-proposed as part of her conclusion: what is at stake in a


crisis (its narrative) is not the realness or falseness of the crisis but ‘the ways in which it allows for certain questions to be asked while others are foreclosed’ (Roitman 2014, 94). The in the conclusion present claim of remaining latency (of crisis) was presupposed and pre-imposed.35 Again, this tastes of petitio principii.

In the end, it seems that the final goal of Roitman’s Anti-Crisis is not a being ‘anti’. What underlies her reasoning is the remaining irrelevance of the actuality—or not—of (and one could add: even the sheer possi-bility or necessity of deciding upon) a crisis. This is very reductive for the concept of ‘crisis’ and would allow us to reproach Roitman’s stance with the appropriate words formulated by the Belgian-born literary theo-rist Paul de Man—not coincidently in a text entitled Criticism and Crisis (de Man 1971)—that repetitively ignoring or downplaying the constant presence of ‘the language of crisis in referring to what is taking place’ (de Man 1971, 6—emphasis added) is only some kind of ‘pragmatic com-mon sense’ that ‘lures the mind into self-satisfied complacency and puts it irrevocably to sleep’ (cf. de Man 1971, 6).36

*

The Portuguese Nobel Prize Laureate, José Saramago, an author who will be of particular interest in our conclusive Extraduction, tells a story about a young shepherd in his Notebook (Saramago 2010). The young shepherd, as Saramago’s tale goes, decided, one fine day, to shout for all to hear ‘Wolf Wolf, here comes a Wolf’. As a result of all the loud shouting the whole village came out with clubs to protect the sheep from the wolf. However, there was no wolf to be seen. One of the villagers, stated that the wolf must have run away because of the shepherds’ shouting. Pleased with his deceit, the young shepherd, as Saramago continues his story, repeated his experiment a second time. And also this time the villagers came out to protect the herd, not to find any sign

35 The circularity of her reasoning is somehow also admitted by Roitman herself when she states that ‘[M]any academic authors, including myself, take crisis to be the start-ing point for narration’ (Roitman 2014, 34). The conclusion was present from the very beginning.

36 By giving credit to de Man’s thesis here, we are taking our leave from a strictly obser-vant ‘Koselleck-ism’. In fact, Koselleck claims that when one can note an inflationary usage of the crisis-language, one that covers almost all aspects of life so far that one could con-clude that one is living in an all-embracing crisis, then ‘this conclusion attests more to a dif-fuse manner of speaking than it contributes to the diagnosis of [one’s] situation’ (Koselleck 2002, 236).

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of a wolf for the second time. When a third series of ‘Wolf Wolf’ cries sounded some time later, there was no movement in the village. The wolf, who had now finally decided to turn up, carried away all the sheep he desired.

We have probably all heard this story before—also because it is as old as mankind (this tale is, in fact, already included in Aesop’s Fables)—. Its morale is usually found in the fact of not lying, or not exaggerating, because the moment it will be true or unbearable nobody will believe you anymore. However, Saramago, gives it a second possible morale that is of purpose to what we are discussing, especially with reference to the observations made by de Man. In fact, Saramago concludes: ‘[T]here were also many more who denied the wolf was coming before it indeed descended upon us, and when in the end it did, I saw and traced the word on its collar: crisis’ (Saramago 2010, 138–139).

*

Let us, however, quickly return to my argument and contextualize the rather harsh words we addressed to Roitman before we turned to Saramago’s tale. de Man’s take on the relationship between criticism, critique and crisis starts with a lecture the French poet Mallarmé held in Oxford in 1894. Mallarmé’s oration, so de Man recounts, opens with the shocking statement that something completely new, something that has never happened before, had taken place. Some unknown, at least unnamed, poets have created a crisis. They have had the courage to ‘tamper with the rules of verse’ (de Man 1971, 3). The clue of de Man’s story is not to be found in the revelation of the names of the unnamed poets. The names have since not been revealed; not by Mallarmé and neither by de Man (who probably has, just like us, no idea who Mallarmé is talking about). Neither is the tampering with the rules of verse the reason de Man begins his text on crisis with Mallermé’s 1894 oration; and this notwithstanding the fact this was the crisis Mallarmé attempted to shock his audience with. In fact, as de Man correctly remarks, what Mallarmé revealed could hardly have been of interest to his audience. The reason de Man starts with this example is exactly this: the crisis, the shocking event Mallarmé brought to Oxford from France, was of very little, if any, importance at all at that time and to that audience, and today it is even less than a ripple in history.

That this is the message of the opening lines, albeit proposed in a somewhat mocking fashion (by, first of all, Mallarmé himself), finds confirmation in a second example. This second example, again regards


Mallarmé. This time it is about Mallarmé’s text Crise de vers where the poet, once more, reports of a group of young poets who, through their favoring of open verse whilst rejecting traditional verse, represent a major crisis for poetry (cf. de Man 1971, 6). Once more, as de Man observes, are we dealing with a clear non-crisis: ‘the poets he mentions are hardly remembered today, and certainly not praised for the explosive renovation with which Mallarmé seems to credit them’ (de Man 1971, 7). However, and notwithstanding the unimportance of the (non-)events Mallarmé mentions, ignoring or downplaying the presence of the language of crisis in Mallarmé would be, for de Man, a serious error. In fact, as we already mentioned, ignoring the constant presence of the language of crisis in referring to what is taking place should simply not be done according to him.

What the stories recounted of Mallarmé crisis-orations demonstrate, and what is important for what follows, is that even if something turns out to be, post-factum, not even close to something that can be defined as a crisis, this cannot just simply be ignored. It remains of essential importance that a connection is established between the usage of cri-sis language and something that is actually taking place in reality (be it a nullity or the simple fact of the oration filled with crisis-language). A crisis can always turn out to be ‘nothing’. This should not surprise as ‘[H]istorical changes are not like changes in nature, …,’ they are ‘without an objective correlate that can unambiguously be pointed to in empirical reality’ (de Man 1971, 6). Now with crisis necessary implying a ‘sense of urgency’ and a certain ‘intensity’ (de Man 1971, 5), the needed and only post-factum available objectivity is not available during the cri-sis—or during what is dubbed as a crisis. As every crisis, however, regards a ‘“separation” [that] takes place’ (de Man 1971, 8), ignoring this would indeed lure the mind into a self-complacent sleep.

Mallarmé’s examples, however, demonstrate one more aspect that needs to be considered closely and that leads us straight back to Anti-crisis. In fact, what the examples of Mallarmé’s texts render evident is that crisis-language is not always understandable by all. ‘They [the British on this occasion]’, as de Man correctly adds, ‘probably had dif-ficulty understanding the rhetoric of crisis …’ (de Man 1971, 5). They had no, or only a vague, idea who the authors were that Mallarmé was talking about, and even the crisis-ridden change or rejection most prob-ably consisted in something they were hardly familiar with. So why did Mallarmé make these claims in a similar surrounding? And more

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importantly, why did de Man, who has demonstrated that these exam-ples could hardly be considered—and can certainly no longer be consid-ered—as crisis-material, bring these examples forth, exactly as examples of crisis? To understand the full scope of this remark we need to real-ize that de Man’s aim in referring to Mallarmé in Criticism and Crisis is to demonstrate that that which [a text in this case] designates a crisis is actually itself (always also) a crisis. Said simply: a crisis is itself always also (or simply, always already) a crisis (the crisis in the case of Mallarmé’s examples thus did not regard the things that he was talking about (the rejection of verse), but was Mallarmé’s text itself ).

Roitman, to return to our discussion, thus not only disregards cri-sis-language in its relation to something that is (actually) taking place (I will turn to this problematic in the next paragraph), she also seems to ignore the crisis-ness of crisis-language as such. This is precisely the meaning of her observation of crisis’s latency. Saying that there is a cri-sis in poetry, or that there is a crisis in politics, in economy, etc., is not recognized by Roitman as being possibly a crisis (in its mere exclamation of a crisis), but is for her just a reduction of crisis for other elements (cf. Roitman 2014, 39). The ascertainment of, for example, a crisis in politics is, for Roitman, not about the actual detection or confirmation in reality of something like a crisis (whether this confirmation is a last-ing one or not) but about politics and the desire of/for critique. That the crisis of politics, to remain in the same field, is (always also simply) a crisis in itself is (the crisis-ness of a crisis is always already necessar-ily present in every crisis of …) for Roitman, unimaginable, or without meaning.

However, let us return to the importance of there being a reference to something that is actually taking place. Although, as we saw, Roitman has no issue stating that ‘[T]here is no reason to claim that there are no “real” crisis’ (Roitman 2014, 94), it is, however, never about the ‘real’ or about the reality of a crisis (and real is in-between inverted commas in Roitman’s text). There is no necessary reference to what is taking place in actuality (even if it could be a mere ‘nothing’ in the long run). And even if one cannot, nor should, underestimate the implications of the crisis-narrative as is stated by Roitman, by leaving out any necessary, or simply possible, connection to an actual crisis she missed out on a whole different level of understanding of what is at stake in the crisis-language she has studied so carefully.


Let us attempt to explain this loss, or missing out, by referring to her primary example: the rhetoric of President Obama’s inaugural speech from January 20th, 2009 (Roitman 2014, 1–2). Roitman claims that Obama’s discourse, which clearly listed a number of historical facts that indicated the presence of something that could be described as a crisis, aims at more than just offering historical facts of crisis. What is at stake in Obama’s speech, according to Roitman, is that more than anything it ‘entails, or perhaps constitutes, a transhistorical journey’ (Roitman 2014, 2). For as much as she has to admit that Obama has ‘given an inventory of historical facts of crisis’ (Roitman 2014, 1), this inventory is completely ignored in all that follows and Obama’s words are no longer about observation but about producing meaning (cf. Roitman 2014, 39). Although Obama’s rhetoric is obviously more than just an inventory of facts, one should not ignore it is also an inventory of facts, and facts related to crisis. If nobody would recognize that starting point of Obama’s discourse (which consists exactly in an account of what is taking place), if it were a ‘mere’ language-game, then the addition of his qualifier (crisis) to the mere inventory (quantifiable facts) would be of no meaning at all.

But let us insist, what is at stake is not that crisis-language can be taken seriously only when there is absolute certainty of a crisis (of an impossibility of that crisis not having been a crisis).37 There is no need that a crisis must be(come), to refer to Marc Augé’s highly disputable definition of our times (but that it is disputable or not is exactly not the question), ‘[T]he planetary crisis now under way’ which ‘future histori-ans may speak of [as] a Hundred-Year crisis’ (Augé 2014, 44–45). Crisis-language needs to be taken seriously notwithstanding the fact that it can—and most often actually will—be proven to (have turned out to) be nothing more than a mere ripple in the ‘sea of history’.38

37 Hegel’s famous Owl of Minerva, the goddess of Wisdom, is known for spreading its wings and flying out only at dusk; that is, when day (the event) has already passed.

38 Also because it is not unseen that even what is considered by almost all reasonable people to be (have been) a crisis will not have been so for some others. Take, for exam-ple, the Asiatic crisis of 1997: the financial meltdown of some of the so-called Asian Tigers (Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, etc.). In his best-selling book The Lexus and the Olive Tree (Friedman 1999), Thomas L. Friedman, the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times journalist, described this financial meltdown that caused so much damage—especially on the populations of these crashing nations—as merely ‘exposing the crony cap-italism’ (Friedman 1999, 452) of those regions. It was, however, according to him, ‘not a crisis’ (Friedman 1999, 453).

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Once more can we turn to Simon Critchley, and one of his rather cunning remarks made during an interview with Carl Cederström, that stresses what is at stake in what we are trying to say. Critchley thus claims that ‘[T]he worst situation for the philosopher is a situation where cri-sis is not recognized, where people would say “crisis, what crisis?”’ (Critchley and Cederström 2010, 34). In order to describe this situation, Critchley then turns to the Nietzschean image of the happy bovine39 of the banal last men: ‘[I]n a world where crisis is not recognized, I would argue, human beings sink to the level of happy cattle, a sort of bovine contentment that is systematically confused with happiness (but maybe that’s a little mean to cows)’ (Critchley and Cederström 2010, 34).40 For Critchley—and Roitman will clearly acknowledge and even partially appropriate Critchley’s reasoning in her Anti-crisis (Roitman 2014, 35)— the main point of his argument is, however, not just the recognition of the crisis. Considering the importance of a crisis is only the first step. What remains, and what Critchley considers as the task of the philos-opher, is the actual production of crisis (cf. Critchley and Cederström 2010, 34).41

Critchley already elaborated this idea in his earlier small volume, from the series of very short introductions, dedicated to Continental Philosophy (Critchley 2001).42 It is very clear, in this booklet, that also

39 See for example the ‘green-pasture happiness’, be it of the herd or not (Nietzsche 2002, II §44, 41; Nietzsche 1968, IV 1, 4, §957, 502) from, respectively, his Beyond Good and Evil and The Will to Power, or the happiness of ‘the cattle, grazing’ (Nietzsche 1997, 60) from his Untimely Meditations.

40 A similar claim is made by Bernard Stiegler (cf. Stiegler 2009, 48).41 A possible way out of Roitman’s situation could be found in Sara Ahmed’s take on

crisis narratives in her The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2004) where this element of the ‘production of the crisis’ is present as well. What is missing in Ahmed (but is present in, and detrimental to, Roitman’s project) is any sort of denial or underplaying of an actual crisis. In fact, also for Ahmed the announcing ‘of crisis is to produce a moral and political justification for maintaining “what is” in the name of future survival’ (Ahmed 2004, 77). However, if there is no actual real crisis, fundamental is ‘the very production of the crisis that is crucial’ (Ahmed 2004, 76–77). So if there is no crisis already active, one needs to be created for it to be operative.

42 An almost identical phrasing of the just reported quote is present there as well. ‘The true crisis’, as Critchley writes just before he commences the section dedicated to the topic of ‘Philosophy as the production of crisis’ (Critchley 2001, 72–75), ‘of the European sciences [Critchley was discussing Husserl’s study entitled precisely Crisis of the European Sciences] or what Heidegger calls “the distress of the West” is felt in the absence of distress: “crisis, what crisis?”. The real crisis is the absence of crisis, the real distress is the absence of distress. In such thoughtless amnesia we sink to the level of happy cattle’ (Critchley 2001, 72).


for Critchley, just like it was already for Roitman,43 the philosopher’s task of the production of a crisis is fundamentally related to the ‘attempt to produce a critical consciousness’ (Critchley 2001, xv). But this coupling of crisis and critique should only happen rather, or only, tardively. If there is one thing that needs to precede any possibility of critique, then it is exactly the recognition of crisis. If crisis is not recognized (some-thing which obviously leaves open the possibility of the crisis turning out to be not so crisis-like in the future), then what remains is the cat-tle contentment. And is this not what Roitman’s volume clearly demon-strates and even puts into practice? Can the assertion of this cognateness, or emphasizing its entanglement too soon and too much (as Roitman did44), not actually produce, or re-introduce, the bovine contentment by making one forget that in the end it is all about the basic recognition of the crisis?

Jacques Derrida’s most provocative remark on Marcel Mauss’s study on the gift comes to mind when discussing Roitman’s Anti-crisis. Just like Derrida claimed that Mauss’s essay ‘misses its object and always speaks, finally, of something else’ and that ‘a work so monumental as Marcel Mauss’s The Gift speaks of everything but the gift’ (Derrida 1992, 24), also we are inclined to claim that Roitman’s book is about almost everything closely related to the concept of crisis, but not about the crisis as such. If crisis is claimed but remains latent, it is not in cri-sis-language but in Roitman’s book.

43 For Roitman, as we already indicated, the entanglement of crisis and critique was inspired by Reinhart Koselleck. For Critchley, on the contrary, it is a fundamental part of the whole enterprise of what is known to be Continental Philosophy (Critchley 2001, xv).

44 Roitman seems to have taken the historical affirmation of Koselleck, that the ‘critical process of enlightenment conjured up the crisis’ (Koselleck 1988, 9), as having metahistor-ical value (even having retro-active effects upon the meaning of the concept of crisis itself). This is, however, stretching the limits a bit too much. Furthermore, it completely misses out on the importance of the veiling/unveiling game played between crisis and critique so important in Koselleck’s Critique and Crisis. The critical enlightenment process, first of all, was itself also a crisis, and the concept itself of crisis already had a well-defined and -known meaning—a meaning upon which this enlightenment critique will have a profound influence (upsetting, as I will attempt to demonstrate, its temporal and spatial structures). No retro-active effects on the concept of crisis are observable, only the obfuscation of crisis by critique (something which is still active in Roitman’s discourse itself as we discovered).

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To conclude, it might be of interest to end this chapter with two other lists, lists similar to the ones proposed in the previous chapter. This time the first list is from Janet Roitman and can be found in her book we just discussed (the second is again ours). The lists regard some of the things that have been considered as being in crisis. And as can be seen, very little has not been defined as being in crisis lately.

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The geography of crisis has come to be world geography CNN-style: crisis in Afghanistan,45 crisis in Darfour, crisis in Iran, crisis in Iraq, crisis in the Congo, crisis in Cairo, crisis in the Middle East, crisis on Main Street. [h]umanitarian crisis, environmental crisis, energy crisis, debt crisis, finan-cial crisis, etc (cf. Roitman 2014, 3).

The following additional elements can be added: the humanities are in crisis as well as the university in its totality, or, reversely, education in total is in crisis; literature as well has been declared to be in a crisis; (traditional) religion is in a crisis as well, and, maybe correlated, the (traditional?) fam-ily is also in a crisis; there is (was) a housing crisis; healthcare is in crisis; the banks are in crisis; and general politics is in a terrible crisis—even the nation-state (especially in its, so-called, Post-Westphalian form) and sovereignty as such have both been declared to be in crisis; the community (general social and organizational life) is in crisis; labor seems to be in crisis as well as the upsurge of numbers of burnouts seems to indicate; the euro(zone) is in crisis and several European countries are in crisis; information (journalism) is in an existential crisis; and fully aware of the non-exhaustiveness of this, these two, list(s), we will end with the harsh reality that an awful lot of people (ever more as the rise in (ab)use of pharmaceuticals indicate) are going through endless personal crisis as well.

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45 It should not go unnoticed how the concept of crisis seems to be identifiable with the concept of war.


4.3 What’s in a meaning

Having come to the conclusion in the two previous sections that, one, the times we are currently living in have as their cipher the concept of (perennial) crisis, and, second, that the concept of crisis is always related to something that is actually taking place and should (even if history might prove it wrong) always be taken serious as a crisis—upon the peril of luring our minds into sleep—we have now finally reached the moment where to start investigating the precise meaning of the concept at stake is unavoidable. In the following two sections we will thus focus, respec-tively, on the etymological and historical understanding of the concept of crisis (Sect. 4.3), on the implications of this historico-etymological when the qualifier of ‘perennial’ is added to it (Sect. 4.4), and, as the conclu-sion of this same Sect. 4.4, on the effects of all this on crisis’ most impor-tant characteristics, namely its spatial and temporal aspects. Let us begin with crisis and its (historical) etymology.

Before embarking upon the unveiling of the etymological and his-torical meaning(s) of the concept of crisis, a preliminary comment is in order. This comment regards the unavoidability of what we could call, in the shadow of Jean-Luc Nancy, a linguistic form of being singular plural (cf. Nancy 2000, 1–99; 2009, xviii). Thoughts of (original) purity are, as Nancy correctly remarks, simplistic and obscene (Nancy 2000, 148). In fact, as David Wills, Nancy’s very acute translator of Sur le commerce des pensées: Du livre et de la librairie—On the Commerce of thinking. Of Books & Bookstores (Nancy 2009)—remarks in his introduction: ‘[B]ecause a word, from the outset, determines its sense in comparison and contrast, in conversation and contact with other words, it begins as a pluralization that is an intercourse and a commerce’ (Nancy 2009, xviii). What is intended here is, however, not (albeit it is cognate to it) some sort of surplus or fundamental inadequacy which generates the famous ‘signifier-surfeit relative to the signifieds to which it can be fitted’ (Lévi-Strauss 1987, 62). Not a surplus, nor an excess, is what is at stake here (interesting as that surplus might be on its own), but an ‘original’, an originary, ‘mélange’ or ‘mêlée’ (Nancy 2000, 156) as Nancy understands it—in a spatial way this mêlée needs to be understood as ‘a crossing and a stop, a knot and an exchange, a gathering, a disjunction, a circulation, a radiation’ (Nancy 2000, 145). Words, almost all words, and certainly all important and pregnant (social) words, never have a single pure mean-ing, let alone understanding. Not only are these words always already being determined in reciprocal relationships with other words, there

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is, furthermore, at their non-relational ‘origin’ no monolithic purity—there is probably no meaningful ‘origin’ at all, only a multiple emerg-ing. Crisis, to conclude this preliminary comment, and this should not be forgotten throughout this chapter, is a word that can be considered as exemplary of this singular plurality, of this word-mélange.

As we now turn to the etymology of crisis, we discover that crisis orig-inated from the Proto-Indo-European root ‘krei’, which means to sieve, to discriminate, or to distinguish (it might have been, in its very origin, related to the practice of sieving/sifting, or to the utensil still known as a sieve, which serves exactly to separate small from larger grains), and derives directly from the Greek word krinō which means to separate or to decide, to cut, to judge, or to select.46 Crisis, as one of the funda-mental Greek concepts, however, meant, as will become evident in what follows, all these things at the same time. Krinō is, in fact, the knot, or stop, where all these meanings cross.47 In this (multiple) understanding, the concept of crisis was used in politics, theology, and, as we are proba-bly all most familiar with, in medicine.48

There is, to start with the field of medicine, probably not a ‘book’ by the famous ancient Greek physician from the island of Kos, Hippocrates,49 that does not reveal the presence of the concept crisis.

46 Crisis is not (!), and neither does it express ‘something positive, creative and optimis-tic’ (Bauman and Bordoni 2014, 3) as Carlo Bordoni argues in his quatre mains text writ-ten with Zygmunt Bauman. Something positive or creative might come out of a crisis, but that is by no means assured by the crisis itself (the same obviously holds for a possibly nega-tive or depressive counterpart). Crisis itself is a neutral concept.

47 As already indicated, in our covering of the meaning and history (etymology) of the concept of crisis, we are generally following the already mentioned German scholar Reinhart Koselleck’s, by now classic, research on the concept of crisis. Regarding this ety-mological history of crisis, we base ourselves particularly on his ‘Some Questions Regarding the Conceptual History of “Crisis”’ (Koselleck 2002, 236–247).

48 In a 2012 PhD dissertation by Argiri D. Aggelopoulou, it is claimed that Aristotle’s definition of the passions, as proposed in the second book of his Rhetoric, has a very similar implication and utilization of the concept of krisis (we were made attentive to this text in too late a stage of the writing process to be able to include it).

49 As W. H. S. Jones correctly remarks in the general introduction to the publication of the Corpus Hippocraticum in the Loeb Classical Library, there is ‘no inner bond of union [of these texts] except that all the works are written in Ionic dialect and are connected more or less closely with medicine on one of its allied sciences’ (Hippocrates 1923, xxviii). So Hippocrates, like many other ancient authors, more than a ‘proper’ name represents a collective one.


The pervasiveness of the concept is so evident that it is generally claimed that it is one of the more important concepts in Hippocrates’ theory of medicine. Galen, the other famous medical theorist from antiquity, even thought Hippocrates had been the first to discuss crisis and the to it related critical days (Hippocrates 1923, liv). The medical understand-ing of crisis needs to be considered within a more ‘general’ theory of diseases. A disease, which has a ‘regular’ course, was considered as a disturbance of the natural/normal human body. The (medical) crisis is then to be understood as a moment where the battle and the decision between the disease and nature (the natural human body) will occur. We can thus read in Affections, the treatise that has what comes closest to a definition of the concept of crisis, that ‘[T]o be judged (Kρίνεσθαι) in diseases is when they increase, diminish, change into another disease, or end’ (Hippocrates 1988, §8; 17). So a person who is sick will reach, in the critical days, the stage or moment of ‘crisis’ where, on the one hand, the battle will be fought between his nature and the disease, and, on the other hand (but simultaneously), the disease will be decided (judged) upon. After the stage or moment of crisis, the patient will become well again, or he will have lost the battle and die.

Although the usage of the concept of crisis in antiquity is mostly to be found in the ‘medical’ writings, it was not limited to just that. As already indicated, also in theology is the concept well present. Limiting ourselves only to texts of the New Testament—which does not mean there is no presence of a krisis in the Jewish writings of the Torah—we find the krisis present, for example, in the idea of God’s final or last Judgment. We find this, to give just a couple of examples, present in the Letter to the Hebrews (9:27 ‘Just as it is appointed that human beings die once, and after this the judgment—ἡ ἡμέρα κρίσεως’). It is also multiple times present in the Gospel of Matthew (e.g., 12:36 ‘I tell you, on the day of judgment—ἐν ἡμέρᾳ κρίσεως—people will render an account for every careless word they speak’), and it is obviously also present in the book of Revelation (e.g., 14:7 He said in a loud voice, ‘Fear God and give him glory, for his time has come to sit in judgment—τῆς κρίσεως’). And, to beat the very accurate reader to the punch, it is also present in the Paulinian tra-dition. For example, in Paul’s Letter to the Romans (2:16), we find the hemerai hote krinei, ‘the day in which God will judge’. As this particular usage of crisis, as judgment, already renders evident, what is at stake in the theological understanding is thus also a decision, a separation, or a judgment. This time, the sifting out (the ‘krei’, following once more the

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Proto-Indo-European heritage) of crisis is to be done between the right-eous and the condemned sinners; sinners who will, as another usage of the concept makes clear, be judged to go to Hell (Gehenna as ‘Hell’ was known in Judaism) as we can find in the Gospel of Matthew (23:33 ‘You serpents, you brood of vipers, how can you flee from the judgment of Gehenna—ἀπὸ τῆς κρίσεως τῆς γεέννης—?’).

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That crisis, the separating, deciding, or judging krinō, is of great importance in theology will not be without importance for a better understanding of the crisis-as-lasting language of which we are attempting to unveil the meaning in this text. We have already discovered (cf. section 4.1) the perils of the possi-bility of confusing the perennial crisis discourse as some sort of apocalyptic dis-course. We have immediately taken the distance from this danger, but we can now see that this hazard is more than an arbitrary or coincidental danger. In fact, almost the opposite is true. The apocalypse is the shadow of the crisis (every judgment has the tendency or the inner need/desire to be the last and final one). We will have to be very attentive as to continuously keep this apocalyptic ghost at bay.

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Finally, the concept of crisis also plays a similar role in various strands of politics. In the field of war-politics we find, for example, Thucydides, in his History of the Peloponnesian War (1974), upholding the theory of the importance of decisive battles. Thucydides writes regarding the great-est of wars of the past (the Persian war) that ‘in this war the decision (τἠν κρίσιν ἔσχεν) was reached quickly as a result of two naval battles and two battles on land’ (Thucydides 1974, I §23). The importance of this theory was still underlined almost twenty-five centuries later by Carl von Clausewitz in this other, by now already, classic treatise on war. von Clausewitz defines this theory, in his On War, as the one stressing the ‘judgment by result’ a theory which ‘at first sight … would seem entirely inadmissible, but that is not the case’ (von Clausewitz 2007, 119). Reinhart Koselleck, furthermore, makes mention of how the concept of crisis was also put to fruition in legal findings and law enforcement and also ‘concerned political decisions that ought to precondition all required legal judgment’ (Koselleck 2002, 237).


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Janet Roitman puts great weight to the theological usage of crisis. In par-ticular, she insists on the pairing of krisis and judicium which, according to Koselleck gives a new meaning to both terms taken up from legal language (cf. Koselleck 2002, 237). According to Roitman this is a ‘decisive shift in the semantics of the term’ (Roitman 2014, 17)—one wonders why she writes ‘term’ in the singular and not the term judicium as well (indicating as such solely the concept of krisis).50 It will be mainly through her insisting on this shift—a shift whose importance is exaggerated and inaccurately refor-mulated—that Roitman will be able to affirm that crisis is, as we already indicated, not a description of a historical situation but a metahistorical narrative that forms the ground for formulating types of critique. In fact, on the one hand, and again without attempting to ignore the importance of the shift indicated by Koselleck, it is rather difficult to imagine a decisive shift that lasted more than three centuries—the timing indicated by Roitman of this shift is Aristotle and the New Testament (cf. Roitman 2014, 17). On the other hand, it disavows the ‘decisionist’ aspect (the judgment, the judg-ing) already present in the Hippocratic tradition. It suffices here to remember the ‘definition’ of the medical crisis proposed in Hippocrates’ Affections: ‘[T]o be judged (Kρίνεσθαι) in diseases is when they increase, diminish, change into another disease, or end’ (Hippocrates 1988, §8; 17). Furthermore, it should not go unnoted that, as E. T. Withington—to whom W. H. S. Jones refers in his general introduction of the Hippocratic works—already wrote: ‘[T]he crisis is the determination of the disease as it were by a juridical verdict’ (Hippocrates 1923, lii). And even if, as Koselleck proclaims, a secularized theological interpretation of crisis did become important in Modernity, it was, first of all, not a new interpretation (crisis was a ‘secularized’ theolog-ical concept already in the NT epoch).51 Secondly, neither did it exclude the other (medical or war-politics) hermeneutics, also because they shared the very basic characteristics which we still attribute to crisis (in whatever context).

50 Obviously, Roitman’s arguing for a decisive shift from one (pure?) meaning of the word crisis in favor of a new one (once more pure?) goes against the singular-plurality and mélange-ness of pregnant (social) words, as we described in the beginning of this chapter. In what follows, we will, however, not argue against this unreal theory of linguistic purity she seems to adhere to. We will simply attempt to demonstrate that her argumentation for this shift is not sustainable. As such, we will have offered—that is, in case our argumenta-tion succeeds in its attempt—a sideways demonstration in favor of the proposed non-mon-olithic ‘origin’ of (most) words.

51 Koselleck’s understanding of ‘secularized’ is similar to the one we described in Section 1.5 as inadequate. Did he (and Roitman) use and understand the concept of secularization in a more correct way, no mention would have been made of these erratic shifts in meaning.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78913-2_1

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In fact, and notwithstanding the proclaimed ‘decisive’ differences between the various usages of crisis, Koselleck did not restrain from proposing two crucial characteristics that are present in all the applications and implications of the various usages of the concept of crisis.52 It is to these characteristics that we now turn.

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What can be concluded from this series of examples of the usage of the concept of crisis? Continuing to follow the fundamental research done by Koselleck, we can distill from the elements shared in all the examples of crisis in the different fields exposed two fundamental aspects of crisis as it was historically (and following its etymology) understood and applied:

1. A crisis implied strict, irrevocable, and definitive alternatives: it was about these alternatives that ‘an appropriate judgment had to be passed and whose alternative consummation was also deter-mined by and in connection with the particular issues themselves’ (Koselleck 2002, 237);

2. A crisis also necessarily implied a rather strict and limited tempo-ral dimension, that is, as Koselleck defines it, a ‘theory of time’ (Koselleck 2002, 237), and indicated or ‘pointed toward the pres-sure of time’ (Koselleck 2002, 238—emphasis added). Crisis-time is contracted time. And for as much as the time of crisis implies a contraction of time itself, considering time-space’s intricate interac-tivity, it will have an effect upon crisis’ spatiality as well, as we will soon discover.

The medical crisis in the Hippocratic tradition thus regarded the moment when the battle of, and with which, the disease rose to its apex, after which the patient would either recover or die. This coincided with (the moment of) the decision, of the judgment of the doctor, again, regard-ing the recovery or soon-to-come death of the patient. Similarly, the

52 One should not forget either that crisis is more than just a particular meaning in a specific ambient. As Roland Barthes remarks accurately, ‘crisis is a cultural model’ that sur-passes field-limitations. The crisis-model, in fact, and still according to Barthes, has ‘marked Western thinking about the organic (with Hippocrates), the poetic and logical (Aristotelian catharsis and syllogism), and more recently the socio-economic’ (Barthes 1990, 52) and we could add the theological to this small list as well.


theological crisis regarded the now-or-never moment that decided, judged, upon the separation between the saved and the damned, or the prophesy of the moment of all moments: the final or Last Judgment where, once more, strict and irrevocable alternatives were at stake. Finally, also the critical battles in warfare—although, as has to be admitted, the war itself could still continue—decided upon (judged on the irrevocable alternatives of the success or failure of) the final outcome of the same war.

Following the Greek understanding of the concept of crisis, which would endure from antiquity to modern times, a crisis was thus some-thing that regarded the separation of irrevocable alternatives in a strictly limited—contracted and contracting—and well defined temporal dimen-sion which simultaneously effected its spatial dimension as well.

----------------------------------------O.D.----------------------------------------

Crisis’s intricacy and inter-relatedness with the medical sphere urges us to dedicate some space to another Greek (medical) concept—ϕάρμακον (pharmakon)—which will, in turn, allow us to attain some of the still hidden side-meanings of the concept ‘crisis’ as well.

Those familiar with the field of philosophy labeled as Contemporary Continental Philosophy, at times even horrifyingly dubbed as Theory—with capital T—(whatever this term my mean), are more than proba-bly aware that one of the most interesting and original text of what is known as Deconstruction is Jacques Derrida’s Plato’s Pharmacy (1981). This text was originally published in Tel Quel in 1968 and then in the collection of essays entitled Dissemination (Derrida 1981, 61–171). This text, which consists of a meditation on the ‘Myth of Theuth’ as found in Plato’s Phaedrus (Plato 2002, 274c–275b), which, in its turn, tells of the ‘invention’ of writing and of writing being, or functioning, as a pharma-kon, that is, a remedy and a poison—“my invention,” Theuth said, ‘is a recipe (pharmakon) for both memory and wisdom’ (Plato 2002, 274e)—has the concept of the pharmakon at its the core. However, of interest to us is not Derrida’s reflection on Plato’s reasoning on writing as being or functioning as a pharmakon, and neither is Derrida’s own speculation on the pendulous precedence of writing over speech and vice versa the reason I will refer to Plato’s Pharmacy. This text is of interest because of the few references or considerations on the pharmaceutical, or medical, functioning of the pharmakon made by Plato, and repeated by Derrida.

As Derrida correctly intuited: ‘Plato is suspicious of the pharmakon in general, even in the case of drugs used exclusively for therapeutic ends, even when they are wielded with good intentions, and even when they

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are as such effective’ (Derrida 1981, 99). Notwithstanding all the good intentions, and, especially, also notwithstanding the possible actual effec-tiveness of the medicine/remedy, Plato remains very doubtful of the pharmakon; ‘There is no such thing as a harmless remedy. pharmakon can never be simply beneficial’ (Derrida 1981, 99). The reason Derrida gives for Plato’s apprehensiveness of the pharmakon is that it is artificial. And, interestingly to note, Derrida suggests that Plato is following the medical theories deriving from Kos in his disapproval of the pharmakon (Derrida 1981, 100).53 Plato believes, so Derrida continues, in ‘the natural life and the normal development, so to speak, of disease’ (Derrida 1981, 100). The pharmakon goes against this natural life and development. So even if it is effective, the pharmakon is ‘disturbing the normal and natural progress of the illness, the pharmakon is thus the enemy of the living in general, whether healthy or sick’ (Derrida 1981, 100). What the pharma-kon can do is only to ‘displace or even aggravate the ill’ (Derrida 1981, 100), or as Derrida interprets the King in the myth, it regards only (or also always) a mere curing of the symptoms54 (cf. Derrida 1981, 110).55

53 As has already been indicated in precedence, Hippocrates was the most famous phy-sician of the Island of Kos. So to translate Derrida’s observation in the language we have used in precedence, saying that Plato was following the doctors of Kos is synonymous as saying that Plato is pledging allegiance to the Hippocratic school, or as W. H. S. Jones defined it: the Corpus Hippocraticum.

54 Richard Rorty has ‘invented’ a rather nice analogy, although, we have to admit, he is discussing something completely different, that we like and that can be used here to explain the ‘curing of one’s symptoms’. Rorty writes: ‘It is as if a psychiatrist were to explain to a patient that his unhappiness is a result of his mistaken belief that his mother wanted to cas-trate him, together with his muddled attempt to think of himself as identical with his Father. What the patient needs is not a list of his mistakes and confusions …’ (Rorty 1981, 33).

55 It might not surprise that, as Naomi Klein reports, Milton Friedman saw his ‘shock doctrine’—the completely erratic and ideological conviction that through destabilization and a precise mixture of well-balanced private and public terror one is able to render doc-ile all possible obstacles so as to create a tabula rasa from which a utopian Edenic new beginning can commence—as the ‘only medicine’ available to save the (world’s) econ-omy. At least, this is what he said to the friends of his loyal follower, the Chilean ruthless dictator Pinochet (reported in Klein 2007, 81). It has to be added, and Klein acknowl-edges this too in her book (Klein 2007, 140), that Friedman was convinced a less warlike and terror-stricken policy than applicated by, for example, Pinochet would suffice for his shock doctrine to be applicable. In fact, as he interestingly wrote in the 1982 preface to his bestselling Capitalism and Freedom: ‘Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around’ (Friedman 2002, xiv). Friedman’s capitalism is a pure pharmakon.


In the Timaeus, for example, in the midst of a discussion on therapies on the body and the soul, Plato lists diverse types of ‘movements’ or ‘motions’ done on or by the body to purify it. The best of these movements/motions is the spontaneous and most natural one, that is, the one produced by the body itself, namely, gymnastics. The worst type of movement/motion to purify the body is the one imposed upon (parts of) the body by something alien to it. And Plato gives the following example to clarify what he means with this: ‘I mean the purgative treatment of physicians; for diseases unless they are very dangerous should not be irritated by medicines, since every form of disease is in a manner akin to the living being, whose complex frame has an appointed term of life’ (Plato 2000, 89b). Only in extreme emergencies should a man, if he wants to be a man of sense, turn to phar-makon, otherwise, as Plato continues, one will ‘provoke a disagreeable enemy by medicines’ (Plato 2000, 89d).

It should not go unnoticed, however, that Plato does not exclude the usage of the pharmakon in its totality, or that his judgment is exclu-sively negative. It is not, for Plato (and certainly not for Derrida either) a question of exclusion. In fact, as Michael Naas remarked so accurately (and which is, or at least seems to be, confirmed by reading Plato as well), ‘[T]he question posed throughout Plato’s Pharmacy is whether pharma-kon does indeed mean “remedy” in one place and “poison” in another, depending on the circumstances, on the context, or whether pharmakon … can never in fact be mastered in this way, reduced to an either/or’ (Naas 2003, 10). We should, in fact, not allow nor accept the reduction of the pharmakon to a pharmakos (cf. Stiegler 2013, 20). Although the two concepts, as Derrida remarks, function almost as homonyms; the phar-makos is first of all the poisoner—the magician or the wizard who used the pharmakon—the concept was overdetermined by another usage. The pharmakos, in ancient Greek culture, in fact, signified above all the scape-goat (be it an actual goat or sacrificial human victims, this does not mat-ter). In this context, the poisonous remedy, the pharmakon is, nor can it ever be(come) an innocent victim, a pharmakos, of a purification rite—the scapegoat as non-passive ‘recipient but … mirage of an omnipotent manip-ulator’ (Girard 1986, 46) as theorized by Girard comes much closer but is still not sufficient. That the rite of the scapegoat, of the scapegoat/phar-makos, can’t possibly be related to the pharmakon is because of its relation to the krinō. The sifting, deciding, and judging of the crisis is also the con-demnation of the pharmakos, a condemnation (a judgment or decision) that the artificial pharmakon attempts to elude in every possible way.

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Concluding, and insisting on the always present artificial and displac-ing (if not also aggravating) nature of the pharmakon, we can already anticipate that the state of permanent crisis, the lasting and perennial crisis, can be considered along these lines of the interference of the non-natural pharmakon on the disease, always deferring the natural cri-sis. The artificial pharmakon (the measures imposed to ‘resolve’ the cri-sis) turned out to be not ‘remedial’ but venomous, creating as such only metastatic reactions.

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4.4 the crisis of crisis

We have just concluded the third section of this chapter that is dedicated to the second concept that is of fundamental importance for this volume (crisis) with a, necessary, sidestep to the Greek concept of the pharmakon. As we now return to proceed our investigation into the concept of cri-sis, soon to arrive at the apex of our problematic, it seems appropriate to quickly summarize what we have already discovered regarding the mean-ing of the concept of crisis. Crisis, as we discovered, originated from the Proto-Indo-European root ‘krei’, which means to sieve, to discriminate, or to distinguish, and directly derives from the Greek word krinō which, in its turn, means to separate or to decide, to cut, to judge, or to select. We also discovered that the term crisis, in this vest of decision (selection), or judgment, found fruitful application in various fields. To start with, it was present as a key concept in the medical field, but also in the jurid-ical, the theological, the political, and even in the rhetorical field did it play a decisive role. Furthermore, we were able to distill two fundamen-tal aspects of the usage of the concept of crisis as it was historically (and etymology) understood and applied: (1) a crisis implied strict, irrevoca-ble, and definitive alternatives, and, (2) a crisis also necessarily implied a rather strict and limited temporal dimension that, as we added, also had implications on its spatial dimension. There is, as the German scholar Reinhart Koselleck to whom we had turned claimed, a pressure of time (Koselleck 2002, 238) at work in the concept of crisis that deregulates the ordinary experience of time. It seems appropriate, in order to pro-ceed in an orderly way, to start with this deregulation of time and proceed from there.


Time is not a monolith, and there are various experiences of time available to the human being. Scholars working on time have coined a manifold of different forms of time, going from the more familiar and somewhat more specifically human related biological time, calendar time, clock time, and chronological time, over more geological- or celestial-re-lated times such as natural time, glacial time, even stellar time, to time that is related to particular events like historical time, or even the highly speculative timeless time as it was discussed by Jacques Derrida (as we soon will encounter) or Manuel Castells (to whom we will return in Sect. 5.1), and so on. In order to understand the particular time-frame of the concept of crisis, the majority of these different experiences of time is not of particular importance. Two particular ‘times’ are, how-ever, of need, and it is in a particular interplay between these two times that we will find crisis at work. In fact, crisis’s temporal dimension (and, although this was not mentioned by Koselleck, crisis has a spatial dimen-sion intricately interrelated to its time-dimension; we will turn to this dimension in a short while) consists of the interruption of chronological time and results in, what we could call, the creation of historical time.

Let us explain crisis’s interplay of these two time-forms somewhat more precisely. The concept of crisis refers first of all to what we call nor-mal ‘chronological’ or ‘clock time’, that is, the artificially created repet-itive rhythm based on, or, simply, translated from natural chronology, or natural time. Clock or chronological time is the time that consists of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, and so on that can be measured and held track of in a non-surprising way and which makes time dividable into past, present, and future. Any understanding of crisis thus needs to begin from the very simple chronological individuation of a past (e.g., someone becomes ill), a present (the crisis, the strict period in which the battle between life and death is being fought), and, finally, an uncertain but irrevocable future (one lives or dies). Secondly, the con-cept of crisis also has repercussions on what one can call ‘historical time’. Historical time is a form of time that stand opposed to (is fundamen-tally separated from) the natural time of the stars as it is time that can be affected by human action and purposiveness—it is the time that fol-lows ‘a sequence different from the temporal rhythms given in nature’ (Koselleck 2004, 96). Historical time is also the time that is, in some sense, ‘made’ or ‘suffered’ (interiorized) by man. It is the time studied in history books, were only certain dates are put on the (natural) time-line, and this because of the result of something that had happened that

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was (in-)directly caused by human kind or had a(n) (in-)direct effect upon it. The crisis—any crisis, because, as we discussed and argued for in Sect. 4.2, every crisis (even the ones which turn out to be nothing but a mere ripple on the sea in the long run) is itself always also and already a crisis—is then the creation of an element (an event) of historical time. A crisis will feature on the time-line of history (examples are too numerous and all too present in the recent past that it is not necessary to list any).

What is thus at stake in a crisis with reference to its time-frame, is that in a chronological present a(n event of) crisis occurs that creates (as event) an element of historical time. However, for as much as a crisis necessarily implies a strict and limited temporal dimension (see the sec-ond fundamental aspect of the usage of the concept of crisis as it was historically (and etymology) understood and applied), the nature of the eventful historical-time-present is that of a moment, an instant, thick with and of the judging/deciding decision between strictly irrevocable, and definitive alternatives. This spatial instant (as that is what it is, a spa-tial instant), this spatial moment, is crisis’ ‘historical time’ occurring in the modality of the present of chronological time where ‘things’ take a decisive turn (in which a decisive turn is being decided) be it liberating or disastrous (as the still uncertain but irrevocable future will establish).

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In one of the more pregnant sentences of his Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money (1992), Jacques Derrida offers a ‘definition’ of the gift where a quite interesting stress is laid on the concept of an ‘instant’. This herme-neutics of the ‘instant’ is of importance to improve our understanding of the moment of crisis we are researching in this section. The part of the ‘definition’ of the gift that is of interest to us goes as follows: ‘[F]or there to be a gift event (we say event and not act), something must come about or happen, in an instant, in an instant that no doubt does not belong to the economy of time, in a time without time, …’ (Derrida 1992, 17). Already in precedence Derrida had insisted on the importance of the instant. In fact, as we can read in the opening chapter: ‘[A] gift could be possible, there could be a gift only at the instant an effraction in the circle56 will have taken place, at the instant all circulation will have been interrupted and on the condition of this instant” (Derrida 1992, 9).

56 This “circle” in question is the kula, the circle-styled system of inter- and intratribal trade to be found in the Trobriand Islands, as it was theorized by Marcel Mauss in his The Gift. The form and reason for exchange in archaic societies (2002).


The presence of the Maussian circle, the kula, obviously renders evi-dent that Derrida’s treatment of the instant is philosophical. However, the etymology of the concept itself offers a very similar reading (strength-ening the case of the philosophical reading offered by Derrida). In fact, the ‘instant’ derives from two Proto-Indo-European roots ‘en-’ which became ‘in’ and ‘sta-’ which developed into the Latin ‘in-stantem’. The instant, following its etymology of ‘standing/making firm—in’, means not just a moment (in time), or a now—and one can see the hic und nunc of the theological understanding of the crisis peeping behind the corner here—but a moment or a now that is pressing or urgent. It is an assiduous moment where time itself stands still or becomes firm, is dressed in spa-tial vests. In the instant, the time of the moment, of the now, stops and presses, becomes heavy, as if it refuses to proceed, to continue. It, time, the time of the instant, presses and remains present, stands still whilst it expands. It is, to return to the Derridaian language, a time that no longer belongs to the simple passing of time as time has stopped, stands still. It is a moment, a now, that remains firm in a time without time.

Derrida’s instant is, however, not the only concept that raises to the occasion in helping us get a firmer grip of the crisis-moment. Giorgio Agamben, in a text that auto-declares to be a critique of the instant—‘Time and History. Critique of the Instant and the Continuum’ (Agamben 1993, 89–105)—stresses the importance of the ‘moment’ (l’attimo).

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Agamben’s critique of the instant (a critique not of the Derridaian instant but of the secularized Christian rectilinear irreversible understanding of time typical of modernity (cf. Agamben 1993, 96)),57 to explain very briefly, is that it leads to the reduction of the experience of time to a sort of ‘pointillis-mic’ way allowing, as such, the metaphysical concept of eternity to enter into this same human experience of time. Said differently, for Agamben, the pointy concept of the instant (the instant being conceived, in fact, as a precise point in time), allows for time to be considered as an endless series of continuously fleeting points on the eternal line of linear time (cf. Agamben 1993, 100; 103), something which Agamben wants to do away with.

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57 Although, on this occasion, Agamben is not criticizing Derrida, it has to be acknowl-edged that both authors follow, language-related, quite a different agenda.

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For Agamben the moment is so much more promising than the instant because, following Heidegger, it is the time (the moment) of ‘the authentic decision in which the Dasein experiences its own finiteness, …, freely assum[ing] the destiny of its primordial historicity’ (Agamben 1993, 103—emphasis added). Basically, the moment allows for the fun-damentally important concept of the Heideggerian Ereignis, the event, to enter the scene of history.

Even though it thus seems that Agamben and Derrida are saying something completely different, and notwithstanding the tiny nominalist battle, they both intend to give importance to the element of the event. As Derrida’s ‘definition’ of the gift explicitly revealed, that which was at stake for him was the event (of the gift) as well. Basically, and although one might think the contrary at first glance, Derrida and Agamben—although having some sort of semiotic ‘fight’—are actually discussing and arguing in favor of the same identical operation to receive more importance than it has up until today received.

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A crisis, in its timeliness, can thus be described as follows: a crisis is an event that occurs in a chronological present that creates (as event) an element of historical time. Its timely element of historical time is to be understood as strictly limited. The crisis is, in fact, merely a moment, an instant, that, however, and exactly because of the qualities of it being an instant or moment, is to be considered as ‘thick’ or ‘heavy’ time that is hard to (make) proceed. The eventful time of the crisis is time that does not belong to the economy of time (a timeless time as Derrida or Castells understand it). Or said differently still, the time of crisis is con-tracting time, time that almost falls back on itself due to its heaviness (a heaviness that is also created by the fact that the decision made/being decided during the crisis is one between two irrevocable alternatives).

But, as we already indicated, the concept of crisis is not just a time- related phenomenon. Also another fundamental aspect of crisis needs to be studied, contemporary-wise with this time-frame, namely spatiality. Whereas crisis consists of a thick and contracting time, spatially speak-ing, crisis needs to be described in the exact opposite way. Crisis’s spatial experience, as we already discovered when we were able to affirm that the thick time of crisis expanded, is not that of a similar implosion due to its heaviness/contraction of space, but that of an expansion, almost explosion, of space. Crisis’s space, during its contracting thick and heavy


decisive and deciding time, is pure expansiveness. Crisis, considered spa-tially, is extension. Crisis, as we have been able to witness in the past dec-ades over and over again (it suffices to think about the banking crisis, starting with one bank, it quickly became a domino effect of collapsing banks), spreads—almost like a disease (but then again, wasn’t crisis one of the main operations in the medical understanding of antiquity; and haven’t we been able to describe crisis as a pharmakon as well?). Crisis’s space, contrary to its time, is imperialistic, or, said differently (and returning once more to the medical sphere), it is contagious. Crisis tends to invade other spaces and invest them with crisis as well.

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What is at stake here in this spatial understanding of crisis is very similar to what Badiou, in his recent The Rebirth of History. Times of Riots and Uprisings (2012), calls the ‘de-localizing extension’ (Badiou 2012, 95).58

Every revolt, if it wants to assume a historical dimension (inserting itself as such in what we described in precedence as historical time), needs, first and foremost, to extend itself, according to Badiou, qualitatively (cf. Badiou 2012, 34). This means that it cannot ‘be reduced to imitation’ (Badiou 2012, 24). All components, as Badiou argues, of the people need to be uni-fied, (re-)present(ed), if the revolt intends to pass its first horde to rise above its immediate (and rapidly possible immediately forgotten) phase. But there is another extension that differs from this first ‘demographic’ extension. This ‘second’ extension needs to come into action if the revolt not only wants to become part of history, but if it wants to open History—with a capital H—up. This further extension is the ‘de-localizing extension’. This is an extension that is space-related. It makes for it that the revolt rises above its merely local nature. An example of this ‘de-localizing extension’ is the protest at Zuccotti park in New York, two years after it had already been occupied, in solidar-ity with the Gezi park protesters in Turkey. Although both protests had a very national character, it was recognized by both groups that they did share some-thing that went above the sheer local aspect.

58 And although this ‘de-localizing extension’ almost necessarily means an opening up to the universal, we believe this is not a necessary aspect (the opening up to the universal) for the functioning of the de-localizing extension.

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That some aspects of crisis are re-traceable in revolts or even revolutions should not surprise. In fact, as Reinhart Koselleck already justly affirmed, crisis and revolutions are very similar on certain aspects (cf. Koselleck 2002, 239). And even if for Koselleck the affinity between crisis and revolution was on a mere temporal plane—not on the spatial one—, the spatial extension Badiou discussed demonstrates to be an essential addition in the understanding of cri-sis’ and revolution’s affinity.

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To summarize, a crisis, understood according to its spatio- temporal dimension is an event, occurring in a chronological present that cre-ates (as an event) an element recorded (recordable) in historical time. Because of its particular nature of event that regards a decision between strictly irrevocable alternatives, its historical time-frame consists of a mere moment, an instant that is constituted, as ‘thick’ or ‘heavy’ time that, exactly because of its thickness implodes or contracts and is thus hard to (make) proceed (a proceeding that can only be reached by the actual tak-ing of the very hard decision or judgment that is required to resolve the crisis). Contemporarily, crisis, as thick and contracting time, also consists of a spatial expansion. Crisis, during its moment that tends to not pass, spreads out as if in an imperialistic contagion, attempting to extend its state of crisis in other spaces. As can be seen, and this is of utter impor-tance, a crisis is internally constructed by the opposing qualities of con-traction and expansion. Whereas crisis’s timeliness is characterized by contraction, its spatiality is characterized by expansion. Crisis, basically, is the operativity of the paradox.59

That a crisis consists and operates primarily through its opposing timely and spatial characteristics, through the contemporary operativ-ity of these opposing forces (albeit on two completely, although con-nected, planes), makes for it that a crisis is always difficult to confront. No particular action seems to be appropriate as almost all remedies seem to tackle only half of the problem (crisis) at hand (reconfirming, as such, once more crisis’ status as pharmakon). A single decision to

59 That the paradox that crisis is can still be operative regards the fact that its paradox of contraction and expansion unfolds itself on the two different planes of temporality and spatiality.


resolve a crisis is never completely adequate, and it always seems as if the particular crisis in question needs to be already decided before any deci-sion can actually (be taken to) resolve anything. The active deciding/judging is always already accompanied by a passive being decided/being judged.

It seems that we have finally come full circle in this section dedicated to the concept of crisis. If there was something as a common denominator of our times, we wrote in the beginning of Sect. 4.4, it could be nothing else but ‘crisis’—and the crisis needed to be understood as being constructed or constituted by a paradoxical internal relation. We have now discov-ered that its paradoxical internal relation was not between a blessing and a curse, as it was in Žižek’s binomial of interesting times, but between its contracting timeliness and its expanding spatiality. This minor inconven-ience should not let us fear that we have not reached our goal. However, there is one aspect we still need to confront. In fact, we immediately had to add a qualifier to the concept of crisis. As we wrote only a few lines later, our times are not just characterized by our living in crisis, but, by us living in a perennial crisis. And for as much as the addition of this qualifier has come to the foreground mainly in recent times (one cannot hold count anymore of the times our epoch has been described as being characterized by lasting/perennial crisis), that we were able to add the qualifier of ‘per-ennial’ to the crisis is not just something that can be considered as accu-rate for our contemporary times. Already Jean-Jacques Rousseau, often described as the Father of modernity, was one of the first to predict the rise of crisis. He described, in his Emile: or On Education (1979), the times he was living in as ‘subject to inevitable revolutions, and it is impossible to foresee or prevent the one which may affect your children’ (Rousseau 1979, 194). And he thus prophesized: ‘[W]e are approaching a state of crisis and the age of revolutions’ (Rousseau 1979, 194).60 Interestingly, as is very clear from the previous prophetic sentence (a sentence that can be considered as a juridical judgment as well), the revolutions on the hori-zon were considered as multiple, whereas only the crisis was considered by Rousseau as being a persistent—or would we say perennial—one.

These prophetic words seem, in fact, to have reached a point of real-ization in our present day. Whereas the word and understanding of cri-sis had become a constant present, or at least threat, during modernity,

60 According to Koselleck: ‘Rousseau was one of the greatest forecasters, whether it was a matter of forecasting the perpetual state of crisis or registering the subjugation of Europe by the Russians and of the Russians by the Asians’ (Koselleck 2004, 23).

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a certain threshold seems to have been shred in (the) recent decade(s) that imply a certain ‘change’, not in the meaning of the concept of crisis, but in its operationality (we will come back to possibility of consider-ing the whole of modernity, not just our contemporary times, as being characterized by the same fundamental traits of the ‘perennial crisis’ in the coming two Sects. 5.1 and 5.2). It has thus been understood that ‘the crisis facing the Western world is not temporary, but the sign of a profound change that … will have long-lasting effects’ (Bauman and Bordoni 2014, vii). Or, as Jean Baudrillard very accurately argued, our time and history can be described and expressed by nothing but the binomial of ‘interminable crisis’ (Baudrillard 2000, 37; 43). In fact, crisis has become so common place that it has even been dubbed by some of the more radical voices of today’s left as having become the main means of ordinary and daily government of society. By means of managing crisis one, as is claimed, simply manages society (cf. The Invisible Committee 2009, 10). So before we can consider this section concluded, we still need to investigate whether the addition of this qualifier of perennial has any particular effect on the meaning of crisis we have just laid bare.

That the addition of the qualifier ‘perennial’ will bring forth some serious change to the spatio-temporal constitution of crisis (and thus to the operationality and functioning of a perennial crisis as well, especially on its possible outcome), is immediately evident on the temporal-plane. Crisis itself, as Henri Lefebvre already revealed, creates disruptions on regular rhythms (cf. Lefebvre 2004, 44). Introducing a time-related qualifier (as perennial, or its interchangeable synonyms of permanent and lasting) that functions as an interruption of disruptions can only have but ulterior effects on the already disrupted crisis-time. That the under-standing of a crisis as a time-contracting recordable event in historical time that is taking place in the (chronological) present will be profoundly affected by this becoming lasting (permanent or perennial) stands with-out a doubt. The important, and the rather difficult task, will be to understand this changing addition of perennial correctly.

As could be misconceived, the addition of the qualification of perennial to the crisis does not have any backlash on the moment, the instant, as it is present in the present of chronological time. A perennial crisis does not comport a perennial present (although, as we will see in the coming Sect. 5.1, this has been put forth by some scholars). The addition of the qualifier perennial will only have indirect repercussions on the chronolog-ical present of the crisis. The added lastingness of the crisis, does not have

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direct implications on what we called clock- or chronological-time but only on what we called historical time. In fact, what the idiom of crisis-as-a-permanent-state is attempting to render evident on its time-plane (and in its semantically paradoxical way), is that crisis’ moment, its instant that does not belong to the economy of time and that is ‘thick’ or ‘heavy,’ so much so even that it implodes or contracts, now simultaneously also rests without a timely end. The moment of contraction is, most importantly, not neutralized but becomes infinitely stretched. It simply knows no end anymore. To say this in its most accurate, but also radically paradoxical way, crisis’ time contraction is being endlessly extended.

A very similar operation is at work in the spatial dimension of the cri-sis as well. Also concerning crisis’ spatial connotations does the addition of the qualifier of ‘perennial’ create havoc, adding a fully functioning opposite to the original spatial implications of a crisis. (It is very impor-tant to realize, and the spatial effects of the addition of ‘perennial’ is able to render this aspect more visible than the timely aspect, that what is at stake is not an overthrowing of the original operation of crisis, nor the rendering inoperative of the ‘original’ functioning of the crisis, but the addition of a fully functioning opposite.) The pure expansiveness of crisis’ spatial understanding, its contagious almost imperialistic invading of the surrounding spaces is, thus, joined (completed) by its exact opposite of reduction (its implosion) of space due to the addition of lastingness to the concept of crisis. The state of permanency added to crisis’ moment of historical time, in fact, has the direct implication of (all/every) space’s implosion. In an eternally lasting world (in crisis) there is, in fact, no par-ticular importance that can be relegated to any particular place/space. To say it in the terminology of Alain Badiou to which we will return once more in Sect. 5.2, the world, understood as the completely expanded globalized space undergoes, contemporarily, a process of becoming world-less. The, finally globalized world is, contemporarily, less world.

To summarize, what is at stake in both the temporal as the spatial understanding and experience of the perennial crisis, and what is expressed by the crisis-as-a-permanent-state idiom, is that crisis’ limited time-space, that instantaneous and spatial moment thick with and of the judging deci-sion in which things take a decisive turn (in which a decisive turn is being decided) be they liberating or disastrous, is that by the mere qualitative addition of ‘perennial’, time and space are being worn out, are being exhausted. The operative paradoxicality of crisis has been fundamentally disturbed by the addition of the qualifier ‘perennial’. In fact, a perennial crisis is no longer a crisis that is internally constructed by the opposing

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qualities of a time-related contraction and a space-related expansion, but consists of an internally double paradoxical situation—with both its time-liness and spatiality now characterized by a contemporary operative con-traction and expansion—that is, however, not being rendered inoperative, but, as we just came to declare, causes exhaustion. To use a neologism that derives from the Italian verb logorare which means to wear out or chafe, what we are dealing with when confronting the question of the per-ennial crisis is what we are going to call the experience of ‘logoration’.

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Whilst describing the variety of possible strategies of war, the famous theo-retic of war to whom we already referred in precedence, Carl von Clausewitz writes: ‘the third, and far the most important method, judging from the frequency of its use, is to wear down the enemy’ (Clausewitz 2007, 36). As Clausewitz immediately continues: ‘[T]hat expression is more than a label; it describes the process precisely, and is not so metaphorical as it may seem at first. Wearing down the enemy in a conflict means using the duration of the war to bring about the gradual exhaustion of his physical and moral resist-ance’ (Clausewitz 2007, 36). As one can see, there is a certain parallel in word choice and explanation of the wearing down and exhaustion we have just claimed and the military wearing down as described by von Clausewitz. But von Clausewitz’s reference to wearing down is not solely present because of his accurate description of this process. The Prussian general was aware of another important aspect that came along with this exhaustion, namely the absence of any positive purpose. Wearing down, according to von Clausewitz, has a par-ticularly paradoxical relation with its activity. In fact, wearing down (or exhaustion or ‘logoration’) can solely function when something is done, but this something cannot consist of anything positive. Wearing down is a purely frustrating force (cf. Clausewitz 2007, 42: ‘action is transposed into waiting’, or as von Clausewitz phrases it still differently, ‘action is postponed in time and space’ (cf. Clausewitz 2007, 43). Wearing down is, in the words of the general, a negativity (cf. Clausewitz 2007, 36), but, this negativity cannot simply be absolute passivity. Wearing down rises above the sheer opposition of activity-passivity. Its goal is the pure usurping of space and time (when and where the opposition of activity-passivity would have been fought out). Wearing down, as such, is related to pure prolongating (cf. Clausewitz 2007, 36). Basically, and remaining in war-terminology, the strategy of wearing down (of exhausting, of ‘logoration’) consists in the occupation of the time and space of any activity and its immediate opposite passivity.

*


In an attempt to further elucidate what is at stake in this paradoxical spatial-timeliness, whilst clarifying the concept of ‘logoration’, we can turn, for a first and more figurative clarification, to Nietzsche’s descrip-tion in Beyond Good and Evil of Wagner’s Meistersinger. Nietzsche writes: ‘[I]t flows in a full and expansive manner: and then suddenly a moment of inexplicable hesitation, like a gap that springs up between cause and effect, a dream-including pressure, practically like a nightmare -, […]’ (Nietzsche 2002: viii, §240). This inexplicable nightmarish hesitation, as a lasting experience, is what ‘logoration’ is about. ‘Logoration’ finds a sec-ond specification in the concept of (the sin) of ‘languor’ as understood by Jean-François Lyotard in his posthumously published (and, unfortu-nately, unfinished) enigmatic and puzzling commentary to Augustine’s Confessions (cf. Lyotard 2000, 29). Languor, in Lyotard’s provocative understanding (and for Lyotard it becomes a means of reflecting on the relation to the self that is, obviously, not of particular interest for our pur-poses; we are interested in a more generalized understanding of the term which we extrapolate from Lyotard’s interpretation), becomes a ‘dura-tion that turns limp’ (Lyotard 2000, 18). Languor, understood as such, implies a ‘delay’ (Lyotard 2000, 56), but most of all it implies a ‘defer-ring’ (Lyotard 2000, 28). The solution of this ‘problem’ of languor lies in faith, at least, the faithful have an advantage as they can hope for the resolution of it received from the Other. However, as Lyotard, himself confesses, this is but a further drawing out of time (cf. Lyotard 2000, 55–56). It is another term mentioned by Lyotard in the context of his pondering the meaning of languor that helps us still one step further in understanding the full meaning of our concept of ‘logoration’. That word is ‘procrastination’ (Lyotard 2000, 56). But contrary to what the word implies (postponing, the placing of something that belongs in the present to tomorrow/the future), the procrastination present in languor and, especially, in ‘logoration’ is not the postponement of something that belongs in the present (not even an eternal postponement; that would be the turning perennial of the present as understood in chronological time, something which we already excluded from the very beginning). No, what is postponed, what is procrastination, is nothing but the present itself.

The nightmare, the sin (and we are back in the field of theology, and … maybe even Limbo), as we all know, are not upheaving or praise-worthy notions. However, as we already indicated, the most common and wide-spread feeling by the citizen residing in this paradoxical time experience is simple (albeit very superficial) happiness. The priests of

4 CRISIS 163

quantification we encountered in Sect. 4.1 even have enlisted positive thinking and happiness on the top of their pink lists of necessary atti-tudes in the Progressive world. Whatever these happy teleological ‘pro-gressivists’ may claim, we are thus confronted by a double paradox. In the words of Jean Baudrillard, although we find us in a world ‘where the contradictoriness of things ended’, we, nonetheless ‘find ourselves, still alive, in a universe of non-contradiction, of enthusiasm, of ecstasy—of stupor in the face of a process which, for all its irreversibility, is bereft of meaning’ (Baudrillard 1993, 33). Should we already risk and make a first connection to the concept of Limbo and its statute of being (contempo-rarily) a lack of a lack? But maybe it is better we wait a little longer.

The operative paradoxicality of crisis which has been turned into an internally double paradoxical situation by means of the addition of the qualifier of ‘perennial’ thus comports this exhaustion, this ‘logoration’. What this entails in terms of the elements of the crisis we have listed in precedence (that a crisis implied strict, irrevocable, and definitive alterna-tives, and, a crisis also necessarily implied a rather strict and limited spa-tio-temporal dimension) is that the necessarily strict limited temporal dimension where the decision should be decided/made is being worn out, exhausted, that is, is being ‘logorated’. The spatially expanding and temporally thick contracting moment of the crisis, by means of the spa-tial implosion and temporal stretching imported by the ‘perennial’, is not postponing the crisis but is precisely wearing out that moment of the crisis itself (it is the pharmacological deferral of the natural crisis considered with so much doubt by Plato). The time and the space (the soil) of the moment is, in the experience of the crisis having become perennial, doubly being eaten away, scavenged (its moment and its soil). The spatial moment of the crisis in a situation where the crisis has become perennial is like the horizon in the joke of Krushchev’s definition of communism as being already on the horizon. The horizon is that line which retreats as one approaches it.

In a more concrete way, this ‘logoration’ caused by crisis’ perennialism is not, as Hartmut Rosa (with whom we will engage in discussion in the next section dedicated to modernity’s time) claims, that ‘there is no longer anything left to decide’ (Rosa 2015, 274) but instead, as Zygmunt Bauman and Carlo Bordoni have correctly intuited, that there are simply ‘no more choices or decision … being made’ (Bauman and Bordoni 2014, 18). What is at stake, in fact, does not regard any-thing implied in every possible cri-sis, but, what could be provocatively stated, the crisis-ness of crisis as such. And with crisis (its perennial variant) having become the normal state of


affairs (or simply being modernity’s normal state of affairs) this implies, as once more Jean Baudrillard accurately remarked, ‘the impossibility of any-thing being over’ (Baudrillard 2000, 37). Said differently ‘we no longer have the means to end processes’ (Baudrillard 2000, 43). The present, that moment of the decision, is postponed, worn out, ‘logorated,’ and this ‘logoration’ has left us in a time-space where it has become impossible to make anything cease. The perennial crisis is the end of all ending.

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169

In the preceding chapter, we have discovered the perennial crisis to be characterized by a peculiar interaction of time and space. We have also found out that this label of ‘perennial crisis’ has become constant in describing our current epoch. The time has now finally arrived to inves-tigate whether this idea is sustainable. Are we indeed living in an epoch that consists of a perennial crisis and, second, but not less important question, is our living in a perennial crisis to be considered as an acci-dental or an essential aspect of our times? In order to determine whether this conviction is tenable, we will carefully examine not just the period that has been called variously ‘postmodernity’, ‘high modernity’, or ‘late modernity’ (these particular labels and categories don’t inspire particular admiration from our side as they are highly arbitrary and generally tend to hide the incapacity of the classifier to deal with the complexity she/he is faced) but the whole of modernity’s temporal and spatial experience. As time and space are, besides being up to a certain level self-evident, also highly difficult and contentious concepts,1 we will limit the scope of this research.

CHAPTER 5

Modernity: A Limboic Fool’s Paradise


1 It is thus not very surprising to discover, with Hartmut Rosa, that if there is a con-cept (exorbitantly enormous as it is) that is under-researched in a not self-evident, not all too specific, or reassuming way (there are as much theories of ‘time’ as there are scholars who have written on this topic), then it is the concept of ‘time’ (cf. Rosa 2015, 2); Saint Augustine’s enigmatic statement about time: ‘What is time? When no one asks me, I know. But if I seek to explain it to someone who asks me about it, then I do not’ (Augustine 2006, II, XIV, 17; 254) is still the most quoted one in scholarly work.



Our investigation into the time experience of modernity will focus on a single time-aspect. This facet has been defined as modernity’s main characteristic on the time-plane, and it regards ‘acceleration’ (and its binary opposite, deceleration or crystallization).2 Our exploration of modernity’s spatial experience will proceed similarly. The concept of ‘globalization’ (and its binary opposite of localization) will be our main focus here. It will be our quest to discover whether modernity’s particu-lar experience of time (Sect. 5.1) and space (Sect. 5.2) can indeed be considered as obliging to the elements we discovered in precedence and that characterized what we called a perennial crisis, and whether (and how) this all relates to Limbo (Sect. 5.3).

5.1 time is out of Joint

The concept and experience of acceleration, although it has become more and more popular and applied in recent times, is not of a very recent date. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Henry Adams already wrote his famous The Education of Henry Adams (Adams 2000) which, albeit a piece of experimental literature, proposes the very inter-esting ‘Dynamic Theory of History’ (Adams 2000, 474–488) and fea-tures ‘A Law of Acceleration’ (Adams 2000, 489–497). Adams was, however, not the first either to have considered acceleration as a particu-larly accurate sign of the times. Acceleration (and its antagonist decelera-tion or rigidification) was already felt at the very beginning of modernity, that is, at the times of the Industrial and French Revolution which stand at the threshold of modernity (cf. Rosa 2015, 13–14). In fact, as Reinhart Koselleck claims, in the period in which modernity was formed ‘there occurs a temporalization of history’ which is a ‘peculiar form of acceleration which characterizes modernity’ (Koselleck 2004, 11). And this acceleration, for Koselleck already meant interestingly: ‘[T]he abbre-viation of the periods which allow for a homogeneity of experience’

2 Mentioning theories of ‘acceleration’ (even acceleration of time) should not frighten or worry the reader. We are not entering the sphere of astrophysics. What is at stake in these theories (as we will be able to discover shortly) is the attempt to understand how ‘everything’ (something which will be disproven) seems to be ‘going faster’. This ‘going faster’ (or process of acceleration) is evident in a variety of fields we encounter daily: forms of transportation that go much faster than before (if they already existed), the changes of trends and ‘fads’, the presence of expiry dates of products that is no longer in a distant future but in the near future (generally the day after the insurance expires), and so on.

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(Koselleck 2004, 242). But Koselleck is not the only one who sustained this thesis. Peter Conrad, for example, succinctly remarks that the whole of ‘[M]odernity is about the acceleration of time’ (Conrad 1999, 9). And in somewhat more radical words does Paul Virilio—who has made speed one of the chore concepts and driving mechanics of his the-orization of the Western world since his Speed and Politics (2006) saw the light of day in 1977—state that ‘[S]peed is the hope of the West’ (Virilio 2006, 78). Virilio goes even so far as to provocatively claim that what is usually called the Industrial Revolution is truly a ‘dromocratic3 revolution’ (Virilio 2006, 69). But what is this (theory of) acceleration, that seems to be characteristic not just of our times but of the whole of modernity, all about? For us to discover that we will now turn to one of the more interesting texts written on this topic in the past decades.

In his very influential work Social Acceleration. A New Theory of Modernity (Rosa 2015), Hartmut Rosa proposes the intriguing hypoth-esis that the (or at least one of the most) fundamental tendency in modernity is social acceleration (2015).4 In a quite astonishing piece of academic writing, Rosa shows how modernity can be seen as fundamen-tally colored by a triple acceleration. Firstly, there is the form of acceler-ation that goes under the denominator of technical acceleration (Rosa 2015, 71–74; 97–107). All sorts of industrial, mechanical, and techni-cal processes, forms of communication, means of production, and modes of transportation have, in the past centuries, seen and undergone an undoubtful and well-evident and well-documented process of acceler-ation. Secondly, and correlatedly (as the various technical accelerations form ‘the material basis of and a condition of possibility’ (Rosa 2015, 106) for this second category), there is the acceleration of social change (Rosa 2015, 74–78; 108–119). All forms of social dimensions, which go from the more basic and central ones such as the family or the forms of employment, to more peripheral ones such as mobility, sociopolit-ical affiliations, and religious orientation to the mere rudimental (such as journal subscriptions or telephone/Internet providers), have also all undergone an acceleration of pace. Simple monogamy, for example, has

3 The concept ‘dromocratic’ derives from the Greek word ‘dromos’ which means race.4 Acceleration is defined by Rosa as ‘an increase in quantity per unit of time’ and a variety

of ‘things may serve as the quantity measured: distance traveled, total number of communi-cated messages, amount of goods produced or the number of jobs per working lifetime or change in intimate partners per year or action episodes per unit per time’ (Rosa 2015, 65).


become ‘linear’ or ‘serial’; hardly anyone ends her or his professional career where they started; fewer and fewer people remain residents of the same place where they grew up and having a family member abroad is no longer an exception to the rule. In many countries has creating a new political party become something that is done overnight (just like clos-ing it down) and even where the political establishment is more solid has swing voting become a much more common phenomenon. Being raised in a particular religion is by far no longer a reason to remain a member, and jumping from one denomination to another is no longer being con-sidered as a no go, and similar or even worse problems of contingency affect the lesser social phenomena such as cultural subscription or purely functional providers (e.g., telephone, television, and Internet). Changes in many aspects of the social field that used to take a couple generations to take place are now confronted not even between generations but are (common) changes within a single generation. Thirdly, Rosa also dis-closes a form of acceleration that he calls the acceleration of the ‘pace of life’ (cf. Rosa 2015, 78–80; 120–148). As Rosa remarks, this third category of acceleration is a rather peculiar one as it is not derived from the second (the acceleration of social change does not necessitate an acceleration of the pace of one’s life) and it even stands in stark contrast, even in a directly paradoxical relation, to the first field of acceleration (the technical acceleration should, in fact, liberate [more] time to allow the pace of life to slacken) (cf. Rosa 2015, 78). This, however, does not mean that speaking about an acceleration of this so-called pace of life is a bridge too far. Neither does it constitute the sheer impossibility of this third form to interrelate with the other two forms of acceleration (we will come back to this possible interrelation in the next paragraph). This third category of acceleration is composed, according to Rosa, of two components, namely the objective and observable condensation of action episodes and the subjective experience and expression of a growing lack of time and anxiety to lose the train of life (cf. Rosa 2015, 78–79).

Interestingly enough, Rosa has also made evident how these three forms of acceleration are self-sustaining and self-propelling and co-exist in an internally ‘reciprocal relationship of mutual escalation’ (Rosa 2015, 151) which, furthermore, is also boosted by multiple external driving forces of further acceleration (cf. Rosa 2015, 160–194). The relationship between the three realms of acceleration is, according to Rosa, one of a causal circle (cf. Rosa 2015, 152–156). Technical acceleration, so goes his clarification, is required to resolve the problem of the acceleration of


the pace of time, and, as such, it intends to save time. However, tech-nical acceleration is, as we already indicated, the material basis and the condition for an acceleration of social change. So the faster the technical change, the faster the change in the social dimension of one’s life as well (it suffices to think about the social change due to the mass usages of the airplane or the most recent so-called digital revolution on the fam-ily-, employment-, habitation-level to get the grip of what is at stake). The technical acceleration is thus an attempted solution for the ‘pace of life’ acceleration while it constitutes, at the same time, the cause of social acceleration. This latter acceleration, however, is, in its turn, the cause of the acceleration of the ‘pace of life’ (which will on its turn cause a new form of technical acceleration and so on and so forth). In fact, with social acceleration coincides what Rosa calls the ‘contraction of the pres-ent’. Social realities lose their stability and constancy and remain valid for ever shorter periods. This, in turn, causes a growing separation between one’s (or institutional) experiences and one’s (or institutional) expecta-tions. However, not only does change occur quicker, ‘there is [also] an expansion of the scope of what is absolutely necessary, of the (adaptive) behaviors to be performed, as well as of the list of what is possible: […]’ (Rosa 2015, 155). This last aspect results from the fact that we not only produce faster but also more (cf. the so-called economic growth rate). And it is precisely when ‘the growth rate (…) outpaces the rate of accel-eration of the corresponding processes’ that ‘the technical acceleration and the acceleration of the pace of life appear simultaneously’ (Rosa 2015, 68). The need, or request, to adapt quicker and to more possibil-ities (than the rate of acceleration of the pace of life itself permit) obvi-ously makes for it that the time that can be dedicated to each of these possibilities becomes scarcer and scarcer. As such, we have made full cir-cle and returned to the two components of the acceleration of the ‘pace of life’, namely the objective and observable condensation of action epi-sodes and the subjective experience of a growing lack of time. As Rosa concludes interestingly: ‘[T]he circle of acceleration is thus a good exam-ple of the divergence of individual and collective rationality…’ (Rosa 2015, 156) which makes it pretty much immune against most attempted individual (but also collective) interruptions.

As we already indicated, according to Rosa, these three realms of acceleration are not only self-sustaining and self-propelling and imbed-ded in an internally mutual relationship of escalation, they are also boosted by multiple external driving forces which in turn are cause for


further (support of) acceleration. These three external driving forces are the economy (money), culture, and, finally, there is also a socio-struc-tural motor. That the economy can be considered as an external driv-ing force of the acceleration circle does obviously not need much further explanation (a rather large number of scholars are even convinced and try to convince us, of the fact that it is exactly the economy itself that is the driving [or destructive] force of modernity as such). The econ-omy (money, or capital, as one wishes) has attempted in all possible ways to appropriate time. It suffices to think of Benjamin Franklin’s ‘time is money’ or the importance of the clock for the industrial, technological, and even digital revolution. The second external motor of acceleration is identified by Rosa as the cultural one. To understand Rosa’s usage of the concept of ‘cultural’ in this context (but he is merely interpreting our contemporary times), one has to combine the secularization pro-cess of the ‘sacral/sacred’ or ‘higher/holy/eternal’ time (which should provide for the fullness of one’s lifetime) with the contemporalized and ‘quantitativized’ eudaimonistic, happy and good, life. The ‘necessity’ to oblige to all possible occasions offered, to savoring as much as one can, that is to enjoy life at its fullest (according to all possible quanti-tative understandings of the word ‘full’) is to be considered as the sec-ond external motor of the already internal perpetually auto-reinforcing chain of acceleration of modernity. The third and final external boosting force of modernity’s founding principle of acceleration is the so-called socio-structural motor. What Rosa intends with this socio-structuring is basically the structuring of time of the social systems. Due to all the technical and industrial innovations and their continuous acceleration are the social systems constantly confronted with the need to restruc-ture their time. The solution to this need to restructure, according to Rosa, was found in the principle of differentiation. However, also on the socio-structural level does the growth effect have an influence. ‘The exponential increase in alternatives and options and thus of systematic surpluses of possibility can no longer be managed by the (linear) accel-eration of systemic processing alone’ (Rosa 2015, 186). As such, these social systems on their own become pressured to accelerate and reflec-tively become a pressure to let the other processes under its influences accelerate as well.

So far, we have only seen how, according to Rosa, modernity is structurally and intrinsically ran by social acceleration which, de facto, is for him the fundamental tendency in modernity. Not only are there


three realms of acceleration that sustain themselves and co-exist as if in a chain-relation of self-propelling and reciprocal escalation, but they are also boosted by three external driving forces of further acceleration that, although they are primarily attributed to only a single of the three realms of acceleration, function as an additional drive to the spiral movement of the chain of acceleration. So we are faced with a sort of ‘dialectical unfolding’, as Rosa explains, ‘of growth and acceleration [that] charac-terizes the authentic nature of modernity and the logic of moderniza-tion’ (Rosa 2015, 195). However, and for as much as this operation of acceleration might seem a powerful force that permits no resistance, it is according to Rosa not the only substantial force at play in modernity. The other major force at work in modernity is acceleration’s opposite, namely ‘crystallization’ or ‘rigidification’.5

Rosa lists five categories of rigidification, crystallization, or iner-tia. The first category regards the natural limits to speed and needs lit-tle explanation. There are ‘quite evident (geo-)physical, biological, and anthropological limits to speed, …, processes whose duration and velocity absolutely cannot be manipulated or can be only at the price of a massive qualitative transformation of the processes accelerated’ (Rosa 2015, 81). Man, for example, needs sleep or she/he simply stops func-tioning after a while. The second category is the category of the ‘niches or oases of deceleration’ (Rosa 2015, 83). This second class consists of places or groups where time is intentionally kept ‘at a standstill’. It suf-fices to think of the Amish communities to understand what is at stake. The third category contains the standstills or moments of inertia that are caused by the dys- or malfunctioning of the system. A traffic jam, depres-sion or burnout, or an economic recession are the most explicative exam-ples. Rosa’s fourth category consists of intentional modes of deceleration and is twofold. On the one hand, there is ideological intentional deceler-ation (the various ‘slow’ movements can be listed here as paradigmatic), and, on the other hand, there is the opposite subgroup that considers (temporary) deceleration as a strategy of acceleration. Yoga courses or days at the spa to recharge the batteries so one can join the rat race once again explain best what is at stake in this second subcategory. The fifth and final category consists of what Rosa calls the forms of cultural, but,

5 That one can consider the mere existence of forces of resistance to acceleration, or sim-ply forces of inertia, indicates that the superficial statement that ‘everything is acceleration’ is misleading if not simply wrong (cf. Rosa 2015, 151).


above all, of structural rigidity. Under this somewhat large denominator, Rosa understands the forces of exhaustion (exhaustion of utopian, intel-lectual, and spiritual nature) that find their striking formulations in the various theories of the ‘end of history’.6 Existential boredom, the (in-)famous ennui, is the diagnosis that results from living in this corroded iron cage.

Of all the powers of rigidification, crystallization, or inertia, only this last category, however, is, according to Rosa, not in one way or another secondary, reactionary, or residual to the forces of acceleration. However, for as much as this final category is not reactionary or secondary to the forces of acceleration—and for as much as this category is considered by Rosa himself to be the most interesting form of all categories of deceler-ation or inertia (cf. Rosa 2015, 89)—it is still to be considered as con-sisting of ‘internal element[s] and an inherent complementary principle of the acceleration process itself ’ (Rosa 2015, 89). Said differently: The forces of deceleration belonging to this fifth category ‘represent a conse-quence and manifestation, or a new level, of the process of acceleration… we are dealing with something that results from processes of acceleration’ (Rosa 2015, 21).

Rosa concludes from all this—and he does so without entering into the language of apocalypse which he dismisses (just as we have done in prece-dence) as a ‘frivolous playing around … that belongs to the phenotype of postmodernism in general’ where the ‘destruction of the world becomes a kind of exciting antipode’ to an ‘everyday existence that appears rigid in virtue of its contingent openness…’ (Rosa 2015, 274)—that in late

6 According to Rosa, it is Francis Fukuyama’s famous declaration of the ‘end of history’ that is at stake here. We do have our serious reservations with this affirmation. Fukuyama’s theorization of the ‘end of history’ can hardly be seen as pronouncing or belonging to the category of boredom or existential ennui caused by a sense of being overwhelmed by the pace of life, let alone can it be compared or likened to categories of ‘“exhaustion of utopian energies”…and the “utopia of the zero-option”’ (Rosa 2015, 89) as Rosa does. The end of history was, as he wrote in the opening paragraph of his famous article entitled ‘The End of History?’: ‘the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of western liberal democracy as the final form of human government’ (Fukuyama 1989). Although Fukuyama admits that this end of history will be somewhat boring and not the most creative of times, there is no exhaustion here, but, on the contrary, the (delusive) claim that ‘all the big questions had been settled’ (Fukuyama 1992, xii). Maybe real life was not up to date yet, but that would soon come. In the meantime, Fukuyama has also some-what come back on his thesis, claiming (rather belatedly) that history may not have ended as there is no end to science (Fukuyama 2002, xii; 15).


modernity acceleration, through the process of continuous reciprocally escalating circling of the various forces of acceleration, has crossed a crit-ical threshold ‘beyond which the demand for societal synchronization and social integration can no longer be met’ (Rosa 2015, 20).7 Many of the constituting elements that permitted the processes of acceleration of modernity to come into being (modern political institutions, modern forms of employment, modern main social systems) are now directly in the path of these processes of acceleration, obstructing its unbothered thundering along its road, and are, as such, in peril of becoming disman-tled—‘the forces of acceleration have developed so far that even the insti-tutional structures that brought about and supported their unfolding can no longer keep up with them’ (Rosa 2015, 92). All this leads, according to Rosa, to a felt inversion (it is not an actual inversion as acceleration remains the fundamental power in command), to a sense of standstill, as one gets the growing sensation of a loss of autonomy and sense of con-trol (aspects, these last, which stood at and were the source of modernity). Rosa is wise enough in not making any explicit predictions regarding the future, but the fact that he intends and understands his research as a form of fundamental social critique says enough about the thoughts he has.

Hartmut Rosa is not the only scholar who has recently focused his attention on processes of acceleration and their importance for our con-temporary socio-politico-cultural Sitz im Leben. In a somewhat shorter, but none the less very interesting, piece of research—admittedly dubbed by its own composer as a bit strange—we are offered another sight on the phenomenon of acceleration in the larger context of modernity. We are talking about Benjamin Noys and his writing(s) on ‘accelerationism’. Noys coined this term in his 2010 volume The Persistence of the Negative. A Critique of Contemporary Continental Theory (2010) and has since re-proposed it in an acceleration-focused work entitled Malign Velocities. Accelerationism and Capitalism (2014). Accelerationism

7 This idea is not an uncommon one—something which Rosa also admits. Not only is it present in Bauman’s Liquid Modernity—‘What prompts so many commentators to speak of the “end of history”, of postmodernity, “second modernity” and “supermodernity”, …, is the fact that the long effort to accelerate the speed of movement has presently reached its “natural limit”’ (Bauman 2000, 10)—it was also already rather prophetically present in Jean Baudrillard’s statement about a ‘system [that] rides roughshod over its own basic assumptions, supersedes its own end, so that no remedy can be found’ (Baudrillard 1993, 32). What one contemplates then is simple catastrophe.


according to Noys consists of an ‘exotic variant[s] of la politique du pire’ (Noys 2010, 5). It consists of a taking up of ‘Marx’s contention that “the real barrier of capitalist production is capital itself,” by argu-ing that we must crash through this barrier by turning capital against itself ’ (Noys 2014, 5). The underlying reasoning is that ‘if capitalism generates its own forces of dissolution then the necessity is to radicalize capitalism itself:…We call this tendency accelerationism’ (Noys 2014, 5). Basically, the argument of accelerationism is thus that ‘the only way out is the way through’ (Shaviro 2015, 1). Said in a somewhat longer way: ‘Accelerationism is a speculative movement that seeks to extrapolate the entire globalized neoliberal capitalist order…. The hope driving accel-erationism is that, in fully expressing the potentialities of capitalism, we will be able to exhaust it and thereby open up access to something beyond it’ (Shaviro 2015, 3). Noys’s own interest in accelerationism is fundamentally labor-related (something which is of little or no interest in this volume), and his own thoughts on accelerationism can be defined as at least somewhat ambivalent. His attitude toward accelerationism consists, in fact, in a combination of a fundamental critique that, none-theless, does not hope to write accelerationism’s epitaph as acceleration-ism’s aesthetic holds a minimal appeal to Noys—as such, he shares in Shaviro’s positive judgment of accelerationism as an aesthetic program (cf. Shaviro 2015, 21).

Accelerationism is, according to Noys, a repetitive phenome-non. He individuates at least 4 different epochal ‘moments’ that have occurred in the past century and that are fundamentally accelerationist: Italian Futurism, Communist Accelerationism (following the Russian Revolution), Cyberpunk Phuturism of the last decade of the past cen-tury and the beginning of the twenty-first century, and a post-2008 crisis apocalyptic accelerationism (interestingly, the majority of ‘dates’/‘peri-ods’ indicated by Noys are also present in Rosa’s work as moments of change of pace, that is of heightened acceleration). Two other forms of accelerationism are also mentioned that are not particularly epoch-bound, they are the machine integration fantasies related to accelera-tionism and a destructive terminal accelerationism. All these sorts of accelerationism form the main corpus of Noys Malign Velocities.

Intriguing as this periodization can be (this is not the occasion to expand on these various forms of accelerationism), what is most inter-esting in Noys’s elaboration of his theory of accelerationism is how this latter relates to its opposite of rigidification (crystallization-inertia).


Whereas Noys’s theory of accelerationism could seem to be in line with Rosa’s theory of social acceleration, his theorization of acceleration’s relation with its opposite consists of a rupture with Rosa’s theory. For Noys—who is elaborating his critique in a much more Marxian inspired context and re-proposes a rather traditional double dynamic that spins itself out in true Hegelian/Marxist dialects (cf. Noys 2014, 10)8—accel-erationism is not the sole agitator of modernity. It, in fact, is not even the primary one as it consists of an answer to an autonomously (or at least independently) operating opposing force. This force of deceleration goes for Noys under the name of crisis. Crisis, according to Noys (who thus seems to share our understanding of crisis as we elaborated in Sect. 4.4, namely that crisis’s time frame is that of a contraction), is a deceleration, that is, ‘the grinding to a halt of the speed machine’ (Noys 2014, 60).

Before we will confront what seems to be a fundamental difference between Rosa and Noys regarding any possible ‘autonomy’ of the accel-eration’s opposing force, let us round up Noys’s reasoning on acceler-ationism. Noys concludes his book by turning to Walter Benjamin and his considerations of activating the emergency brake of history (cf. Noys 2014, 83–92). Benjamin’s invocation of an emergency brake of history comes as a response to another one of Marx’s contentions, namely that revolutions are locomotives of world history. Benjamin turns this con-tention on its head by saying that ‘perhaps it is quite otherwise. Perhaps revolutions are an attempt by the passengers on this train…to activate the emergency brake’ (Benjamin 2006, 402). As Noys correctly stresses, what is at stake in Benjamin’s image is that the ‘emergency brake is the operator of Benjamin’s non-teleological politics of temporality, which aims to wrest…from the continuing dialectic of production/destruction that is our constant “state of emergency”’ (Noys 2014, 92). Said differ-ently, the emergency brake analogy of Benjamin is the attempt to start thinking outside of the acceleration/deceleration time frame.

Let us, however, quickly return to the main point of contention between Noys and Rosa, namely the autonomy (or independence) of an opposing force to acceleration. Reminding ourselves quickly, according to Rosa, 4 of the 5 categories of inertia or rigidification that he discusses

8 Although on more than one occasion, Rosa also identifies the relationship between the powers of acceleration and the powers of rigidification/deceleration as dialect (e.g., Rosa 2015, 283; 287). The dialectics at stake are very different than the one intended by Noys.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78913-2_4


in his work are purely secondary, reactionary, or residual to the forces of acceleration. Only the last category (of structural and cultural rigid-ity) could aspire to some proper autonomy. However, also this last and ‘most interesting form of an (at least superficially) opposing decelera-tion in the context of a theory of social acceleration’ (Rosa 2015, 89—emphasis added) is, for Rosa, only an internal and inherent principle of the acceleration process. It is merely a consequence, a sheer result, of the process of acceleration. These phenomena of deceleration and rigidifica-tion are, for Rosa, nothing more than an ‘epiphenomenal appearance of inertia’ (Rosa 2015, 22). Noys’s elaboration of his theory of accelera-tionism seemed to have proposed a different view. Acceleration was not considered as the sole agitator of modernity, but consisted in an answer to an autonomously or independently operating and opposing force, namely deceleration. This, however, was not the final point of the theory of accelerationism. In fact, the aspect of deceleration is not of particular importance in any theory of accelerationism. For the accelerationists, but also for the simple Marxists present in his story, deceleration is, respec-tively, a mere nullity that needs to be suppressed to reach the maximum velocity possible to let the system crash. In case this noble cause cannot be reached for any particular reason, deceleration (crisis) is nothing but the mere sign (or ‘desire’) to recommence a new phase of acceleration. Neither in accelerationism is deceleration or rigidification, in the end, thus considered as an equal opposing antagonist of acceleration.

Even if Noys’s theory of accelerationism thus turned out to be offer-ing only an illusion of any possibility of acceleration’s antagonist to be an equally autonomously functioning power or force, it should make us realize that a serious attempt to think the possibility of deceleration’s autonomy is needed. Interestingly enough, a number of reasons on why we should try to consider deceleration an autonomous force are actually to be found in Rosa’s work itself. In fact, and first reason, Rosa himself admits on numerous occasions that they (these processes of deceleration and crystallization) are a presence from the very beginning of modern times (cf. Rosa 2015, 14). Furthermore, on the variety of moments of extreme acceleration (or even during conjectural or returning waves of acceleration), these forces were constantly present as explicit antagonists of acceleration. The denial of autonomy or of independency of decel-eration seems to be a mere arbitrary and totally unnecessary judgment by the hand of Rosa, similar to Henri Lefebvre’s remark: ‘[H]istorical times slow down or speed up, advance or regress, …. According to what


criteria? According to representations and political decisions, but also according to the historian who puts them into perspective’ (Lefebvre 2004, 14).

Secondly, and correlatedly, there is a systematic downplaying into epiphenomena of some of the pathological characteristics related to decel-eration that, at his own admittance, ‘constantly accompanied…the history of social dynamization in modernity’ (Rosa 2015, 249—emphasis added). Considering acedia, melancholia, ennui, neurasthenia to today’s depres-sion (cf. Rosa 2015, 249) as mere pathological side effects (epiphenom-enal appearances) of the only true operative force of modernity seems just a bridge too far. Although Rosa explicitly acknowledges Benjamin’s contention that ‘the sick have a very special knowledge of the con-dition of society’ (reported in Rosa 2015, 250) and even if he demon-strated from the very beginning that he was familiar with Foucault’s theorization of the processes of ‘normalization’ (cf. Rosa 2015, 7), the pathological expressions typical of rigidification or crystallization (not of acceleration) are gobbled up in the appropriation of deceleration by acceleration. There is, however, no particular reason to give precedence to Rosa’s destitution of the pathologies of deceleration and rigidification as has been proposed by Byung-Chul Han while describing our con-temporary society as the Burnout Society (Han 2015). That the patho-logical paradigm has shifted from the immunological to neurological in late- or postmodernity—‘[N]eurological illnesses such as depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), borderline personality disorder (BPD), and burnout syndrome mark the landscape of pathol-ogy at the beginning of the twenty-first century’ (Han 2015, 1)—is (should be) about more than the upholding functionality of a theoretical framework.

Third, and finally, a particular silence by Rosa is probably most revealing of all. We have, in fact, seen how Noys identified the force of deceleration with the name of the crisis. A crisis was for Noys, as we discovered, the grinding to a halt of the speed machine. Interestingly enough, there is almost no trace at all of the concept of crisis in Rosa’s Social Acceleration. The only thing that Rosa has to say about crisis is the following: ‘Thus what is experienced in this way as a time of crisis from within the cultural horizon of modernity is certainly not a time of great upheavals or decisions that can be faced, as it were, “chronopo-litically” by means of a reorientation of political action. The crisis con-sists rather in the fact that there is no longer anything left to decide: …’


(Rosa 2015, 274). Crisis’s time-interruptive characteristic is even denied by Rosa. Once more it seems that the consideration of how inertia is only an appearance consists of a mere theory-related necessity.

However, for as much as all the insistences of deceleration’s auton-omy could indeed be, as Rosa so provocatively (and somewhat cynically as well) claims, ‘just an academic construct estranged from reality’ (Rosa 2015, 15), there is also a very fundamental philosophical reason why we should never just silently accept the predominance of a force and the subordination of its opposing force. For us to reveal this philosophical reason, we have to return to Derrida’s pharmacy.

*

If one should pick one thing, only one single thing, that would have to remain of the philosophical research of Jacques Derrida, then, without any sort of doubt whatsoever, that only thing would necessarily have to be his innovative understanding of how binary opposites (oppositions) work.

Already in his first American discourse, held back in 1966 at Johns Hopkins University, entitled Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences (Derrida 2001, 351–370), Derrida states that ‘[I]t could perhaps be said that the whole of philosophical conceptualization, which is systematic with … opposition[s]’ (Derrida 2001, 358), are [that is, these binary oppositions], still according to Derrida, ‘the founding concepts of the entire history of philosophy’ (Derrida 2001, 359). If we are to understand how these oppositions operate systematically in philosophy’s history, then we need to realize that with these ‘classical philosophical oppositions we are not dealing with peaceful coexistence of a vis-à-vis, but rather with a violent hierarchy. One of the two terms governs the other (…), or has the upper hand’ (Derrida 1981, 41). Deconstruction, which consists of the operation (the strategy of reading and interpreting of texts that is always already at work in the texts themselves) that attempts to unveil the functioning of these foundational oppo-sitions, which ‘are designed to leave in the domain of the unthinkable the very thing that makes this conceptualization possible’ (Derrida 2001, 365)9, has as its scope to overturn the hierarchy without confirming the new situation as the dominant position without neutralizing these founding binary oppositions (cf. Derrida 1981, 41).10

9 This is similar to Heidegger’s Seinsvergessenheit (to which it [in-]directly returns as a sort of homage). These founding oppositional concepts of philosophy (and its history) are, according to Derrida, the true forgotten angular stones of Western philosophy.

10 Deconstruction is, in fact—and contrary to what many of its critics have ignorantly proclaimed—, not to be considered as some sort of destructive or nihilistic fury that wants to liberate itself of the Western philosophical tradition.


But what does all of this mean? And what implication does it have on what we have been attempting to put forth? For us to be able to reveal this we will return once more to Plato’s Pharmacy. This time we will, however, not focus on Derrida’s interpretation of Plato’s Myth of Theuth, but on the introducing pages of Derrida’s text that, at first sight seem all too strange to belong to Derrida’s writings.11 But before we start, let us quickly recall that the Platonic Myth of Theuth regards the origin of writing, and is studied by Derrida because of the binary opposition between speaking/orality and writ-ing, and the so-called inherent superiority or primacy of Logo-/Phonocentrism that stands at the origin of Western philosophy.

Contrary to what one would expect from an anti-rationalist and obscu-rantist (as Derrida has been described at times), Plato’s Pharmacy does not start with the crab-like sideways pacing and spinning around the main argu-ment typical of most of Derrida’s work. It, in fact, begins in an extraordinar-ily traditional way by reproducing the history of the reception of the Phaedrus (Plato’s dialogue that contains the Myth of Theuth). For an incredibly long time, Derrida begins, has the Phaedrus been considered as a badly composed text. It was argued that this was caused by Plato’s young age (making it thus one of Plato’s earliest texts) or by his old Plato (making it, accordingly, one of his last texts). Only since Heidegger, as Derrida’s time-framing of the reception of the Phaedrus continues, has the opinion on this text changed. It is now considered as one of Plato’s most mature and pregnant texts (cf. Derrida 1981, 66–67). However, and even though Derrida concords with the last judgment—‘[T]he hypothesis of a rigorous, sure, and subtle form is nat-urally more fertile’ (Derrida 1981, 67)—, in the end, he seems to care very little about which one is the ‘correct’ reception. Establishing which reception of the Phaedrus is the right one—or simply even the most plausible one—does not seem to belong to the reason of his turning to the reception of the Phaedrus.

So why does Derrida treat the reception of the Phaedrus when he is not really interested in which one is the correct or the most probable one? What is of interest to Derrida is the fact that in both occasions (the all too young or too old Plato—the recent reception is of less importance here) the Phaedrus was accused of being badly composed. The text was considered as inadequate. It did not consist of a well-constructed or well-made object. For a long time was the Phaedrus thus considered as missing textual unity. Pieces of text, it was said, had arbitrarily been put beside each other. Basically, the whole organic order of the text was missing. However, and this is where Derrida wanted to arrive, aren’t all these accusations, accusation to textuality (writing) in

11 Michael Naas has written an excellent chapter (‘A Given Take: The Platonic Reception of Plato in the Pharmacy’) in his Taking on the Tradition. Jacques Derrida and the Legacies of Deconstruction (Naas 2003, 3–21) that treats the same topic I am about to confront.


general as will be argued in Plato’s Myth of Theuth? Isn’t one of the major problems of writing, according to the myth, the organization and arranging of the discourse (cf. Plato 2002, 277c)? And isn’t orality’s success and writ-ing’s failure in this organization one of the major themes of the myth as well? So, as Derrida ironically remarks, Plato’s written text has been accused, over the centuries, for one and the same reasons ‘he himself’ accuses writing of.

Basically, what Derrida is thus implicitly demonstrating with this mise en abyme is that the general theory of precedence of orality over writing that is proposed internally in the Phaedrus, is also the recipe (pharmakon) of its his-torical reception itself. The hierarchization that is proposed in The Myth of Theuth, has not been critically received in the tradition of the work of Plato but has simply been put to work. From the very moment orality and writing are considered, they have never coexisted peacefully. There has always been a violent hierarchy, where one of the two terms governs the other. And the tradi-tion has been a continuous re-emphasizing and re-confirmation of this oppos-ing violent hierarchy (even in the case of our contemporary re-evaluation of writing, which has simply overturned the process of governing, not the violence of the hierarchization as such).

The task deconstruction thus poses itself is to re-introduce the ambivalence of the members of the binary opposition. This is a very difficult task, especially considering the fact that from the very moment the opposition comes to life, as Derrida’s reading of the Phaedrus renders evident, it is always already inclined in favor of one of the two elements. This brings us back to what we already wrote in section 4.1 about the ‘triplet’ tradition-translation-be-trayal. Tradition is always already a betrayal, or better, it begins with a betrayal before it can become a tradition. As Michael Naas succinctly writes, ‘the tradition seems to begin already at its origin, whereas the origin becomes itself only in being received’ (Naas 2003, 15). The origin is thus not (just) the beginning, but is itself always already received (there is no pure originality) and when it is continuous (as a tradition), it (the origin that has become a tradition) does not only give us the themes and topics of which it is made up but also the means to receive these themes and topics. We could formulate all of this correctly in the following, albeit for most probably rather enigmatical, way: Plato was the first platonic.

*

Following this understanding, both Rosa’s description of the prece-dence of acceleration over rigidification or crystallization and Noys’s recovery of the Hegelian/Marxist dialectical movement between accel-eration and deceleration are then not what the y say or seem to be. They are not, nor do they propose, a description of actual processes that shape the current or past-to-current state of affairs. Rosa’s (and Noys’s)


theorization consists, on the contrary, always already of choices (ideolog-ical followings) regarding either one or the other element of the binary opposition. And if anything is the true ‘academic construct estranged from reality’, then it is this opting out for one of the two opposites acceleration/deceleration. The most important lesson to be learnt from Rosa’s ‘New Theory of Modernity’, as the subtitle of his book goes, then it is that modernity thus seems the ideological imposition of accel-eration’s predominance. If we are to understand the experience of time of our epoch, or, as the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council already desired, if we want to be capable of reading the signs of our times, then we need to see beyond the ideological imposition of modernity.

If Rosa’s (and Noys’) ‘description’ have turned out to consist in (unconscious?) ideological readings, then how are we to describe moder-nity’s time-experience (in the hope we ourselves don’t fall in the ideolo-gy-trap)? We believe that, for example, Peter Conrad—even though he too most of the time wears ideological glasses—momentarily lifted the ideological bias when he writes that ‘we run as fast as we can in order to stay in the same place’ (Conrad 1999, 6). We find a similar idea in Paul Virilio’s concept of ‘polar inertia’, which does not mean moving in high speed, but residing in absolute speed or motion (cf. Virilio and Lotringer 2002, 71). And Virilio is absolutely correct when he insists that this consist in a revision of speed (cf. Virilio and Lotringer 2002, 97) into a sort of stasis (absolute standstill) which, as Virilio remarks, elaborat-ing this Greek concept of stasis, results in some sort of incarceration (cf. Armitage 2001, 31). A similar thought of revision of speed is also pro-posed by Roland Barthes in his observations regarding the Jet-man—the ‘paradox is that an excess of speed turns into repose’ (Barthes 1972, 71). Absolute speed and complete inertia are thus present contemporarily.12

12 Rosa speaks of a German rather poetic translation of Virilio’s ‘polar inertia’ into ‘fre-netic standstill’ (Rosa 2015, 15; e.a.). This is, indeed, quite an interesting translation. As Jonathan Trejo-Mathys (the translator of Rosa’s Social Acceleration) correctly remarks, ‘frenetic standstill’ becomes a ‘central theorem of his theory of acceleration’ (Rosa 2015, 335, n. 56) rather than accurately referring to Virilio’s binomial. In the series of interviews with Virilio collected by John Armitage entitled Virilio Live (2001), one of the interviewers has another ‘metaphor’ up his sleeve, namely ‘frenzied hyperactivity’. It is interesting to note how Virilio quite cynically ignores this observation (he responds, ‘when I use the term “polar inertia”’ without adding what could have been a good interpretation—but is more than probably not considered as such by Virilio) and repeats the fact that what is referred to is absolute speed and a sort of paralysis, of paralyzing inertia (Armitage 2001, 154–155).


(What makes Virilio’s understanding of polar inertia so interesting is not the fact of it being a limit-concept, but its relation to the notions of incarceration and paralysis. Both these concepts should remind the reader of the condition of Limbo without much problems. We will, obvi-ously, return to all the similarities and kinship between the paradoxical state of timeliness we are unveiling here and the concept of Limbo in the conclusion.) Almost the same idea of absolute speed which finds its iden-tical twin in complete standstill can be found in Jean Baudrillard’s almost visionary remarks on the millennium, where he phrases our current para-digm of ‘acceleration by inertia’ (Baudrillard 2000, 47).

One, however, does not have to remain in purely time-language to uncover like-minded observations. In the sphere of politics, we can find, for example, in Wolfgang Streeck’s Buying Time (2014)—a book that will become fundamental in a short while—the highly condensed observation that the ‘governability problem…can and must be overcome by more of the same’ (Streeck 2014, 176). A similar stance is also held by the already encountered Slovenian philosopher/psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek regarding the capitalist dynamics which ‘offer more of the same in the guise of con-stant change’ (Žižek 2014, 4). All of this is also very similar to Friedrich Engels phrasing of the methodology adopted by the bourgeoisie regarding the question of housing, namely ‘solving it in such a way that the solu-tion perpetually renews the question anew’ (Engels 1935, 74). A similar metaphor can also be found, if we read Zygmunt Bauman correctly, in the new type of refugee camps that have been and are being built: they con-stitute the ‘permanence of transitoriness; the durability of the transient’ (Bauman 2007, 47). Finally, a last example we will offer, we find even a similar understanding in a comment on Bergson’s élan vital by Ernst Bloch that goes interestingly: ‘[T]he so-called intuition enters into this continuously surprising mode, but without ever meeting the actual Novum for sheer aimless infinity and incessant changeability;—where everything ought to be constantly new, everything remains just as it was’ (Bloch 1995, 140—emphasis added). More examples, of both the former paragraph’s formulations in non-purely time-language and the previous one of purely in time-language, of this play of oppositions could have been given, but we will leave it with these.

If we were to try and describe, simultaneously trying to explain what is at stake in, these operations, we would turn to Lewis Carroll’s sequel to Alice in Wonderland—Through the Looking-Glass (2015)—and Alice’s


little run with the Red Queen. Alice meets the Red Queen during her attempt to climb a hill, so she can get a better view from the garden of the Looking-Glass house (a situation that is very similar to Dante’s in the opening cantico of the Divine Comedy, as we discussed in Sect. 3.4). She has not fully grasped how to successfully move around in the upside-down world on the other side of the mirror. So when, after hav-ing encountered the Red Queen, this latter starts to run, Alice happily joins her, hoping this will enable her to understand how to move in the upside-down world. The Red Queen spurs Alice on to run faster and faster. After this exhaustingly fast run has gone on for a while, they finally stop. The Red Queen, having understood Alice’s tiredness, allows her to rest a bit under a tree. While Alice looks around, she, however, starts to recognize the place as the one they’d been the whole time. Let us follow the discussion between Alice and the Red Queen:

“Why, I do believe we’ve been under this tree the whole time! Everything’s just as it was!”

“Off course it is,” said the Queen. “What would you have it?”“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally

get to somewhere else-if you ran very fast for a long time as we’ve been doing.”

“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place”. (Carroll 2015, 206)

This running but keeping in the same place should strike us for its similarity with Conrad’s and all the other scholar’s expressions we just encountered. And this image of running very fast while staying in one place probably immediately recalls another one that is particularly apt to describe modernity, namely the hamster or simply running wheel. Interestingly enough, wheel running does not seem to be an activity liked by rodents out of misery of their captivity. As Meijer and Robbers (2014) have shown in an experiment, even free roaming rodents, when they are confronted by running wheels in the wild will gladly jump on it and go for a spin. This activity, which at least seems devoid of any meaning, goal, or purpose and which checks off all boxes of stereotyped behavior, can thus also be chosen voluntarily by feral animals (cf. Meijer and Robbers 2014, 4). The running wheels of rodents obviously also

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hint at the so-called rat race of the corporal world, but this rat race syn-drome has by now spread in a metastasis style to almost the whole of our sociocultural world. Also here, it should not surprise that free roam-ing individual human animals choose to voluntarily participate in this race. Finally, another image (the last one we will list) that comes close to Alice’s stationary fast run is very familiar to all: the little run on the tapis roulant.13 This image takes Meijer and Robbers’ research even an ironical step further as it demonstrated not only that free roaming crea-tures can voluntarily choose an artificial artifact devoid of any (at least its original) particular purpose or meaning, but will voluntarily also do so no longer in the wild but in ‘captivity’—at least in the captivity of the fitness center.

Two objections could be made. The first regards the nature of the examples offered, and the second is about the more than probable impos-sibility of finding any serious application of the time-structure implied in what we have been discussing in these last pages. Regarding the first objection, one could, in fact, remark that these examples are not time-re-lated at all. That would, however, be a very shortsighted comment. They, in fact, are very much time-related. It suffices to think about the nature of repetition (its essential timeliness) and recall the very significant formula-tion made by Henri Lefebvre that ‘[D]ifferences induced or produced by repetitions constitute the thread of time’ (Lefebvre 2004, 8). Not only do we find ourselves within the sphere of the same operation we have been following in the past paragraphs, but we also discover (recover) its basic link to time. It does not do harm to remind ourselves at this moment what Giorgio Agamben wrote regarding the essentiality for every epoch to understand its relation to (its) time. As he pointed out: ‘[E]very con-ception of history is invariably accompanied by a certain experience of time which is implicit in it, conditions it, and thereby has to be elucidated’ (Agamben 1993, 91—emphasis added). And, ‘[S]imilarly, every culture is first and foremost a particular experience of time, and no new culture is possible without an alteration in this experience’ (Agamben 1993, 91). If Agamben is correct in his statement, then from this follows that all aspects of every particular culture (its sociological, political, economic/

13 Rosa agrees on the paradigmatic relevance of the treadmills in the fitness studios (see Rosa 2015, 363, n. 44). He, however, sees this as an example of acceleration induced par-adoxical situation of ‘speeding standstill’ missing out on the true autonomous meaning of this paradox.


financial aspects) also always stand in a particular relation to the time experienced in that specific culture.

As to the objection that no real-life events or situations could possi-bly fulfill the criteria we have been delineating, in what remains of this chapter we will offer concrete realizations of this in the fields of poli-tics, science, and the economy. By covering these three fields, we hope to demonstrate that this operation is active in our whole contemporary society.

The example of politics takes us back to Rosa’s Social Acceleration, more precisely to the point where he formulates his thesis on the con-nection between politics and acceleration in the eleventh chapter. Rosa writes: ‘[M]y thesis is thus that toward the end of the twentieth century the role of politics as a social pacesetter that was undisputed in classical modernity has been lost because the intrinsic temporality of the politi-cal is largely resistant to or incapable of acceleration’ (Rosa 2015, 262). This, as can easily be said, is a very remarkable thesis. It, in fact, would allow us to understand a whole series of political actions. Most impor-tant of all, it seems to allow us to understand the renewed trust of the contemporary politicians (after the years of the Second World War) in governing through decrees (against the more traditional regular ‘laws’). This should then not primarily be seen as some uncanny (unconscious) attempt to return to totalitarian or fascist law-making, but consists of a mere struggle to keep up with the pace of society’s acceleration. For as much as this thesis is thus promising, it is, however, fundamentally flawed and incomplete.14 Rosa, once more, seems to be blinded by the hidden ideology of his theoretical framework.

14 Politics, furthermore, seems to be very capable of keeping up with the pace (if not still setting the pace of) the processes of acceleration—if there is a missing out, it does, more than probably, not result from systemic or endemic incapacity, but of personal and mental incapability of the majority of the contemporary political class (Max Weber’s statement on the ‘revolutionary state’ that ‘complete amateurs have been handed power over the admin-istration … and they wish for nothing better than to use the trained officials as executive heads and hands’ (Weber 2004, 49) is still more than appropriate, probably it is more so now than it ever was in the beginning of the twentieth century). If one looks at the tradi-tional political institutions (and its physical buildings as well), then one cannot but think that politics is completely out of pace. However, politics is, already since a while, no longer happening there. Politics is now being done on the screens of the more traditional means of the media, but above all on Twitter and Facebook—perfectly in line (also as far its con-tent—its ephemeral presence/absence game—is concerned) with its times.


Within the greater whole of modern democratic politics, ‘politics’ as such (as understood by Rosa as well) is never the sole player. There is no democracy without politics, but neither is there democracy without law. As Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari summarize Georges Dumézil’s work on political sovereignty and domination so well: The modern state always has two heads, the despot’s and the legislator’s, the king’s and the jurist’s—true, at times their function is occupied by the same physi-cal person, but the two poles remain as such in opposition (cf. Deleuze and Guattari 2013b, 409–410). Politics, within the national democratic state (but even within a more globalized supranational level), cannot be seen, nor does it have any form of operativity without its counterpart, its antagonist, the law. So where we have acceleration and politics on one side (here Rosa has seen correctly), we are contemporarily also witness-ing an extreme form of rigidification on the side of the law. In fact, as the philosopher and former law student, Giorgio Agamben so extremely accurately remarks, today we witness an ‘unprecedented hypertrophy of the law—one that under the guise of legislating everything, betrays its legitimacy through legalistic excess’ (Agamben 2012, 40).15 The prob-lem of democracy is not just ‘political’ as Rosa would have us want to believe. The so-called struggle of politics is the real epiphenomenon. What we are witnessing today is an utter exhaustion and ‘logoration’ of democracy as such, that is, of the larger public sphere. The problem of democracy is no longer posed; it has been deferred into the future while we are amidst the mere administration of things—managerialism of real politics—already feared (and prophesized) by Hannah Arendt.

The second example brings us to science. Doubting processes of (massive) acceleration in science- and technology-related fields consist simply in delusion. Not only are most people aware of the acceleration of hardcore scientific research (medicine and its progress are highly medi-atized as well as other and more high-tech theoretical research, as, e.g., CERN), but everyday experience is proof of this acceleration as well. We don’t intend to contradict these aspects, science is subject to, and even steers processes of acceleration. We do, however, want to insist on the fact that also science is a field where one can easily ascertain the contem-porary operativity of the processes of acceleration and rigidification. As acceleration in science is a proven fact, what needs to be demonstrated is

15 For a series of examples (especially from the field of religion) on this hypertrophy of law, see Benson and Bussey (2017).


the continuous operativity of one or more processes of rigidification or crystallization. To do this, we will return to the work of one of the most important contributors to philosophy/history of science: Thomas Kuhn.

In 1962, Kuhn’s groundbreaking The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1996) was published. In this text, to reassume very sum-marily, Kuhn argued that science does not proceed as if in an increas-ing continuum but through a number of successive revolutions from one ‘paradigm’ to another (cf. Kuhn 1996, 170–173). Now a paradigm, according to Kuhn, consists, first of all, of a series of models, theories, and techniques that are common to a group of members of the scien-tific community. Secondly, a paradigm also consists of a series of achieve-ments that are sufficiently open-ended but which, tendentially, do seem to promise success. All of these elements put together thus form a para-digm and allow for science to function in a ‘normal’ way (cf. Kuhn 1996, 10–11). Science (‘normal science’), according to Kuhn, consists in the putting into practice—application—(repetitively and hopefully success-fully) of a series of models, theories, and techniques by a group of pro-fessionals (who have, more or less consciously, underwritten that same series of models, theories, etc.). Basically, ‘normal science’ thus consists for its largest part in mop-up work the paradigm leaves to be done (cf. Kuhn 1996, 24). What this allows, and this constitutes an important element of Kuhn’s theory, is the fact that the scientists can determine which problem is a scientific problem, and which one isn’t (science’s par-adigmatic functioning operates as a means of inclusion and exclusion16). Every once in a while, however, a paradigm will start to show cracks. And if these cracks are not successfully fitted, the problems or innova-tive techniques that made it crack within its set of rules and practices will eventually make it crumble, letting another paradigm rise to the occasion.

If Kuhn’s theorization is correct, we have immediately also discov-ered how in science there is not only acceleration but also rigidification at work: the force of the paradigm. So also in modern science does it seem that not just the force of acceleration is operative, but also, and

16 The capacity of inclusion and exclusion allows, for example, for crackpots to be imme-diately (or, at least, quickly) fall through the maze, but, on the other hand, it can also avoid for true and fundamental innovations to be accepted, as was, for example, the case with Mendel and his ‘fellow’ biologists in the nineteenth century and a series of other scientists before and after him.


simultaneously, its opposing force of rigidification. And, interestingly enough, it seems that only when both forces are not contemporarily active that science can proceed ‘normally’—accelerating within its already rigid paradigm. However, also within this ‘normal’ functioning of mod-ern science—characterized thus by the non-contemporary operativity of both accelerating and crystalizing forces—does the phantom of ‘logora-tion’ materialize, and this precisely because of opposing forces becoming simultaneous operativity.

For us to be able to demonstrate that also science has been sub-jected to the experience of ‘logoration’, it suffices to note, once more with Kuhn, that the paradigms of science are not supposed to func-tion in other fields such as art, philosophy, political theory, and theol-ogy (cf. Kuhn 1996, 160). Our times, as we are all very familiar with, have, however, seen a stunning imperialism of the science paradigms into fields where they are not supposed to claim any force of operativ-ity. Humanities (studies), social sciences, but even theology and art are on the constant peril and threat of losing their proper identity because of the constant attacks from the science paradigms (be they externally or internally imposed). The acceleration typical of the activity of ‘normal science’ finds itself thus combined with a continuous rabid operativity of the crystalizing of its paradigms outside of their own proper fields. This imperialism of the paradigms of science, however, puts in serious peril all the forms of cross-fertilizations between science and the other fields of research that operate outside of science’s paradigms. It is/was, how-ever, mainly through these cross-fertilizations that cracks are to appear in reigning paradigms which not only cause their downfall but, especially, the means of science to progress. Once more, we are confronted with the procrastinating effect typical of ‘logoration’. Just like in Milton’s Limbo, also the frenetic and almost fanatical imperialism of science’s reigning modern paradigm—which has allowed for unseen acceleration—is taking us very quickly, nowhere.

To conclude this chapter, let us quickly turn to Wolfgang Streeck’s fundamental study on the financial crisis. Also in the economic/finan-cial field will we be able to discover the presence, on the one hand, of the contemporary operativity of time’s opposite forces and, on the other hand, the same operation of ‘logoration’ at work as well. Capital, as this is the point where we need to start this final example, is and requires, as needs no particular demonstration, speed and a continuous accelera-tion of pace. Marx was already well aware that the faster the circulation


of capital the better, and ‘[C]irculation without circulation time—i.e. the transition of capital from one phase to the next at the speed of thought—would be the maximum…’ (Marx 1973, 630–631). However, and contrary to the delusions proposed by economists (especially econ-omists of the Von Hayek and Friedman type), ‘…, capitalism is not a state of nature but a historical social order in need of institutionaliza-tion and legitimation: …’ (Streeck 2014, 24). Capital needs politics, but (democratic) politics, as Pierre Rosanvallon has demonstrated, is not just a question of ‘the functions and dysfunctions of electoral-representative institutions’ but also, and not less important, ‘the organization of dis-trust’ (Rosanvallon 2012, 5). Now it is this political distrust17 that is a fundamental (in-)direct decelerating and even crystallizing aspect in the economic realm. In its most operative mode, this political mistrust causes ‘crisis of confidence on the part of capital’ which is ‘not [a] technical dis-turbance but [a] legitimation crisis’ (Streeck 2014, 23).18

In the past forty years, we have, according to Streeck (Streeck 2014, 32–40), witnessed three occasions when capital’s acceleration power was matched by the rigidification power of mistrust with the result of three legitimation crisis of capital itself. The outcome of these crises can be con-sidered as textbook examples of ‘logoration’. In fact, as Streeck makes clear in the rollercoaster-read that his Buying Time is (a title that is a whole program, as can now be fully understood) over and again has the reaction to this contemporary operativity of acceleration and rigidification not lead to the opting for one of these two powers, but has time been bought through some kind of financial magic that is intended to generate a (re-)new(-ed) illusion of growth (Streeck 2014, 46).19 The ‘[O]sten-sible solutions never took more than a decade to become problems—or rather, the old problem in a new form. Each victory over the crisis sooner or later became the prelude to a new crisis, …’ (Streeck 2014, xiv). Said

17 Rosanvallon is correct to stress the need of some rehabilitation of the political distrust. It is, in fact, an increasingly important, albeit an inherently ambivalent, aspect of our con-temporary democratic institutions as it can reinforce or contradict democracy as such (cf. Rosanvallon 2012, 24).

18 This is what Streeck calls, a ‘theory of the “common pool”’ (Streeck 2014, 47–48) and is the standard economy theory of politics that explains ‘the crisis of public finances in terms of failure of democracy’. Streeck also underwrites a similar theory. However, for him the failure is not on the part of the electorate but of capital (and its management).

19 The problem of ‘money’ is reversed on ‘time’ which is being ‘bought’, giving some-what of a cynical twist to Jefferson’s statement that ‘time is money’.


differently, the problem ‘must be overcome by more of the same’ (Streeck 2014, 176). The operation of buying time is thus a literal reformulation of Lyotard’s comments on languor, as a drawing out of time, which, however, turns time limp, procrastinating the present itself. The finan-cial and economic present—colored by Adorno’s very evocative consid-eration of a ‘sense of well-being in alienation’ (reported in Streeck 2014, 18)—has thus, time and again, been subjected to, what we have defined as, ‘logoration’.

As can be seen, especially from our treatment of the last example, we have directly wandered into the literal realm of the concept of crisis. More specifically, we are even stranded in the reign of a perennial cri-sis. All three final and concrete examples have, in fact, revealed how each specific field was governed by the contemporary operativity of the oppos-ing time-related forces of acceleration and rigidification. And in all three examples have we been able to discover how this simultaneous operativ-ity of opposing forces has led to a profound phase of ‘logoration’. And as we have been able to observe in all three cases, that what is being post-poned (bought out) is exactly the moment, that strict and very limited time-space, thick with and of judgment.

Before we can conclude from this the correctness of our thesis (we will come back to all of this in Sect. 3.3), let us turn to modernity’s spa-tial experience to see whether a similar operation is at work there as well. Only when this will be confirmed will we have come full circle and can we conclude that living in modernity equals living in perennial crisis (equals living in Limbo).

5.2 eXhausted sPace

Having discovered the experience of time in our modern epoch, it is now time to turn to that other vital and basic category of human experience: space. However, even before we can begin our discussion of the experi-ence of space in modernity, a fundamental question poses itself almost immediately. This question regards whether we even can discus space at all. Did, as a number of scholars suggested and argued for, space not get dissolved by time’s accelerating speed? Let us investigate this supposed dissolution and discover if there might not be more at hand.

Zygmunt Bauman, to start with a scholar we have encountered already numerous times, argues that modernity basically can be char-acterized as an epoch of the ‘changing relationship between space and

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time’ (Bauman 2000, 8). No longer, as Bauman continues, are both basic experiences of human life ‘locked in a stable and apparently invul-nerable one-to-one correspondence’ (Bauman 2000, 9). In modernity, and contrary to space’s inflexibility and obstinacy, time ‘thanks to its newly acquired flexibility and expansiveness…has become, first and fore-most, the weapon in the conquest of space’ (Bauman 2000, 9). ‘Time’, as Bauman concludes, ‘was the active and dynamic side in the battle, the side always on the offensive: the invading, conquering and coloniz-ing force’ (Bauman 2000, 9). Whereas Bauman only sees a battle where time has the upper hand over space, David Harvey goes a step further when he argues for an ‘overwhelming sense of compression of our spa-tial and temporal worlds’ (Harvey 1990, 240). For Harvey, however, this compression of space–time causes almost exclusively spatial adjustments, even so that he concludes that this compression is nothing more or less than the ‘process of annihilation of space through time’ (Harvey 1990, 293). Hartmut Rosa, who is highly indebted to Bauman and, especially, Harvey, substantially agrees, as we discovered in the previous chapter, with the thesis of time’s predominance over space. His main claim—a claim somewhat less radical than Harvey’s—goes as follows: ‘there is no independent spatial moment of change in modernity analogous to acceler-ation: the transformation of spationtemporal structures is primarily driven by its temporal dynamic of change’ (Rosa 2015, 29).

Although for some scholars it thus seems that time had the prece-dence over space, at times reducing space to ‘nothing’ even, not all seem to share this conviction. For example, and while not directly questioning the importance of time and its processes of acceleration, Henri Lefebvre does put a figurative bomb under the belief of time’s supremacy by refer-ring to the notion of measurement (a notion of fundamental importance in modernity’s ‘new’ understanding of time). Lefebvre, in fact, interest-ingly asks whether ‘spatialization of time’ is not ‘a preconditional oper-ation for its measurement?’ (Lefebvre 2004, 10). If Lefebvre is correct, and time needs some sort of spatialization for it to be able to be meas-ured, then the assumption that time predominates over space becomes at least a little bit shaky. The operation of an overturning of time’s pre-dominance over space is supported by Frederic Jameson, another scholar who has made his fame studying contemporary times (postmodernism is the term he uses). For Jameson, in fact, postmodernity was caused by a crisis of ‘temporal organization in general … and indeed, the problem of the form of time, temporality… in a culture increasingly dominated


by space and spatial logic’ (Jameson 1991, 25). And Manuel Castells, to give one final example, the scholar who, interestingly enough, coined the binomial ‘timeless time’ which we already encountered, does not hesitate to state that although generally speaking it is time that governs space (places)—‘places are time-bounded’ (Castells 2010, 495). In our society of ‘timeless time’, so he claims, it is ‘space [that] shapes time’ (Castells 2010, 495). As can be seen, also regarding the question of the precedence of time over space (similar to the question of the precedence of acceleration over rigidification or crystallization) ideas differ widely. Once more it does seem that what we are confronted with doesn’t regard descriptions of any actual process that shape the current or past-to-current state of affairs, but, on the contrary, mere choices (ideological followings) regarding the predominance of one or the other element of modernity’s space–time opposition.

In either understanding (time’s dominance or space’s overpower-ing), the autonomy of one of the two elements is being surrendered. If Bauman (before he took the stand in favor of time over space as we just came to see) is right in his conceptualization of modernity as meaning the separation between time and space, which means, according to him, that they are ‘ready to be theorized as distinct and mutually independ-ent categories of strategy and action’ (Bauman 2000, 8), then either the temporalization of space or the spatialization of time will give a colored reading from the start. Space’s dissolution by time (acceleration) seems one more effect of modernity’s ideological imposition (imposture). For as much as one cannot simply ignore the influence of time on space; time, however, is not capable to completely overcome space. If anything (remaining with the topic of space), we continue to be fundamentally bound and tied to a purely spatial location by the sheer fact of us pos-sessing bodies, of our being embodied creatures (just as we are funda-mentally timely creatures due to our being unresolvedly bound to our biological clock/time). Time, even time at its utter acceleration, cannot undo this basic spatiality (just as space can’t relieve us from our due bio-logical destiny: death). It will be this basic and original spatiality of space that will be at the center of this chapter.

Turning our attention now to the discussion of space, a last reference to the opposition between orality or speech and writing, between the phonē and the graphē (or the ear- and eye-modality to them related), will take us to one of the more pregnant thesis regarding the experiences of space’s spatiality of modernity. This thesis we find in Marshall McLuhan’s


still very influential and interesting (if not even more so now) The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) and its ‘sequel’ from 1964 Understanding Media. The Extensions of Man (1994). Our concern with McLuhan’s The Gutenberg Galaxy and Understanding Media does, however, not regard the main thesis of these books. That our world has undergone three fun-damental transformations—the first in the fifth century b.c., the second in the sixteenth century,20 and the third and final transformation is tak-ing place now in the twentieth century21 (cf. McLuhan 1994, 154)—is not what makes these books a good starting point for our section ded-icated to space. What does make them important to us is McLuhan’s coinage of the highly provocative binomial of ‘global village’ (McLuhan 1962, 21; 31; 219; … and McLuhan 1994, 93; …)—a binomial that from the very beginning hints at a contemporary presence of the two opposing spatial forces of globality and locality. But what does McLuhan intend with this concept? McLuhan does not elaborate extensively on the meaning of the ‘global village’ neither in The Gutenberg Galaxy nor in Understanding Media. If anything, he seems to take its meaning as easy to understand. This is, however, not the case as on more than one occasion his descriptions offer very diverging views (we will return to this aspect in a little while). Before we venture into offering our own interpretation of the ‘global village’, let us try to sketch the big lines of McLuhan’s reasoning, returning one last time thus to the binary opposi-tion of phonē and graphē, speech and writing.

According to McLuhan, Western culture, like all other cultures on the globe, started out as a purely oral one. Even with the invention of writing, at first figurative or pictographic writing (like hieroglyphic or ideogrammic writing) and later with the invention of the alphabet and phonetic writing (which occurred somewhere in the fifth century b.c. and is, according to McLuhan, the first fundamental shift and revolution in his scheme of triple transformative revolutions), did the West remain

20 This second revolution, which is mainly due to the invention of ‘print’ (with all its implications—identical reproduction, mechanization, etc.)—‘a delirium…. A transfor-mation and metamorphosing drug that has the power of imposing its assumptions upon every lever of consciousness’ (McLuhan 1962, 259–260)—is the main thematic of his The Gutenberg Galaxy.

21 The third revolution is the ‘electrical revolution’—we are living in a ‘new electric struc-turing and configuring of life’ (McLuhan 1994, 26)—and is the topic of Understanding Media.


fundamentally an oral culture. For example, the greatest written works of antiquity (Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey) were ‘mere transcription’ of oral traditions. Furthermore, the great teachers of antiquity (Socrates, Jesus, …) did, purposely, not leave anything written behind. And the greatest art of antiquity was rhetoric. The predominance of orality did thus not collapse with the invention of the alphabet and phonetic writing but did last way into the Middle Ages (The Gutenberg Galaxy is dedi-cated to the demonstration of this fact). Even the late Middle Ages, as McLuhan demonstrates very convincingly, were still characterized by the dominion of orality. Manuscript culture was still very much an oral culture. Reading for medieval monks was to ‘carrell or reading-singing’ (McLuhan 1962, 92) and, as Istuan Hajnal noted: ‘the art of writing was held in great esteem because they saw in it the proof of a solid oral tra-dition’ (reported in McLuhan 1962, 94). Scholasticism too, the method and modality of ‘reasoning’ typical of the medieval and mainly universi-ty-bound schoolmen, was, according to McLuhan, profoundly related to oral traditions (cf. McLuhan 1962, 102–104). Even in the fifteenth cen-tury, well after Guthenberg brought the pre-existing components needed to create the printing press together,22 did orality remain on its throne. As McLuhan claims: ‘writing, reading, and oratory remained inseparable until well after printing’ (McLuhan 1962, 90). It was only in the six-teenth century that the full understanding (the full functionality) of the printing press came into being, and we would enter into the mechanical age.

Now according to McLuhan, this predominance of orality brought a whole series of characteristics with it for Western culture. One in particu-lar is of importance to us, and it regards a specific ‘spatial’ characteristic. With orality, as McLuhan intriguingly claims, comes tribality. More spe-cifically, with orality comes ‘locality’. And even if the invention of the alphabet and phonetic writing lessened the tribal/local characteristic, they remained predominant (the difference between the nomad and the

22 In the end, it seems that Gutenberg’s contribution to his own invention (huge as this was) was rather modest. All the components needed to create the printing press were already known, he (simply) brought them together in the fifteenth century. McLuhan goes even so far and ponders upon the question what Gutenberg actually invented: ‘Usher has made it plain that the cluster of events and technologies that got together in the mind and age of Gutenberg is quite opaque. Nobody is today prepared to say even what it was the Gutenberg invented’ (McLuhan 1962, 154).


citizen of antiquity cannot be downplayed, but the main characteristics of their space experience remain very similar). Space was anything but continuous, uniform, or homogeneous. If anything, it even was the exact opposite, namely fragmented, pluriform, discontinuous with each ‘thing’ making its own space. Every space on its own consisted of something unique, and space considered in its most general way consisted of an interplay between spaces. The proper place or space of things was charac-terized by a certain dignity (even if void and bereft of all material props). The ‘local’ or tribal world is the magical (even mythical) and implicit (compressing) world of orality. Only with the ‘invention’ of the map (an invention contemporary to prints coming to full operativity) would space become uniform, continuous, and would spaces connect with one another in a continuous way, similar to the printing press providing for the continuous production of uniform products. The ancient world of the city-states and even Rome (with the sole capital and the manifold of satellite conquered cities) was oral, but also the feudal world of the Middle Ages was an oral,23 spaciously pluriform and discontinuous world.

Now together with the switch (revolution) from the predominance of orality to the one of writing and printing—the switch from the ear to the eye, as McLuhan describes it on innumerable occasions (cf. McLuhan 1994, 81–88)—comes a switch from the spatial predominance of local-ity to the predominance of globality. The mechanical era (the era that came into being with this switch and that finds in the printing press24 its paradigm: ‘with the Gutenberg technology we move into the age of the take-off of the machine’ (McLuhan 1962, 155)) brought with it a funda-mental expansion of the world. Tribalism and ‘locality’ had seen its last days as ‘print causes nationalism and not tribalism’ (McLuhan 1962, 50). The world expanded under the power and pressure of the ‘mass pro-duction of the uniform and repeatable type that the fission of the senses occurred, and the visual dimension broke away from the other senses’ (McLuhan 1962, 54). The eye, fundamental for the visual world of writ-ing (starting with the letter and soon enough followed by the number) dethroned the oral world of the ear, and its attention to homogenization

23 ‘The feudal system was based on oral culture and self-contained system of cen-tres-without-margins, …’ (McLuhan 1962, 162).

24 ‘Printed books, themselves the first uniform, repeatable, and mass-produced items in the world, provided endless paradigms of uniform commodity culture for sixteenth and succeeding centuries’ (McLuhan 1962, 163).


and uniformity opened up space. ‘[I]t is necessary to keep in mind’, as McLuhan writes, ‘that print created gigantism not only for the author and the vernaculars, but for markets. And the sudden expansion of enlarged markets and commerce under the inspiration of the first form of mass production, seemed to be a visible extension of all the latent venalities of mankind’ (McLuhan 1962, 196–197). Basically, ‘[D]uring the mechanical ages we had extended our bodies in space’ (McLuhan 1994, 3), the world had become a globe.

*

We are aware of the many, and often diverging, interpretations of the (at times very vague, liquid—even slippery—or plastic) concept of ‘globaliza-tion’.25 And although the study of globalization has finally reached a phase of some scholarly agreement (cf. Steger 2004, 1), the concept of globalization still is ‘a fad word fast turning into a shibboleth, a magic incantation, a pass-key meant to unlock the gates to all present and future mysteries’ (Bauman 1998, 1). The concept ofglobalization has been used, since its earliest appear-ance in the ‘60 s ‘to describe a process, a condition, a system, a force, and an age. Given that these competing labels have very different meanings, their indiscriminate usage is often obscure and invite confusion’ (Steger 2003, 7). And almost all attempts to define it—even the very broad definitions proposed to avoid running into obscurity and confusion as, for example, the one pro-posed by Manfred B. Steger: ‘the term globalization should be used to refer to a set of social processes that are thought to transform our present social condition into one of globality’ (Steger 2003, 8)—have a very hard time in finding any sort of generalized agreement.

In our reference to the word globalization—which does not consider glo-balization as a mere myth (cf. Bourdieu 1998, 34) or solely as a ‘masking effect’ (Rykwert 2002, 8)—we intend to take a step back from the discussions of the field of globalization studies and return to a very basic understanding of what is primarily at stake in the concept. In taking this step back, we are following Peter Sloterdijk who correctly reminds us to ‘recall the philosophi-cal origin of the globe motif’ (Sloterdijk 2013, 8). By starting at this very basic level we again become aware (an awareness that seems to have been

25 For some, it is a cultural ‘movement’, for others, a sociopolitical one, and for others still—like, for example, the former ‘guru’ turned into fierce enemy of globalization, Joseph E. Stiglitz—globalization is first and foremost an economic concept. For Stiglitz, globali-zation consists solely in ‘the removal of barriers of free trade and the closer integration of national economies’ (Stiglitz 2002, ix).


forgotten in the various jargon-filled debates) of the basic fact that at the basis of the derivative concept of globalization stands its chore relation to a variety of operations of distance (cf. Sloterdijk 2013, 8) which, obviously reminds of the spatial implications of globalization. In this chapter, and without intend-ing to ignore all the multidimensional aspects, the lateral connotations, and implications of the derived concept of globalization, we will thus work with this extremely basic-level (philosophically inspired) understanding of globali-zation as space-related. Our working definition of this phenomenon is then as follows: globalization is basically a reconfiguration of space which only on a second moment has implications on the spheres of communication, the eco-nomic and labor market, interpersonal and intra-personal relations, and, finally, even on the experience of time.

*Three centuries later (at the beginning of the twentieth century),

McLuhan sees the coming about of a third and, up until today, final ‘revolution’. It is the electrical revolution. And while electricity and electrification of all has led to a world ‘without walls’ (McLuhan 1994, 283)—‘[O]ur new electric technology that extends our senses and nerves in a global embrace…’ (McLuhan 1994, 80)—it has, at the same time, brought along a new emphasis on orality with all the spatial implications that this involves. The renewed emphasis on the auditory has made for it that once more our world (even though circumscribed into a single space that embraces the whole globe) is fragmented and divided. The electrical age has thus inaugurated a new epoch of tribali-zation. However, the accelerating effect of the new electrical age—which makes for the fragmentation and tribalization to occur in the modality of simultaneousness—has, as its side effect, that the detribalization effect, characteristic of the expansion of the mechanical age, remains present as well. Tribalization and detribalization, in the electrical age, thus occur simultaneously. ‘Our speed-up today is’, as McLuhan claims, ‘…an instant implosion and an interfusion of space and functions’ (McLuhan 1994, 92–93).

It is this contemporality of expansion which led to globalization (and detribalization), which was followed by a returning to the predomi-nance of orality (a shift from the visual to the auditory) which, in turn, brought along a renewed emphasis on ‘locality’ and tribalization, and which, because of the rendering simultaneous of the experiences of the tribalized fragmentation caused by the processes of acceleration, that has allowed McLuhan to coin the extremely accurate binomial of the ‘global


village’: ‘a single constricted space resonant with tribal drums’ (McLuhan 1962, 31).

*

What we have just written regarding the final electric ‘revolution’ and its implications on space might seem, to some, a partisan read-ing. On a number of occasions has McLuhan, in fact, claimed that the electrical age ‘replaces’ the mechanical age with all of the consequences that this brings along—‘implosion and contraction then replace mechanical explosion and expansion’ (McLuhan 1994, 103); ‘[I]t is rather the invasion of the mechanical world by the instantaneous char-acter of electricity’ (McLuhan 1994, 349)—. More than a ‘global vil-lage’ there is thus merely time(acceleration)-related simultaneousness on a planetary scale. This latter spatial reference has, however, very lit-tle meaning as space is terminated as a factor in social arrangements. In the electrical age, electrical media ‘abolishes the spatial dimension, rather than enlarge it’ (McLuhan 1994, 255). Or, as McLuhan even claims on one occasion, time and space are completely abolished (cf. McLuhan 1994, 152).26 All of this, in a certain sense, brings us back to the first question we asked in the beginning of this chapter. Was it possible to investigate the concept of space in modernity as time had supposed to resolve this issue for us? Also according to McLuhan, that answer would thus seem to find negative affirmation.

This, however, is only half of the story. For as much as McLuhan, in fact, seems to sustain this dissolving of the mechanical age in favor of the electrical age and its acceleration/simultaneousness, where space’s social importance has come to an end (an idea that is, however, not present in The Gutenberg Galaxy), a whole different story is told as well.27 This other parallel story regards the simultaneous presence of the mechanical and the electrical age. This story tells of a world where expansion and contracting are active in a contemporary way. It is

26 One could, in fact, wonder about acceleration’s capacity to destroy, much earlier than it would be able to destroy space, time itself. This idea is, for example, proposed by Bernard Stiegler when he thinks about industrial’s calendarity that is capable of destroy-ing time (cf. Stiegler 2009, 52). Bauman gives this time-space plot another twist when he writes that ‘[P]erhaps, having killed space as value, time has committed suicide?’ (Bauman 2000, 118–119).

27 We have already seen how acceleration, as understood by McLuhan, actually stood in service of the spatial dimension. It was, in fact, the process of acceleration that made the simultaneous experiences of the tribalized fragmentation in the new global village possible.


similar to the world described by Jacques Attàli: ‘[W]e live in a world that is simultaneously shrinking and expanding, growing closer and farther apart’ (Attàli 1992, 117). It is this simultaneous presence (and not the oppression of one spatiality over the other) which vows, still according to McLuhan for the particularly paradoxical nature of our times. Let us quickly see what he wrote at the beginning of Gutenberg and the end of Understanding Media (proposing, as such, the all-embracing general idea that combines these two volumes):

[W]e are today as far into the electric age as the Elizabethans had advanced into the typographical and mechanical age. We are experi-encing the same confusions and indecisions which they had felt when living simultaneously in two contrasted forms of society and experi-ence. (McLuhan 1962, 1—emphasis added)

[T]he mechanical techniques, with their limited powers, we have long used as weapons. The electric techniques cannot be used aggressively except to end all at once, like the turning off of a light. To live with both of these technologies at the same time is the peculiar drama of the twentieth century. (McLuhan 1994, 342—emphasis added)28

As can be seen, McLuhan himself seems to be stuck between two differ-ent visions: either a competitive vision of battling forces of expansion and implosion (with the latter in the phase of replacing the former), or a comprehensive vision where these opposing forces are both con-temporary and fully operative. The first vision, at times, seems to be the more accurate. But its accurateness is merely superficial, as this vision can’t explain its own ‘peculiar drama of the twentieth cen-tury’ (McLuhan 1994, 342).29 The latter theory seems more com-plex, but it also seems to propose the most accurate reading of the binomial ‘global village’. The strength of the concept of the ‘global vil-lage’ is, in fact, only present when what is at stake is the contemporary operativity of the expansive forces of globalization and the shrinking

28 Besides these general affirmations of the simultaneousness of the mechanical age and the electrical age, a manifold of examples can be brought forth (offered by McLuhan him-self) that speak against the accuracy of the story of the replacement of the effects of the mechanical age by those of the electrical one.

29 For the first version to even hint at accuracy, it would need another theory, namely the theory of the ‘Break boundary’ as it was theorized by Kenneth Boulding (Boulding 1963, 73) and re-proposed by McLuhan (cf. McLuhan 1994, 38), a copy of which we have also found in Rosa’s theory of ‘surpassing the threshold’ (see Sect. 3.1). McLuhan, however, never elaborated this theory.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78913-2_3


or compressing ‘localizing’ forces of tribalization—a contemporariness of opposing movements that is also present in the fortunate expression coined by Bauman ‘glocalization’ (Bauman and Bordoni 2014, 125)—. We thus remain convinced of the possibility and strength of our chosen reading of McLuhan and the consequential interpretation of the ‘global village’.

*

Up until now, we have thus discovered that we cannot skip our inves-tigation in the concept of space. Time not only has not ‘destroyed’ space, but space is no less fundamental for a culture or a society than time. We have also discovered, at least if our reading and interpretation of Marshall McLuhan’s binomial ‘global village’ is correct, that similarly to what we unveiled regarding the experience of time, a contemporary operativity of two opposing forces is also at work in the modern experience of space. The next step we need to take now is finding corroboration of this thesis elsewhere, maybe even find a philosophical ‘ground’ (if we dare to use a similarly burdensome word) for this double contemporary operativity of spatial oppositions. Let us turn for this to a discussion between Jean-Luc Nancy and Alain Badiou on the concept of the world.

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Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, with their interplay between ‘deter-ritorialization’ and ‘reterritorialization’, as they expounded in Anti-Oedipus (2013a) and A Thousand Plateaus (2013b), could have been thought of as offering a possible corroboration of the contemporary operativity of the spatial forces of expansion and compression. And although ‘deterritorialization’ and ‘reterritorialization’ are concepts that have a spatial undertone and can also effectively be applied to the cat-egory of space, they are, however, much more than that. Being much more than just spatial (or spatially applicable) concepts, they would have made us overshoot our target, especially considering the very basic spa-tial concept of globalization we have put forth at the beginning of this section. Furthermore, the sequential nature of the modalities of ‘deter-ritorialization’ and ‘reterritorialization’ makes for it that this conceptual model is not functional for what we are trying to render evident here. For it to properly function, one would need to try to conceptualize both modalities to operate contemporarily; a feature that is possible, but that does not find in this excursus its proper place of development.

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The ‘world’ as an ‘object’ of thought has been on Jean-Luc Nancy’s radar for a very long time. From his ‘Changing of the World’ first pub-lished in 1990 in the collected volume Une Pensée finie—A Finite Thinking (2003)—over his 1993 The Sense of the World (1997), to the 2002 The Creation of the World or Globalization (2007), the world has been an almost constant presence in Nancy’s thought. Its presence is still felt in one of his latest books, the 2013 volume that transcribed his conversations with Pierre-Philip Jandin entitled La possibilité d’un monde—The Possibility of a World (2017)—and where the second section is dedicated to the topic of le monde, the world. Interesting as a gen-eral exposé on Nancy’s worldview might be, this is not the scope of this chapter. There is, however, one basic thought that was present from the very beginning that needs to be brought forth, namely that something is coming to an end. This something that started out as ‘culture’ (cf. Nancy 2003, 306) turned out to be the world: ‘[T]here is no longer any world’ (Nancy 1997, 4), ‘[T]he world has lost its capacity to “form a world”’ (Nancy 2007, 34).

Obliged to interpret this ‘end of the world’ in too few of words, we need to start by acknowledging that Nancy’s end of the world is not to be considered as some sort of apocalyptic statement or a prophecy (cf. Nancy 1997, 4). The end of the world is not an apocalyptic finishing of the world but it has a name and is a ‘type’ of world as well. It is the ‘immonde’ (Nancy 1997, 9; 2007, 34), which is not just the vile or the unclean (to which the French word hints at), but is simply the ‘un-world’. And this ‘un-world’, quickly skipping some steps in Nancy’s reasoning over the years, is nothing else but ‘globalization’ understood as:

the phenomenon that understands itself or seeks to be understood as a unification or as a common assumption of the totality of the parts of the world in a general network of communication, commercial exchange, juridical or political reference points, and finally of practices, forms, and procedures of all kinds linked to many aspects of ordinary existence. (Nancy 2007, 27)

‘Globalization’ does, at first sight, not seem necessarily associable with the highly negative undertone of the ‘immonde’. For the phenome-non of unification (or the assumption of the totality of parts) to become ‘immonde’, we need to consider its modality of ‘application’. Nancy, in fact, distinguishes between two possible modalities of application. The


first he calls ‘globalization’ and the second (which consists of an untrans-latable French word) ‘mondialisation’.30 Both terms thus basically sig-nify the same. What makes them different is the modality according to which they ‘apply’ themselves to the world. Now, globalization stands for ‘an integrated totality’, for the ‘enclosure in the undifferentiated sphere of a unitotality’ (Nancy 2007, 28), whereas mondialisation stands for an ‘expanding process throughout the expanse of the world of human beings, cultures, and nations’ (Nancy 2007, 28). And even though Nancy lets the door somewhat open in his Prefatory Note to the original French edi-tion of the book regarding a possible collaboration between globalization and mundialization (which can also be ‘translated’ as ‘world-forming’)— the conjunction present in the title of the book we are taking in consider-ation here (The Creation of the World or Globalization) can be considered in either a disjunctive, substitutive, or even conjunctive sense (cf. Nancy 2007, 29)—it soon turns out to be an either/or situation. ‘Globalization’ needs to be seen ‘as the suppression of all world-forming (mondialisation) of the world’ (Nancy 2007, 50).

Although it might seem from this that Nancy is a prophet of doom, as Christina M. Smerick correctly remarks, if anything ‘Nancy fulfills the other prophetic function: that of gesturing toward what must be thought in order to provide a way ‘out’—a way out that is ever more in this world’ (Smerick 2012, 38). In fact, obfuscated as our minds are by globalization’s reasons, we are no longer able to grasp the full meaning of the end of the world. As Nancy explains, we mistakenly understand the end of the world as being ‘sensuous’, that is, as meaning the lack of meaning (for this reason, the title of the 1993/1997 volume is in fact The Sense of the World). However, as Nancy demonstrates, sense (mean-ing) and world are to be considered as ‘synonyms’, the ‘world is not merely the correlative of sense, it is structured as sense, and reciprocally, sense is structured as world’ (Nancy 1997, 8).31 The end of the world is thus some sort of mystification by means of globalization that intends to let us forget that the world and (its) sense arise together, simultaneously in the act of world-forming.

30 It should be noted here, that the title of Nancy’s volume translated as The Creation of the World or Globalization was not La Création du monde ou la globalisation but La Création du monde ou la mondialisation.

31 The expression ‘the sense of the world’ is, according to Nancy, clearly a tautological one (cf. Nancy 1997, 8).


Now, if philosophy has any task at all in this context, it is, accord-ing to Nancy, exactly to allow the opening up of the world by disclos-ing that ‘the world is the origin, and that the worldliness of the world, qua absolute existential condition, exhausts its finite sense—exhausts it, that is, opens it infinitely’ (Nancy 1997, 160). Philosophy needs to argue the case that ‘“[T]he world is the origin” means that the origin is there where it opens itself ’ (Nancy 1997, 160). This implies that any possible sense or meaning will only come ‘into being’ with the creation of the world itself. The task at hand for philosophy, according to Nancy, that is, the gesture that needs to be taken toward the future, consists thus in the active struggle to create the world (ex nihilo), which, in turn, means ‘reopening each possible struggle for a world, that is, for what must form the contrary of a global injustice against the background of general equivalence’ (Nancy 2007, 54).

Alain Badiou, turning to the antagonist in this philosophical discus-sion, fraternally disagrees with Nancy’s worldview (cf. Badiou 2002). Before we, however, turn to Badiou’s argumentation, it needs to be said that also for him, the ‘world’ as an ‘object’ of thought is not of a recent date. Just to give a single example that is already eloquent enough, the ‘sequel’ to his Being and Event (2005) bears the revealing title of Logics of Worlds: Being and Event, 2 (2009). Furthermore, and in a way a lot similar to Nancy’s gesture (although Badiou might not be particularly pleased about this), also Badiou attempts to envisage a way out of a state of worldly affairs that can hardly be considered rosy. Our text of refer-ence will, however, not be Logics of Worlds but an un-published lecture, The Caesura of Nihilism (2002), where Badiou tackles Nancy and pro-poses the intriguing idea of there not being any world.

The main issue of interest for this chapter is the difference between Badiou’s and Nancy’s understanding of the meaning of the ‘world’. According to Badiou, for Nancy the world ‘is a category of existence’, it (the world) is a ‘place of the event of existence’, that is, the world is ‘a generic category of the sense of Being’ (Badiou 2002). As we have been able to see previously, this connection between sense and existence or Being is, in fact, exactly how Nancy considers the world. Badiou’s inter-pretation of Nancy’s worldview is thus a correct one. The world as the category of meaning of Being is, however, not how Badiou understands the world. The world for Badiou, as he painstakingly described in his Logics of Worlds and reassumes in The Caesura of Nihilism, is that which comes into being only when there ‘is a certain logic of being-there …


of contingency’ (Badiou 2002). Badiou’s (possibility of the) world does not revolve around the categories of meaning and Being but around the categories of contingency and appearance, that is, visibility. The world for Badiou ‘means … nothing else than the logic of the situation which envelopes all visible living beings’ (Badiou 2002).

Now according to Badiou, our current world—which he defines as an intervallic world, a world ‘that is not any world’ (Badiou 2002), or said differently still, a ‘worldless’ world, and us, human beings who dwell in this intervallic world are ‘passers’, we are merely passing through—‘deprives the vast majority of human beings of their visibility’ (Badiou 2002), and it does so by denying them to have a name: ‘[T]he only name available is “excluded”, which is the name of he who does not have a name. The great majority of humanity counts today for nothing’ (Badiou 2002). This worldless or intervallic world (the first a spatial qualification and the second a temporal one) is caused, according to Badiou, by Capital, or by the ‘market’: ‘market…: it is the worldly name of what is not a world’ (Badiou 2002). And if philosophy has any legitimate task left, then it is not, to be found, in the creation of the world that will, through its opening up, bring with it its meaning as well, but is ‘to help find new names that will bring into existence the unknown world that is only waiting for us…’ (Badiou 2002).

If we were to venture into the arduous task of drawing a conclusion from this discussion between Badiou and Nancy, it would be to sideline the different argumentations of their proposed ways out of the current state of worldly affairs. Badiou obviously insists on proposing a differ-ent vision than Nancy, and it is rather clear to see that they are, in fact, not exactly the same (the ontological difference between Badiou’s under-standing and Nancy’s cannot be underestimated). However, the differ-ence between the two theories proposed seems (to us, at least) not the most interesting aspect of this ‘discussion’. The most interesting aspect of this discussion lies not in the ‘visions’ of the world(s) they argue for but in the world(s) they are battling, that is, the globalized world of Nancy and the intervallic world which is ‘world-less’ (as it has been often described) of Badiou. These two worlds seem to share some surprising characteristics that are worth holding still with for a moment and that bring us back to what was at stake in the binomial coined by Marshall McLuhan of ‘global village’.

In fact, the intervallic world of Badiou and Nancy’s globalized world are first of all intrinsically related to space. As we already indicated


regarding Nancy’s conceptualization of the end of the world, this end did not result from some lack of meaning (sense) as ‘the sense of the world is a tautological expression’ (Nancy 1997, 8). The world and (its) sense arise together in a simultaneous act of mondialisation. But if the end of the world is not about meaning (sense), then what is it about? Very simple; it is about space and place. In fact, ‘[A] world is precisely that in which there is room for everyone: but a genuine place, one in which things can genuinely take place (in this world). Otherwise, this is not a “world”: it is a “globe” or a “glome”, …’ (Nancy 2007, 42—emphasis added). Sense is not ‘the primary theme of all existence’, but the first theme of the world is ‘first of all, the spacing/spaced taking-place-there’ (Nancy 1997, 158). The world comes into being as its proper extension, with which it ‘co-existingly’ comes into being (and through which it—starts to make—sense). The same reasoning holds for globalization, except that it is followed through negatively.

As for Badiou’s world-less intervallic world, also this world is to be seen as the negative expression of the positive logics of (the) world(s). As such also the world-less intervallic world is governed by a ‘topo-logy of the visible’ (Badiou 2002—emphasis added)—and we all know the meaning of the Greek word topos (τόπος), namely place. What is thus at stake in the intervallic world is also a logic of place, but, more specifically, a logic of absence of giving—in the understanding of a gift (always also venomous—in a similar way as the pharmakon)—not just the necessary place, but simply any place at all.

This first take on the worlds both philosophers are contesting could make us believe that what is at stake in Nancy’s globalization or Badiou’s intervallic un-world is a mere negative operation. This would, however, be incorrect. If we are to succeed in considering the full reach of both arguments, we have to overcome the limiting view that ‘the planet is subject to solely negative globalization’ which consists of and enforces ‘a perverted openness of societies’ (Bauman 2007, 7—emphasis added). Overcoming this partial view is only feasible if we once more return to the very basic spatial understanding we proposed previously. That we have just discovered that both Nancy’s globalization and Badiou’s inter-vallic non-world are primarily to be understood spatially enables us to perform this operation.

We can then discover how besides the spatial contracting un-world-ing of Badiou and Nancy’s suppressive globalization stand, respectively, the ‘enveloping’ (expansive all-englobing) of the world by this intervallic


world-less world of Badiou, and the ‘encompassing’ of the world (glo-balizations unifying project) which brings along the ‘un-world-ing’ theorized by Nancy (2007, 34). Once more, we are thus confronted, in both instances, with a contemporary battle between opposing opera-tions in the experiences of space. The expansive all-encompassing world-globe is simultaneously (we would say co-original if we had not claimed in precedence not to take refuge to the idea of originality because of all the detrimental effects connected to it) invested by the forces of spatial un-world-ing, of spatially lessening the world itself. That it is exactly this contemporary operativity of opposing spatial forces that is at stake in both Nancy’s and Badious’s discourse can also be evinced by the fact that both Nancy and Badiou argue for a differentiation of space that proceeds along the lines of laterality. The spatially centering of both the opposite spatial movements (positive in its expansive understanding and negative in its, obvious, concentering and contractive operation) is being attempted to be cut through—de-centered—in Nancy’s mondialisation and Badiou’s attempt of creating a new world after the intervallic world. What Nancy’s and Badiou’s arguments propose, in spatial terms, is lateral movement, a lateral movement that attempts to stretch and brake/rup-ture the opening and closing suffocating circling embrace of moderni-ty’s spatial operating. The encompassing and enveloping homogenizing space cancels out that lateral space as it can only consider movements along the line of expansion and contraction.

To conclude, Nancy’s globalized immonde (un-world) and Badiou’s intervallic world-less world are thus both ‘global villages’, where the opposing spatial movements are contemporarily operative. We have thus found confirmation (even a philosophical ground) of our interpretation of McLuhan’s nature of modernity’s spatial experience. Not only does modernity’s temporal experience operate following the same modality as perennial crisis, but also modernity’s spatial experience does so. As we near the end of this volume, the pieces of the puzzle seem to finally fall into their place.

*

It is quite interesting that Badiou defines this paradoxical experience of space as ‘intervallic’—‘[W]e are the experiments of the interval. We are between two worlds, one which is falling little by little into oblivion, while the other is only fragmentary’ (Badiou 2002)—. The intervallic period, especially in its spatial and psychoanalytic legacy attributed to it by Badiou (the first part


of The Caesura of Nihilism consists of another discussion with Nancy on the Lacanian concept of jouissance [enjoyment]), brings us close to what Keith Tester has called an ‘interregnum’—‘[G]lobalization has meant the collapse of the reality principle of the Modern Era and the present can be identified as a moment of interregnum’ (Tester 2009, 25)—. Tester is not the only one to have attributed this particular meaning to this concept. The first to have considered an interregnum as a period of time when old ways are no longer properly operative, while new and effective means are not yet available was Antonio Gramsci. In fact, in his Quaderni del carcere (Prison Notebooks), he cunningly notes that an interregnum is a period where ‘the old is dying and the new cannot be born; …’ and this causes for ‘a great variety of mor-bid symptoms [to] appear’ (Gramsci 1971, 276).32 But Gramsci has another name for the interregnum as well, a name that will allow us to return once more to one of the two central notions of this volume. The whole phrase of Gramsci’s notebook goes, in fact, as follows: ‘the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear’ (Gramsci 1971, 276—emphasis added). In a rollercoaster ride we thus go from world-less, over intervallic, globalization and finally interregnum to the concept that has been left hiding a while now, but that returns now with a vengeance, namely: crisis.

*

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The City is the place where the contemporary operativity of the two opposing forces of ‘spatialization’ comes to full expression. It is the city (every city, not just the megalopolis) that is the place where the contem-porary operativity of expansion and compression receives their complete articulation. And the city is the place where the balancing trick between these two forces is constantly played out.33 A confirmation of this can be found in a rather speculative theory proposed by former special advisor

32 Derrida refers to similar conditions when talking about birth. In ‘Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’ he writes: ‘I employ these words, I admit, with a glance toward the operations of childbearing—but also with a glance toward those who, in a society from which I do not exclude myself, turn their eyes away when faced by the as yet unnamable which is proclaiming itself and which can do so, as is necessary when-ever birth is in the offing, only under the species of the nonspecies, in the formless, mute, infant, and terrifying form of monstrosity’ (Derrida 2001, 370).

33 It should thus not surprise that the inaugurating battle of modernity, the French Revolution, was fought principally in the city of Paris. Waterloo was the last spasm of the old regime and this style of warfare disappeared with Napoleon’s defeat.


to French President François Mitterand: Jacques Attàli. In fact, Attàli has interestingly argued that ever since the thirteenth century, there have been, broadly speaking, eight societal forms—each organized around a specific technology—with at its center ‘a dominant city where the essen-tial financial, technical, cultural, and ideological (but not necessarily polit-ical) power is concentrated’ (Attàli 1992, 25). According to Attàli, these cities are, respectively, Bruges, Venice, Antwerp, Genoa, Amsterdam, London, Boston, and finally New York34 (cf. Attàli 1992, 27).35 The simultaneously expanding and contraction of the city—a simul-taneous ‘decentralization and recentralization’ (Soja 1989, 208–215) as Edward W. Soja so cunningly remarks—finds thus a geographical mir-roring in the expanding embrace of globalization that can only oper-ate through means of it finding in the contracted locality of the city its opposing power. Considering our society in its global meaning, the following affirmation of one of the greatest scholars of the city, Joseph Rykwert, begets a significantly new and provocative understanding: ‘we cannot tinker with our cities without making some adjustments to soci-ety as well—or vice versa. Perhaps it would be closer to the truth to say that a change to one must imply, presuppose, a change in the other’ (Rykwert 2002, 7).36 As can be seen, what is important is not just that there are important cities in the globalized world, but that without these cities no globalized world could have come into being, and without this globalized world, there would not have been these cities. Once more we have the same operation of simultaneous and contemporary functioning opposing powers.

34 The idea of New York being the ‘capital of the globe’ is shared by one of the most important scholars of the city, Joseph Rykwert (2002, 188). Edward W. Soja, another scholar of the modern city, is of the opinion that it is Los Angeles that holds the scepter of being the center of the world: ‘Los Angeles, in another paradoxical twist, has, more than any other place, become the paradigmatic window through which to see the last half of the twentieth century’ (Soja 1989, 221).

35 Obviously, the first dominant cities did not stand at the center of a global world. With every new societal form the embraced space underwent massive expansion. And although the cities themselves grew, its centers became ever more concentrated.

36 This view of mirroring reciprocity between the ‘global’ and the local is shared by Rykwert’s colleague Edward Soja. In his extremely interesting study on Los Angeles, he claims that ‘Los Angeles provides an exaggerated case of more general national trends’ (Soja 1989, 210) to which we could add, global trends.


The city, however, is not solely that place where in a sort of mise en abyme the contemporary operativity of the two opposing forces of ‘spa-tialization’ are coming into full expression. We can (and need to) dis-cover another important mirroring geography with the city as one of its main characters—and similar to Attàli, a quick look in the past (not to the thirteenth century but to the twentieth century) is required. As we have already argued elsewhere (Vanhoutte 2017), the city is not a recent ‘invention’. ‘Cities’, forms of nucleated congregational settlements, came into existence already 8000 years ago (Catal Hüyük, in modern day Turkey, e.g., or Jericho in today’s Palestine). However, the city as we know it today, that is, what would become the modern city, started to emerge in the eleventh and twelfth centuries because of a remarka-ble urban revolution to which we have already referred. Due to an inter-play of various technical and mechanical innovation, economic growth, increase in the population, political stability and the consequential longer periods of peace, and, finally, greater craftsmanship and farming tech-niques, did these two centuries see the rise and consolidation of the city as we still know it. However, almost simultaneous to this ‘birth’ of the (modern) city there was another ‘birth’ of a geographical area (as if it consists of the identical twin of the city). Or better, of two other geo-graphical areas. These areas, however, were in the hereafter and they regard the areas of, on the one hand, Purgatory and, as some might already have expected, Limbo.

This parallel emergence, in such a surprisingly short period of time, of Limbo (and Purgatory) and the city is not a coincidence. The mirror-ing of the antithetical Heaven and Hell in the earthly monastic and the rural dispersive living needed a serious update with the emergence of the new type of congregational communal living that was the (becoming) city. And similarly as the city consisted in a new third and intermediate place and its inhabitants, the citizens, formed an equally newborn third class, so did both Limbo and Purgatory constitute intermediate or mid-dle states. The city, this new intermediate place with its new intermedi-ate men who dwelled in-between the countryside (where the noblemen and the farmers resided) and the non-world of the monasteries of the ordained, found its perfect twin-reflection in the realm(s) of the hereaf-ter, in-between paradisiacal bliss and eternal punishment of Hell.

In our previous take on this topic of the city and the realms of the hereafter, we concluded with the provocation that maybe Dante was


wrong, and Purgatory was not a hillside upwards to Heaven37 but a city. As such, we should not forget that in our globalized world, we, city-dwell-ers, are living in demonically governed territory. A couple of lines before this provocative conclusion we had, however, already indicated that this was more than probably not the most accurate reading of the city (although it still is a possible one). The most carefully pondered mirror geography of the city is, in fact, Limbo (cf. Vanhoutte 2017, 141).38 The (walled) city (of Limbo) is not a place of physical punishment that has as its only way out Heaven, but the place of the ‘lack of lack traversing the structure’ (Deleuze and Guattari 2013a, 350) of the (capitalist) Badiou-an style of the intervallic (un-)world. This structure of the double lack, which we disclosed with Saint Thomas as being the full nature of Limbo, is, in fact, also the very nature of the city of the globalized world, being, as it is, the playing field of the two opposing forces of ‘spatialization’ we dis-covered earlier. The city is in fact that center of the globalized world-less world where those without names who are enclosed solely because of original sin (their being merely beings before they get a name) are actually joyful not because of their absence of awareness of their lack of (having a) name, but because of their absence of the mere understanding of this pri-vation of lacking a/their name.

For as much as the city is the cipher of Limbo, it is, however, also to be considered as the only place to start from in the event we take it upon us to finally decide that we are not going to await a new descent of Christ to save us and act (an action which in this occasion is identical with the deciding itself, that is, the taking of the decision). The city, in fact, is not solely that particular place where the two opposing forces of ‘spatialization’ in a double way (double mirroring—firstly between the global encompassing and local contracting spatial operations and, sec-ondly, between the hereafter and the here-now) come into full expres-sion, but it is also that place where the potentiality of the overcoming

37 Purgatory has, in fact, only one direction and conclusion, namely Heaven.38 For as much as Purgatory could be considered as the correct mirroring image of the

city, what is at stake is a similar operation as the one we already discovered as described by Milton in his Paradise Lost. Just like those Milton takes pride in (justly) ridiculing as being headed for Heaven (in their hopes and wishes at least) but who were coast (and cast) away by means of a violent cross-wind into the Paradise of Fools, so also the citizens (the members of the basically economical un-world) mainly consist of those who pray and hope for Purgatory but get carried away by a stern cross-wind (caused mainly by climate-change induced radical weather) straight into the still existing Paradise of Fools. A Paradise of Fools that was, as we can recall, named Limbo.


of this contemporary operativity of the two opposing spatial forces of expansion and compression (globalization and localization) will need to find its purely immanent origin. Already Henri Lefebvre, one of the pioneers of the study of the city understood the ‘revolutionary’ charac-ter of the city. The city was not just a place of ‘generalized misery’,39 as he wrote in his groundbreaking essay ‘The Right to the City’ (Lefebvre 1996, 147–159), but also the place to ‘elude … and break free from’ this misery40 (Lefebvre 1996, 159).41 And, more important still—and we will also come back to these particularly important aspects in our Extraduction—Lefebvre already realized the necessity of the city to become an ‘empty’ or a non-space (cf. Lefebvre 1996, 169), and for this ‘revolution’ to be initiated by small groups or fractions of classes of peo-ple (cf. Lefebvre 1996, 154).

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5.3 Limbo as PerenniaL crisis

In his ‘Philosophy for Laymen’, the second essay of the collection of Unpopular Essays (1950), Bertrand Russell makes the following intriguing statement:

[B]ut so long as men are not trained to withhold judgment in the absence of evidence, they will be led astray by cocksure prophets, and it is likely that their leaders will be either ignorant fanatics or dishonest charlatans. To endure uncertainty is difficult, but so are most of the other virtues. For the learning of every virtue there is an appropriate discipline, and for the learning of suspended judgment the best discipline is philosophy. (Russell 1950, 27)

39 To phrase it different with Zygmunt Bauman, cities are ‘swiftly turning from shelters against danger into danger’s principal source’ (Bauman 2007, 72).

40 Lefebvre, interestingly, describes this paradoxical state of the city—as being a locus of Hell and of culture—as part of the city’s double legacy, respectively, the city’s Jewish leg-acy and the city’s Greek legacy (cf. Lefebvre 1996, 205–206). According to Lefebvre, this double and paradoxical legacy still has reverberations on the modern city as we still ‘haven’t resolved the contradiction between these two traditions’ (Lefebvre 1996, 206). One could judge this double paradoxical Jewish–Greek legacy of the city as a ‘mythological’ transla-tion (and further confirmation) of the contemporary operativity of the spatial opposite’s we have been attempting to establish throughout this chapter.

41 The conviction of the city being the (only) place to start the overcoming of our current socio-politico-economic impasse has been recently re-proposed by David Harvey (2012).


This statement, that is more than just a distant reminder of the Cartesian doubt is, according to Marshall McLuhan (and this has been somewhat parrot-like repeated by other scholars of the media), ‘the great discovery of the twentieth century’ (McLuhan 1994, 62). Even if Russell might have had a very good point in reminding of the fundamental vir-tue of doubt, suspending judgment, this great discovery of the twenti-eth century does have another side to it as well. To already minimally discover this other and much darker side, it suffices to remind ourselves quickly of how the two preceding sections ended in combination with another reminder, namely the linguistic derivation of the concept of ‘judgment’. The answer to both reminders is: crisis.

Russell is, obviously, being a little bit mistreated here. He obviously merely states that people should learn to wait to judge before they’ve had the chance to acquire/study the necessary evidence to pass appropri-ate judgment.42 However, and for as much as it goes far beyond Russell’s intentions, McLuhan might have been far more prophetic than he ever wanted to be when he claimed that it was the mere ‘suspension of judg-ment’ (as such!) that was the greatest discovery of the twentieth century. Haven’t we, in fact, been testimony, in the past two sections, to a stub-born and continuous application of this greatest theory (it suffices to think of Janet Roitman’s suspension of judgment regarding the existence of any ‘real’ crisis) that could also be somewhat provocatively translated43 as: perennial crisis?44

42 It is quite interesting how this idea of ‘suspended judgment’ reminds us of Simon Critchley’s ‘production of a crisis’ we briefly discussed in Sect. 4.2. Both ideas intend to stress the necessity of the critical attitude, but, most interestingly of all, they do this in a very contradictory way, the one from the other. If Russell wants to temporarily suspend judgment/crisis, Critchley intends to accelerate and even inaugurate crisis: to judge.

43 Although this translation might be considered somewhat provocative, it is perfectly defendable. As we already indicated, the concept of crisis derived from the Greek word krinō which means, among a series of other possibilities, to judge. That ‘suspension’ has been substituted by the qualifier ‘perennial’ relates to the particular operation that is put in action by this qualifier as we discussed in Sect. 4.4 and will briefly summarize in a short while. This operation we defined as ‘logoration’ or exhaustion, as the excavation of the soil of the present, its postponement or procrastination, terms, these last, which in the end, can be considered (following the thesaurus) as synonymous with suspension.

44 It is necessary to remind ourselves of the desire of Janet Roitman, as we noted in Sect. 4.2, to suspend judgment about all the claims to crisis. Something which, as we can reaf-firm, is a means to uphold the state of perennial crisis.

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If the statement we just made is an accurate one (something which we are obviously convinced of), then it seems that we have finally reached the point where we can start connecting all the dots. However, before we proceed to do so, and start phrasing the conclusions to this work (there will be two), let us, first, quickly recapitulate what we discovered in the previous chapters. We will start with the concept of crisis and the implications the addition of the qualifier of ‘perennial’ had on it, and then confront this with what we have unveiled in the preceding two sections.

While studying the simple concept of crisis we discovered, first of all, how a crisis had a double internal implication and played itself out on two different forms of time. Regarding its double internal implica-tion, we discovered that a crisis implied, firstly (the decision/judgment between), strict and irrevocable alternatives and, secondly, a strict spati-otemporal dimension. Regarding crisis’ playing itself out on two differ-ent forms of time, we discovered how, on the one hand, the concept of crisis refers to what we call normal ‘chronological’ or ‘clock time’ (the artificially created repetitive rhythm translated from natural time), and, on the other hand, that it also had repercussions on what one can call ‘historical time’ (the form of time that stands separated from the natural time and can be affected by human action and purposiveness). A crisis, as we deduced from this, is thus an event that occurs in a chronological present and that, as an event, creates an element of historical time. Crisis, understood as such, is a spatial instant (an event [recordable] in ‘histor-ical time’) that occurs in the modality of the present of chronological time where ‘things’ take a decisive turn (in which a decisive turn is being decided) be it liberating or disastrous. Crisis’ time frame, if we dissect crisis now into its two main characteristics of time and space, consists of a mere moment or instant that because of it being constituted out of ‘thick’ or ‘heavy’ time implodes or contracts. Crisis’ spatial-ness, on the contrary, consists of pure expansion similar to imperialistic contagion and expresses itself in the attempt to extend itself into other spaces. A crisis, as can be concluded from this, is this event that unfolds itself at the inter-stices of chronological and historical time and is internally composed of the opposing qualities of (temporal) contraction and (spatial) expansion. Crisis is, as we claimed, the operativity of the paradox.

The addition of the qualifier of ‘perennial’ to crisis did not leave crisis’ paradoxical operativity untouched. We, in fact, discovered how a crisis that had become a perennial one is no longer internally constructed by


the opposing qualities of a time-related contraction and a space-related expansion, but unfolds itself now as an internally double paradoxical sit-uation. Crisis’s time contraction is now accompanied—it is important to understand that time’s contraction is not opposed, but accompanied—by it becoming endless. Crisis’ time contraction is thus now being indefi-nitely extended. Similarly, also crisis’ spatial (imperialistic) expansiveness is touched by the addition of perennial-ness. Crisis’ spatial expansion is now accompanied (again, it is accompanied, not opposed) by its implo-sion. Both crisis’ timeliness and spatiality are thus characterized by a contemporary contraction and expansion. The original paradoxical operativity out of which the crisis consisted (a paradoxical operativity that remained functional because of its unfolding on the two different planes of spatiality and temporality) has now become internally doubly paradoxical which undermines the paradoxical operativity of the ‘simple’ crisis. This undermining of the paradoxical operativity of the crisis does, however, not render the crisis inoperative. No. It exhausts it; it wears the basic understanding and operativity of the crisis out. Crisis’ limited time-space, that instantaneous and spatial moment thick with and of the judging decision, in which things take a decisive turn (in which a decisive turn is being decided), be it liberating or disastrous, is, by the mere qual-itative addition of ‘perennial’, being ‘logorated’.

Under the apogee of the knowledge that modernity can be under-stood as that period when time and space are ‘ready to be theorized as distinct and mutually independent categories of strategy and action’ (Bauman 2000, 8) we thus embarked upon our research of moder-nity’s time experience. While our investigation into modernity’s time (Sect. 5.1) started out by making us incline to think that (time) accel-eration consisted of the main (and, at times, even only) operative force (this was the provocative thesis proposed by Hartmut Rosa, whose Social Acceleration we studied profoundly), it soon turned out that this pre-dominance was an ideological imposition that attempted to hide the contemporary functioning of acceleration’s opposite force, namely deceleration (rigidification or crystallization). We are, in fact, living in a topsy turvy time where acceleration and rigidification are contemporar-ily operative and operating in full force. However, and contrary to what one could have expected (two negatives cancel each other out), this contemporary operativity of these two opposing time-forces did not produce a neutral time-experience. What is at stake, and is difficult to


phrase considering its utter paradoxical state, is thinking acceleration and rigidification (speed and inertia) at the same time. If we were to affirm something ‘positive’ about it and not circle around it as if it were in the grip of negative theology, we can say that the contemporary operativity of acceleration and deceleration/rigidification renders ordinary histori-cal time inoperable. It regards a wearing out of (historical) time. This comports that time itself is exhausted—not that as, for example, Rosa claimed, rigidification comports a sense of exhaustion; there is no feeling of exhaustion related to rigidification, let alone to acceleration; and what is mostly felt by the citizen (especially the citizen who resides in this par-adoxical time-experience) is simple (albeit very superficial) happiness—the exhaustion present is the exhaustion of time. Or to say it starting from the notion of ‘extended present’ as coined by Nowotny, the con-temporary operativity of acceleration and deceleration/rigidification does consist of a present, but not of an extended present, rather, of an eroding present. The present is not getting larger or bigger because it gobbles or guzzles down the future, but is on the contrary getting smaller and smaller. The soil of the present is being eaten away, scavenged,…quicker and quicker. The present, in the understanding that is of our concern, is becoming less and less present. And this experience is exactly what we have called the experience of the exhausting and eroding present, the experience of ‘logoration’. The examples we offered—the concrete polit-ical, scientific, and financial ones, but also the more literary ones—all backed up this reading of the contemporary operativity of acceleration and deceleration.

We discovered an almost identical operation was at work in the spa-tial experience of modernity. Also with respect to the experience of space were we able to unveil how, under the surface of the ideological apparent predominance of one of the two spatial binary oppositional elements of spatial movements (expansion), a contemporary operativ-ity of both expanding or ‘globalizing’ and contractive or ‘localizing’ forces were actually at work. We found in Marshall McLuhan’s bino-mial of the ‘global village’ a well-functioning paradigm. Our modern spatial world, as we deduced from this, is characterized by a simultane-ous expanding and shrinking, where everything gets closer while it also grows apart. The global village is, and similar to time’s lack in produc-ing a neutral time-experience due to the contemporary operativity of the two opposing time-forces of acceleration and deceleration, unable to


produce a neutral space-experience. And this impossibility is caused by its own submission to the contemporary operativity of its own two spa-tial forces of expansion and implosion. It is this experience that, accord-ing to McLuhan, causes confusion and, interestingly enough, indecision (cf. suspension of judication). Once more we are thus confronted by the exhausting experience of ‘logoration’. And whereas it was the soil of the present that was being eaten away in modernity’s time-experience, we are now confronted with the soil (one’s being given a space and a place) of the present being eroded and scavenged.

The time has now come to phrase our first conclusion, and this first conclusion sounds as follows: We are living in an epoch, that is to be defined by the binomial of ‘perennial crisis’. That we can say to be living in perennial crisis is not because, as has been claimed (by, e.g., Hartmut Rosa), certain forces in the fundamental and basic experiences of time and space of modernity have passed a certain threshold and are now imploding. We can proclaim to be living in the modern epoch character-ized by perennial crisis because of the fact that modernity’s ideological forces (which consisted in the continuous giving of precedence to one of the oppositions of the possible binary experience of time and space—respectively, acceleration over deceleration and expansion over implo-sion) are debilitating. This abating of the ideological forces of modernity has allowed the interplay of modernity’s opposing forces in the experi-ence of time and space to come to the surface. Modernity is thus not the global world (a world of globalization) where all, or at least almost all, is effected by a continuous crescendo of speeding up, but the experience of the distinct and independent but contemporary operating free interplay of, on the one hand, time-acceleration and time-deceleration, and, on the other, spatial expansion and spatial implosion. The lifting of the ide-ological veil of modernity has, however, not just given leeway to moder-nity’s play of distinct and internally opposing forces of time and space to come to light, it has also allowed the realization that this free interplay of opposing forces leads to exhaustion and ‘logoration’.

This experience of exhaustion, this ‘logoration’, characterized as it is by the non-neutralizing double internal contradictoriness of moderni-ty’s time and space, causes, by means of its operation of procrastination and deferral, that is, of its capacity to turn duration and spatialization into lethargic experiences, confusion and indecision. This exhaustion typical of modernity’s nature of the perennial crisis is the cause of what


McLuhan described ‘the never-explained numbness … [of] the individ-ual and society’ (McLuhan 1994, 6)—a numbness that has now finally been explained. It, ‘logoration’, is what turns man into the somnolent or the sleepwalker as described by Jean-Luc Nancy:

[I]t is possible that the world today is that way: without sleeping or wak-ing. Sleeping standing up, waking while dozing. Sleepwalking and somno-lent. World deprived of rhythm, world that has deprived itself of rhythm, that has stripped away from itself the possibility of seeing its days and its nights correspond to the system of nature or history. (Nancy 2009, 38)

However, and for as much as this almost pestering condition of ‘logoration’ is the cause of this numb somnolent state of deferral (of the suspension of the judging crisis), it goes, nonetheless, hand in hand with some strange sense of (imposed?) well-being (if not even joy and hap-piness). To state it once more in the very accurately phrased words of Jean Baudrillard, what we encounter today is the experience of living in a world ‘where the contradictoriness of things ended, and we find our-selves, still alive, in a universe of non-contradiction, of enthusiasm, of ecstasy—of stupor in the face of a process which, for all its irreversibil-ity, is bereft of meaning’ (Baudrillard 1993, 33—emphasis added).45 In fact, and even though we negatively discussed the quantifying positivists in Sect. 4.1, their insistence on the ‘fact’ that we live in the most free, equal, peaceful, and w/healthy world (following some of Nornberg’s and Pinker’s ideas) is extremely paradigmatic of our times. And for as much as we think (and know) that they are completely wrong, in our world where contradictions have been surpassed, the knowledge that something is wrong is no longer of particular relevance and does no longer produce the capacity to undermine that which is wrong. Both

45 Herbert Marcuse seems to have shared this prophetic idea of Baudrillard when he claimed that, at least in merely political terms, the greatest peril did not come from a bad and lethargic society, but ‘from the affluent society,…, not from a poor society, not from a disintegrating society,…, but from a society which develops to a great extent the material and even cultural needs of man—a society which,…, delivers the goods to an ever larger part of the population’ (Marcuse 2015, 176). It is from this society that, Marcuse claims, we need to liberate ourselves from. In fact, it is only in this type of so-called ‘good’ and ‘happy’ society—which is modernity’s society—that one is subject to the operativity of ‘perennial crisis’.

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good and wrong, in fact, have simply been reduced to the most beloved of all things today: opinions (doxa). And as we all know, all opinions (even the most cu cu ones) are allowed to be had and have all the same ‘value’, something which renders every form of critique non-functional, leading even to its retreat (cf. Boltanski 2011, xi–xii). Isn’t it ironic to see how at the apex of the age of reason, of the Kantian emergence of man from his ‘self-incurred immaturity’, from ‘his inability to one’s own understanding without the guidance of another’ (Kant 2003, 54), that we have become testimony to the withdrawal of critique and criticism? In fact, it is under these conditions that one no longer has to apply the advice of Russell and suspend judgment (or the Kantian one we just mentioned), as one can now rest assured that judgment has indefinitely (perennially) been procrastinated. The examples we offered in Sect. 5.1, particularly Wolfgang Streeck’s vey provocative (but also very accurate) thesis on time being bought to actually avoid making any sort of deci-sion/change/judgment, demonstrated this all too detailed. Modernity’s finally liberated status of perennial crisis simply means, as we already claimed in precedence, the end of all ending.

But, and here we arrive at our second and final conclusion, aren’t these aspects of the perennial crisis, of modernity’s ‘liberated’ nature of perennial crisis, not also already what was at stake in Limbo (imma-nentized without any particular requirement of translation)? And couldn’t we then conclude from this that living in modernity’s state of perennial crisis is like living, in the rendered immanent (not translated!), space–time known as Limbo? Let us list some of the just mentioned fun-damental aspects of the perennial crisis and see if we can find them pres-ent in Limbo as well—the lesser or more superficial characteristics that are shared by modernity as perennial crisis and Limbo, like, the impor-tance of walls and fences that we encountered in the Visual Anteprima, or the carceral and even warlike aspect of both, will not be confronted here. They are, obviously, to be considered as further confirmation of our (admittedly rather provocative) thesis.

Firstly, if modernity’s state of perennial crisis can be considered as the operativity of a double non-neutralizing contradiction or paradox (and is this not exactly what is at stake in modernity’s contemporary but distinc-tive—non-neutralizing—operativity of time’s and space’s opposing forces of, respectively, acceleration and deceleration and expansion and implo-sion?), also Limbo consists of a double non-neutralizing contradiction.


In fact, isn’t Limbo as a state of being not where the utmost punishment (the lack of the beatific vision) is considered exactly not as such? And isn’t this non-punishing punishment not even resulting, at least if we are to believe one of the greatest minds of all history: Saint Thomas, in some state of joy?

However, and second aspect, the parallelism (or should we say iden-tification?) between modernity as perennial crisis and Limbo goes much deeper than both just being about a double non-neutralizing contra-diction or paradox. Limbo’s double non-neutralizing contradiction is, in fact, not just about the utmost punishment paradoxically not being a punishment but actually present in a realm filled with joy. Limbo, no longer as a state of being but as a time and a place, is also about being, as Anish Kapoor so accurately claimed, contemporarily static and dynamic. Limbo, just like modernity as perennial crisis, is about a contemporary operativity of spatial and temporal opposites (something which is ren-dered evident in a particularly paradigmatic way by the cancellation of Limbo, that which actually had never truly existed, by the International Theological Commission in 2007) that result in the experience of ‘logoration’, the eternal deferral of the present.

Thirdly, but we have already stated this third aspect at the end of the first, for as much as we have thus the presence of this double non-neutralizing paradox, we have immediately also the non-contradictoriness of contra-dictions that turns into happiness or joy. And just like modernity’s state of perennial crisis, the intervallic world’s characteristic of ecstasy and joy is caused by the structure of a double lack, so is Limbo’s joy caused, as we dis-covered with the Angelic Doctor, by the absence, the sheer lack, of the mere understanding of this privation of lacking.

Fourthly, just like we are now living in an epoch where the taking of decisions, the judging, the permission of crisis to follow through has been indefinitely (at least undecidedly) postponed into a future that, as future, has no relevance anymore as the present itself, as we discovered, is being procrastinated (this again is the result of ‘logoration’s’ operativ-ity that resulted from the addition of the qualifier of ‘perennial’ to the crisis), Limbo is also a place without any space for decision-making. In fact, of all the places in the hereafter, Limbo is the only one where one arrives without any active participation of the one who has arrived there (this was, as we discovered in Sect. 3.3.2, already voiced by Gregory Nazianzen). Heaven, Purgatory and even Hell, as we discussed in

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precedence with the help of C. S. Lewis, are inhabited by people who, by means of their actions, have actually chosen their otherworldly realm. Only Limbo is occupied by people (unbaptized infants or patriarchs and the just who lived before Christ was born) who are allocated there for reasons that exclude their actions and decision. And, interestingly enough, neither is Limbo, although it is (at least partially—the limbus patrum) one of the few places where one can take its absence—Purga-tory being the other one—, inhabited by people who actively participate in its abandoning (unlike in Purgatory where, for example, the petition-ary prayers of the community still alive in combination with one’s per-sonal active purging helps in redeeming one’s sins). Only Christ could have and actually did perform a similar stunt, by descending into Limbo and liberating the souls—at least of the Fathers.

Fifth, and final, Limbo, just like the perennial crisis that modernity truly is, is characterized by it being endless (the end of all ending). In fact, contrary to Heaven and Hell (Purgatory and [at least a section of] the limbus patrum are temporal realms) which can be qualified as eter-nal (the bliss in Heaven is eternal and the tortures in Hell are eternal as well), Limbo cannot. Limbo is not about lasting forever; it is about not having an end. In Limbo, ending has come to an end itself. It is, like modernity’s present, procrastinated indefinitely. Limbo simply is endless. As can be seen, and concluded from this fifth point and all of the preced-ing four ones, Limbo is not (to be understood as) a category of the here-after (Ratzinger was right, in the end, to cancel it as a category of the hereafter), but it consists of the nature of our present life down here on earth.

We, inhabitants of the modern world, are not living in a world char-acterized by acceleration and globalization. Although it might appear as such, like most appearances, that is a deceit. We are living in a very par-adoxical world, where forces that are supposed to oppose each other, in what should be a balancing trick, are composedly and assuagingly oper-ating besides one another in a non-neutralizing way. And just like our modern state of perennial crisis has all the Dantesque high-rising and noble castles with (albeit probably withering) green pastures and a lovely little (polluted) stream and the wailing and crying is hardly heard (just a sigh once in a while—but still coming from far too far away to worry us), it is as much a fool’s paradise as Limbo is.


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229

In The Coming Community (1993), Giorgio Agamben refers to a parable first told by Gershom Scholem, and later repeated by Walter Benjamin. The parable is about the coming Kingdom of the Messiah and it goes like this: ‘[A] rabbi, a real cabbalist, once said that in order to establish the reign of peace it is not necessary to destroy everything nor to begin a completely new world. It is sufficient to displace this cup or this bush or this stone just a little, and thus everything’ (Agamben 1993, 53). Benjamin’s version of the parable goes as follows: ‘[T]he Hassidim tell a story about the world to come that says that everything there will be, is just as it is here. Just as our room is now, so it will be in the world to come; where our baby sleeps now, there too it will sleep in the other world. And the cloths we wear in this world, those too we will wear there. Everything will be as it is now, just a little different’ (Agamben 1993, 53). As can be seen, Benjamin’s version is almost identical to Scholem’s, except for one thing. Scholem’s version of the parable doesn’t finish where we interrupted it—Benjamin’s version does end as we reported. There is still one more sentence that we need to add, and it is this sentence that actually makes the difference. After Scholem, in fact, claimed that it is sufficient to displace one small thing to change everything, he adds: ‘[B]ut this small displacement is so difficult to achieve and its measure is so difficult to find that, with regard to the world, humans are incapable of it and it is necessary that the Messiah come’ (Agamben 1993, 53).

CHAPTER 6

Extraduction: Ascent Out of Limbo




Agamben’s usage of this parable and ours are different. Agamben is interested in the ‘nature’ of the tiny displacement, in the coming about of an ‘otherwise’ even when everything is deemed to be definitely fin-ished. We, on the contrary, are interested in Scholem’s last sentence. To be more precise in the last part where we can read that ‘humans are inca-pable of it and it is necessary that the Messiah come’. This entire book has also been about incapability, and about the necessity of the Messiah to come, once more. That is, it has been about a deemed incapability and the thought that it is required for the Messiah to come. Is Limbo, as we saw (literally) in the Visual Anteprima, not that place where the conquer-ing Christ, standing atop of the remains of the destroyed gates and walls of the afterworld with a squashed and defeated devil stuck under the debris, liberated the Fathers from the non-punishment of the worst of all fates (the lack of the beatific vision)? And isn’t the perennial crisis, that qualified form of crisis that results in the ‘logoration’, the exhaustion, the procrastination of that thick spatial-moment when the decision/judgment is supposed to be taken, not equally a situation with no natu-ral, only a supernatural, outcome? Or isn’t it? True, for some the joyous state of their double lack—either with reference to the beatific vision or the sheer deciding of the krinō—will more than suffice, but it remains a carceral situation that will certainly not satisfy all. And, furthermore, it is, like the lack of the beatific vision, not the true destiny of the human being.

If we don’t have to await a second coming (which would also consist in the absolute end), what is it then that can be ‘done’? To tell the truth, we do not have the answer, nor do we believe, as we already stated in the Introduction, that it is the task of the philosopher to have the answers to the problems she/he might have unveiled. However, that answering as such is not on our plate, does not mean that some thought-experi-ments, or, even simply, some tales (and what is more appropriate than a tale to respond to a parable) cannot help us in the thinking process that precedes any form of answering and which is the furthest the phi-losopher should expose himself to. One of these tales can be found in a novel by the Portuguese Nobel prize laureate José Saramago. The novel in question is Seeing, and the tale goes as follows: on election day, a tre-mendous storm hits the capital of an unnamed, but democratic, country. Almost not a single voter has been seen casting a vote in the first hours of the day. However, with the storm fading, also the feared prospect of massive abstention starts to crumble. In fact, at exactly four o’clock in

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the afternoon, people start to turn up en masse at the voting booths. The relief felt for having avoided this possible political disaster is, however, short lived. In fact, as the outcome of the election becomes clear, it turns out that party votes only reach 25% while blank votes exceed 70%. After having overcome the initial shock, the government calls for new elec-tions. Under a promising clear sky, voting takes place in a much more regular way. When the results are finally known, the verdict is, however, more surprising than the week before; there are no abstentions and no spoiled votes, and the regular parties now divide only 17%, while the blank votes have reached 83%. The prime minister decides that the gov-ernment must leave the capital and a state of emergency is declared.

Even if the story told up until now is already of great interest and should make us think, also what follows is of the utmost interest. From the new capital, the president and ministers warn the former population that their ineluctable fate will be that of looting, rape, murder, terror, and the uprising of some kind of totalitarian regime. However, nothing of this kind happens. And although the people do suffer government- imposed strikes, bombings, terror-attacks (kgb/stasi type) espionage and finally murder, they are the result of the sinister plotting by the dethroned politicians attempting to make the inhabitants of the former capital surrender (demonstrating how the former democratic regime held all the seeds of the predicted looting and totalitarianism in its bosom). In the moments when the former capital is not held hostage by the political leadership, life in the capital actually continued. People paid their rent; food was present in the supermarkets, and even the less joyous require-ments that are to be maintained for the city’s basic survival, like the refuse collecting, was not interrupted.1 Without there being any remain-ing laws, without any governing bodies in place, without anyone with representative authority, and without anybody telling anybody else what to do, the city, as if finally renouncing de la Boétie style ‘voluntary servi-tude’, kept on functioning perfectly well.

A number of important conclusions can be drawn from this tale (and it is important to remember that it is a story and not some sort of programmatic outline of some revolution). The first one relates to

1 The refuse collectors, stirred up by the former interior minister, did refuse to take up their tasks the first days. On the third day they, however, returned to their duties with one small difference than before: ‘[T]hey were not in uniform, they were wearing their own clothes. It was the uniforms that were on strike, they said, not them’ (Saramago 2006, 93).


the nature of the action taken by the population of the (former) capital. The second is about the outcome of the undertakings of the population. The final conclusion we will focus on—more and other aspects of the tale could be mentioned, but these three are the most important for our purpose—regards the place of the action: the capital, that is, a city. We have already dedicated some attention to the city, and we will conclude by returning one final time to it.

Turning to the first aspect of Saramago’s tale that needs more atten-tion, namely the nature of the action undertaken by the population of the (former) capital, we need to start by stating that even though in Saramago’s novel the action described belongs to a very specific field (the political),2 the type of action described would not lose its operativ-ity when applied to different realms, as even when considered in a more general way. Having cleared this, it is essential to correctly understand the particular action described by Saramago. Very often, this has not been the case (cf. Vanhoutte 2013). It is thus important to acknowledge that the population of the capital did not refuse to vote, and neither did they cast invalid votes. Thus, speaking more generally, what is at stake is not a denial to act, and neither does it consist of an invalid or invali-dating action. That it exactly consists of behavior that is not a nulling or voiding, let alone that it consists in not acting, is precisely what leaves the former government at a complete loss on how to behave conse-quently. The particular behavior of the inhabitants of the former capital has, in fact, taken away the soil underneath its ultimate weapon, namely becoming reactionary. Time and again does the former government desire for a type of behavior by the population that would consist of invalidating action. The population, however, never falls prey to this type of action, leaving, as such, nothing to the former political class except ruthless destructive violence.

The action undertaken by the population of the former capital, thus, consists of positive action. It consists of positive action that, in its act-ing, however, negates any further appropriation or seizure of the living world (by means of politics, law, economy, religion, etc.). The structure of its action can thus be described as that of a ‘positive negative’, a pos-itive action that frees by means of negation, or, to say it by radicalizing one of the more pregnant conceptual inventions of Agamben, it is an

2 For those interested, we have written elsewhere on the specifically political impacts of these actions as described by Saramago (cf. Vanhoutte 2014).


action that operates along the lines not of ‘not doing’, but of ‘doing…not’ (cf. Vanhoutte 2014, 6). What is at stake in the action undertaken by the population can be described as an act of ‘profanation’, to which we already hinted at in Sect. 3.5, as it is understood, again, by Agamben. To profane, as Agamben writes when redirecting us rightfully to the Roman jurists, is returning something ‘to the free use of men’ (Agamben 2007, 73), it is ‘returning to use’ that ‘which was unavailable and sepa-rate’ (Agamben 2007, 77). The act of voting validly blank is thus an act of re-appropriating the public space, returning it to the free use of all men (not just some professional ‘representatives’), by the population of the former capital.

The second aspect of Saramago’s story that needs to be highlighted regards the outcome of the undertakings of the population. Even though, as we already indicated, the citizens of the former capital were put under the strain of all types of espionage, and even murder, bomb-ings, and straightforward acts of terrorism were not outlawed, they, nonetheless, remained completely composed. Mass gatherings (which materialized spontaneously), as, for example the one to honor the dead of the bombing of the train station—and which made the professional politicians hope, at least for a very short while, for an answer that would respond at tone to the horror they had caused, as that would legitimate them once more—never derived into violence. This type of manifesta-tion, many of which we have been witness to in our days, never even reached the level of becoming volatile in Seeing—and this contrary to the ones that have occurred in the nonfiction of the past decades. And even though it should be remembered that Saramago’s novel is exactly that, a novel, one can legitimately ask whether in the absence of anything to battle (laws, governing bodies, [representative] authority, or even simply someone who tells you what to do) our present battles (be they fought by the physical battles of the Black Blocs, other anarchic or resurrection-ist groups, or the virtual ones fought by, for example, Anonymous or Wikileaks) would have actually occurred.

The main aspect of the second point, however, is not some justifica-tion of antagonist violence, neither is it a call for anarchism or a call to non-violence. These points needed to be made, but the main feature is still another one. In order to stress the main point of the outcome of the behavior of the population in this particular novel of Saramago we are discussing, we need to turn once more to the two basic features of the concept of crisis. In Sect. 4.3, we discovered that a crisis had the

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following two characteristics: first, a crisis required a limited and strict spatio-temporal dimension, and, second, it implied irrevocable and definite alternatives. Now, it isn’t hard to see how the story told by Saramago seems to fulfill these basic characteristics, especially the second one regarding the irrevocable and definite alternatives. The point we wanted to make regards the fact that notwithstanding the very peculiar situation in the former capital, and once more we feel the need to return to the same concept we used before that seems particularly accurate, the population remained very composed. Everything, to use the language of Benjamin and Scholem from the parable of the coming world, had not been destroyed and a completely new world had not been created in the ‘new’ world of the former capital. Basically, and this is so very impor-tant to stress, everything is just as it was before. All of this could, and even should, make us think about all the negativity of the various sce-narios that are constantly drawn before us when confronted with crisis- situations. The almost exclusive attention reserved for the possibly negative outcome of every crisis, seems to be, although obviously not imaginary, at least more than a little bit partisan and colored. As nobody is in the possession of crystal balls, there seems to be no particular need to see the outcome of crisis as necessarily so absolutely negative. If any-thing, and if we are to take history seriously in its possible offering of examples that are also useful for the future, in so many cases, the negative scenarios foretold turn out to be exact only if everything is done in order for the crisis not to come to its ‘critical point’, thus never reaching the ‘new’ post-crisis phase.

Finally, the third and last aspect of Saramago’s novel that needs some further consideration regards the place of the action. As was clear from the very beginning, the place of action of Seeing is the capital of a country that is left unnamed. That this is of interest to our discourse regards obviously the fact that as capital, we are dealing with a city. Now, Saramago’s capital is not only of interest to us because of it offering a clear example of a city being the place where the balancing trick between decentralization and recentralization is played out in a double way—being as such the quintessential place where the Limboic nature of our times comes to full expression—and neither because it also demonstrates to being (as city) the place where the worst and the breaking free of this worst is contemporarily present. No, Saramago’s capital city is of great interest to our cause because it says something about the nature of the


characteristics of the city in its ‘breaking free’ quality. The capital, in fact, has to become the ‘former’ capital.

Said in an extremely simplified way, Saramago’s former capital is of such interest to us because it constitutes the paradigm of the non-place (understood in the exact opposite way as was done by Marc Augé). Augé’s non-place is Limbo, it is ‘supermodernity’, characterized as it is by eternal delay (cf. Augé 1997, 104), loss of identity (cf. Augé 1997, 103), hypertrophy of law (cf. Augé 1997, 96; 102), and stems from overabundance and excesses (Augé 1997, 109) similar once more to the Limboic superficial and emptying happiness. Saramago’s non-place/former capital, on the other hand, is the ‘heterotopia’, that can only be accessed by means of rites and purifications (profanations) and, as such, opens up to a related ‘heterochrony’ par excellence (cf. Foucault 1986). It should, in fact, not surprise that, just like Foucault can claim that the boat, the ship, is the heterotopia by antonomasia (cf. Foucault 1986, 27), we can claim that Saramago’s non-place/former capital of Seeing is, in fact, the boat of another tale of his, namely the Tale of the Unknown Island (1999). The former capital is like the ship that sets out to locate an unknown island, realizing, in the end, that it itself is the island it set out to discover (the capital had it always in itself to become the ‘former’ capital). Saramago’s capital, in its profaning braking free, becoming, as such, the ‘former’ capital, has taken on the vests of the ‘heterotopia’ by antonomasia.

Every summary of these three points needs to start by acknowledg-ing that Saramago’s Seeing is, first and foremost about (the making of a decision that is simultaneously) the taking of an action. The population of the capital did not refuse to act, and neither was its act an invalid act. The ‘positive negative’, or the profanation, consists in an actual act. It regards the activity of deciding, or, said more precisely, it regards letting the deciding action take place. To translate the action taken in Seeing in the language of crisis, it regards the act of allowing, deciding, the crisis to arrive, to let the crisis act out as crisis and decide/judge. Only the actual decision to let the crisis operate as crisis can allow us to come on top of it.

It is in this context that we also need to reconfirm, as we already did in Sect. 4.2, that recognizing the crisis simply does not suffice (recog-nition of a(ny) crisis is of absolute necessity, but it does not suffice). However, neither does the creation of crisis, as we discussed in prec-edence, do the trick. Both attitudes, the latter a lot less than the first

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obviously (but then the latter comes frighteningly close to the extreme neo-liberal ‘shock-doctrine’ as denounced by Naomi Klein), still per-fectly follow what Martin Buber called the ‘fixation of indecision’ (Buber 1953, 134). This does not result, according to the very accurate reversal applied by Buber, into true indecision but precisely into the ‘decision to evil’ (Buber 1953, 88).3 Each crisis thus not only needs to be recognized as such, it also needs to be allowed to, decided to, come to its full con-clusion. Every attempt to exhaust, ‘logorate’, crisis’ time-space not only creates or reconfirms the state of Limbo here on earth, but also is a deci-sion to evil as even crisis’ most negative outcome, death, and its destina-tion in eternity, is still better than the perennial endlessness of Limbo.

Returning to our summary, the place where this action can first occur is any city which has, by means of the profaning operation—the ‘posi-tive negative’ act just described—become a non-place, or better a heter-otopia. This has, in fact, always already been its true destiny. If we thus want to end this epoch of perennial crisis, of Limbo, we have to topple over the hegemonic orthodoxies (the political, social, economic, and cul-tural ones) and this not just in favor of, but especially by means of het-eropraxis. Said in a more simple and basic way, heresies are what is most needed today. This need for new (non-religious) heresies, however, will be the topic of a forthcoming book.

To conclude, let us return one final time to Scholem and the parable of the Kingdom to come. If the investigation of Saramago’s novel Seeing (and the shorter Tale of the Unknown Island) taught us anything, then it should be that we have to reverse Scholem’s last sentence. This reversal should go along the lines of C. S. Lewis’s cunning remark in A Preface to Paradise Lost (1969) that states: ‘[A]pparently, the door of the prison was really unlocked all the time; but it was only you who thought of try-ing the handle’ (Lewis 1969, vi). The new version of Scholem’s parable would then go in the following way: ‘[A] rabbi, a real cabbalist, once said that in order to establish the reign of peace it is not necessary to destroy everything nor to begin a completely new world. It is sufficient to displace this cup or this bush or this stone just a little, and thus everything. But this small displacement is so easy to achieve and its measure is so effortless to find that, with regard to the world, humans think they are incapable of it and they believe it is necessary that the Messiah come’. They aren’t.

3 ‘Intensification and confirmation of indecision’, Buber writes when interpreting Kain’s refusal to reply to God, ‘is decision to evil’ (Buber 1953, 88). In fact, Kain murdered his brother.


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indeX

AAbelard, Peter, 6, 49, 60, 68, 70, 72,

79Acceleration (speed), 7, 31, 170–174,

177, 179, 180, 185, 191, 218Accelerationism, 129, 177–180Adams, Henry, 170Agamben, Giorgio, 1, 4, 14, 105, 119,

124, 154, 188, 190, 229Ahmed, Sara, 139Albert, the Great (Albertus Magnus),

6, 19, 21, 44, 49, 70–72, 74Alexander, of Hales, 6, 43, 49, 70,

72–75, 83, 93Alice (in Wonderland), 186Allen, John L., 38Angels, 14, 16, 88, 92, 95Anselm, of Canterbury, 6, 49, 65, 66,

72, 75Apocalypse, 7, 19, 121–124, 129,

145, 176Aquinas, Thomas (Saint), 6, 43, 44,

49, 70, 80–82Arendt, Hannah, 4, 121, 190Ariosto, Ludovico, 6, 94Aristotle, 90, 118, 124, 143, 146

Ascension, 43, 79Attàli, Jacques, 203, 212Auctorem Fidei (Papal Bull), 36, 85Augé, Marc, 138, 235Augustine (Saint), 6, 41, 44, 45, 50,

51, 55, 75, 76Augustinians, 85, 96Auvergne, William of, 70

BBadiou, Alain, 7, 123, 160, 204, 207Baptism, 37, 39, 43, 53–56, 64, 69,

71, 75, 85, 88, 91–93, 99Barthes, Roland, 118, 147, 185Basil, of Caesarea (the Great), 61Baudrillard, Jean, 159, 163, 164, 177,

186, 221Bauman, Zygmunt, 28, 29, 117, 122,

143, 163, 186, 194, 215Beatific vision, 37, 38, 40, 68, 69,

71–73, 76–78, 81, 83–85, 92, 109, 223, 230

Beatrice, 87Beckett, Samuel, 124Benedict XVI (pope). See Ratzinger

254 INDEX

Benjamin, Walter, 179, 229Benson, Iain T., 103, 104Bergson, Henri, 186Bloch, Ernst, 186Bonaiuto, Andrea di, 12, 13, 15–18,

24Bonaventure, of Bagnoregio (Saint), 6,

44, 49, 70, 72, 74–79, 92Bordoni, Carlo, 143, 163Borges, Jorge L., 117, 127Bosom of Abraham, 16, 59, 60, 76,

78, 79Brown, Wendy, 29, 30Buber, Martin, 236Byzantine Empire, 65

CCanon law, 66, 103Carmelites, 96, 103Carroll, Lewis, 186Carthusians, 65Castells, Manuel, 32, 152, 196Catastrophe, 7, 122, 123, 125–128,

177Catechism of the Catholic Church, 37Cathars, 66Catholic Church (Catholicism), 36,

41, 99Celestius, 52–54Chesterton, Gilbert K., 118Christ, 12, 14–17, 19–24, 26, 31, 35,

38–40, 43, 48, 55, 59, 60, 69, 71, 72, 79, 80, 82, 91, 97, 116, 214, 224, 230

Christianity, 6, 46, 50, 53, 65, 66, 79, 88, 131

Chrysostom, John, 83Cistercians, 65City, 12, 17, 27, 30, 41, 65, 66, 87,

103, 199, 211–215, 231, 232, 234–236

Clausewitz, Carl von, 145, 161Connolly, William E., 100, 104Conrad, Peter, 171, 185Creed, Apostles’, 21Crisis

perennial (lasting), 5, 7, 12, 84, 109, 120, 129, 142, 145, 151, 158–160, 163, 164, 169, 170, 194, 210, 216, 217, 220, 222–224, 230, 236

Critchley, Simon, 105, 123, 139, 216Critique, 62, 94, 105, 107, 121, 123,

125, 127, 133, 135, 137, 140, 146, 154, 177–179, 222

Crystallization. See Deceleration/Rigidification

DDaniélou, Jean, 61Dante, Alighieri, 6, 19, 43, 45, 86–90,

93, 99Deceleration/Rigidification, 24, 31,

170, 218, 219Deleuze, Gilles, 190, 204de Man, Paul, 133, 134Demon, 22Derrida, Jacques, 118, 140, 148, 152,

153, 182, 183Detribalization, 201Dominicans, 65, 74, 96, 103Dupuy, Jean-Pierre, 121, 122, 125,

129, 130Dystopia, 122

EEastern Church, 60Eco, Umberto, 131End of History, 176, 177Engels, Friedrich, 186Eschatology, 120, 123, 129

INDEX 255

Eternal Life, 53, 55, 56, 58, 59, 83, 101

FFire, 27, 63, 69, 73, 76–78, 85Foucault, Michel, 61, 117Franciscans, 65, 74, 96, 103Friedman, Milton, 149Fukuyama, Francis, 176

GGift, 140, 153, 155, 209Gilson, Étienne, 76Girard, René, 118, 150Globalization, 170, 200, 201,

203–206, 209, 211, 212, 215, 220, 224

Global village, 7, 197, 201–204, 208, 219

Glocalization, 204Gnosticism, 47Gospel of Nicodemus, 20, 21, 23Graham, Gordon, 2, 4Gramsci, Antonio, 211Gray, John, 105, 121, 130Greek (Orthodox) Christian Church,

23, 98Gregory, Nazianzen, 6, 49, 64, 223Gregory, of Nyssa, 49, 61, 63–65Gregory, the Great, 42, 43Guattari, Félix, 190, 204

HHalo, 14, 15, 19Han, Byung-Chul, 121, 181Happiness, 59, 73, 74, 78, 84, 85, 92,

93, 95, 98, 139, 162, 163, 219, 221, 223, 235

Harnack, Adolf von, 51Harrowing, of Hell, 21, 47, 89, 92Harvey, David, 195, 215Heaven (Paradise), 16, 43, 44, 53, 79Hegel, Georg W.F., 118Heidegger, Martin, 118, 155, 183Hell (Hades), 4, 16, 17, 19, 22, 23Heloise, 68Heresy, 44, 52, 53, 55, 56, 59, 63,

66–68, 77Heterotopia, 235, 236Hippocrates, 90, 143, 144, 146, 147,

149Homer, 89, 198

IIllich, Ivan, 125Inertia, 175, 176, 178–180, 182, 185,

186, 219polar Inertia, 185

Inferno, 86, 90, 91Instant, 153–155, 157, 159, 160, 201,

217Interesting Times, 116, 117, 120,

121, 129, 132, 158International Theological

Commission, 35, 36, 38–41, 86, 100, 223

Interregnum, 211Irenaeus, of Lyons, 47

JJameson, Friederic, 195, 196Jankélévitch, Vladimir, 130Jesuits, 85, 86John-Paul II (pope), 36Jonas, Hans, 125Joy, 1, 11, 22, 46, 82, 84, 85, 93, 95,

98, 109, 221, 223

256 INDEX

Judaism, 145Judgment (final), 2, 45, 51, 55, 144–

148, 150, 151, 157, 158, 178, 183, 194, 215–217, 222, 230

Julian of Eclanum, 52–55Justin, Martyr, 23, 47

KKant, Immanuel, 118, 119, 222Kapoor, Anish, 24–26, 223Klein, Naomi, 128, 149, 236Koselleck, Reinhart, 133, 140, 143,

145, 151, 157, 170Kuhn, Thomas, 191

LLanguor, 162, 194Latin Christendom, 65Latour, Bruno, 5Lefebvre, Henri, 159, 180, 188, 195,

215Le Goff, Jacques, 31, 42, 51Lessius, Leonard, 85Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 142Lewis, Clive S., 30, 128, 224, 236Limbo

Limbo of Children (limbus puer-orum), 43–45, 47, 48, 70–72, 78, 80, 83, 92

Limbo of Fathers (limbus patrum), 42–44, 47, 48, 69–72, 78, 80, 92, 224

Limbo of Hell (limbus inferni), 74, 92

Limbo of the Just (limbus iusto-rum), 43

Limbo of Vanity, 94–96Localization, 79, 170, 215Logoration, 161–164, 190, 192–194,

216, 219–221, 223, 230

Lombard, Peter, 69, 72, 74, 75, 81Lyotard, Jean-François, 162

MMagisterium, 36, 37, 99Mallarmé, Stéphane, 135–137Mao, Zedong, 115Marcuse, Herbert, 221Martin, Jean-Clet, 129Marx, Karl, 120, 178, 179, 192Mauss, Marcel, 140, 153McLuhan, Marshall, 7, 24, 131, 196,

204, 208, 216, 219Melandri, Enzo, 106Messiah, 17, 124, 229, 230, 236Milton, John, 6, 86, 93Modernity, 7, 29, 31, 106, 107, 122,

131, 146, 154, 158, 159, 163, 164, 169–171, 174, 175, 177, 179–181, 185, 187, 189, 194–196, 202, 210, 211, 218–224

Molina, Luis de, 85Mondialisation, 206, 209, 210

NNaas, Michael, 150, 183, 184Nancy, Jean-Luc, 7, 131, 142, 204,

205, 221New Testament, 17, 21, 44, 144, 146Nietzsche, Friedrich, 62, 162Non-world, 209, 213Norberg, Johan, 130Noys, Benjamin, 177

OObama, Barack, 138Old Testament, 27, 44, 79, 89

INDEX 257

PParadigm, 4, 28, 30, 93, 107, 181,

186, 191, 192, 199, 219, 235Paradise, 6, 23, 44, 59, 74, 79, 80, 82,

86, 90, 91, 93–99, 214, 224, 236Paradise, of Fools, 94, 97–99Paradox, 30, 48, 58, 74, 75, 93, 119,

120, 157, 163, 185, 188, 217, 222, 223

Patriarchs, 19, 22, 23, 26, 31, 93, 224Paul (Saint), 16Pelagianism, 52–54, 57, 68, 77Pelagius, 52–54Pharmakon, 148–151, 156, 157, 184,

209Pharmakos, 150Pinker, Steven, 130Plato, 44–46, 48, 49, 90, 96, 118,

148–150, 163, 183, 184poena mitissima, 69Postmodernity, 169, 195Prayer, 14Printing press, 198, 199Profanation, 107, 233, 235Prophets, 19, 22, 23, 26, 31, 98, 215Protestantism, 85Pseudo-Dionysius, 64, 65, 67Punishment, 57, 73, 75

privative, 65, 67, 68, 71, 72of the senses, 73, 82–84, 199

Purgatory, 4, 31, 35, 44, 51, 52, 59, 61, 70, 71, 74, 79–81, 86, 90–92, 213, 214, 223, 224

QQueneau, Raymond, vii, viii

RRat-race, 175, 188Ratzinger, Joseph, 36, 41, 224

Red Queen, 187Revolt, 156Revolution, 65, 66, 124, 157, 170,

171, 173, 174, 178, 197, 199, 201, 202, 211, 213, 215, 231

Ricoeur, Paul, 100Roitman, Janet, 129, 132, 141, 146,

216Rorty, Richard, 149Rosa, Hartmut, 7, 163, 169, 171,

177, 195, 218, 220Rosanvallon, Pierre, 193Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 158Russell, Bertrand, 215Rykwert, Joseph, 212

SSacrament, 39, 53, 55, 64, 69Said, Edward, 29Saramago, José, 8, 134, 230Satan, 19, 22, 23, 95, 97Scapegoat, 119, 150Schmitt, Carl, 29, 108Scholasticism, 65, 66, 86, 198Scotus Erigena, John, 64Second Vatican Council, 37, 38, 40,

99, 185Secular, 3, 100, 101, 103–106, 109,

131Secularization, 100–109, 146, 174Sentences (commentary), 37, 68, 69,

75, 81, 90, 117, 131, 153, 162Serres, Michel, 5Shaviro, Steven, 129Shock doctrine, 128, 149Signature (theory of), 106, 109Sin (original), 37, 39, 43, 50, 53–55,

57, 58, 63, 64, 67–71, 73, 74, 76, 81–83, 85, 87, 92, 99, 214

Sleepwalker, 221Sloterdijk, Peter, 200

258 INDEX

Socrates, 44, 45, 48, 90, 198Soja, Edward W., 212Sontag, Susan, 2Space, 7, 24, 27, 28, 32, 74, 88,

101, 102, 107, 147, 148, 155, 156, 160, 161, 163, 164, 169, 170, 194–197, 199–202, 204, 208–210, 212, 215, 217–220, 222, 223, 233, 236

Steger, Manfred, 63, 200Stiegler, Bernard, 121, 139, 202Stiglitz, Joseph E., 200Streeck, Wolfgang, 186, 192, 222Suarez, Francisco, 85

TTaylor, Charles, 101, 102Tester, Keith, 211Thanzung sessions, 115Thucydides, 145Time

chronological, 152, 153, 159, 162, 217

historical, 122, 152, 153, 155–157, 159, 160, 217, 219

Tribalization, 201, 204Triduum, 43, 79

VVatican (city), 38, 40, 99, 185Virgil, 45–47, 87–93Virilio, Paul, 171, 185

WWalls, 25–31, 41, 89, 201, 222, 230Weber, Max, 189Weil, Simone, 120World-less, 160, 208–210, 214

ZŽižek, Slavoj, 115, 122, 129, 186

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Limbo Reapplied: On Living in Perennial Crisis and the Immanent Afterlife