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Laurens ten Kate | Strange Freedom
already announced in the heart of monotheism’s doctrine of creation since
God “necessarily” has to disappear, to die as a stable entity, as an existing
power. Although Nancy develops this rather daring exegesis in quite strong
and certain formulations (“decisive”, “nothing but…”, “most intrinsic and
proper…”), I hold that his efforts to re-read the creation story open up a
productive new realm of research on the ambiguities of freedom:
“The creator necessarily disappears in the very midst of its act, and with
this disappearance a decisive episode of the entire movement that I have
sometimes named the ‘deconstruction of Christianity’ occurs, a move-
ment that is nothing but the most intrinsic and proper movement of
monotheism as the integral absenting of God […].” (Nancy 2007, 68)
This deconstruction is not only one of Nancy’s research projects over the
last twenty years, it is part of a history in which humankind deconstructs
and thus reinvents itself: a historical break line in the axial process we
briefly discussed above. The ex nihilo pinpoints the disappearance of the
gods into the distant, invisible, transcendent God of monotheism… the dis-
appearance of God in his act of creation. I will return to this complex con-
nection between creation and beginning in the next section.
4 Freedom and Play:
Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Humanity
We need to obtain a clearer insight into the value of these theories of crea-
tion as theories of the connection between acting and ‘being acted’ – the
paradoxical structure of imaginaries that lies at the basis of our explora-
tions into the strangeness of freedom. In order to do so, I propose to take
a closer look at Friedrich Nietzsche’s genealogical anthropology, in par-
ticular in his Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Here, we encounter an idea new to our
train of thought so far: imaginaries are of the order of play. Hence, we need
a theory of play.
The Camel, the Lion, the Child
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885) consists of a long series of hymn-like “dis-
courses” [Reden]: sermons or reflections, mostly in prose, sometimes in
poetic form. Every hymn finishes with the solemn words “Thus Spoke
Limina
Grazer theologische Perspektiven, Volume 2:2
- Title
- Limina
- Subtitle
- Grazer theologische Perspektiven
- Volume
- 2:2
- Editor
- Karl Franzens University Graz
- Date
- 2019
- Language
- German
- License
- CC BY-NC 4.0
- Size
- 21.4 x 30.1 cm
- Pages
- 267
- Categories
- Zeitschriften LIMINA - Grazer theologische Perspektiven