Studying Whitehead's Process and Reality with John Cobb

     

• John Cobb's Guidance: His Vocation, Lifestyle, and Sense of God's Love

• The Widening Effect: John Cobb’s Legacy of Imagination, Compassion, and Hope​​

Studying Whitehead's Process

and Reality with John Cobb

article link

by Jay McDaniel​

​During my graduate studies, I had the privilege of taking two classes under John Cobb. One focused on the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, where we studied Process and Reality, and the other explored Christian-Buddhist dialogue. Both courses left a lasting impression on me, not just because of the subject matter but because of John’s unique teaching style, which I came to understand as profoundly "proposative" in nature.

In the Whitehead course, we spent time discussing Whitehead’s concept of "propositions" as "lures for feeling." During one such discussion, John drew an intriguing connection between Whitehead’s use of the term "propositions" and the word "proposal." He suggested that propositions could be understood as proposals—ideas put forth for consideration rather than dogmas to be accepted uncritically. He then casually remarked that a Whiteheadian approach to teaching would naturally be, in his words, "proposative" in spirit.

This proposative approach stood in contrast to more didactic teaching methods, where instructors present a fixed and authoritative set of truths that students are expected to accept without question. It also avoided the pitfalls of a purely open-ended approach, where the teacher offers no guiding content, leaving students adrift in unstructured conversation. Instead, John’s proposative style balanced these extremes. He presented ideas as invitations for exploration—concepts to ponder, discuss, and evaluate.

John’s teaching sessions typically began with him speaking for about twenty minutes, during which he introduced ideas and framed the discussion, building upon paragraphs in Process and Reality.(He assigned none of his own books or secondary texts.) Afterward, the floor opened up for dialogue. Often, we struggled to grasp the complex concepts he presented, prompting him to elaborate further. Yet even in his explanations, John’s tone and manner remained proposative. He never imposed ideas upon us or pressured us to adopt them. Instead, he shared thoughts in a way that encouraged reflection and inquiry. His delivery was casual rather than dogmatic, inviting rather than insistent.

He was very clear that Whitehead's philosophy was itself a complex set of proposals - some metaphysical, some empirical, and some as lyrical -and that often but not always Whitehead's appeal was to intuition. The ideas were to be tested against experience, including both personal experience and evidence received from other sources of knowledge, including science, psychology, art, and religion. And he was equally clear that Whitehead's ideas are themselves in process: that what people "do" with Whitehead includes adaptations, revisions, alterations, and, if needed, downright rejections.

There were students in our class—at least one—who rejected almost all of it from the outset. This particular student was a fairly convinced Wittgensteinian and understood Wittgenstein as debunking the metaphysical enterprise. John disagreed, but he also treated the student with respect, making it clear that there might be wisdom in the critique. There was nothing dogmatic in John’s manner of teaching. We got the sense that John himself was always open to critique and questioning, and that he had a capacity to relativize his own points of view and listen, with sincerity, to views that contradicted his own.

*

John's course stretched our minds beyond anything we had theretofore imagined. John casually noted that Whitehead would lie awake at night asking questions we never imagined. We agreed. Who among us had thought about relations between pure potentialities of the objective species and those of the subjective species, much less the very idea that things can be real as potentials, but not actual. Taking Whitehead under John was by all means an intellectual adventure—an adventure of ideas. And John's manner of explanation—in presenting the idea of eternal objects, or prehensions, or actual entities, or subjective forms—were often new to us and excitingly difficult to understand. I say "excitingly" for a reason. Studying with and under John was, for me and many others (but not the Wittgensteinian), exciting.

Typically,as noted above, the ideas from Whitehead presented as "proposals" were themselves presented as they emerged from particular paragraphs and sections of Process and Reality. As John offered his twenty-minute intro, we would turn to the paragraph, read what Whitehead said, and then consider the idea, with help from John. So you might call his approach "text-evoked" as well as proposative. He wanted to be faithful to Whitehead's text and ideas.

*

As I remember, John was particularly focused on making sure our class didn’t think Whitehead’s cosmology was only about God. Instead, it was about an organic universe in which God played an important role. Whitehead’s key ideas—the eight categories of existence along with Creativity and God—were central to the proposals we studied. If I had to highlight the core ideas that John emphasized in the course—or at least the ones that stood out most to me while reading Process and Reality with him—it would be these ten:

• Actual Entities – The basic units of reality, each a process of unifying past influences into a new moment of experience.

• Eternal Objects – Timeless possibilities or forms that actual entities can incorporate into their processes.

• Prehensions – The ways actual entities feel and respond to the influences of other entities.

• Nexus – Groups or networks of actual entities that form patterns of connection.

• Subjective Forms – The specific ways actual entities experience or interpret the influences they prehend.

• Propositions – Potentialities or ideas about how reality might unfold, providing aims for creative action.

• Multiplicities – Collections of entities or possibilities that can be unified in various ways.

• Contrasts – The combinations of differences that create meaningful patterns or harmonies.

• Creativity – The ultimate principle underlying all processes of becoming and change: the self-creativity of each moment of experience and the creative advance into novelty of the universe as a whole.

• God – A source of novel possibilities and a companion to the world, guiding processes toward beauty and harmony without coercion.

When I teach Process and Reality to others, as I’ve often done with college undergraduates, I tell them that mastering these ten ideas is a big step toward understanding Whitehead.

But these were not the only ideas. I recall vividly discussing hybrid physical prehensions, experience in the mode of causal efficacy, perception in the mode of presentational immediacy, the extensive continuum, and questions of value, harmony, and intensity (the self-enjoyment of a concrescing subject). But all seemed framed in terms of eight categories and the two additional ideas (Creativity and God).

​*

We students were also asked to trace an idea through the text that was presented by Whitehead in different ways and present the idea in a one-on-one oral exam at the end of the course. The idea that I traced was transmutation. This task of tracing an idea was itself an exercise in proposative thinking. It required us to engage deeply with Whitehead’s text, considering the evolution of concepts and testing their relevance to our own experiences and reflections. In doing so, we came to appreciate the fluid and evolving nature of philosophical inquiry, a hallmark of John Cobb’s teaching method.

And we were asked, on our own, to read another of Whitehead's books. I read Modes of Thought. John assigned no secondary texts; no books that he himself had written; and we got the feeling that he was not too keen on our reading secondary texts before reading Whitehead in the original.

*

I recall one particular moment when we turned our focus to Whitehead’s understanding of God. A student in the class asked a question that suggested Whitehead’s concept of God captured “what God really is.” John paused for a moment and then gently responded, “God may be ‘something like’ this.” He emphasized that Whitehead’s ideas about God should be understood as proposals, not definitive statements. John reminded us that any concept of God—no matter how profound—remains, in essence, a map, not the territory itself. He drew attention to the distinction between experiencing God and conceptualizing God, emphasizing that the reality of God is always more than our experience or ideas about God. Whitehead’s concept of God was one way of thinking about divine presence in an evolving universe, but it did not—could not—fully capture the mystery and depth of divine reality.

I remember one day when John had to miss class. A conference was being held in Claremont on, as I recall, the rights of nature. The conference included a visit, on John's part, to a local indigenous community where elders from the tribe guided John and others in the activity of getting down on the ground, ears to soil, to hear the voices of ancestors. John came back the next week, and shared the experience with the class. Although he knew "modern" perspectives, eschewing such ideas, would reject the very idea; he was quite open to it, adding that Whitehead's notion of "objective immortality" and "feeling the feelings" of the past might help us be open to such possibilities. Such was his own openness to the world.

*

In the class it was apparent to all of us that we were in the presence of a teacher who was brilliant, kind, analytical, imaginative, and, not least, curious about the world and the many disciplines that are part of the modern university. The class was in Whitehead's "philosophy" but, for John., the value of Whitehead's philosophy is that it could help link, help us see connections between, so many different areas of thought: economics, aesthetics, literature, physics, education, biology, and mathematics, for example. In this breadth of interest, he inspired us to want to think beyond whatever pigeonholes we were confined to. Yes, he was a philosophical theologian - but he was interested in so much more than philosophy and theology. It was 'all' connected for him, and his very example of being curious about the world, and openness to interconnections, inspired us.

We left his class thinking that the value of Whitehead's philosophy was not just that it might help us "explain" things or "understand" reality. It was that it would encourage us to be curious and open, like our professor, and avoid pigeonholes. I am sure it is this that has affected me to try to develop, in my own small way, a website - Open Horizons - that includes essays on a wide and eclectic array of topics, all of which, thanks to Whitehead and John, seem connected.

*

Of course, we didn't leave the class without writing a term paper and having a final examination. My term paper was on transmutation which, in Whitehead’s philosophy, refers to the process by which data from the world are transformed into feelings or subjective experiences within an actual entity. It highlights how the external world becomes internalized through prehensions and contributes to the formation of new realities. For Whitehead, transmutation is not merely a passive reception but an active transformation, demonstrating how each actual entity integrates the past into its own becoming. This idea underscored for me the deeply relational and dynamic nature of existence in Whitehead’s system. I have been "transmuting John's class for many years now, and adding some transmutations of my own. This very page is a transmutation of his influence on me.

And then there was the final exam, itself an oral exam. As individuals taking the class, we would meet John in his office and, as I recall, be asked three questions about Whitehead. The first would be a softball question such as "What is an actual entity?" The second a little more difficult, such as: "What is the extensive continuum and how does Whitehead think it is related to the ontological status of the future?" The third would be, typical of John, the "So What" question: "Why does any of this matter?" To the latter, of course, there was not a final answer, but he was interested in our response, for our own sake.

*

I think there were about twenty students in the class. Some left the class inspired by Whitehead's Process and Reality and wanting to know more, while others left having had their fill of cosmology and metaphysics. I realized then, as I realize now, that reading Process and Reality in depth is for some, but not all. Still, I think everyone left being inspired by, and grateful to, John Cobb. They were inspired by his proposative method of teaching, by his openness to new ideas, by his humility and capacity for self-criticism, and by the sheer range of his thinking. He seemed, and was, interested in everything: economics, spirituality, aesthetics, physics, politics, agriculture, biology, morality, literature, and more. He thought it was "all" connected and that Whitehead's philosophy can help us see the connections or, at the very least, inspire us to look for them. We agreed with him. Yes, he was a philosophical theologian. But we had never met a theologian like John - a theologian whose humility and openness were as inspiring as his ideas. A theologian whose proposative style was contagious such that we, too, became more open, more interested, more curious, more adventurous, more engaged.

* * * * * * * *

Whitehead's Eight Categories of Existence

plus Creativity and God

Actual Entities

An actual entity is a moment of concrescence—a moment of experience in which the many entities of the past actual world are felt and gathered into the unity of a subjective whole. In each actual entity, "the many become one, and are increased by one." This gathering includes the self-creativity and self-enjoyment of the entity, as it unifies influences from the past and brings forth something new. Actual entities are multiple and thus different from one another. Each entity arises with its own distinct characteristics, shaped by its unique prehensions and subjective forms. Once completed, an actual entity perishes as a subjective experience but continues to exist objectively, contributing to future moments of experience. This process exemplifies the dynamic nature of reality—each actual entity participates in the ongoing creative advance of the universe by transforming the past into novelty.

Prehensions

Prehensions refer to the ways actual entities relate to and "take account of" one another. This concept captures how an entity feels or grasps another entity—not conceptually, but experientially. Prehensions are the building blocks of relationships, with each actual entity prehending others through positive (inclusive) or negative (exclusive) feelings. These prehensive relations allow all things to participate in one another’s becoming, embodying the interconnectedness of all entities.

Nexus (or Nexūs)

A nexus is a network of actual entities related through shared prehensions, forming structured webs of interconnected experiences. Some nexūs take on enduring forms called societies, where occasions of experience inherit common characteristics from one another, creating patterns of continuity.

• Corpuscular societies: These consist of relatively stable entities, such as atoms or molecules, which persist across time by maintaining coherence.

• Personally ordered societies: These are sequences of experiences that form personal identities, such as the stream of consciousness that constitutes a person’s life. Each occasion builds on its predecessors, creating personal continuity and coherence over time.

Nexūs and societies reveal how individual occasions of experience participate in larger patterns of becoming, connecting everything from microscopic particles to human lives in an ongoing process of transformation.

Subjective Forms

Subjective forms refer to the emotional or qualitative tone that shapes how an entity experiences the world. These forms influence how prehensions are integrated, giving each experience a unique emotional quality. For example, one person might feel rain as melancholic, while another experiences it as refreshing. Subjective forms guide how entities respond to and integrate the influences they prehend, adding emotional depth to experience.

Eternal Objects

Eternal objects are pure potentials—abstract qualities or possibilities that actual entities can take up in their becoming. They are not confined to any specific event but exist as timeless potentials. For example, the quality "redness" is an eternal object that can manifest across different instances and contexts. Eternal objects provide the abstract building blocks that influence the unique character of each experience.

Propositions

Propositions are lures for feeling—imaginative suggestions that invite actual entities to explore certain possibilities. They function as speculative invitations, guiding the creative process by proposing how things might be. A proposition is not merely a factual statement but a suggestion for novelty and change. For example, an artist may consider a proposition that offers a new way to combine colors. Propositions help entities integrate new potentials, influencing both artistic creation and practical problem-solving.

Multiplicities

Multiplicities are diverse entities that exist in disjunction from one another. They may consist of actualities (such as actual entities) or potentialities (such as eternal objects). As truly distinct, multiplicities are not yet unified into the togetherness of an actual occasion of experience. A particular moment of experience (or actual entity) gathers these disparate elements into unity, but outside such unification, the universe remains a multiplicity. In this sense, multiplicities represent the richness of possibilities that are yet to be integrated.

Contrasts

Contrasts refer to patterns of difference or opposition that are either harmonized or remain in tension within experiences. These contrasts give shape and complexity to reality by bringing together opposing elements. For example, a melody is enriched by contrasts between high and low notes, and a life story is enriched by the interplay of joy and sorrow. Contrasts are essential to the depth and texture of experience, embodying both harmony and tension within each moment.

Creativity

Creativity is the “ultimate of ultimates,” the underlying activity expressed in all actualities. It manifests as the self-creativity of each actual entity through concrescence—the integration of many influences into a unified moment of experience. This process also involves transition, where the subjective immediacy of an entity perishes but lives on as objectively immortal in the experiences of future entities. Creativity is the driving force behind the novelty in the universe, enabling the ongoing process of becoming through which the past transforms into something new.

God

God encompasses three aspects, offering a relational and evolving presence in the universe:

• Primordial Nature - This is God's conceptual aspect, holding all eternal objects as pure possibilities. It represents the timeless realm of potentiality, offering the raw materials from which new experiences emerge.

• Consequent Nature - This is God’s empathic reception of all that happens, integrating every experience into the divine life. God feels the world, weaving all joys and sufferings into a coherent whole, continuously expanding in response to the world's becoming. God’s consequent nature ensures that no moment of experience is ever lost, as every event contributes to the unfolding divine reality.

• Super-jective Nature - This is God's influence on the world, luring creatures toward new possibilities. The superjective nature represents the way God inspires and persuades actual entities toward greater beauty, truth, and harmony, without coercion. God’s power lies not in domination but in invitation—offering new possibilities and guiding the world toward creative advance.

Is God Talk Necessary? with John D. Caputo (Part 1)

John D. Caputo

Usually I try to give a short intro to a subject matter but time is pressing at the moment. In short, Dr. Caputo and I have travelled different roads but have gotten to the same point spiritually. For myself, I came by the highways of Process Theology (Whitehead) via Continental Thought. For John, he came by way of progressive Catholicism which finds him in the Radical (religious) and Continental theology side of things. It would not be coincidental that we have each needed to deconstruct our past in order to get where we are today.

I have many of Dr. Caputo's books and am recommending the current new series of five volumes below which summarize his thinking over these many years. My first meeting with John was when hosting him and Peter Rollins for a week via my computer per GCAS' request (sic, Creston Davis) many years ago. I've stayed aware of John's work ever since then; and regarding Pete, I met him personally and have listened to him many times via Rob Bell and Mars Hill, and Pete's own network. If memory serves correctly, I believe Pete is a protege of John's.

All for now. Enjoy!

R.E. Slater

November 14, 2024

Bio - John D. Caputo

https://artsandsciences.syracuse.edu/people/faculty/caputo-john-d/

Research and Teaching Interests

John D. Caputo is a hybrid philosopher/theologian intent on producing impure thoughts, thoughts which circulate between philosophy and theology, short-circuits which deny fixed and rigorous boundaries between philosophy and theology. Caputo treats "sacred" texts as a poetics of the human condition, or as a "theo-poetics," a poetics of the event harbored in the name of God. His past books have attempted to persuade us that hermeneutics goes all the way down (Radical Hermeneutics), that Derrida is a thinker to be reckoned with by theology (The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida), and that theology is best served by getting over its love affair with power and authority and embracing what Caputo calls, following St. Paul, The Weakness of God. He has also addressed wider-than-academic audiences in On Religion and What Would Jesus Deconstruct? and has an interest in interacting with the working church groups like ikon and the “Emergent” Church. He is currently working in a book on our frail and mortal flesh, probably to be entitled The Fate of All Flesh: A Theology of the Event, II.

Professor Caputo specializes in continental philosophy of religion, working on approaches to religion and theology in the light of contemporary phenomenology, hermeneutics and deconstruction, and also the presence in continental philosophy of radical religious and theological motifs. He has special interests in the "religion without religion" of Jacques Derrida; the "theological turn" taken in recent French phenomenology (Jean-Luc Marion and others); the critique of onto-theology; the question of post-modernism as "post-secularism;" the dialogue of contemporary philosophy with St. Augustine; the recent interest shown by philosophers in St. Paul; the link between Kierkegaard and deconstruction; Heidegger's early theological writings on Paul and Augustine; “secular” and “death of God” theology (Altizer, Vattimo, Zizek); medieval metaphysics and mysticism.

He conducts a series of biennial conferences on these themes: April, 2005, "St. Paul Among the Philosophers" (now available from Indiana University Press); April, 2007: "Feminism, Sexuality, and the Return of Religion" (in press with Indiana University Press); April, 2009: "The Politics of Love" (in preparation. The final conference, “The Future of Continental Philosophy of Religion,” was held April 7-9, 2011.

Recently, three books have appeared about his work: Cross and Khora: Deconstruction and Christianity in the Work of John D. Caputo, Eds. Neal Deroo and Marko Zlomsic (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2010); A Passion for the Impossible: John D. Caputo in Focus, ed.Mark Dooley (SUNY Press, 2002) andReligion With/Out Religion: The Prayers and Tears of John D. Caputo, ed. Ed. James Olthius (Routledge, 2002). Prof. Caputo joined the department in Fall, 2004 after retiring from Villanova University where he taught from 1968 to 2004.

Professor Caputo's The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event (Indiana, 2006) received the 2007 AAR Book Award for "Constructive-Reflective Studies in Religion.” What Would Jesus Deconstruct? was the winner of the ForeWord Magazine Best Philosophy Book of 2007 award.

Prof. Caputo retired at the end of the 2010-11 academic year.

Education

Ph.D., Bryn Mawr College (1968)

M.A., Villanova University (1964)

BA, LaSalle University (1962)

Career

Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Humanities, Syracuse University, 2004 - present

David R. Cook Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Villanova University, 2004 – present

David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy, Villanova University, 1968-2004

Visiting Professor, New School for Social Research, Spring, 1994

Distinguished Adjunct Professor, Fordham University Graduate Program, 1985-88

Visiting Professor, Fordham University, Fall, 1980

Visiting Professor, Duquesne University, Fall, 1978

Instructor, St. Joseph's University (Philadelphia, 1965-68)

Is God Talk Necessary?

with John D. Caputo (Part 1)

interview link

Ilia Delio sits down with philosopher-theologian John D. Caputo (Jack). Ilia asks Jack about how he got from Continental Philosophy to what he calls weak theology, and theo-poetics. Then they tackle the big, enduring question Jack and Ilia like to often ask—what is going on “in the name of God?” and why it might benefit us to stop talking about “God.”

ABOUT JOHN D. CAPUTO

“The name of God is the name of the impossible, and the love of God transports us beyond ourselves and the constraints imposed upon the world.”

John D. Caputo, the Cook Professor of Philosophy Emeritus (Villanova University) and the Watson Professor of Religion Emeritus (Syracuse University), is a hybrid philosopher/theologian who works in the area of “weak” or “radical” theology, drawing upon hermeneutic and deconstructive theory. His most recent books are What to Believe: Twelve Brief Lessons in Radical Theology (2023) and Specters of God: An Anatomy of the Apophatic Imagination (2022). His The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event (2006), won the American Academy of Religion award for excellence in the category of constructive theology.

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5 Volume Summation Series

by John D. Caputo

Book 1 of 5: John D. Caputo: The Collected Philosophical and Theological Papers: Volume 1: 1969–1985 Aquinas, Eckhart, Heidegger: Metaphysics, Mysticism, Thought

Volume 1 brings together the earliest publications of John D. Caputo when the young “Catholic philosopher” was working out the relationship of the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas and the mysticism of Meister Eckhart to what Martin Heidegger called “thinking” and “Being.” The collection reflects an early interest in mathematical logic, includes his work on Kant and the possibility of a phenomenological ethics, and extends to the essays of the early 1980s where we can see the main lines of Radical Hermeneutics beginning to take shape.

“John Caputo’s extraordinary work from his earliest work on Eckhart, Heidegger and others to his later work on Derrida, and his contemporary philosophical theology have been a singular resource for all serious contemporary scholars. I heartily endorse this project.” —David Tracy, Greeley Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Catholic Studies,, University of Chicago Divinity School

“The John D. Caputo Archives comprise an essential resource for all scholars working in contemporary European Philosophy, especially Continental Philosophy of Religion.” —Kevin Hart, Kyle Professor of Christian Studies, University of Virginia

Book 2 of 5: John D. Caputo: The Collected Philosophical and Theological PapersVolume 2: 1986–1996: Hermeneutics and Deconstruction, by John Caputo (Author), Eric Weislogel (Editor)

Volume 2: Hermeneutics and Deconstruction covers the period when Caputo first worked out his notion of “radical hermeneutics,” where the strategies and resources of deconstruction prove to be the way to come to grips with the “difficulty” of the hermeneutic situation, in which radical does not mean radically grounded but radically exposed to instability and undecidability. In essays on Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, Levinas, Lyotard and Derrida, he shows how hermeneutics is inwardly disturbed by deconstruction and deconstruction is inevitably an account of the hermeneutic condition, where each is the condition of the other. Here, too, Caputo makes his first explorations into the implications of deconstruction for faith, ethics and religion. The volume includes several essays previously unpublished or unavailable.

Book 3 of 5: John D. Caputo: The Collected Philosophical and Theological Papers: Volume 3. 1997–2000: The Return of Religion, by John Caputo (Author), Eric Weislogel (Editor)

The Return of Religion,Volume 3 of this collection of John D. Caputo’s papers, covers the period when the “return of religion” was in the air, and, in particular, when Caputo was conducting a dialogue between Jacques Derrida and leading theologians and philosophers of religion at the Villanova University conferences. Here are the papers from that era, several of them originally published in hard-to-find forums, that articulate just what it is that theology has to learn from deconstruction—and deconstruction from theology—in the search for a postmodern or postsecular approach to religion. In these essays, Caputo enters into dialogue with Heidegger, Derrida, Levinas, Marion, and Wyschogrod, among others, addressing such themes as radical hermeneutics, the gift, the tout autre, the impossible, the il y a, Catholicism and postmodernity, and religion without religion.

Book 4 of 5: John D. Caputo: The Collected Philosophical and Theological Paper: Volume 4: 2001-2004: Continental Philosophy of Religion, by John Caputo (Author), Eric Weislogel (Editor)

Volume 4: Continental Philosophy of Religion collects the papers published by Caputo at the time a continental version of the philosophy of religion was taking shape, when postmodern theory provided a different way to think about God and religion, which in turn opened up a new way to think about postmodern theory. With papers on Augustine, Radical Orthodoxy, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Derrida, Levinas, Gadamer, and Marion and others, Caputo questions the distinction between theism and atheism, the religious and the secular, in search of the God who comes after the God of metaphysics in a religion without religion.

Book 5 of 5: John D. Caputo: The Collected Philosophical and Theological Papers: Volume 5: 2005–2007: Coming Out as a Theologian, by by John Caputo (Author), Eric Weislogel (Editor)

Volume 5: Coming out as a Theologian collects the papers published by Caputo during his first years in the Syracuse University Religion Department when, as Catherine Keller said, he “came out of the closet as a theologian”—a “weak” or “radical” theologian, nothing confessional or denominational. Caputo here puts deconstruction into the service of a “constructive theology” of the “event” in a series of lively essays, including several previously unpublished pieces, while also engaging the work of T. J. J. Altizer, Ted Jennings, Louis Mackey, Jean-Luc Marion, Calvin Schrag, Mark Taylor, Merold Westphal, David Wood, and Edith Wyschogrod.

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Other Books by John D. Caputo

Questioning God (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion)

Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy)

Hermeneutics: Facts and Interpretation in the Age of Information (Pelican Books)

What to Believe?: Twelve Brief Lessons in Radical Theology

The Folly of God: A Theology of the Unconditional

More Radical Hermeneutics: On Not Knowing Who We Are (Studies in Continental Thought)



Truth: Philosophy in Transit

Specters of God: An Anatomy of the Apophatic Imagination

God, the Gift, and Postmodernism (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion)

Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy)

The Mystical Element in Heidegger's Thought

On Religion

After the Death of God (Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture)

Demythologizing Heidegger (Philosophy of Religion)

Heidegger and Aquinas: An Essay on Overcoming Metaphysics

St. Paul among the Philosophers (Philosophy of Religion)

It Spooks: Living in response to an unheard call

The Religious

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John D. Caputo

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John D. Caputo
Born	John David Caputo October 26, 1940 (age 84) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US
Alma mater	La Salle University (BA) Villanova University (MA) Bryn Mawr College (PhD)
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Continental philosophy phenomenology postmodern Christianity
Institutions	Villanova University Syracuse University
Doctoral students	James K. A. Smith
Other notable students	Theodore George
Main interests	Hermeneutics ethics mysticism theology deconstruction
Notable ideas	Weak theology radical hermeneutics
Website	https://johndcaputo.com/

John David Caputo (born October 26, 1940) is an American philosopher who is the Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion Emeritus at Syracuse University and the David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Villanova University.^[1] Caputo is a major figure associated with postmodern Christianity^[2] and continental philosophy of religion, as well as the founder of the theological movement known as weak theology.^[3] Much of Caputo's work focuses on hermeneutics, phenomenology, deconstruction, and theology.

Education

Caputo received his BA in 1962 from La Salle University, his MA in 1964 from Villanova University, and his PhD in philosophy in 1968 from Bryn Mawr College.^[4]

Work

Caputo is a specialist in contemporary continental philosophy, with a particular expertise in phenomenology, hermeneutics, and deconstruction. Over the years, he has developed a deconstructive hermeneutics that he calls radical hermeneutics, which is highly influenced by the thought of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Additionally, Caputo has developed a distinctive approach to religion that he calls weak theology. Recently, his most important work has been to rebut the charges of relativism made against deconstruction by showing that deconstruction is organized around the affirmation of certain unconditional ethical and political claims.

Caputo has a special interest in continental approaches to the philosophy of religion. Some of the ideas Caputo investigates in his work include the "religion without religion" of Jacques Derrida; the "theological turn" taken in recent French phenomenology by Jean-Luc Marion and others; the critique of ontotheology; the dialogue of contemporary philosophy with Augustine of Hippo and Paul of Tarsus; and medieval metaphysics and mysticism. In the past, Caputo has taught courses on Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas, Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Derrida.

Positions held

Caputo taught philosophy at Villanova University from 1968 to 2004. He was appointed the David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University in 1993. Caputo was the Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion at Syracuse University, where he taught in both the departments of philosophy and religion from 2004 until his retirement in 2011. He is emeritus professor at both Villanova University and Syracuse University and continues to write and lecture in both the United States and Europe. He is active in the American Philosophical Association, the American Academy of Religion, the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy and he chairs the board of editors for the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory.

Notable former students of Caputo

• Theodore George
• Michael Brogan
• James K. A. Smith, professor, philosopher and theologian
• Nythamar de Oliveira, professor, philosopher and theologian

Bibliography

• (1978) The Mystical Element in Heidegger's Thought (Ohio University Press)
• (1982) Heidegger and Aquinas (Fordham University Press)
• (1986) The Mystical Element in Heidegger's Thought (Fordham University Press paperback with a new "Introduction")
• (1987) Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction and the Hermeneutic Project (Indiana University Press)
• (1993) Against Ethics - Contributions to a Poetics of Obligation with Constant Reference to Deconstruction (Indiana University Press)
• (1993) Demythologizing Heidegger (Indiana University Press)
• (1997) The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida (Indiana University Press)
• (1997) Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida, ed./auth. (Fordham University Press)
• (2000) More Radical Hermeneutics: On Not Knowing Who We Are (Indiana University Press)
• (2001) On Religion (Routledge Press)
• (2006) Philosophy and Theology (Abingdon Press)
• (2006) The Weakness of God (Indiana University Press)
• (2007) After the Death of God, with Gianni Vattimo (Columbia University Press)
• (2007) How to Read Kierkegaard (Granta; Norton, 2008)
• (2007) What Would Jesus Deconstruct?: The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church (Baker Academic)
• (2013) The Insistence of God: A Theology of Perhaps (Indiana University Press)
• (2014) Truth [Philosophy in Transit] (Penguin)
• (2015) Hoping Against Hope: Confessions of a Postmodern Pilgrim (Fortress Press)
• (2015) The Folly of God: A Theology of the Unconditional (Polebridge Press)
• (2018) Hermeneutics: Facts and Interpretation in the Age of Information (Pelican)
• (2018) The Essential Caputo: Selected Writings, ed. B. Keith Putt (Indiana University Press)
• (2019) Cross and Cosmos: A Theology of Difficult Glory (Indiana University Press)
• (2020) In Search of Radical Theology: Expositions, Explorations, Exhortations (Fordham University Press)
• (2021) The Collected Philosophical and Theological Papers, Volume 3 [1997-2000]: The Return of Religion, ed. Eric Weislogel (John D. Caputo Archives)
• (2022) The Collected Philosophical and Theological Papers, Volume 1 [1969-1985]: Aquinas, Eckhart, Heidegger: Metaphysics, Mysticism, Thought, ed. Eric Weislogel (John D. Caputo Archives)
• (2022) Specters of God: An Anatomy of Apophatic Imagination (Indiana University Press)
• (2022) The Collected Philosophical and Theological Papers, Volume 2 [1986-1996]: Hermeneutics and Deconstruction, ed. Eric Weislogel (John D. Caputo Archives)
• (2023) The Collected Philosophical and Theological Papers, Volume 4 [2001-2004]: Continental Philosophy of Religion, ed. Eric Weislogel (John D. Caputo Archives)
• (2023) What to Believe? Twelve Brief Lessons in Radical Theology (Columbia University Press)
• (2024) The Collected Philosophical and Theological Papers, Volume 5 [2005-2007]: Coming Out as a Theologian, ed. Eric Weislogel (John D. Caputo Archives)

See also

• Khôra
• List of American philosophers
• List of deconstructionists

References

1. ^ "John D. Caputo". Westar Institute. Retrieved 2021-03-17.
2. ^ Camilleri, René (October 18, 2009). "Reinvent the Church". Times of Malta. Retrieved August 20, 2012.
3. ^ "John D.Caputo". College of Arts & Sciences at Syracuse University. Retrieved 2021-03-17.
4. ^ "Villanova University Catalog" (PDF). Villanova University.

External links

Online writings

• John D. Caputo at philpapers.org
• "After Jacques Derrida Comes the Future" at the Wayback Machine (archived September 27, 2007), by John D. Caputo
• "For Love of the Things Themselves: Derrida’s Hyper-Realism" at the Wayback Machine (archived September 27, 2007), by John D. Caputo
• "Jacques Derrida (1930–2004)" (pdf), by John D. Caputo
• "Scripture: A Prologue" (pdf), by John D. Caputo
• "Without Sovereignty, Without Being: Unconditionality, the Coming God and Derrida's Democracy to Come" (pdf), by John D. Caputo
• "Theopoetic/theopolitic" (pdf) John D. Caputo and Catherine Keller
  'Cross Currents; Winter 2007; V. 57, No. 1'

Interviews

• Interview with Carl Raschke
• Interview at The Modern World
• After Atheism: New Perspectives on God and Religion, Part 2 by David Cayley, Ideas, broadcast 1 May 2012

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The Stone

Looking ‘White’ In the Face

By George Yancy and John D. Caputo

 July 2, 2015

This is the 13th in a series of interviews with philosophers on race that I am conducting for The Stone. This week’s conversation is with John D. Caputo, who is the Thomas J. Watson professor of religion emeritus at Syracuse University and David R. Cook professor of philosophy emeritus at Villanova University. He is the author of numerous books, including “The Insistence of God: A Theology of Perhaps” and “Truth.” His next book, “Hoping Against Hope,” will appear this fall. — George Yancy

George Yancy: I’d like to begin with an observation — maybe an obvious one — that the task of engaging race or whiteness in philosophy has been taken up almost exclusively by nonwhite philosophers. My sense is that this is partly because whiteness is a site of privilege that makes it invisible to many white philosophers. I also think that some white philosophers would rather avoid thinking about how their own whiteness raises deeper philosophical questions about identity, power and hegemony, as this raises the question of personal responsibility. I have found that it is often very difficult to convince white philosophers that they should also take up this project in their work — they tend to avoid it, or don’t consider it philosophically relevant. Do you agree?

Stop us and ask, ‘To what extent is everything you just said a function of being white?’

John D. Caputo: “White” is of the utmost relevance to philosophy, and postmodern theory helps us to see why. I was once criticized for using the expression “true north.” It reflected my Nordo-centrism, my critic said, and my insensitivity to people who live in the Southern Hemisphere. Of course, no such thing had ever crossed my mind, but that points to the problem. We tend to say “we” and to assume who “we” are, which once simply meant “we white male Euro-Christians.”

Photo

John D. Caputo

Credit

 Carlos Vergara

Postmodern theory tries to interrupt that expression at every stop, to put every word in scare quotes, to put our own presuppositions into question, to make us worry about the murderousness of “we,” and so to get in the habit of asking, “we, who?” I think that what modern philosophers call “pure” reason — the Cartesian ego cogito and Kant’s transcendental consciousness — is a white male Euro-Christian construction.

White is not “neutral.” “Pure” reason is lily white, as if white is not a color or is closest to the purity of the sun, and everything else is “colored.” Purification is a name for terror and deportation, and “white” is a thick, dense, potent cultural signifier that is closely linked to rationalism and colonialism. What is not white is not rational. So white is philosophically relevant and needs to be philosophically critiqued — it affects what we mean by “reason” — and “we” white philosophers cannot ignore it.

G.Y.: Do you think that this avoidance of race among white philosophers is rooted in fear?

J.D.C.: I think that racism arises from a profound fear of the other, and fear is not far from hatred. But my experience is that most philosophers, most academics, are quite progressive in their thinking about race and sexuality and politics generally and they are often active in progressive causes. My guess is that if they don’t write professionally about racism — I suspect it is often part of their teaching — it is in part because of a certain thoughtlessness, like my “Nordo-centrism.” I am not afraid of the Southern Hemisphere; it just didn’t hit me that this expression assumes “we” all live in the Northern one!

But I also think we have to take account of the professionalization and corporatization of the university, where our livelihood depends upon becoming furiously specialized technicians who publish in very narrow areas. Racism — like sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, religious discrimination, mistreatment of animals, environmental destruction, economic inequality — is a complex problem. All these problems demand to be addressed responsibly, and that requires expertise, a command of the literature, a knowledge of history, etc. No one can do all that, especially people trying to find jobs and later on get tenure and promotion, unless it intersects with their specialty in some pertinent way.

We all learned from Hannah Arendt a long time ago about the long arm of thoughtlessness, which she ventured to say reaches as far as the death camps.

It is usually the damage done by religious dogmatism that occupies my attention. So I am at least as guilty as other white philosophers. My own work has always involved theorizing the “other,” the claim made upon us by those who are excluded by the prevailing system, so I am always on the verge of mentioning race and even have race and other powers of exclusion in mind.

My shortcoming is that I lack the expertise to get down in the dirt with most of these problems; the advantage is that my work has a suggestiveness to a lot of people on the front lines in different life-situations, who grasp its application and tell me it helps them with their work.

G.Y.: Given that you claim above that white philosophers can not responsibly ignore the subject of race, what do you think must be done to get them — and the ways they understand philosophy — to change?

J.D.C.: More often than not I do not analyze race explicitly unless I am asked to; it’s only then I find there are new things for me to say. I guess that means that one solution is to do what you’re doing now — ask us! Interrupt us. Stop us and ask, “To what extent is everything you just said a function of being white?” There’s a fair chance we never asked ourselves that question. And get the courses that do raise this question into the curriculum.

G.Y.: You mentioned that most philosophers and most academics are quite progressive, but often slip into a kind of unintentional thoughtlessness. Still, the recipients of such thoughtlessness can suffer deeply. And even “progressives” can continue to perpetuate deep systemic forms of discrimination in problematic ways. Do you think that thoughtlessness can function as an “excuse” for not engaging more rigorously in combating various structures of systemic power?

J.D.C.:   No doubt. We all learned from Hannah Arendt a long time ago about the long arm of thoughtlessness, which she ventured to say reaches as far as the death camps. Every time I am asked to say something about race — or the environment or sexism or these other issues we’ve mentioned — I feel like Augustine in the “Confessions” praying and weeping over his sins. In these matters I follow Levinas. When he analyzes ethics as an asymmetric relationship to the other — that means the other overtakes us, lays claim to us with or without our consent — he says a good conscience is fraudulent. This means our responsibility never ends and we can never say it has been discharged. It is when we think that things are fine that we are not thinking. It’s just when we say “peace, peace” that the lack of peace descends on us. We coast on the status quo and we need the unrelenting provocation of responsible intellectuals, artists, journalists and the media to remind us of our complacency about the suffering that is all around us.

G.Y.: You’ve argued that true religion or prophetic religion engages the real, involves a process of risk, especially as it demands, as you’ve said, serving those who have been oppressed, marginalized, orphaned. Etymologically, religion comes from “religare,” which means to “bind fast.” I wonder if that process of binding fast is with those who are the strangers, the orphans, the unarmed black men recently killed by police, women who are sexually objectified, the poor, etc.

The great scandal of the United States is that it has produced an anti-gospel, the extremes of appalling wealth and poverty.

J.D.C.: Yes, it is, of course. In the gospel Jesus announces his ministry by saying he has come to proclaim good news to the poor and imprisoned and the year of the Jubilee, which meant massive economic redistribution every 50th year! Can you imagine the Christian right voting for that? The great scandal of the United States is that it has produced an anti-gospel, the extremes of appalling wealth and poverty. But instead of playing the prophetic role of Amos denouncing the American Jeroboam, instead of working to close that gap, the policies of the right wing are exacerbating it.

That has been felt in a particularly cruel way among black men and women and children, where poverty is the most entrenched and life is the most desperate. The popularity of such cruel ideas, their success in the ballot box, is terrifying to me. The trigger-happy practices of the police, not all police, but too many police, on the streets of black America should alert everyone to how profoundly adrift American democracy has become — attacking the poor as freeloaders and criminals, a distorted and grotesque ideological exaggeration of freedom over equality. The scandal is that the Christian right has too often been complicit with a politics of greed and hatred of the other.

To be sure, younger evangelicals are becoming critical of their elders on this point, and I am trying to reach them in my own work, and there are also many examples of prophetic religion, like the Catholic parish in a North Philadelphia ghetto that I wrote about in “What Would Jesus Deconstruct?” The secular left, on the other hand, won’t touch religion with a stick and abandons the ground of religion to the right. So both the left and the right have a hand around the throat of prophetic religion.

G.Y.: You raise a few important issues here. I wonder what it would look like for a white police officer to see an unarmed black man/boy through the eyes of prophetic religion. On an international stage, I imagine that both Palestinians and Jews would begin to see one another differently, where each would feel the deep ethical weight of the other.

J.D.C.: Prophetic does not mean the ability to foretell the future. It means the call for justice for “the widow, the orphan and the stranger,” the affirmation that the mark of God is on the face of everyone who is down and out, and a prophetic sensibility requires walking a mile in the shoes of the other.

I remember years ago, the president of a local college (in the Quaker tradition) took a year’s leave of absence to work as a trash collector. I think you are hitting on an irreducible element in the phenomenology of “alterity,” the very nub of it: Were I there, there would be “here.” That is a simple thought whose depth we never plumb. In my own work I cite it frequently to criticize the idea of “the one true religion.” We have seven grandchildren and when the last one was born I remember thinking that a little black child was also being born that day, as dear and innocent as our granddaughter, who was going home to a desperate situation where the odds will be stacked against her. We begin with an originary natal equality and then we crush it. “Switched at birth” stories, like Mark Twain’s “The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson,” have a deep ethical and political import. Were I there, there would be here. That should transform everything.

G.Y.: On June 17, 2015, a white male shot and killed nine people in the historic African-American Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Baptist Church in Charleston, S.C. There was no apparent capacity on the part of this white male to walk in the shoes of the other, to envision black life as anything other than disposable.

At a certain point in my career I decided to let my heart have a word.

J.D.C.: Exactly. This was a white man declaring these lives not merely worthless but, still worse, a threat to the “natural order” — what form of oppression does not hide behind the “natural order?” — of the supremacy of the so-called white race. There is a qualitative difference here. This was not the result of a split-second miscalculation or a misunderstanding by a policeman in a tense situation. This was a ruthless execution. Here the other does not overtake me but lies beneath me, contemptible and abject. This is pure hatred of the other.

G.Y.: Staying on the theme of walking in the shoes of the other, can you speak to the recent revelation regarding Rachel Dolezal passing as black? Do you see this as a genuine dwelling with the other or as a form of appropriation?

J.D.C.: I can only assume her intentions were good but I think she was misguided. You can’t be an “intentional” victim, adopt it freely, because that means you are always free to walk away from it if the going gets rough, take a few weeks off for a holiday, or just you change your mind. So it ends up making a mockery of the oppressed — the biting edge of oppression is that is not of your own choosing! People who try to walk a mile in the shoes of the other, to live among and dedicate their lives to working with the oppressed, are also sensitive to the fact of their own privilege. They know they can never truly identify with them. They understand this paradox but it doesn’t paralyze them. This problem also comes up in Christian theology — God intentionally assumed our mortal condition but it wasn’t an inescapable plight visited upon the divine being without its consent.

G.Y.: Is there a version of philosophy that “binds us” philosophers to the real, one that requires risking our necks for the least of these?

J.D.C.: That is the attraction of postmodern philosophy to me, which is a philosophy of radical pluralism. It theorizes alterity, calls for unrelenting sensitivity to difference, and teaches us about the danger of our own power, our freedom, our “we.” I think that philosophy is not only a work of the mind but also of the heart, and it deals with ultimate matters about which we cannot be disinterested observers. So at a certain point in my career I decided to let my heart have a word, to write in a more heartfelt way, which of course is to push against the protocols of the academy. That is why I advised my graduate students, only half in jest, that it would be too risky for them to write like that, and safer to wait until they were tenured full professors!

Related

More From The Stone

Read previous contributions to this series.

Furthermore, we do not merely write, we teach. Teaching means interacting in a fully embodied and engaged way with young people at a very precious moment in their life — when they are most ready to hear something different. Here philosophy professors brush up against what I consider the religious and prophetic quality of their work, even if they resist those words. Our work is a vocation before it is a form of employment.

Of course, this is possible in any philosophical style or tradition, but this is the special attraction of “Continental” philosophy for me. This style of thinking erupted in the 19th century with Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, who wrote with their blood, as we say, and the young Marx, and stretched from phenomenology to post-structuralism in the 20th century, and came to a head under the name of postmodernism, the affirmation of difference and plurality in a dizzying, digitalized world. This tradition speaks from the heart, speaks to the heart.

I came to philosophy through religion and theology and as a result philosophy has always had a salvific and prophetic quality for me. It has always been a way to save myself, even as in antiquity philosophy did not mean an academic specialty but a way of living wisely. This is all threatened today by the professionalization of the university, of our teaching and our writing.

G.Y.: The 20^th century French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard claimed that postmodernism involved a resistance toward and critical questioning of metanarratives — “big stories” like the Enlightenment, the march of scientific progress, or the supremacy of the West, that legitimate nations or cultures. I think postmodernism has tremendous value in terms of critically engaging racism. Yet metanarratives are also powerful, and resistant to being undone. Besides encouraging white people to become more thoughtful, how do we do the deeper ethical work of dwelling near one another, recognizing our shared humanity?

J.D.C.: “Emancipation” is a prophetic call that never stops calling. If we take it as a meta-narrative, then we run the danger of being lulled into a myth of progress, and we have seen how successful the right has been in reversing progress in civil rights and fair elections. But if I am dubious about meta-narratives, I am not dubious about prophetic action, which lies in singular sustained acts of resistance.

I have several times used the example of Rosa Parks. She did not one day, out of the blue, refuse to give up her seat and move to the back of the bus, nor was she even the first one to do that. What she did that day was another in a long line of acts of resistance, but this one worked. This one “linked” as Lyotard would put it. It set off a citywide bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., which was led by a young pastor no one ever heard of who ran a local church, a fellow named Martin Luther King Jr. The rest is history — a history the right would like to undo. So Rosa Parks did the right thing at the right time in the right place. She set off the “perfect storm” — for racists!

I have a hope against hope not in meta-narratives but in singular actions like that. Singular, but consistent and resolute.

G.Y.: Lastly, do you think that we need more prophetic voices in the world? What sort of Bildung or educational cultivation might help to generate more prophetic voices as opposed to those voices that appear to be seduced by power and narrow thinking?

J.D.C.: The prophetic voices are often the voices of obscure people who have no idea they’re prophets, who produce changes they never dreamed possible. So massive changes, structural changes, tend to be a function of mini-changes, singular deeds of singular people. We require a massive change in a culture of greed and selfishness, where the concept of the “common good” is moribund, never even mentioned.

One place this change should be focused is the children, investing in the schools, lifting up a generation of desperately disadvantaged children in the ghettos, which I think is the best shot we have to break the cycle of poverty. There is no better place to experience the prophetic call of the other than in the face of a child in need, no better way to “dwell near” the other, as you put it.

Right now, with electoral districts gerrymandered against the poor, and with the unchecked flow of right wing wealth into political campaigns, the electoral process that is supposed to address these problems has been profoundly distorted and corrupted. Right now, I fear it will take a generation to correct that. But the whole idea of prophetic action is that it is precisely when we are sure that things can never be changed that a woman refuses to sit in the back of the bus and the whole world changes. I also have hope in contemporary systems of communication. If we can keep them open, otherwise invisible individual acts of resistance — and oppression — become visible. That will keep the future open. That is our hope against hope.

This interview was conducted by email and edited. Previous interviews in this series (with Linda Martin Alcoff, Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky, Charles Mills, Falguni A. Sheth, Peter Singer and others) can be found here.

George Yancy is a professor of philosophy at Duquesne University. He has written, edited and co-edited numerous books, including “Black Bodies, White Gazes,” “Look, a White!” and “Pursuing Trayvon Martin,” co-edited with Janine Jones.