Homologies: On the Critique of the Religion of Heaven and the Critique of Earthly Religion

Abstract

This article explores structural analogies between the spheres of theology, epistemology, and politics from a dialectical perspective. The starting point is the recognition that the "reification" or "objectification" of totality is expressed as the negation of otherness.

In the theological sphere, structure is defined in terms of "immanence-transcendence". In this realm, the immanent frame may be closed in on itself, as in the case of physicalist naturalism, which presents itself as "the totality (the physical universe) containing all totalities," or it may remain open to its exteriority or transcendence. In the epistemological sphere, the circle of representations that constitutes the subject-object correlation, the mind-world relation, the interior-exterior topology, can be interpreted as a primitive and insurmountable totality, the so-called "correlational circle," or it can remain open to its background. In the political sphere, capitalist modernity, as a historical totality, can present itself as the "end of history" and express itself as the negation of its exteriorities - the excluded populations, non-human nature, and future generations - or it can submit to the verdict of injustice of its victims and take responsibility for the unintended effects produced by its blindness.

These structures reveal a transhistorical question concerning the problem of the objectivity of the world that arises from our finite condition. But they also pose a historical question concerning the self-understanding of modernity, the intrinsic logic of the capitalist order, and the horizons of the post-secular era.