Abstract
In this paper, I examine the role that the biblical story of Adam and Eve, Genesis 2â3, plays for philosophers and biblical scholars who advocate a weak metaphysics. In particular, I discuss writings by Mark Glouberman, Richard Kearney and Gianni Vattimo. I examine the question of whether and in what sense Genesis 2â3 can be said to be a primal scene for weak thinking or weak metaphysics.
1 Introduction and Terminological Clarifications
The story of Adam and Eve is probably not the first thing that comes to peopleâs minds when they think of contemporary metaphysics. In this paper, however, I would like to identify aspects of Genesis 2â31 that predispose these chapters of the (Hebrew) Bible as a reference point for weak metaphysics and weak ontology. The aim of the paper is thus neither an exegesis or interpretation of the biblical text nor a discussion of the positions of the philosophers I am dealing with (and especially not a comparison of their positions as a whole), but an analysis of the role that Gen. 2â3 can play for weak metaphysics. More precisely, I am trying to answer the question of whether or in what sense this creation narrative can be regarded a primal scene of weak metaphysics.
The choice of philosophers that I will discuss results from this question: Richard Kearney and Mark Glouberman have both referred to this biblical passage and both have developed a theory that falls under what I will call âweak metaphysicsâ in the following. The reasons why I refer to Gianni Vattimo are different: the name and original content of weak metaphysics go back to him,2 which is why an examination of how he relates to a story that I would like to identify as a âprimal sceneâ, for this very philosophical approach, seems indicated. Although he developed his philosophy partly from an exegesis of the Bible, he never3 â astonishingly, it seems to me â addresses the story of Adam and Eve, even though, as I will try to show, one might expect him to do so. Further, the three philosophers offer an impression of the range of what I mean by weak metaphysics.
The meaning of âweak metaphysicsâ was, as mentioned, coined by Vattimo, but the term is now often used in a broader sense.4 Proponents of weak metaphysics â as I will understand it in this paper â deny that there are âeternally validâ, objective, general, law-like statements about being as such (or about God, man, world). Rather, they claim that all statements about being (or about God, man, world) must be weakened (vis-Ã -vis metaphysics in the âstrongâ sense) in some respect. We will see what such weakenings can look like.
For the purposes of this paper, it is not necessary to give a definition of metaphysics. What I will use, however, is a certain classification, which I will adopt for weak metaphysics: For metaphysics the division into general metaphysics or ontology and special metaphysics has been common since the beginning of the 18th century.5 Ontology examines being as such or â in more modern terms â the basic structures of reality. Special metaphysics deals with God (then also called rational theology), soul (man), and the world. Analogously, I will apply these differentiations to weak metaphysics, but I will not be concerned with metaphysical considerations concerning âthe worldâ. This distinction will also structure my engagement with all three authors â Glouberman, Kearney and Vattimo â: I will examine, respectively, whether there is a weak ontology, a weak metaphysical conception of God, and a weak metaphysical conception of humans.
This essay has two limitations in terms of content: First, a common reading of the story of Gen. 2â3 sees it as a weakening, a disempowerment of Adam and Eve; one could therefore say as a weakening of the human being or the soul. I will leave aside this reading, which does not imply a weakening of metaphysics in any broader sense. Second, I also omit those historical texts that from todayâs perspective can be seen as anticipating a weakening of metaphysics (in the sense of Vattimo, for example).6 In other words, I am not concerned here with weak metaphysics avant la lettre.
2 The Weak Metaphysics of Glouberman, Vattimo and Kearney and Their Relationships to Genesis 2â3
2.1 Mark Glouberman and the Ontology of the Particular
I begin my considerations by examining Mark Gloubermanâs book âI Amâ: Monotheism and the Philosophy of the Bible.7 Glouberman himself says that his concern is a certain ontology. Neither he nor anyone else has yet subsumed his view under âweak metaphysicsâ, but I will argue below that his philosophical approach is âweakâ (in the broad sense I outlined at the outset; his conception differs fundamentally from Vattimoâs, however). Glouberman bases his view on an interpretation of Genesis 2. This chapter of the Bible tells how God creates Adam, the first human being, from dust, breathes life into him, and then creates Eve from Adamâs rib. He claims that the story contains the message of the (Hebrew) Bible.8 He develops his conception by contrasting Genesis 2 with Genesis 1 â the other creation narrative of the bible â which he interprets as follows:
The world of Genesis 1 is a system: a place for everything and everything in its place. The narrative tracks the system onwards from a formless beginning. Distinct regions emerge: heavens and earth, upper and lower waters, wet areas on earth and dry land. Then, inhabitants emerge for the regions: celestial bodies, plants, marine creatures and birds, land animals; finally, men and women. The thinkers maintain that internal principles govern the differentiation of the chaos and (some of) the formation of (some of) the inhabitants, like the principle, of which Big Bang theorists speak, that as temperature decreases, the energy soup congeals into more discrete objects.9
Glouberman downplays the role of God in this âworld of Genesis 1â and portrays it as self-sufficient system that works according to fixed principles. The best way to see the difference between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2â3, according to Glouberman, is to look at the creation of humankind in both scenarios:
Gen. 1:26: Then God said, âLet us make humans in our image, according to our likenessâ.
Gen. 2:7: Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
In both cases, God creates humanity; only in Genesis 2, however, human beings are particulars. Glouberman then asks:
Why say this in terms of God? [â¦] The natural world, qua system, has in it no particulars. The advent of particulars cannot be explained on the natural basis. [â¦] But why God? [â¦] God, the deity of the Bible, is not only non-natural. God is also a genuine particular: God is one.10
While likeness is transmitted via properties (thus generalities), only an individual â a particular â can âbreathe into oneâs nostrils the breath of lifeâ. As God is a genuine, generic particular, he is able to pass on this particularity to human beings:
That one-ness is compatible with the existence of any number of entities having it. Adam is one entity. Eve is a second. According to the Bible, each of them, inspired with Godâs breath of life, has Godâs one-ness.11
As a consequence, being essentially means being a particular â which is what Glouberman calls âontology of the particularâ. And the idea of this ontology is fundamental for the metaphysical conception of one God:
In fact, particularity, the ontological idea, is, I would say, prior to monotheism, the theological idea. So God has one-ness. That one-ness is communicated. The result of Godâs surgery in creating the woman is a (second) separate particular.12
So Genesis 2 takes a position on Genesis 1, and this position, according to Glouberman, is the position of the Bible. This position is also taken in many other places in the Bible; Glouberman refers,13 for example, to the Shema Yisrael14 and to the Book of Job.
The position differs not only from that of Genesis 1, but also from the view of the Greeks. To show this, Glouberman compares a passage from the Book of Job with one from the Iliad:
A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble, comes up like a flower and withers, flees like a shadow and does not last. (Job 14:1â2)
Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the leaves across the earth, / now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: / as one generation comes to life, another dies away (Iliad 6: 145â149)
Although these passages might seem very similar, they differ significantly in that the Book of Job is about the life and death of one man, whereas the Iliad is about mankind (people are born, people die, new people are in the world,â¦).
In summary, Gloubermanâs conception can be reproduced as follows: The Bible represents an ontology of the particular against the ontology of the general as found in Greek thought. This ontology is weak insofar as it has no general principles as its basis. The world cannot be adequately described as a place where events take place according to universal laws, but must be understood as a changing interplay of particulars. God is one of the particulars (the first one). This God is thus the God of a weak metaphysics insofar as he is not determined by general principles and does not regulate the world through such principles. Genesis 2 is the section of the Bible in which this view is most clearly articulated.
While Gloubermanâs conception as an overall interpretation of the Bible does not seem defensible from the point of view of (mainstream) biblical scholarship, there is an aspect in which research agrees with him. While for many decades Gen. 2 was regarded as the older text, in recent years there have been increasing voices15 arguing that the priestly text, Gen. 1â2:4, is older, with, among other things, the argument that Gen. 2 explains how evil came into the world. This means that, in line with Gloubermanâs view, they understand Gen. 2 as a response to Gen. 1. Gloubermanâs view as an interpretation of Gen. 1 and Gen. 2 taken by themselves, i.e. not generalised to a position of the Bible as a whole, can be seen as quite plausible.
In any case, the question of whether Gen. 2 expresses the view of the Bible as a whole is irrelevant for my purposes here since I am only concerned with the role that Genesis 2 can play for a weak metaphysics. An open problem, however, is whether or how Glouberman can extend his claim that we are dealing with âparticularsâ to include being as a whole â after all, he is talking about an âontology of the particularâ. Human beings are particulars in Gloubermanâs understanding, but what about plants or even things?16
Another problem is that Glouberman claims, as we have seen, that the ontological idea is prior to the conception of God, but he provides not much evidence. One way to justify his claim would be to say that when comparing Genesis 1 and 2, what is being compared is not conceptions of God, but conceptions of creation.
In any case, Glouberman, drawing on Genesis 2, develops a weak metaphysics of God and a weak metaphysics of humankind and he claims (perhaps rightfully) that he has also developed a (weak) ontology.
2.2 Richard Kearneyâs God Who May Be
Richard Kearney is the second representative of a weak metaphysics whom I would like to engage. He advocates a weak metaphysics with regard to God: âGod neither is nor is not but may be. That is my thesis [â¦]. What I mean by this is that God, who is traditionally thought of as an act or actuality, might better be rethought as a possibility.â17 This statement is not to be understood as a claim about the probability that God exists, but about Godâs mode of being. It is very different from the confession of an agnostic because it implies both the falsehood of the proposition that God exists and the falsehood of the proposition that he does not exist; rather, it says something about the way God âexistsâ.
This weak metaphysical understanding of God is based on a weak ontology in general: Since Aristotle, we have been used and trained to thinking that âbeingâ (reality) is higher, more valuable than what âmay beâ (possibility) â but this is precisely what Kearney is opposing with his ontological conception.
From a practical point of view, such a weak metaphysics, in particular a weak God, also has many advantages; for example, such a concept of God reminds us of the fact that we are responsible for the world (not a God who rules).18
Kearney has not only developed a weak metaphysical concept of God and a weak ontology, but â independently, at first sight â also a weak metaphysical concept of humans. He describes this concept in his book The Wake of Imagination. There he explains that a fundamental presupposition for the seduction of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 is yetzer/
(1) yetzer is principally bad, because it lets humans live in and think of their possibilities, instead of their reality.20
(2) There is a good yetzer (yetzer ha-tov/
×צר ×××× ) and a bad yetzer (yetzer ha-ra/×צר ×רע ); humans are good when they, as free beings, choose the good ones from the possibilities open to them at every moment.21
Kearney, for obvious reasons, prefers the second option, and so he constructs the âpossibilizedâ human.22 We are dealing here with a weak metaphysics of humans insofar as humans initially exist in their possibilities, not in their realities. Before a person can take action, they are faced with an option. Kearney sees this not just as a fact, but as the basic determination â the metaphysical determination â of humans, what makes human beings what they are.
Having conceptualized the âpossibilizedâ human in The Wake of Imagination and the âpossibilizedâ God in The God Who May Be, he establishes â also in The God who may be â a relationship between the two:
By choosing to be a player rather than an emperor of creation, God chooses powerlessness. This choice expresses itself as self emptying, kenosis, letting go. God thus empowers our human powerlessness by giving away his power, by possibilizing us and our good actions â so that we may supplement and co-accomplish creation. To be made in Godâs image is therefore, paradoxically, to be powerless; but with the possibility of receiving power from God to overcome our powerlessness, by responding to the call of creation with the words, âI am able.â To Godâs âI may beâ each one of us is invited to reply âI can.â Just as to each âI can,â God replies âI may be.â In this eschatological play of power and powerlessness, the human self becomes the capable self.23
God is a God who may be, a weak God, so that humans become stronger and can choose the good (the good in man becomes real) from among their possibilities. God can remain in the possible, humans must always turn (themselves, their ideas) into reality and should do this well.
To which biblical passages is Kearney referring? In The Wake of Imagination, it is explicitly to Genesis 2â3. In The God Who May Be he does not name any biblical passage, but references to Genesis 2â3 as to Genesis 1 seem obvious to me. âTo be made in Godâs imageâ in the above is clearly a reference to Genesis 1. âChoosing to be a player rather than an emperor of creationâ as well as the described âdialogueâ between God and âeach one of usâ can be interpreted partly in Christian terms, but they also seem to be readable as allusions to Genesis 2â3. The outline of the quoted passage brings to mind Gloubermanâs distinction between âon the sceneâ and âin the sceneâ:24 while God is âon the sceneâ in Genesis 1, he is âin the sceneâ in Genesis 2â3 â the allusion to Genesis 2â3 is thus made clearer by the âdialogueâ in the above quotation.
Kearney does not contrast Genesis 1 with Genesis 2â3, but reads them together: God transfers his weakness (which becomes clear in Genesis 2â3) to his image (Genesis 1). In Kearneyâs case, as in Gloubermanâs, however, Genesis 2â3 can be seen as the actual primal scene for his considerations, for here the weak metaphysics in relation to God is combined with the weak metaphysics in relation to man. A weak ontology that upgrades possibility in comparison to reality underlies all of these representations. (Possibly one could argue that Genesis 1 would allow the weak ontology to be integrated, but for that one would have to go beyond what Kearney says.)
2.3 Gianni Vattimoâs Pensiero Debole
Gianni Vattimo states in his book Credere di credere (with the unfortunate English title Belief) that he is considered the founding father of âweak ontologyâ or âweak thoughtâ: ââWeak thoughtâ is an expression I used in an essay from the early eighties [â¦] and which ended up as the label of a philosophical trend, or (even) a school of thought.â25 He also uses the term âweak ontologyâ,26 although it is important to note that weak thought does not aim at establishing a theory in a narrow sense at all; it is the process or movement of weakening that is at stake. Nevertheless, it is something conceptual, something articulated in texts that we can refer to.
Vattimo has â to the best of my knowledge â never mentioned Genesis 2â3. However, I will argue that Genesis 2 would be a very appropriate reference for his reflections.
At the centre of his view is secularisation: âThe keystone [â¦] is the term âsecularizationâ. This, as is well known, indicates the process of âdriftingâ that removed modern lay civilization from its sacral origin.â27 It is, however, a secularization within Christianity:
My reflections on Girard [â¦] paved the way for a conception of secularization characteristic to modern western history as an event within Christianity linked positively to Jesusâ message and to a conception of the history of modernity as a weakening and dissolution of (metaphysical) Being.28
How is such a secularization compatible with or even inherent to Christianity?
If the natural sacred is the violent mechanism that Jesus came to unveil and undermine, it is possible that secularization â which also constitutes the Churchâs loss of temporal authority and human reasonâs increasing autonomy from its dependence upon an absolute God, a fearsome29 Judge who so transcends our ideas about good and evil as to appear as a capricious or bizarre sovereign â is precisely a positive effect of Jesusâ teaching, and not a way of moving away from it.30
Secularisation means the weakening of God; thus, it means a weak metaphysics with regard to God.
However, Vattimo not only advocates the concept of a weak God, but also a weak general metaphysics,31 i.e. a weak ontology â there are no universal laws that determine the course of the world:
Yet the end of the metaphysical God does not prepare the rediscovery of the Christian God only insofar as it removes the prejudice of natural religion. If the meaning of the end of metaphysics is to reveal in Being an essential inclination to assert its truth through weakening, weak ontology will not be just a negative preparation for the return of religion [â¦]. By contrast, the incarnation, that is, Godâs abasement to the level of humanity, what the New Testament calls Godâs kenosis, will be interpreted as the sign that the non-violent and non-absolute God of the post-metaphysical epoch has as its distinctive trait the very vocation for weakening of which Heideggerian philosophy speaks.32
For me, the primary meaning of this expression [weak thought] is not the idea of a thinking that is more aware of its own limits, that abandons its claims to global and metaphysical visions, but above all a theory of weakening as the constitutive character of Being in the epoch of the end of metaphysics.33
Weakness in Vattimoâs case means, in general terms, the reduction of power, influence and control, and historicity instead of eternal truth.34 Genesis 2â3 contains several elements of weakening in this sense. For example, God creates Adam and gives him Eve as a âhelpâ â âhelpâ (Gen. 2:18:
Why does Vattimo not refer to Genesis 2â3 (neither here nor in other writings), even though the reference would be very appropriate? The â not very pleasant36 â answer can perhaps be found in a video showing Vattimo at an event. In this video, Vattimo explains that he simply does not like (much of) the Old Testament,37 and that is because the God of the Old Testament is so cruel: âa strong master, who wants you to obey; then if you donât obey, he punishes youâ.38 If he reads Genesis 2â3 with this bias, he must obviously miss those aspects of the story that shed an entirely different light on God.
This is not to claim that Vattimo only has negative things to say about the Hebrew Bible, e.g. he writes:
â[T]he biblical revelation (Old and New Testament) also represents the long process of Godâs education of humanity [â¦].â39
â[K]enosis begins with creation itself and the Old Testament.â40
â[S]ecularization is the way in which kenosis, having begun with the incarnation of Christ, but even before that with the covenant between God and âhisâ people, continues to realize itself more and more clearly [â¦].â41
And he also admits that there is, so to speak, a genuine Jewish contribution to weak thinking in the form of
theoretical positions that, in the light of the Holocaust of the Jews under Nazism, have been taken with regard to the possibility of thinking God not as omnipotent, but as in struggle alongside humanity for the triumph of goodness.42
Nevertheless, the God of the Hebrew Bible remains the âfearsome Judgeâ (see quotation above) for him, and he is also unable to interpret a creator of material entities in any way other than an element of a strong metaphysics:43
Seen in this light, the kenosis that is the original meaning of Christianity signifies that salvation lies above all in breaking the identification of God with the order of the real world, in distinguishing God from (metaphysical) Being understood as objectivity, necessary rationality, foundation. Even to think of God as the creator of the material world is to subscribe to this metaphysical conception of the divine [â¦].44
Perceiving Genesis 2â3 as a staging of a weakening is not possible with this default setting. I think that is a great pity, especially as the story of Eve and Adam has a lot to offer which would make it suitable as a key scene, even a primal scene, for Vattimoâs views.
3 Genesis 2â3 as a Primal Scene for Weak Metaphysics
3.1 Different Kinds of Weakening in Genesis 2â3
Many textual elements of weak metaphysics, as conceptualised by Vattimo, Glouberman, and Kearney, can be found when going through Gen. 2â3:
Gen. 2:7: â[T]he LORD God [â¦] breathed into [the manâs] nostrils the breath of lifeâ. God, Adam, and Eve are thus particulars. [Glouberman]
Gen. 2:18â19: God creates Eve as a help (
×¢×ר ) for Adam â which is the help of a saviour, usually God; so God gives up power, weakens him-/herself/themselves. [Vattimo]Gen. 3:5: â[â¦] when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God knowing good and evilâ. Man is a being with imagination, therefore a being of possibilities [Kearney]
Gen. 2:17: The tree of knowledge gives man freedom45 and puts him/her in the realm of possibilities [Kearney, Vattimo]
Gen. 3:22â24: Through the displacement from paradise, man becomes a being subject to historicity. [Kearney, Vattimo]46
There can be no exhaustive list of all kinds of weak metaphysics that may ever occur or be invented; therefore, I cannot show that Genesis 2â3 is a primal scene for every such metaphysical theory, but I hope it has become obvious that for a wide range of weak metaphysical theories, Genesis 2â3 can be seen as an important point of reference.
From a systematic point of view, it should have become clear that the following directions of weakening the âstrong metaphysicsâ are possible:
from the general in favour of the individual,
from the real to something ontologically weaker: the possible
from the strong and powerful to the weak and powerless
from the eternal, the supra-spatial to the temporal, the spatially localised, the historical
I would like to add two further directions â albeit only in a tentative way â in which a weakening of metaphysics could be considered and which would also have connections to Gen. 2â3:
First, Jean-Luc Marionâs Dieu sans lâêtre could also be seen as an extreme version of a weak metaphysics. The direction of the weakening would then be from being/the existent to non-being/the non-existent. God is not there, according to Marion, but gives himself/herself/themselves. And that too would be indicated in Gen. 2â3: God is not visible, but he/she/they gives and communicates.47
Second, the idea that ontology must give way to epistemology â that, as Kant argued, there is no theory of the being of the world independent of our cognition â can also be interpreted as a weakening of metaphysics. In Gen. 2â3, this would correspond to the tree of life being replaced in its central position by the tree of knowledge, as Kurt Appel suggests in an essay.48
3.2 âPrimal Sceneâ â In What Sense?
So far I have used the term âprimal sceneâ in a non-committal way, in the sense of a narrative that â paradigmatically â illustrates the meaning of a weak metaphysics (a narrative that can claim to be one of the oldest narratives that has helped to shape our culture). I used the term in the same way as it is done, for example, in the abstract of a book on high culture and violence, where it says: âThe primal scene of violence is the biblical story of Cain and Abel and fratricide.â49
I have not touched upon the question of whether it is a primal scene in the Freudian sense. Genesis 3 and 4 do indeed thematise and imagine a sexual act with unpleasant consequences done by ancestors, but an examination of this question would go beyond the scope of this essay.
More importantly, I have so far also left unaddressed the matter of whether the scene could be âprimalâ in the sense that there could be a factual connection between the narrative and the âinventionâ of weak metaphysics (by Gianni Vattimo); in other words, whether Gen. 2â3 â in some convoluted and perhaps unconscious way â could have influenced Vattimoâs thinking and steered him towards his weak ontology. Any attempt to answer this question must necessarily remain highly speculative. It seems quite clear to me, however, that one such path would be via the idea of Christ as the new Adam.
Christ as the new Adam could be the link between Gen. 2 and Vattimoâs âweakeningâ. St. Paul is the one who establishes Christ as the new Adam, and Vattimo repeatedly refers to St. Paul, e.g.:
Will a concept of the course of history as driven toward emancipation by diminishing strong structures (in thought, individual consciousness, political power, social relations, and religion) not be a transcription of the Christian message of the incarnation of God, which Saint Paul also calls kenosis â that is, the abasement, humiliation, and weakening of God?50
In his essay on Credere di credere, Jakob Deibl makes the connection I have in mind here explicit, when he ascribes to Vattimo, with reference to the Letter to the Romans, that he thinks of an âopen, historical being in Christ, the new Adamâ:
Vattimo bringt darüber hinaus den Gedanken der Wirklichkeitsauflösung mit der paulinischen Deutung von Tod und Auferstehung in Verbindung: âDer paulinische Satz âTod, wo ist dein Stachel?â (1 Kor 15, 55) kann mit gutem Grund als extreme Leugnung des âWirklichkeitsprinzipsâ gelesen werden.â Es ist dies die Verkehrung der unter der Wirklichkeit und Macht des Schicksals des Todes stehenden Welt und Geschichte. Der kardinale Punkt, aus dem heraus sich Dasein erschlieÃt, ist nicht mehr der Tod wie bei Heidegger, sondern die eigenste und äuÃerste Möglichkeit des Daseins ist der neue Mensch, das nicht positivierbare, offene, geschichtliche Sein in Christus, dem neuen Adam, wie es in der Taufe auf seinen Tod geschenkt wird. Christi Tod aber ist der überwundene, der verkehrte Tod. (Röm 6, 3â11)51
It can therefore be speculated that the idea of Christ as the new Adam establishes a real connection between Gen. 2â3 and Vattimoâs reflections, that the narrative could therefore also be a âprimal sceneâ in the sense that it could stand at the beginning of a historical and cultural development in which Vattimo, Kearney and other representatives of a weak metaphysics later appear.
In any case, I hope to have shown that Genesis 2â3 is outstandingly suitable for explicating weak metaphysical theories of various kinds.
Biography
Esther Heinrich-Ramharter completed PhDs in philosophy and in mathematics in Vienna. Habilitation in philosophy in 2010. Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Vienna since 2011. Vice-Speaker of the Research Centre âReligion and Transformation in Contemporary Societyâ at the University of Vienna since 2022. Recent publications: Religionsphilosophie nach Wittgenstein (ed., 2024), The Vienna Circle and Religion (ed., 2022), Springer; âJosef Schächter â Philosophy of Language between Logical Empiricism and Tanach Studyâ, Logique et Analyse 256 (2021), 375â383.
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Vattimo, Gianni: A Farewell to Truth. New York: Columbia University Press 2011.
Vattimo, Gianni: Christianity as Secularisation, Tuesday 14 August 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK3ZsvPSLZI, (date of last access: 9. 10. 2023).
Vollrath, Ernst: Die Gliederung der Metaphysik in eine Metaphysica generalis und eine Metaphysica specialis, in: Zeitrschrift für philosophische Forschung (16.2/1962), pp. 258â284.
White, Stephen K.: Sustaining Affirmation. The Strengths of Weak Ontology in Political Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press 2000.
By Genesis 2â3 I will always mean the non-priestly text Gen.2:4 (or 2:4b or 2:5) to 3:24. I quote from the Bible according to the NRSV.
See Vattimo, Belief, p. 34.
To the best of my knowledge.
To give some examples: Pier Aldo Rovatti is classified as a âweak thinkerâ; however, he focuses more on the weakening of the subject than Vattimo. Umberto Eco is, as he himself once stated (see Eco, Weak Thought and the Limits of Interpretation, p. 42), also enlisted by many among the theorists of weak thought. However, weak thinking or weak metaphysics have not remained limited to Italian philosophy, but have also spread to the Anglo-Saxon world. Richard Kearney, for example, is named as a representative of a weak metaphysics or weak theology (see Bradley, Review of Reimagining the Sacred). Weak ontology has also made a steep career in political philosophy in recent years (there is talk of a âweak ontological turnâ). See, e.g., White, Sustaining Affirmation. In the person of Charles Taylor, to whom also a âweakâ view is attributed, philosophical interests in politics and religion are united.
See Vollrath, Gliederung der Metaphysik, pp. 259â262.
Flasch, Eva und Adam, would offer many starting points for such an endeavour, for example.
In my opinion, this book is one of the most original contributions to the ongoing debate about whether the Hebrew Bible contains philosophy.
When Glouberman speaks of âthe Bibleâ, he always means the Hebrew Bible.
Glouberman, I Am, p. 46.
Glouberman, I Am, p. 63 et seq.
Glouberman, I Am, p. 64.
Glouberman, I Am, p. 64.
Glouberman, I Am, p. 64.
Shema Yisrael (Dtn. 6:4â9): âHear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is one (
See Blenkinsopp, P and J in Genesis 1:1â11:26; Bosshard-Nepustil, Vor uns die Sintflut, pp. 187â195, Otto, Paradieserzählung, pp. 183â189; Schüle, Der Prolog der Hebräischen Bibel, pp. 160â168 â to mention just a few.
In her habilitation thesis, Sandra Lehmann recently developed an ontology of things that could help here. Cf. Sandra Lehmann: Die Hyperbolé der Wirklichkeit. Metaphysik nach dem Ende der Metaphysik. BRILL: Leiden/Paderborn 2025.
Kearney, The God Who May Be, p. 1.
Kearney, The God Who May Be, p. 4 et seq.
See Kearney, The Wake of Imagination, p. 42.
See Kearney, The Wake of Imagination, pp. 43â45.
See Kearney, The Wake of Imagination, pp. 46â49. There are indeed rabbinic traditions that deal with the (good and bad) yetzer, but Kearney does not specify what exactly he is referring to and I cannot identify it.
He describes âyetser as a passion for the possible: the human impulse to transcend what exists in the direction of what might existâ (Kearney, The Wake of Imagination, p. 42).
Kearney, The God Who May Be, p. 108.
Glouberman, I am, p. 188 et seq.
Vattimo, Belief, p. 34.
See, e.g., Vattimo, Belief, p. 42 et seq, p. 44 et seq, p. 63.
Vattimo, Belief, p. 41.
Vattimo, Belief, p. 40 et seq.
The Italian word is âminaccioso,â meaning âfearsomeâ, âmenacing.â It is mistranslated as âfearfulâ in the English version.
Vattimo, Belief, p. 41.
Terminological confusion must be avoided here: Vattimo â deeply influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger â opposes metaphysics, in particular, a metaphysical conception of God. His rejection of metaphysics means a rejection of any notion of a (transcendental) structure of the world that would be given once and for all and of any notion of an objective truth. I use the term âweak metaphysicsâ for positions (like Vattimoâs) that reject or oppose (strong) metaphysics. Vattimo might not have liked this terminology, since he reserved the word âmetaphysicsâ for those conceptions that he rejects.
Vattimo, Belief, p. 39.
Vattimo, Belief, p. 34 et seq.
Cf., e.g., Vattimo, After Christianity, p. 80, 91.
Compare, e.g., Dtn. 33:26, Ps. 121:1, 146:5. See Schellenberg, Der Mensch, das Bild Gottes?, p. 192 and p. 222.
I will not comment in this essay on the discussion about Vattimoâs anti-Zionism or anti- Semitism.
Vattimo: Christianity as Secularisation, 0:15:20â0:15:21.
Vattimo: Christianity as Secularisation, 0:13:26â0:13:34.
Vattimo, Belief, p. 38.
Vattimo, Belief, p. 66.
Vattimo, Belief, p. 48.
Vattimo, Belief, p. 67.
Weak thinkers following Vattimo also adopt this attitude. Jack Miles writes in a very nice essay in an anthology in honour of Vattimo: âGod reveals himself to his first human creatures rather as their master than as their father. Adam and Eve, whether or not they fully appreciate that God is their creator, do acknowledge his mastery over them in some preliminary way. Though they will disobey him, they do not challenge his right to command their obedience.â (Miles, Fatherhood of God, p. 309) In his essay, Miles describes how God gradually becomes a father in the Bible; and he is undoubtedly right that Adam and Eve do not question Godâs right to command, although they disobey him. But what remains unnoticed here (it is not important for Milesâ intentions) is that God gives them the opportunity to break his rules.
Vattimo, A Farewell to Truth, p. 55.
Cf., e.g., Schellenberg, Der Mensch, das Bild Gottes?, p. 209.
Kearney, The Wake of Imagination, p. 39 et seq: âThe sin of imagination leads to the fall of Adam and Eve into historical time where the spirit is no longer at one with itself as in the Garden of Eden.â Kurt Flasch traces this back to St. Augustin: âDas Paradies und der Himmel muÃten [according to St. Augustin] zeitfrei sein. Erst mit Eva und dem Apfelbià begann die Zeitâ (Flasch, Eva und Adam, p. 16).
In Genesis 3:8 and 3:10 God is heard, but nowhere is it said that he/she/they is seen.
Compare Gen. 2:9 and Gen. 3:3â4. A careful discussion of the role of trees in paradise is offered by Appel, Gott â Mensch â Zeit, pp. 25â27.
Jung/Scheid/Wernert, Hochkultur und Gewalt, abstract.
Vattimo, After Christianity, p. 91.
Deibl, âGlauben zu glaubenâ. Vattimos Apologie des Halbgläubigen, p. 292.
