Today we talked about symbols and the generative power of symbols. I started to think how the symbols fit into a symbolic order, and through this symbolic order Christianity has defined and redefined itself on a basis of the power inherit, or lack of power, in the symbolic rituals of the church. So, my definition for the symbolic order comes out of Lacan: The social world of linguistic communication. intersubjective relations, knowledge of ideological conventions, and the acceptance of law (which Lacan calls the "big Other").
The example of Prof. Layne's son talking about symbols relates to this order. The child in consumed by language and accepts the rules, norms, and ideological consciousness of a certain society. Through this acceptance of the symbolic order, Simon (Prof Layne's son) is now able to relate to and deal with others and the authority they posses. Lacan gets a little messy when he starts pulling the symbolic order from the Oedipus complex, but even through dealing with this Oedipus complex, the name of the father, a likeness to Christianity and the conception of God as father arises. When I say the Name of the Father I mean that which mediates your desire and communication through restrictions and law--think of the Freudian superego. Language as the mediator of the symbolic gives us the human act par excellence, originally founded on the existence of the world of the symbol, specifically on the laws and contracts. Even in using the phrase par excellence I make a philosophical point through some sort of symbolic authority. Why do I even say par excellence in my pseudo french accent, when I could just as easily say it is the quintessential. By using the phrase par excellence I am taking from a linguistic terminology that symbolically represents an intellectual. I become what I want to be through the words and the symbolic authority I give to language I use and how I relate to it by relating to others. I want others to see me as a philosophical power, and the way they can perceive me in this way is through the words I use to paint a picture of myself.
Anyway, that tangent was going on for too long. The symbolic order in Christianity broke down during the Reformation, and a need to reinvent God and his rituals were called for. It seems like a lot of people in this class like Nietzche, and I think he realized this lack of symbolic authority of the Church in his proclimation, "God is Dead." God is Dead isn't a call for atheism, but we are given a break from the taditional Christian ideology and are introduced to a new form of belief. The thesis "God is Dead" is only one part of a two-fold thesis: "God is Dead" and "Christianity has survived the Death of God." Looking at the survival of Christianity despite the death of God can help to elucidate just what type of ideology has been functioning since the reformation.
Nietzche's affirmation concerns a symbolic God. The inherent power of God is stripped from the rituals of Christianity and we are left with a "dead God" we must power ourselves. In this death of the symbolic we can find the two formulations of God that have been functioning throughout the history of Christianity. There is the God of scientists, philosophers, and theologians, and there is the God of Job, Jacan, and Abraham. The first God functions as an ontological God within and the throughout the symbolic order of linguistics, law, and ideology; the God of Abraham functions as the Symbolic God--it is the excess of the symbolic which leads to Nietzche's death of God. The God referred to in the affirmation "God is Dead" is the God that powers the symbolic. This powerless God is robbed from the traditional Christian rituals and belief and in this void we find Christianity replacing God in the power of the symbolic.
The Reformation was a way for the Chruch to try to re-activate God in a new way that could survive the death of the symbolic God. Once rituals become powerless, new forms of worship begin to spring up without having to rely on a symbolic master. The power of the master was now in the hands of the people, and with this power new forms of prayer are no longer contingent on rituals.
The problem of the symbolic lack of power manifests itself as the empowerment of those who were once enslaved. This can also be seen through the Hegelian master-slave dialectic, which at its core claims that the master/slave power/powerless relationship is equally contingent on both parties. The lines between master and slave are ultimately blurred. Rituals that produce nothing due to the absence of the symbolic God shows us how the invisible scaffolding of our consciousness, our moral conception of life and will to believe, affirms this master-slave dialectic within the Christian fath. Using religion as a crutch is key to the survival of Christianity despite the "DEATH OF GOD." Using religion as a way to diminish your self and as a way to produce a sense of alienation as means to raise yourself up into the religious sphere is captured by the typical Christian rhetoric of "I am a sinner but in God I am saved." In this proclamation Christianity is able to elevate itself from a false sense of self worth into assimilation with God. This gives an excellent example, AN EXAMPLE PAR EXCELLENCE, of fetishistic disavowal at work after the "death of God": I know very well that the symbolic God is gone from the rituals and that I have to take the place of God by becoming my own God, but I nonetheless act as though the symbolic God still functioned as the generative power in the rituals and beliefs I uphold.
The discovery of God as a "power" is a major reason why Christianity was able to survive the death of God. Before the Reformation, the symbolic rituals created a way for people to connect to the God that is "beyond" our world. The rituals acted as a way for the two realms of existence, the earthly and the heavenly, to meet. Once the symbolic God was lost from the rituals, the God functioning as "power" takes on a whole new meaning. The way to reach "beoynd" into the other realm of existence is utterly unattainable. The symbolic no longer acts as the quilting point between realms, but it does feed on infinite passion to attain a higher level of being through religious experience. The new power no longer functions as generative but as accumulative. This accumulation of power created God again after the Reformation by keeping God at a distance. To get in touch with God we must function as passion for God. But this is too much philosophy for one blog post.
Ultimately, I am not trying to paint an atheists interpretation of Christianity. I actually think that the similarities between fundamentalist Christians and atheists are scary. The modern atheist can look at the proclamation "God is Dead" and find within it something he/she can support, but within this support there has to be an unconscious belief in God. This unconscious belief affects the modern atheist just as much as the conscious belief that God is dead, in the sense that there is a space in which God dwells. The atheist is a subject presenting him/herself as a tolerant hedonist dedicated to the pursuit of happiness, beauty, pleasure--a profound and naive romanticism maybe?--and their unconscious is the site of prohibitions: what is repressed is not illicit desire or pleasure, but suppression itself.
Hopefully you read all of that. Class isn't boring, it is just hard for me to give a synopsis of what happened without going off on tangents.
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