Sacrifice in the Post-Kantian Tradition: Perspectivism, Intersubjectivity, and Recognition (SUNY Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy)

An examination of the philosophical notion of sacrifice from Kant to Nietzsche. In this book, Paolo Diego Bubbio offers an alternative to standard philosophical accounts of the notion of sacrifice, which generally begin with the hermeneutic and postmodern traditions of the twentieth century, starting instead with the post-Kantian tradition of the nineteenth century. He restructures the historical development of the concept of sacrifice through a study of Kant, Solger, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, and shows how each is indebted to Kant and has more in common with him than is generally acknowledged. Bubbio argues that although Kant sought to free philosophical thought from religious foundations, he did not thereby render the role of religious claims philosophically useless. This makes it possible to consider sacrifice as a regulative and symbolic notion, and leads to an unorthodox idea of sacrifice: not the destruction of something for the sake of something else, but rather a kenotic emptying, conceived as a withdrawal or a "making room" for others. Paolo Diego Bubbio is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. Publisher's note Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Abbreviations 14 Introduction: The Notion of Sacrifice 16 1 Kant: Sacrifice and the Transcendental Turn 34 Kant’s Kenotic Turn in Epistemology 35 Kant’s Practical Philosophy: “A Sacrifice Before the Moloch of Abstraction”? 40 Symbolic and Regulative Value of Sacrifice 46 2 Solger’s Sacrificial Dialectic 54 Sacrifice as Double Negation 54 Knowledge and Tragic Dialectic 58 Solger’s Sacrifice 61 Negation and Privation 64 Solger and Hegel 67 Sacrifice as Salvation 72 3 Hegel: Sacrifice and Recognition 76 Sacrifice in the Phenomenology of Spirit 76 “Pure insight,” “Faith,” and “Religion” 81 Sacrifice as Darstellung and Recognition 85 Sacrifice and Incarnation in Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion 90 The Incarnation of Christ 94 Some Consequences of Kenotic Sacrifice on Hegel’s Metaphysics 97 4 Kierkegaard: Sacrifice and the Regulativity of Love 102 Sacrifice in Fear and Trembling 102 Kierkegaard, Hegel, and Recognition 105 Regulativity of Sacrifice 111 Kierkegaard’s Kenotic Sacrifice 119 Features of Kenotic Sacrifice 121 Kierkegaard, Hegel, and Sacrifice 126 Kierkegaard’s Sacrifice: An Alternative to Hegel? 128 5 Nietzsche: The Sacrifice of the Overman 132 Three Meanings of Sacrifice 132 Political Implications of Sacrifice 141 6 Conclusion: The Long Way of Sacrifice 156 Sacrifice from Kant to Nietzsche . . . 156 . . . And Beyond 161 Bataille 164 Derrida 167 Girard 169 Vattimo 173 What Theory of Sacrifice? 175 Notes 182 Bibliography 212 Index 224 __An examination of the philosophical notion of sacrifice from Kant to Nietzsche.__In this book, Paolo Diego Bubbio offers an alternative to standard philosophical accounts of the notion of sacrifice, which generally begin with the hermeneutic and postmodern traditions of the twentieth century, starting instead with the post-Kantian tradition of the nineteenth century. He restructures the historical development of the concept of sacrifice through a study of Kant, Solger, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, and shows how each is indebted to Kant and has more in common with him than is generally acknowledged. Bubbio argues that although Kant sought to free philosophical thought from religious foundations, he did not thereby render the role of religious claims philosophically useless. This makes it possible to consider sacrifice as a regulative and symbolic notion, and leads to an unorthodox idea of sacrifice: not the destruction of something for the sake of something else, but rather a kenotic emptying, conceived as a withdrawal or a “making room” for others.