Erich Przywara and Giorgio Agamben: Rhythm as a Space for Dialogue between Catholic Metaphysics and Postmodernism

Abstract

While Agamben is becoming an increasingly important thinker for theology, 1 he is nevertheless still regarded by some as one of the multitude of postmodern philosophers who have built their thought on ontological nihilism. Conor Cunningham, for example, in tracing a genealogy of nihilism, has said of Agamben that he attempts to set up a world of undifferentiated potential, in which there is no distinction between good and evil. He argues that Agamben inverts actuality and potentiality, such that what is potential is the real and what is actual is only mirage. Any actuality is simply the inhibition of potentialities, an 'ontological pretence' that prohibits the existence of what could be otherwise. Cunningham's conclusion is that Agamben would like to bring the world as we know it to an end, and he does not offer us a new one in its place. 2 As a result of criticisms such as these, a strict division has emerged between Catholic theology, such as the analogia entis of Erich Przywara and what has been characterized as postmodern, nihilist ontologies in general. John Betz has argued that theology's rejection of Przywara's analogia entis is the result of its acceptance of postmodern philosophy's predilection, inaugurated by Nietzsche, Barth, and Heidegger, for the sublime over and against the beautiful, that is, for force over and against structure, 3 and that this is one of the symptoms of nihilism. While Betz does not himself include Agamben in this list, Milbank reads Agamben along similar lines, arguing that the only option that Agamben seems to accept is an apocalyptic interruption that makes even more extreme Heidegger's lack of mediation between Being and beings. He argues that Agamben ought, instead, to be thinking the possibility of mediation according to Catholic theology. 4 In contrast to these criticisms, this article puts forward an alternative reading of Agamben which does not reduce him to a moment in the genealogy of nihilism, but instead indicates a rhythmic proportion in his thought between time and eternity, meaning and suspension, and actuality and potentiality. I argue this by exhibiting Agamben's use of rhythm as comparable to Przywara's rhythmic metaphysics. The presence of such rhythmic proportion in Agamben's work calls into question the interpretation of those like Cunningham and Milbank who suggest that Agamben's aim is to liquefy all actuality into undifferentiated potential or to apocalyptically overturn our current reality. This in turn gives credence to a dialogue between theology and at least certain thinkers within postmodern philosophy that such strict delineations as Betz's tend to deny it. If the rhythmic proportionality of the aesthetic form of Przywara's analogia entis is comparable to that of Agamben, then the ability to hold structure and force in rhythmic proportion is still an option that remains available to postmodern thought. Betz's important project of making Przywara's analogia entis a significant concept in theology thus need not be an undertaking that opposes Przywara t...