Event overview
A Freudian-Thomist analysis of the limits of liberalism in the context of the biblical injunction to love my neighbour as myself
Jacques Lacan claims that Freud's discovery of the death drive filled him with horror, a horror which "derived from the evil in which he doesn't hesitate to locate man's deepest heart". This paper traces the concepts of love of neighbour and love of self from Aquinas through Kant to Lacan, in order to ask how far the annihilating urge of the death drive after the death of God provides a perspective from which to analyse the violence that underwrites modern liberal societies. Is there a postmodern Lacanian Thomism, attentive to issues of gender, desire and violence, which might help political theologies to go beyond the rhetoric of justice and peace to a purgation of the deeper, darker roots of violence in the modern soul? Such a question challenges not only secular liberalism, but also the liberal theologies which are parasitic upon its agendas and constrained by its boundaries.
Dates & times
Date | Time | Add to calendar |
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21 Jan 2021 | 6:00pm - 7:30pm |
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