A summary of Part IV of Milbank’s book.
Milbank argues that a proper theological response to postmodernism must be discriminating. He accepts the postmodern critique of “substance,” and thinks that Christianity can get along without employing this notion. But other aspects of the postmodern attack on traditional philosophy cannot be admitted by theology.
His critique of postmodernism proceeds by three steps: first, he argues that genealogy requires an ontology of violence; second, he claims that this ontology has no claim to being anything more than another myth, another way of telling the story: ahs no justification for claiming to be more than just another contingent description of the world; third, he concludes that this is “an entirely malign mythology.”
Genealogy first: According to Nietzsche and Foucault, their historical method exposes what is really going on in history. Nietzsche tells history in a way that everything is reducible to an exercise of the will to power. Christianity is especially perverse precisely because it masks its will to power under an apparent renunciation of power. But there is a basic difficulty with genealogy. On the one hand, it posits that all cultures are rationalizations of power and violence, while arguing on the other hand that certain cultures are closer and more overt in their commitments to power and violence than others.
Milbank argues effectively that genealogy is just another way to tell the story, and does not have any privileged position among the various ways one could tell the story of history. How can genealogy justify its claim that power and violence is the basic reality of history? Not in terms of genealogy, but only by a prior metaphysical commitment. Though Nietzsche announces the end of metaphysics, he in fact only offers a different metaphysics. In fact, the only reason why genealogists focus on power and violence is because they have assumed a particular ontology, an ontology of violence.
Thus, Milbank moves into the second stage of his analysis of postmodernism: genealogy requires an ontology that makes violence ultimate. Milbank charges that post-Heideggerian philosophy is essentially Gnostic in that it treats creation as inherently, metaphysically fallen, conflicted, violent. No redemption is possible. A second factor is the belief that all difference is conflicted difference. There is no ontological basis in Heidegger or his followers for a harmony of difference. Violence and conflict are “ontologized,” projected as the ultimate reality. For Derrida, for example, all interpretation is a matter of doing violence to the original text; interpretation is always subversive. Milbank asks, Why? And thinks that the answer is that subversion and conflict has been presupposed as the most fundamental reality.
Like sociology, genealogy ultimately ends up with an ahistorical account of history. For sociology, “society” is a basically unchanging something that is productive of the religious, cultural, and political shape of things. For genealogy, power is reified and becomes an ahistorical, unchanging reality, the bedrock underneath the shifting patterns of history. Milbank is here more “postmodern” than Nietzsche, in that he doesn’t think there is any unchanging “bedrock” of history, but only continually shifting patterns.
Third, Milbank wants to show that this mythology is entirely malign. Genealogy ends up being complicit with and approving of the violence it claims to expose and unmask. As noted above, Nietzsche and Foucault begin with the belief that all culture is ultimately about power and violence. They claim that even Christianity, which seems to put a premium on peace, is really just a clever way of covering real intentions and goals, power. Christianity is the real enemy for Nietzsche precisely because it veils its will to power under a cloak of renunciation of power. But if power and violence is the real and basic story, then we should conclude that those societies that are open about their commitment to power and violence are in some sense “truer” than those that veil that commitment. Fascist regimes are more honest, and therefore more moral, than Christian societies, and so too for ancient heroic societies. Milbank suggests that Nietzsche read Augustine back to front: He agreed with Augustine that pagan virtue was merely self-assertion and violence, but revels in that discovery instead of condemning it, as Augustine does, in the light of an alegernative configuration of human life.
Milbank argues that, for all their differences, postmodernism and antique philosophy share a commitment to violence. There is a hidden continuity between antique virtue and postmodern chaos. Thus, a revival of antique virtue cannot meet the challenge of postmodern nihilism. We need a wholly new ontology, one that rejects the ultimacy of violence. The only alternatives left are nihilism and Christianity.
Here Milbank, though appreciative of MacIntyre’s work, is also critical of what he sees as an effort to revive antique virtue. MacIntyre treats the philosophy of Aristotle as a universal, while Milbank insists that rationality is not equivalent to Aristotle. Aristotle’s was contingent philosophy, and it was tied to the oppressive structures of the ancient polis. Try as we might, we cannot detach Aristotle from this social and political setting.
Milbank also suggests that MacIntyre is not sensitive enough to how radically Christianity revises even the form of ethics. For Aristotle, Milbank says, what made virtue real was phronesis, prudence. Prudence regulates love. For Aquinas, as for Christianity generally, love is the highest virtue, and love regulates prudence. Further, the primacy of the “mean” in Aristotle’s philosophy is tied to notions of virtue as victory, victory in this case over passion, and thus makes violence inherent to ethics. Ethics, for Aristotle as for Kant, is an “overcoming” of chaos, the chaos of natural inclinations or passion.
Milbank appeals to Augustine’s City of God as a “deconstruction” of antique Roman virtue since Augustine shows that even the virtues of the pagans were “splendid vices.” According to Augustine, even the virtues of pagan Rome reduce to an exercise of violence. Virtue, as MacIntyre points out, originally was connected with excellence in an agonistic, a conflict situation: had to do with conquest. This association with violent suppression was never removed from conceptions of virtue. For Romans, the virtuous man is one that suppresses and gains victory over his passions. Politically, this translates into empire: By controlling his passions, the Roman gained glory and pre-eminence. Virtue was still a matter of conquest in a conflict, and the Roman peace is Roman virtue writ large, a process of limiting power by power, limiting violence by alternative violence. This is all rooted in cosmologies that conceive of “creation” as a matter of the demiurge controlling chaos. For Milbank, ontology, politics and ethics are of a peace, for both ancient thought and for Christianity. At each level, there is violent conquest of chaos in ancient thought and culture. As Milbank strikingly puts it, for antiquity, there can be no virtue without conflict and competition, and thus no virtue in heaven, where conflict has ceased. For Augustine, virtue is preeminently found in heaven, since virtue is harmony and love.
What Christianity thus provides in response to modern social theory, postmodern nihilism, and antique virtu e, is a “counter-histor y,” a “counter-ethics” and a “counter-ontology.” The counter-history is the history of Christ and his church. This is the Christian “metanarrative” within which all other stories and events must find their meaning and place. The church “defines itself as both in continuity and discontinuity with the community of Israel; later on it defines itself as in still greater discontinuity with the ‘political’ societies of the antique world. This account of history and critique of human society is in no sense an appendage to Christianity — on the contrary, it belongs to its very ‘essence.’” This implies “a gigantic claim to be able to read, criticize, say what is going on in other human societies,” which “is absolutely integral to the Christian Church.” In fact, “for theology to surrender this claim, to allow that other discourses - the ‘social sciences’ - carry out yet more fundamental readings, would therefore amount to a denial of theological truth. The logic of Christianity involves the claim that the ‘interruption’ of history by Christ and his bride, the Church, is the most fundamental of events, interpreting all other events. And it is most especially a social event, able to interpret other social formations, because it compares them with its own new social practice.” Augustine was able, from the perspective of this history, to redescribe the whole history of paganism, and expose it as based on violence, pursuit of self-interest and dominion for its own sake.
The counter-ethics is the church. Milbank challenges common claim that Augustine is the precursor of liberal and individualistic Christianity and shows that Augustine’s Christianity is inherently social. Augustinian Christianity did not wholly reject the ancient association of ethics and the polis. For Christianity, ethics is still located and fulfilled in community, but the community was the new community of the church.
Within this counter-society a new social practice takes place. Instead of rivalry and victimization, the church is a place where priority is placed on forgiveness of sins and bearing of one another’s burdens. Moreover, the new polis of the church offered another form of rule: Instead of the rule of coercion, it offered a pastoral model of rule. There is still, Milbank argues, a place for coercive means under certain circumstances but this is not to be domination for its own sake, but always, as Augustine argued, for the good of the one who is coerced. Even coercion is infused with and qualified by love.
In this new city, peace is not the mock peace of Rome. Augustine said that the peace of Rome was not really peace. In Rome, power limited and kept power in check. True peace is a matter of absolute harmony and love. True peace as a consensus in love. For Christianity, too, virtue is not a suppression of the passions, not a suppression of desire, but a redirection of desire to its proper object. Neither peace nor virtue rests on violence.
Under counter-ontology, Milbank stresses several Christian teachings that undermine both antiquity and postmodernism. Essentially, he wants to show that Christianity posits the ultimacy of peace over conflict, and that the ultimate reality for Christianity is a harmony of difference. Unlike postmodernism, Christianity does not see difference as inherently conflicted difference but rather sees difference as the essential obverse of communion and harmony. Milbank employs a musical analogy, drawn from Augustine’s De Musica.
The ultimate reality is the Triune God. Milbank is unashamedly Trinitarian, and for him the philosophical implication of the trinity is that ultimate reality is a matter both of difference and of harmony. God is not an undifferentiated monad: He is Three, and thus difference is not threatening. Difference is a principle that describes the highest reality of all, yet this difference is not a difference of antagonism and violent conflict. It is a difference in unity, a difference united in love, a harmony of difference.
The other important point here is that Christianity does not teach that violence and evil are inherent in the creation, and more than they are inherent in the Trinity. Christianity teaches an originally good and harmonious creation, a peaceful kingdom, which was destroyed by a historical fall. Violence and evil and death are not therefore inherent in creation but are in this sense contingent, and because of this it is possible for the world to be redeemed. Augustinian Christianity gives violence and evil “no ontological purchase,” since evil is simply the privatio of some good. Because evil is located in the will, it doesn’t exist as a thing.
Finally, he returns to his earlier points about “poesis.” The great failure of Christian ontology, he claims, is the failure to challenge the modern concepts of the “made” as a sphere of secularity. This failure has meant a failure of Christianity to provide a cultural and political perspective that could challenge modernity. Trinitarian theology can, however, provide a robust constructivist perspective that is not secular. Christianity teaches that there is a “making” within God Himself, since the Father “begets” the Son. This kind of begetting is mirrored in the creation. Making is not an alienation from God, no merely practical or instrumental activity, but is the fulfillment of the imago Dei.