For Milbank one can be orthodox without being fundamentalist

Anthony Paul Smith Says: June 25th, 2007 at 11:17 am Daniel,

Well he is anti-capitalist. He does deeply celebrate the middle ages, but it’s a strange middle ages he is thinking of and hardly fascistic. His organicism is more akin to Spinoza’s or, ironically, the Russian Sophiologists than what I think you are suggesting. Furthermore not every organicism is fascist. It depends on the understanding of the organism. This is just a stupidity within ‘Marxist’ discourses that often leads to an outright rejection of ecology and environmental issues. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about with regard to the fuhrer principle, but I’ve never seen that in John. If anything John is one of the least fascistic instructors I’ve ever had and really does let his students go wild with their papers. He does, like Hallward, think there has to be some kind of structure in place to resist capitalism. Are you also calling this a fuhrer principle in Hallward, or is it only a fuhrer principle because John is a theologian?

I’m sorry, but I think you have all misunderstood him. There are certainly issues I expected your crew to have with his work, but calling him a fascist just seems kind of silly and really ignores the bulk of his work. Granted his delivery is often over the top, often trading in hyperbole in the same way that Zizek does, and this can lead to real misunderstandings.

Anthony Paul Smith Says: June 26th, 2007 at 8:50 am You, let’s call you all the anti-obscurantist materio-rationalists for the sake of time, all seem to suggest that Milbank is bad (even fascistic!) because he advocates a kind of hierarchy of society (though without classes, I would hope you all caught that), a mystical aspect (religious) to society that opens up to irrationalism, and a Leninism/Fuhrer principle.

It seems to me that at least Milbank is willing to go to the end! You all seem to want, and this will really disturb you, a kind of Deleuzian society! A kind of spontaneous, rational society where each can pursue their own interests without worrying about a leader/law telling you to do something else. I mean, and I have to be frank here, you seem to all be going on about the difference between Marxist communism and Milbank’s version of communism, but do you really have any faith in the proletariat? And is that faith, or trust or whatever word you want to attach to it, really at all rational based on your experience with them?

I want the obscurantism back! Eurocentrism is exactly this idea that obscurity is bad and that politics is somehow rational or not fantasmatic. An und für sich “Integrity through hypocrisy.”