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John William Phillips: Globalatinization and Compassion
Globalatinization is a rough translation from the French neologism "mondialatinisation" (rough because the notions of monde [world] and globe are hardly equivalent) and emerges in translations of seminars and talks by Jacques Derrida, principally, but has gained currency since the mid-1990s, especially in recent years, when diverse processes of globalization are nevertheless increasingly obviously Anglo-American. (Derrida's translator, Samuel Weber points out that the passage from "world" to "globe" does seem to suggest something of the Anglo-American nature of processes that globalatinization stands for).
Paul Mercken observes (and I agree) that the reference to the Roman suggests St Paul but also the holy Roman Empire, on the one hand, and the several no doubt historically heterogeneous processes of schizm and secularization that rather precisely each time oppose themselves to the Roman or later to the Christian in general: oppose themselves to, but carry on, in concept, language and gesture, the Christianity that thus continues to bear them.
This globalatinization governs not only Christian forms and secularised states (which, by being post-Christian and even, as we now sometimes say, post-secular, remain Christian) but also the Jewish and Muslim religions that in different ways share yet also fall out over e.g., Jerusalem, or the book(s) of Abraham/Ibrahim. The Latin thus not only governs the globalization of Christianized values (whether politicized or mysterious, secret or sacred) but of any thought that is expressed in the Latinate forms of the modern monotheistic religions: com-passio, religio. The problem comes to light (and in these terms has hardly been exhausted) in the Enlightenment or Aufklarung, and in the radical acts of les lumieres and is perhaps brought to a head by Hegel in his lectures on politics and religion.
To talk of a compassion that would be other than the Latin, Christian, secular, post-secular: would that still not be to judge by the forms that compassion names? It would thus be difficult indeed to elude this quite monumental ethnocentrism (Greek, Roman, Byzantine, European, American) and looking for the place of "compassion" in other cultures would hardly achieve this in these terms, the terms of compassion. Religion too (the word and the concept) would not simply be found among non-western (non-Christian, non-secular) cultures, for whatever was found as an equivalent or of even as a different kind of religio would still be considered as and subjected to the judgement of religio itself (which is another question that should be posed, no doubt).
It would perhaps be better to confront the notion of compassion itself (and in this respect I have some sympathy with Bracha Ettinger's complex discussions of originary compassion) with the question of its limits. Not to limit it, of course, but rather to open the question of limits up to what I believe our sense of this notion could imply, that is, that compassion should have no limits. So long as we repeat the idea or sentiment in a normative orbit we avoid this questioning.
The sense of compassion-that would be compassion itself-pure compassion-abstracted or at least wrenched from its Latin historicity: would it leave one feeling at a loss in the face of an impossible demand for compassion (the killer without a conscience, cruelty, asocial dis-passion, the genocidal act: all might provoke feelings of compassion in a struggle with its contraries). Are we less likely to offer compassion where we would not expect to have it returned, for instance, which would thus inscribe it within the limits of an economy of exchange? The difficulty or even impossibility of the pure act of compassion might then be the indicator of compassion in its radical possibility. In this respect it might reside at the foundation of religion (and, as Hegel would have added, at the foundation of the state) as the possibility also of absolute evil. Then one would be talking again of violence and the supersophisticated machines of the contemporary milieu as well as the violence for instance of tortures and beheaddings.
> John William Phillips
Paul Mercken observes (and I agree) that the reference to the Roman suggests St Paul but also the holy Roman Empire, on the one hand, and the several no doubt historically heterogeneous processes of schizm and secularization that rather precisely each time oppose themselves to the Roman or later to the Christian in general: oppose themselves to, but carry on, in concept, language and gesture, the Christianity that thus continues to bear them.
This globalatinization governs not only Christian forms and secularised states (which, by being post-Christian and even, as we now sometimes say, post-secular, remain Christian) but also the Jewish and Muslim religions that in different ways share yet also fall out over e.g., Jerusalem, or the book(s) of Abraham/Ibrahim. The Latin thus not only governs the globalization of Christianized values (whether politicized or mysterious, secret or sacred) but of any thought that is expressed in the Latinate forms of the modern monotheistic religions: com-passio, religio. The problem comes to light (and in these terms has hardly been exhausted) in the Enlightenment or Aufklarung, and in the radical acts of les lumieres and is perhaps brought to a head by Hegel in his lectures on politics and religion.
To talk of a compassion that would be other than the Latin, Christian, secular, post-secular: would that still not be to judge by the forms that compassion names? It would thus be difficult indeed to elude this quite monumental ethnocentrism (Greek, Roman, Byzantine, European, American) and looking for the place of "compassion" in other cultures would hardly achieve this in these terms, the terms of compassion. Religion too (the word and the concept) would not simply be found among non-western (non-Christian, non-secular) cultures, for whatever was found as an equivalent or of even as a different kind of religio would still be considered as and subjected to the judgement of religio itself (which is another question that should be posed, no doubt).
It would perhaps be better to confront the notion of compassion itself (and in this respect I have some sympathy with Bracha Ettinger's complex discussions of originary compassion) with the question of its limits. Not to limit it, of course, but rather to open the question of limits up to what I believe our sense of this notion could imply, that is, that compassion should have no limits. So long as we repeat the idea or sentiment in a normative orbit we avoid this questioning.
The sense of compassion-that would be compassion itself-pure compassion-abstracted or at least wrenched from its Latin historicity: would it leave one feeling at a loss in the face of an impossible demand for compassion (the killer without a conscience, cruelty, asocial dis-passion, the genocidal act: all might provoke feelings of compassion in a struggle with its contraries). Are we less likely to offer compassion where we would not expect to have it returned, for instance, which would thus inscribe it within the limits of an economy of exchange? The difficulty or even impossibility of the pure act of compassion might then be the indicator of compassion in its radical possibility. In this respect it might reside at the foundation of religion (and, as Hegel would have added, at the foundation of the state) as the possibility also of absolute evil. Then one would be talking again of violence and the supersophisticated machines of the contemporary milieu as well as the violence for instance of tortures and beheaddings.
> John William Phillips