gesang reviewed The Suspended Middle by John Milbank
Insightful, but fundamentally flawed
3 stars
Milbank's position seems to me an absurd mixture of insightful, sane observation and bizarre and unintelligible hostility toward a tradition that he calls "Scotist". This largely is due to his inability to engage with serious, or even technical, philosophy as a theologian with a cultural bias. When he invokes phrases like "participatory" and "analogia entis" and stresses their essential character, it is never intelligible since these catchwords are merely invoked rather than used in any precise manner: there's no inherent connection that assures only by means of participation can the natural yearning for the supernatural be made possible, and analogia entis has literally nothing to do with the problems under investigation.
And seriously I can't take these theologians who find a fault in the 13th century and condemn a whole 800 years of civilization as fundamentally went astray seriously. Not because I'm a progressive, but solely because historicity cannot be …
Milbank's position seems to me an absurd mixture of insightful, sane observation and bizarre and unintelligible hostility toward a tradition that he calls "Scotist". This largely is due to his inability to engage with serious, or even technical, philosophy as a theologian with a cultural bias. When he invokes phrases like "participatory" and "analogia entis" and stresses their essential character, it is never intelligible since these catchwords are merely invoked rather than used in any precise manner: there's no inherent connection that assures only by means of participation can the natural yearning for the supernatural be made possible, and analogia entis has literally nothing to do with the problems under investigation.
And seriously I can't take these theologians who find a fault in the 13th century and condemn a whole 800 years of civilization as fundamentally went astray seriously. Not because I'm a progressive, but solely because historicity cannot be disentangled with truth.
Polemical, but without actual work done, and similar to thinkers he closely associate with, such as Zizek, not at all rigorous and is in a strong sense propagandist.