Christological Controversies: Will the Real Catholic Žižek Please Stand Up?

dc.contributor.authorVučković, Marko
dc.date.accessioned2023-10-16T22:33:15Z
dc.date.available2023-10-16T22:33:15Z
dc.date.issued2023-10-01
dc.descriptionThis peer-reviewed author accepted manuscript is available in its final form as Vučković, M. D. (2023). Christological Controversies: Will the Real Catholic Žižek Please Stand Up?. European Journal of Theology, 32(2), 260-294. https://doi.org/10.5117/EJT2023.2.006.VUCK
dc.description.abstractPlato’s dialogue Parmenides contains the infamous ontological bombshell, the so-called Third Man argument. This argument involves a reductio criticism of the forms, arguing that the reductio premise – roughly, ‘there cannot be any ontological interpenetration between the One and the many’ – is false. The argument intimates that the only way for thought to move beyond the forms is to accept the ‘impossible’ object, the nonsensical One-and-many. This article calls any ontology which accepts this Third Man argument and attempts to answer it on its own terms, ‘material dialectic’. The high-profile debate between John Milbank and Slavoj Žižek in The Monstrosity of Christ brings the relevance of this dialectic into stark relief. Both authors accept the material dialectic and mobilise it toward competing christological theses. Yet it is important to navigate the Third Man argument in such a way as to keep a dyophysite Christology in order to satisfy orthodox theological pressures. I will therefore advance two conclusions: first, that the material dialectic is a valid analytical project; and second, that neither Milbank nor Žižek espouses an orthodox Christology: Milbank’s is monophysite while Žižek’s is patripassian. Following Milbank, I will call the final (dyophysite) corrective the ‘Catholic Žižek’ – only, contra Milbank, it will be the real Catholic Žižek.
dc.identifier.citationVučković, M. D. (2023). Christological Controversies: Will the Real Catholic Žižek Please Stand Up?. European Journal of Theology, 32(2), 260-294. https://doi.org/10.5117/EJT2023.2.006.VUCK
dc.identifier.issn2666-9730
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10315/41480
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.5117/EJT2023.2.006.VUCK
dc.publisherEuropean Journal of Theology
dc.rightsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalen
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.subjectJohn Milbank
dc.subjectSlavoj Žižek
dc.subjectOntology
dc.subjectDialect
dc.subjectMaterialism
dc.subjectMonophysitism
dc.subjectDyophysitism
dc.subjectChristology
dc.titleChristological Controversies: Will the Real Catholic Žižek Please Stand Up?
dc.typeArticle

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