The subject of passion (18)

The second hour was devoted entirely to a review of the research carried out. The lecture took us from the Third Council of Constantinople to the Council of Trent. Over this long period, we were able to test the hypothesis of a "Christological turn" in anthropology by following issues as diverse as the dispute over monotheism in Late Antiquity and the Eucharist in "premodernity". To the question: "What contribution has Christological and, more broadly, theological inquiry made to the archaeology of the subject?", we can answer: the uncovering of an obscured historical fact - the introduction of hypostatic union into anthropology; in other words, the intervention of the subject - of hypostasis - in the mind-soul-body relationship (the so-called "trichotomous" division of man). The lecture on the subject of passion has, we hope, led to a certain archaeological rehabilitation of hypostasis, against the reduction of the history of theology to a "minor" or "subaltern knowledge", characteristic of a certain "colonization of the Middle Ages". It also marked a number of milestones in the Christological lengthening of the anthropological questionnaire: from the polemics surrounding the Pséphos of Sergius ^I (633) to the aporetic discussions between Reformed and Lutherans at the Montbéliard colloquium (1586). Attention to the history of the "Gethsemane problem" has also highlighted the problematic status of "movements of the flesh". By making the refusal of the cup the expression of an involuntary "movement of the flesh", of an infra-ethical "anguish", Monothelism shows itself incapable of confronting the hypothesis of a genuine conflict of wills in Christ. This deficit has been highlighted by the theses of Maximus the Confessor. The anthropological heuristic potential of the notion of "movements of the flesh" should not, however, be underestimated by the philosopher and historian of philosophy. The work on the archaeology of the subject carried out as part of the lecture, like all the research that preceded it, leads from the subject of attribution to the subject of imputation, or more precisely: to the subject considered as capable of self-imputation of his acts as well as his passions. From this point of view, what emerges from the lecture is that the voluntary or involuntary, i.e. imputable or non-imputable, status of the "movements of the flesh" is the most historically fertile of the anthropological problems posed by the Gethsemane problem: it is this that, historically, enabled the production of new concepts, distinctions and problems, with which it burdened the dominant Aristotelian tradition during the late Middle Ages. By way of confirmation, we offered the audience a brief evocation of three philosophical "breakthroughs" occasioned by reflection on the status of the movements of the flesh: the theory of pre-affects; the Jesuit theory of the "advertence of reason"; the condemnation of "morose delectation". Focus on "prepassion", propatheia, propassio, antepassio, in the Stoic tradition and its medieval revival: from Augustine to Pierre Lombard, with the theory of "first movements", in the context of theological reflection on the "sin of sensuality". We then turned to GrandArnauld's controversy with the Jesuits over the advertence of reason and the quarrel over "philosophical sin". Finally, we moved on from the advertence of reason to the question of morose delectation, articulating the two themes on the relationship between différance in the Derridean sense of the term and sin.