Charles Edwin Winquist (June 11, 1944 – April 4, 2002) was the Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion at Syracuse University, and is known for his writings on theology, contemporary continental philosophy and postmodern religion.(2002, April 29) "Memorial service for professor winquist will be held may 4", Syracuse Record, p. 3 (Syracuse University Libraries Special Collections University Archives, November 28, 2017). Before he assumed his position at Syracuse University, he taught religious studies at California State University, Chico, from 1969 to 1986.(2002, April 11) "Charles Winquist". The Post-Standard (Syracuse University Libraries Special Collections University Archives, November 28, 2017).
Education Winquist received his B.A. in philosophy from the University of Toledo (1965), his M.A. in theology from the University of Chicago (1968), and his Ph.D. in philosophical theology from the University of Chicago (1970).Curriculum Vitae (Syracuse University Libraries: Special Collections Research Center University Archives, November 28, 2017) p. 1.
Philosophical and theological work Winquist's work is tactical as well as theoretical, showing what kind of work theology can do in contemporary society. He suggests that theology is closely akin to what Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari refer to as a minor intensive use of a major language. The minor intensive theological use of language, Winquist argued, pressures the ordinary weave of discourse and opens it to desire. Thus theology becomes a work against "the disappointment of thinking"."Desiring Theology" (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
Unfortunately, contemporary religious thinking is often mired in disputes over the exact meaning of religion and theology. Serious groups generate ideas that, despite their best efforts, create conflicting interpretations that diminish, rather than improve, the philosophical, dialectical and social-scientific foundations of theology. These communities are not isolated groups of privileged theologians, but rather people across the world who experience their lives as meaningful and important. A minor intensive theological literature is not a "Sunday-school theology", as Winquist called it, but rather an effort to weave together daily discussions between the open spaces in communication. Communication makes everyday life divine, Winquist argued (citing Huston Smith). Smith called it divine ordinariness, which came from his understanding of Zen Buddhism. Theology acts on the everyday existence of the overriding secular discourse in communities."The World's Religions" (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1991).
Subversion and transcendence
The world's mythologies and religious customs are not problematic because of the traditions themselves, but rather because of a secular culture that has overwritten these traditions. To think about God, and the meaning of life, even if there is no understanding written or spoken, is an act of transcendence. Thinking symbolically becomes a form of consciousness that goes far beyond individuals. It's a meditation of the past and future, a reflection of the world within and beyond. Communicating through abstract ideas is at the foundation of creativity and symbolic thought, including art, music, the written word, mathematics, and science.
Winquist finds insight in René Descartes' Third Meditation, writing that in our thoughts about God, we transcend our "subjective dominance". The very thought of God's attributes create doubt about the innate ability of human nature to comprehend the existence of God. Descartes posited that he (Descartes), as a finite being, could never originate the idea of an infinite substance (God) unless it was placed in him by an actually infinite being. Winquist extended this, arguing that "thinking formulaically" about the divine actually defies the self. Traces of the divine — or even the "other" — alter the very thought patterns of the questioning individual, causing thought to transcend itself and disrupts its own "recording surface".Winquist, Charles. (1994). "Theology: Unsettled and Unsettling", Journal of the American Academy of Religion, LXII/4. While perceptual limitations (what Winquist termed a "knot") persist, he ultimately argues phenomenology is "humiliated", or brought to its limit, when encircled by meaningful nuances that that exceed its control.
Edmund Husserl's "phenomenological reduction", a sort of bracketing allows for the suspension of an object or content of a thought, judgment, or perception, called noema (as well as eidetic reduction), is a helpful key in understanding Winquist's work. Maurice Merleau-Ponty also weighed in on bracketing, although primarily because he rejected Husserl's ideas. It is debated whether or not he rejected "reductionism", but it's worth noting that Merleau-Ponty's opposition to Husserl sparked his phenomenology of perception. Merleau-Ponty wrote the most important thing about the reduction, and Husserl's constant re-examination of its possibility, was its impossibility. Husserl himself said, according to Merleau-Ponty, that the effort made the philosopher a perpetual beginner who should never take anything for granted, that philosophy "is an ever-renewed experiment in making its own beginning, that it consists wholly in the description of this beginning..."
Working from the middle
Winquist argued that concerns about beginnings and endings were "fictive productions of heuristic strategies", stating that being in the middle of experience should not be resisted. When people put themselves (or find themselves) in another person's experience, and empathize with, or "simulate" their perspectives and surrounding world, it coincides with their own, even though other factors in which "the other" represents his or her world must be different. Objects exist independently, despite the knot of perceptual subjectivity of the experience itself.
Secularists and Scientists are often suspicious of the need for transcendence and posit true knowledge comes only from objectivity. Husserl struggled with this notion and gradually adopted a more creative approach identified as transcendental idealism.Dupré, Louis (1968). "Husserl's Thought on God and Faith", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 201-215. The astronomical numbers of unperceived and unexpected features become evident, "intuitively presented", only by further observation. But the focus is not about "being", but about being the questioner. Every structure in a questioner's desire for knowledge mediates meaning, and even the sciences factor into "dharma", principles that order understanding. The act of becoming, or "being the questioner of being" transcends self-contained content and finds expression in conscious questioning, a process that returns self to experience and knowing.The Transcendental Imagination: An Essay in Philosophical Theology, Winquist, Charles (1972). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
These observations are best done from the middle. Acceptance of experience demands interpretation. Experience is often camouflaged, and the significance of being in the middle of experience is not easily accessed. Seeing through the manifest content of experience (see content (Freudian dream analysis)) reveals its hidden nature. This unmasking has traditionally been taught by prophets, Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, and sages across the globe. Even psychoanalytic interpretation, Winquist argued, counts. The mask of piety that covers deliberate, hurtful acts, for example, simplifies reality and contributes to a “simplicity of denial”. We cannot “dream a story forward” if the story being told is not recognized for what it is.Winquist, Charles E (1980). Practical Hermeneutics, A Revised Agenda for the Ministry. Chico, California: Scholars Press, pp. 88-90. An awareness of the “I” of consciousness returns into itself, and being “in-itself” reaches beyond selfhood to unity with the universal. This understanding places us in the middle of experience, or the “middle term”, an awareness where the individual renounces self. Hegel, for example, called this the consciousness of the certainty of being all truth.
Metaphysical categories, abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space, are not the essence of meaning. Experience is not reduced to these categories. Experiences are exemplified and enlarged by the world and its traditions that connect us all.Homecoming: Interpretation, Transformation and Individuation Winquist, Charles (Missoula, MT. Scholars Press, 1978). Consciousness takes an object — the other in all its forms — and the act of focused purpose cannot be detached from the renewed or, arguably, revived understanding of the perceiving subject.The Logos of the Soul, Christou, Evangelos (Vienna: Dunquin Press, 1963). The focus on the "complexity of the middle" centers experience even in the presence of ambiguity and confusion. The human condition is situated between the "semantics" of desire and the "verbum of the hierophanies", the expression of the sacred. An individual is not "given" to an object. The object remains a mystery, and awareness of this, even in the most ordinary of experiences, adds depth and meaning to life. Winquist called this calm of the unknown a "dark time", or "taboo", a juncture of understanding that allows individuals to enter a "range of meaning" that is already a part of human experience. The middle allows an avenue of heightened awareness while remaining centered. Many modalities of thought can access the middle, and there is more than one way to turn thoughts to look upon the process itself."The Subversion and Transcendence of the Subject”, (1980). Journal of the American Academy of Religion, LXVIII/1, 45-60.
Postmodern theology
Winquist was an early proponent of what has been called "weak theology", which emphasizes the responsibility of individuals to act in the world here and now — a controversial concept that has created a rift between traditionalists and deconstructionists — and was deeply engaged in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, Paul Tillich, and Mark C. Taylor, among others. Winquist argues in Desiring Theology, for example, that Derrida's deconstructive criticism is not "wild analysis", but the very careful reading of texts.
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) was the founder of "deconstruction", a way of criticizing not only literary and philosophical texts, but also political institutions. Derrida rejected Platonism, which is defined by the belief that existence is structured in terms of oppositions (separate substances or forms) and that the oppositions are hierarchical, with one side of the opposition being more valuable than the other. Deconstruction attacks such beliefs by reversing hierarchies between the invisible or intelligible, the visible or sensible, essence and appearance and voice and writing. Derrida even rejects hierarchies between the soul and the body, or good and evil.
This is why deconstruction is often confusing: it explores what is hidden, not only in written texts, but in ordinary daily language and life. Because people borrow language, it has meanings beyond individuals and cultures. It has a semantic life of its own, and its content can never be fixed. Sounds and syntax come into people's minds uninvited, with one word leading to still more words. Understanding this is a reflection that replaces the source of the reflection — the individual — and opens up meaning beyond self. In Derrida's Glas and others he has written, The Truth in Painting for example (and creative works in general) Winquist argued, return us to the other and the beyond of multiple expressions, a base need for absolution ("the savior absolu").
Deconstruction