Andrew Shanks
Publications . . .
(a) Poetry translation
Nelly Sachs, Revelation Freshly Erupting: Collected Poetry (Manchester: Carcanet, 2023)
This was awarded the ‘Warwick Women in Translation Prize’ in 2024; and, in 2025, the ‘Schlegel-Tieck Prize’.
(b) Philosophy / theology
Sublime Virtue: ‘Sainthood’, as Rendered Problematic by a Dozen Novelists (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2024)
What might a notion of ‘sainthood’ look like, radically purged of propagandist church ideology? Here, initiating an answer to that question, we have the evidence of a ‘secular canon’ – the writings of twelve leading novelists: George Eliot, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikos Kazantzakis, Yiyun Li, Colson Whitehead, André Schwarz-Bart, Georges Bernanos, Marilynne Robinson, Morris West, Graham Greene, Shusaku Endo and Ford Madox Ford.
These writers are considered as witnesses to sublime, as opposed to simply beautiful virtue: in the sense that ‘beautiful virtue’ is unequivocally attractive, but ‘sublime virtue’ is authoritative, entirely admirable, yet simultaneously alarming, and therefore repellent to those of us, the vast majority, who remain more or less locked into the conventional morality of herd or gang.
Apocalyptic Patience: Mystical Theology / Gnosticism / Ethical Phenomenology (London: Bloomsbury, 2024)
This book develops a philosophico-theological grand narrative, revolving around the twofold speculative equation: ‘the solidarity of the shaken = the kingdom of God’ / ‘the kingdom of God = the solidarity of the shaken’. The argument begins from an epiphany, the immediate aftermath of a ‘velvet revolution’: Prague, January 1990. It then unfolds into a systematic attempt to contextualise that revelatory moment, addressing the whole encounter between continental philosophy and Abrahamic religious tradition.
So, it invokes Jan Patočka’s pioneer-conception of ‘the solidarity of the shaken’: an ideally thoughtful togetherness, crucially stripped of any other limiting qualification. The first part of the argument expands upon Patočka’s philosophy-centred grand narrative, with reference to the pre-philosophical origins of Abrahamic religious tradition; that primordial ‘shaken-ness’.
The question, then, is: what most fundamentally obstructs proper theological recognition of the identity between ‘the solidarity of the shaken’ and ‘the kingdom of God’?
One answer: evangelistic impatience.
The second part of the argument, accordingly, considers two classic therapeutic strategies addressing this malady: on the one hand, ‘mystical theology’, Christian and Islamic; and, on the other hand, the quite separate, yet complementary traditions of gnosticism, Jewish and Christian.
And the third part, then, has to do with secular philosophic traditions considered in the light of ‘the solidarity of the shaken’: (a) the philosophical proponents of radical, pre-political ‘pathos of shakenness’ – Kierkegaard, Levinas, Løgstrup; (b) Heidegger, Strauss, Adorno, Arendt and Hegel contrasted as philosophical solidarity-strategists; and (c) the practical emergence of ‘the solidarity of the shaken’ in the ‘public conscience movements’ of ‘third modernity’.
Theodicy Beyond the Death of ‘God’: The Persisting Problem of Evil (London: Routledge: 2018)
An anti-Leibnizian, because trans-metaphysical, work of theodicy – here Hegel is, perhaps rather oddly, juxtaposed to the not at all philosophically minded figure of Nelly Sachs. Why Sachs? Because she represents such a strikingly non-consolatory form of religious faith. Although she came from a completely secularised Jewish background, she turned to religious faith, precisely in defiant response to what, for so many, is the ultimate argument against it, the Shoah: writing poetry in the most vivid recoil from the sheer blasphemy, as such, of that horror.
Hegel versus ‘Inter-Faith Dialogue’: A General Theory of True Xenophilia (Cambridge University Press, 2015)
The title is perhaps too odd. But I deplore the phrase ‘inter-faith’, as I deplore all talk of ‘faiths’ in the plural. ‘Faith’ is, in English, a word which only acquired a plural in (I think) the later 19th century; originally, as it happens, in anti-religious polemic. The trouble is, such talk tends to confuse ‘faith’ with just the sort of religiousness that St. Paul is so keen to tell us that true faith isn’t!
Hegel pioneered the comparative study of religion. And, in line with my understanding of Hegelian principle, I identify true faith as an inflection of the will towards perfect truth-as-openness. In relation to other religious traditions, this must involve the practice of a maximum xenophilia. Here, I seek to develop a systematic typology of religious traditions, in terms of their potential contributions to such dialogue.
Along the way, the argument includes discussions of Kabbalah; and of al-Hallaj, as interpreted by Louis Massignon. It presents religious pluralism as ‘God gambling’ …
A Neo-Hegelian Theology: The God of Greatest Hospitality (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014)
This book is not simply an interpretation of Hegel. Rather, it belongs to an attempt, so far as possible, to re-do for today something comparable to what Hegel did for his day. Divine revelation is on-going: never before has any generation been as well positioned as we are now, potentially to comprehend the deepest truth of the gospel. So Hegel argued, of his own day. And so this book also argues, of today; not least, because of specifically modern horrors It is an attempt to indicate, in Trinitarian form, the most fundamentally significant way in which that may be the case. Thus, it opens towards a systematic interpretation of the history of Christian truth, essentially as an ever-expanding medium for the authentic divine spirit of openness.
Hegel and Religious Faith: Divided Brain, Atoning Spirit (London: T. & T. Clark, 2011)
Here, I begin with a defence of ‘Hegel’s God’ against (what I consider to be) the caricatural attack by William Desmond. (A thinker whom I also admire.)
I then return to my original point of entry into Hegelian thought: the passage on ‘the unhappy consciousness’ (das unglückliche Bewußtsein) in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel illustrates this mentality with allusions to Christian history; which has misled many readers into thinking that he is simply talking, in convoluted fashion, about why he isn’t a Christian. – But he is a Christian! The mentality in question is a universally possible corruption, of any culture featuring a strong sense of the sacred. Hegel calls it a form of consciousness; but it is only really possible, as a stable condition, insofar as it remains sub-conscious. He calls it unhappy, which it is objectively; but on the subjective, conscious surface it may be full of (obligatory) joy. It is a split-minded condition. Hegel of course historically precedes the science of neuropsychology; but I argue that his account of this state of mind corresponds to the dialectical relationship between the two hemispheres of the brain, as explored by my friend Iain McGilchrist in his book, The Master and his Emissary. (Except that in Hegel’s account, the ‘emissary’ has already usurped the authority properly belonging to the ‘master’; who has, in consequence, become the servile underling.) I propose renaming the condition, as: ‘unatonement’.
Other topics discussed include: Hegel versus Fichte; Hegel versus Heidegger; Hegel versus Deleuze and Guattari.
Anglicanism Reimagined: An Honest Church? (London: SPCK, 2010)
The immediate spur to writing this little book was the (very ugly) Lambeth Conference of 2008. Why after all does the Anglican communion consider it appropriate to affirm its unity in this fashion: by periodically convening all the people, from around the globe, ultimately responsible for church discipline? Isn’t it the very essence of our distinctiveness that, in view of cultural diversity, we consider church discipline to be, properly, a local concern? Wasn’t that why we originally rejected the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome? So, I say: abolish the Lambeth Conference! Gathering the discipline-people together is just a recipe for pointless culture-war squabbles. Make it a rule that bishops of one province should never, ever, meet with bishops of another province, if there’s an agenda involved!
Other reforms then suggested themselves. For instance: admission to communion of all the baptised, including infants. Divine grace does not depend on understanding. (What level would ever be sufficient?) This seems to me to be an important point of symbolic principle.
Against Innocence: Gillian Rose’s Reception and Gift of Faith (London: SCM, 2008)
Gillian Rose (1947 – 95) was arguably the most original and significant philosopher of the Continental tradition in the English-speaking world.
Originally from an altogether secular Jewish background, her thought evolved towards deeper sympathy for both Jewish and Christian religious tradition. And she chose to be baptised on her deathbed. Struck down by cancer in the prime of her career, she is known for the lyrical memoir Love’s Work, written during her final illness. But she was also a notable critic of prevalent philosophic and theological fashions: postmodernism, ‘Holocaust piety’, Radical Orthodoxy. This book is a study of her profound, often difficult, but consistently thought-provoking work. Starting from her baptism, it is an attempt to interpret that final commitment of faith in the light of her earlier thought. Above all: her testimony to the demands of the ‘broken middle’ – the place of ultimate, all-round negotiation – where thinking is most pulled apart but also most alive.
The Other Calling: Theology, Intellectual Vocation and Truth (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007)
What is the true calling of the intellectual, as such? This book is a systematic riposte both to the elitism of philosophy in the heritage of Plato, and to the typical individualism of Plato’s philosophic opponents.
Here, instead, intellectual integrity is identified with a form of priesthood.
Recalling how, once, all intellectuals were, as a matter of course, all priests, I argue for a new, religiously multi-cultural ‘priesthood of all thinkers’. The argument – developed first in philosophic terms, then in relation to Christian theology – is about the most basic moral purposes of both disciplines. It negotiates a strategic partnership between the two, as complementary contributions to this (Melchizedekian) ‘priestly’ ethos. Leo Strauss figures here, alongside Kojève, Epicurus, Rousseau, Coleridge, the prophet Amos, Hegel, Girard and others.
Faith in Honesty: The Essential Nature of Theology (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005)
As I understand it, the Christian dogma of the Trinity derives from the threefold-ness of three basic problem-clusters confronting Christian theology right from the outset, and continuing to evolve down to the present day; divine revelation being refracted to theology through these problem-clusters.
Thus:
(a) The first theologians were men interpreting Hebrew prophetic
tradition, who had however been trained in Greek philosophy, a quite
alien mode of thought. Nowadays, Christian theology has to engage with
a whole plethora of different religious and philosophic traditions.
(b) How is the gospel of Jesus Christ to be spread? Christian
theology, throughout its history, is grounded in the problematic task
of preaching. To what extent does this require strategic compromise
with the ways of the world, for the sake of evangelistic success?
(c) The early Christians were inventing whole new forms of religious
liturgy and community-organisation. Subsequently, things have of
course frequently gone wrong – requiring theologians, led by the Holy
Spirit, to guide the Church towards fresh beginnings.
And, then, in this book I further correlate the three Trinitarian domains to the threefold providential struggle of truth-as-Honesty: (a) against dishonesty-as-banality; (b) against dishonesty-as-manipulation; (c) against dishonesty-as-disowning. ‘Banality’, the most primitive and trans-culturally universal mode of dishonesty. ‘Manipulation’, the dishonesty archetypally represented by the cruelty of crucifixion. ‘Disowning’, the dishonesty involved in evading corporate self-critique.
‘What Is Truth?’ Towards a Theological Poetics (London: Routledge, 2001)
At the heart of this book, on ‘poetic truth’, I develop an elementary opposition between ‘pathos of shaken-ness’, the aesthetic principle correlated to the ‘solidarity of the shaken’, and ‘pathos of glory’, tending towards kitsch, art in the service of the libido dominandi, ‘lust for domination’.
Plato spoke of a primordial ‘quarrel’ between philosophy and poetry; Augustine urged his Christian readers to ‘shun the company of the poets entirely’. A sound response to ‘pathos of glory’, indeed – but disastrously obscuring the countervailing truth-potential of ‘pathos of shakenness’, as such! More recent thinkers such as Nietzsche and Heidegger have sought to mend relations between philosophy and poetry. However, I argue that they are both much too soft on ‘pathos of glory’, as such.
Here, Heidegger’s ideal poet, Friedrich Hölderlin, is rescued from the Heideggerian interpretation through being set alongside his equally prophetic contemporary William Blake; also, alongside Nelly Sachs, arguably the greatest religious poet of the twentieth century; and, reaching right back, alongside the prophet Amos as well. Four very different, but pre-eminent, representatives of ‘pathos of shakenness’. Shaken by the imperatives of truth-as-Honesty.
God and Modernity: a new and better way to do theology (London: Routledge, 2000)
The facetious sub-title is perhaps too ‘shouty’. But the point in question has to do with theology as a form of solidarity-theory. I am arguing here for a form of church-loyalty ‘new’ in the sense of explicitly seeking to be as transparent as possible to the trans-confessional ‘solidarity of the shaken’.
Which, in turn, I discuss here as the emergent common ethos of new civil-society movements, at their best, deliberately abstaining from any quest for executive power within the state, but simply seeking to awaken the public conscience.
I develop a grand narrative, the outlines of a narrative about the development of the grand narrative genre: the story of the ‘three stages of modernity’; understanding ‘modernity’ as that which is constituted by grand narratives. Thus:
(a) ‘First modernity’ is what is constituted by the interpretations of world history developed by Abrahamic (Jewish, Christian, Islamic) religious communities, as a basis for their internal solidarity.
(b) ‘Second modernity’ is what emerges from the Enlightenment: interpretations of world history, understood as culminating in an ideal secular state. In its mature form, it is the world of radical, cosmopolitan political parties.
(c) ‘Third modernity’ is what is only now in the process of emergence, with the current proliferation of new civil-society movements, outside the world of party-politics. Jan Patočka’s conception of the ‘solidarity of the shaken’ is crucial here; inasmuch as this is the environment in which it finally begins to become possible for the ‘solidarity of the shaken’ to emerge as a truly effective, and fully self-aware, energy.
The three stages overlap, and clearly require reconciliation. Herein, I argue, lies a new vocation for theology.
Civil Society, Civil Religion (Oxford: Backwell, 1995)
Already anticipating the point of view further developed in God and Modernity, this is where I first begin to register the seminal work of Patočka. It is framed as the potential basis for a form of ‘pure civil theology’, understood as ‘a theory of critical civil religion’.
In the past, ‘civil religion’ has always been understood as the religious self-expression of a particular state-establishment. But with the increasing organisation of international ‘civil society’, new possibilities open up. What would a theology governed by the ‘solidarity of the shaken’ look like? It would, I suggest, be a response to ‘revelation’ in the whole of history, but above all in those memories which remain most traumatic and disturbing to us with regard to our identities as citizens. Each confessional tradition, for instance, has its own particular angle on the negative-revelatory experience of twentieth century totalitarianism. But what would constitute an ideal culture of proper ‘remembrancing’ of that trauma – set free from any merely propagandist interests?
Hegel’s Political Theology (Cambridge University Press, 1991)
This was my Ph. D. thesis. It begins with a discussion of Milan Kundera’s conception of ‘kitsch’; admittedly, not very well integrated with the ensuing argument, but a significant growth-point for my subsequent work. And its main focus is on the concept of ‘the Unhappy Consciousness’ in the Phenomenology of Spirit.
I seek to defend Hegel here from the criticisms developed by a number of thinkers: amongst them, Barth, Voegelin, Kierkegaard, Adorno, Foucault, Metz and Arendt.
(c) Significant articles
‘“With the pertinacity of bloodhounds”: Hegelian comments on an old text of Fr. Daniel Berrigan’s’: in Charles Pemberton, ed., Theology and Civil Society (London: Routledge, 2018)
‘A Desire for the Impossible’: in Ewan Fernie, ed., Redcrosse: Remaking Religious Poetry for Today’s World (London: Bloomsbury, 2013)
‘Honesty’: in Samuel Wells and Sarah Coakley, eds., Praying for England: Priestly Presence in Contemporary Culture (London: Continuum, 2008)
