Simone Weil once postulated the riddle, ‘What does the miser lose when he loses his fortune’? From here she began to explore how the miser has found a way of enjoying their desire by managing the distance that exists between themselves and their treasure. The miser knows, as few do, that real enjoyment revolves around a certain type of lack.

For Weil, the main problem of the miser concerns the instability of the object that they use to spark and sustain their desire. While the treasure of the miser occupies a type of superposition analogous to Schrödinger's Cat, it can all too easily lose this status by being either grasped or stolen. The type of lack that it generates is too precarious and unstable.

At this point Weil is able to articulate her definition of God. God is not an existent thing that can be grasped or stolen away. Rather ‘God’ is the name for a Ground that opens up the space of desire by avoiding both being and non-being. In other words, ‘God’ names the source our of which a type of incompleteness arises. An incompleteness that is woven into reality itself.

In contrast to the idea of the universe as one, Weil argues that the universe is incomplete, and that it is precisely this incompleteness that explains why human subjectivity exists (along with everything else). The disciple is not then one who affirms the existence of some supreme being, but who rather intends toward the Ground and who orients themselves around the lack generated by this Ground.

Weil calls the world of being, the world of Gravity, and baptises the name of the lack that infuses it with the name Grace.

From this, Weil develops a sophisticated critique of standard atheism, and offers a fascinating description of the religious vocation.

In this pyroseminar I will outline Weil’s argument, draw out its insights and offer a slightly modified version of the position that will help to clarify the work of pyrotheology.

As always, it can also be watched live or later via Patreon. To access this - and all other - pyroseminars, you just need to be signed up to the Flame level, or above, on Patreon.

OTHER PYROSEMINARS INCLUDE:

• Embracing the Absurd | Atheism isn’t Enough

• Beyond Belief | Christianity and Ideology Critique

• The Alien from Inner Space | Sin and Prometheus

• On Love | The Unwanted Gift of Nothing

• Embracing Failure | On Not Getting what you Want

• The Tech of Pyrotheology | Transformance Art

• The Tech of Pyrotheology | Decentering Practices

• Freedom from Meaning | Drive, Grace, the Absurd

• The Last Guru | On Fantasy and Transference

• Escaping the Sitcom | On Brent and Gargoyles

• Catching Light | Lewis and the Sublime

• God After God | The Certainty of Doubt

• Joined by Lack | The Ontic and the Metaphysical

• Confronting the Holy | Whole or Hole

• Losing the Lost Object | On Conversion

• On Envy and Jealousy | Girard and Christology

• Deranged Animal | Desire, Drive and The Thing

• The Meaning in Life | Drive and the Transcendental

• Alienation Times Two | Traversing the Fantasy

• God Forsaking God | Conversion, Forgiveness, Joy

• Who is No. 1 | Peterson, PC and the Unconscious

• Is God Dead | The Event of Radical Theology

• Mapping Pyrotheology | Returning to the Start

• Problem or Symptom | The Zizek/Peterson Debate

• The Self-Castration of God | Authority, Freedom, Kenosis

• The Magic Trick of Christianity | Pledge, Turn and Prestige

• Identical Wines | Salvation and Object a

• A Contingent Gristle of the Real | Joker and Divine Violence

• You Don’t Hate Mondays… | Class Antagonism in Marx

• The Politics of Difference | Cultural Marxism or Cultural Capitalism