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"The true dividing line in the contemporary crisis does not run between liberals and totalitarians, but between religious and philosophical transcendentalists on the one side, and liberal and totalitarian immanentist sectarians on the other." Eric Voegelin, 1953 essay, 'Origins of Totalitarianism'

10. Girard's book offers a "third way" between competing conceptions of political theology that otherwise seem stuck in a rut. And - unlike so much theory - offers practical and applied hope for global society.

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9. As he says: "the sacred, which has been returning for two thousand years, is not an archaic form of the sacred, but a sacred that has been ‘satanized’ by the awareness we now have of it, and that indicates, through its very excesses, the imminence of the Second Coming" (p.92).

8. But this situation should not lead to despair, says Girard. The irruption of sacred violence, pogroms, terrorism & war is itself an indicator of progressive history. The good is sown in the bad like wheat and tares. Providence is assured; peace will come. It is inexorable.

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7. This is what Girard means, then, when he refers to "apocalypse". It is a situation we ourselves produce: “strangely, we don't see that the violence we ourselves are in the process of amassing and that is looming over our own heads is entirely sufficient to trigger the worst”.

6. In other words, for Girard: in the contemporary world violence is no longer constructively channelled by the sacred. As a result, in his words, “violence, which produced the sacred, no longer produces anything but itself”. ("Battling", p.41)

5. Christianity demystifies the violence of the sacred. But demystification, which is good in the absolute, is bad in the relative, for it unleashes violent forces that are no longer contained by the scapegoat mechanism. See the interpretation of Schwager:

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4. In this text Girard argues that world history is an admixture of progress and regression.

3. Girard himself (I met him once) has always had a kind of mystique for me and I remember reading this text with a sort of "frisson" as its logic first began to sink in.

2. This text actually has a lovely English translation with Michigan State University Press that is very readable and accurate. The English title is "Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoit Chantre": msupress.org/978087013877...

1. René Girard’s “Achever Clausewitz” (2011) has been a very important text for me as I’ve thought about political theology & its relation to the concept of apocalypse.

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"Nothing perhaps distinguishes modern masses as radicality from those of previous centuries as the loss of faith in a Last Judgment; the worst have lost their fear and the best have lost their hope". Hannah Arendt, 'The Origins of Totalitarianism', p.419

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12. In fact "The Shadow-Line" can be considered a sister text to "The Secret-Sharer" (my other favourite Conrad work), since both describe a metaphysics of identity in a modern world that can no longer understand what it means to "belong" to a particular place.

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11. The narrator's adoption of his "command" on the ship thus represents the call on the self to "become what you are not - what you are not ready to be". Just as had been the case with the young Conrad, displaced from his Polish identity and sent into the world by his Uncle.

10. In this context we can see that the shadow of "The Shadow-Line" does not so much indicate a clear line of transition from youth into maturity; rather it is the penumbra Conrad continuously occupied, shades of identity, a divided self.

9. Conrad was at core a displaced Pole, a "secret agent" in a world that was not his own and in which he was destined to be alien. His very chosen name referenced a book by national poet Adam Mickiewicz about Polish identity misunderstood in a foreign land.

8. From the protagonist in "The Shadow-Line" we have the confession of a divided self. Just as was the case for Conrad himself, whose self-description was always: “Pole, Catholic, gentleman”. In that order. This is crucial to understanding his novelistic vision and his philosophical metaphysics.

7. Crucial here (as always in his texts) is Conrad's careful choice of epigram: the “great mirror of my despair” (taken from the French poet Charles Baudelaire). We are to ask: has this narrator truly passed through and beyond a "shadow-line" into clear waters?

6. The text Conrad eventually wrote, however, also disavows pure autobiographical readings, distancing itself from these by use of techniques such as symbolism and inter-textuality (Coleridge, Shakespeare, Dante).

5. These intimations are traced in other artists around this time in the wonderful book by Thomas Harrison, "1910: The Emancipation of Dissonance". He writes about Schiele, Trakl, Kandinsky, Lukàcs, Simmel, Campana and Schoenberg (but not Conrad). www.ucpress.edu/books/1910/h...

4. Like some other artists in the period after 1910, Conrad seems to have had intimations of the terror that was to come. The descriptions in "The Shadow Line" of emaciated and frightened sailors below deck seems anticipatory of images of soldiers cowered in their trenches.

3. The book could not be produced at that time. Instead, "The Shadow-Line" was eventually written as a late text, 1915, in the context of WWI. In fact, Conrad’s son, Borys, had enlisted and became a second lieutenant while the author worked on the text.

2. In "The Shadow Line" Conrad draws on his experience as commander of the Otago in 1888. The genesis for the story itself dates to 1899, when Conrad had in mind a story titled “First Command,” a possible follow-up to “Youth: A narrative” (1898). (see: www.nzgeo.com/stories/jose...)

1. Joseph Conrad’s wonderful late novella, “The Shadow-Line”, written in 1915, is one of my favourites. A short thread on historical, psychologising and metaphysical readings of this important text.

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"Recipes are not what we need, nor do we need to be reassured – our need is to escape from meaninglessness." ~ René Girard

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Gaston Fessard's false ID, seized during WW2, when he was searched by Gestapo.

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Tim Howles @timhowles.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

"I think it is because I strive to be apolitical that I become supremely political." French Jesuit Gaston Fessard, 1935.

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This should be very good: "The Technocratic International: Experts and the Making of a World from Nowhere" Jan Eijking global.oup.com/academic/pro...

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Tim Howles @timhowles.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

“I seriously believe that Christianity is the only foundation of Socialism, and that a true Socialism is the necessary result of a sound Christianity.” F. D. Maurice, Tract on Christian Socialism, 1850

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Tim Howles @timhowles.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

If anyone is free in Oxford tomorrow, we have two places left for this lecture: "Bringing Rivers Back to Life: Indigenous Water Management in Mexico" - for those working in political ecology, geography, religion, ethics Let me know if you can make it. Register: lsri.campion.ox.ac.uk/events/rivers

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Who can carry a kirpan in the UK? Religion, law and the question of risk

Sikh religious practices and the kirpan (ceremonial knife) in relation to English law: A short and informative article by Jasjit Singh (University of Leeds). theconversation.com/who-can-carr...

theconversation.com

There is a widespread misunderstanding that all Sikhs are required to wear a kirpan.

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On completing his last essay, "Quod Deus Dicitur", on his death-bed in California: "According to his wife, Lissy, Voegelin said: 'At last I understand Christianity!' To which she responded: 'Yes, Eric, but you’re going to take that understanding with you!'” voegelinview.com/the-spirit-o...

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My most precious G. M. Hopkins sonnet is “My own heart let me have more pity on”. I read it often. And sometimes in conjunction with W. B. Yeats’ "Dialogue of self and soul", which I think is a sort of commentary on it. www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/90507/...

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