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Richard Boothby / Is Nothing Sacred? Toward a Lacanian Theory of Religion

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Overview

Richard Boothby argues for a Lacanian “theory of religion” grounded in Lacan’s notion of “respecting emptiness/unknowing”—often discussed under the sign das Ding, and alongside the function of dusting (as a relation to what cannot be known). Building on Embracing the Void, Boothby claims that religion’s primal drive is not simply fear or protection, but a complex response to the unknown thing in the other: a confrontation with the void that destabilizes and then is managed through symbolic/imaginary defenses.

Lacan’s Key Religious Claim: Avoiding vs. Respecting Emptiness

Boothby emphasizes a passage from Lacan: religion consists of both avoiding emptiness and (more deeply) respecting emptiness. He focuses primarily on the second, suggesting that religious impulse stems from a consciousness of unknowing that first arises toward other people. This becomes the lens for reading major religious traditions.

Western Religious Formations as Responses to the Unknown

Boothby lays out three historical/structural “formations” of religion, each shaped by an anxious encounter with what cannot be known.

1. Greek Paganism (Homeric World): Worship of Forces, Not “Things”

  • Reality as contending forces/agents: In Homer, reality is portrayed as a world of forces (e.g., dawn, sea wind, hunger) rather than inert objects.
  • Finite, polytheistic divine life: The gods are not omnipotent; even Zeus has limits.
  • Acceptance of unknowing: Because no overarching coherence is guaranteed, Greek culture can sustain multiple—even contradictory—myths.
  • Ontology claim (Boothby): The Homeric universe has no infinite totalizing power, only finite agencies in contest.

2. Judaism: A Direct, Law-Based Relation to the Unknown Beyond (Yahweh as “Dusting”)

  • Unexpected address to Abraham: The decisive event is Yahweh’s address to Abraham, which transforms Abraham into a “subject” through an irrevocable relation to what remains unknowable.
  • The binding moment (Isaac): The command to sacrifice Isaac, in Boothby’s reading, revokes promise and requires fidelity without compensatory expectation—religion becomes absolute (no buyable reward).
  • Burning bush reading: The exchange (“I am what I am”) is read non-metaphysically. Instead of a completed essence, it functions like a question/conditional that underscores unknowing. Boothby also argues that even God’s creation does not fully coincide with itself.
  • Lacanian theme: The divided subject is altered through speech and address.

3. Christianity: Love for Neighbor/Enemy as Embracing the Threatening Other—Then Institutional Defenses

  • “One true religion” (Lacan via Boothby): The claim is not that Christianity is true due to propositional correctness, but that it uniquely confronts dusting through a moral command.
  • Jesus as humiliating, embodied figure: Divine power appears paradoxically as God offering itself as sacrifice for mortals, rather than humans offering gifts upward.
  • Command to love: The decisive directive is love of the neighbor, including the enemy—embracing the strange other and adopting one’s own unconscious as subject.
  • Development as defense mechanisms: Christianity’s history is framed as a case study in defensive adaptations to traumatic openness:
    • Transcendentalizing God and shifting love into an otherworldly framework (Boothby links/credits this especially to Paul).
    • Imaginary defenses via the Church (icons, imagery) that displace the immediacy of the neighbor challenge.
    • Symbolic defenses via doctrinal authority and inward surveillance (orthodoxy replacing direct vulnerability to others).
  • Resulting contradiction: Boothby calls Christianity the most “symptomatically” conflicted religion: the same tradition of “love” becomes historically bound up with violence and coercion—persecutions, pogroms, conquest, slavery, crusades, and broader bloodshed “in the name of Christ.”

Major Critique: Paul vs. the “Wandering Rabbi” (Jesus)

A central claim of Boothby’s lecture is that Christianity becomes fundamentally transformed when Paul universalizes and infinitizes Jesus’ message into an afterlife reward structure.

  • Jesus (wandering rabbi): Teaches love as a present, here-and-now openness without reward/penalty mechanics.
  • Paul: Adds infinite reward (and implicitly infinite stakes), “infinitizing everything,” thereby changing moral logic into a system where failure can invite punishment or exclusion.
  • Consequence: This helps explain how love becomes compatible with harsh enforcement and doctrinal scorekeeping.

Audience Q&A Themes

The audience pressed on several points that sharpen or challenge the lecture.

  • What is “Jesus’s original teaching,” given the dating problem (letters vs. gospels)?

    • Boothby says his reading is radical and admits Paul “directs” the later gospel tradition by setting the stage for transcendentalizing Jesus’ message.
    • Even if Paul can be defended as promoting universalism, Boothby maintains Paul still changes the structure by attaching infinite reward.

  • Is the Homeric world “without infinity,” and how does that relate to Benjamin’s “capitalism as religion”?

    • Boothby answers yes: Homeric ontology lacks an infinite unifying horizon—only finite contesting powers exist (e.g., Zeus can fail).
    • He also clarifies that abstraction/infinity are not the same: abstraction does not necessarily require infinitude.

  • Ethics of love: does “love neighbor” imply self-harm, violence, or indifference between good and evil?

    • Boothby argues Greek ethics already involves loyalty and enemy-handling; “infinite ethics” doesn’t automatically appear in pagan honor codes.
    • Jesus, as framed by Boothby, articulates an ethic that can be “infinite” in demand without needing infinite reward.

  • Is the turtle/parables discussion really about “love of brother”?

    • One attendee asks how neighbor-love logic applies to loving an abusive/hostile sibling/brother.
    • Boothby broadly agrees the command can be traumatic and does not deny the likelihood of conflict.

  • “Religion without religion,” or is it still religious?

    • Boothby implies the core is a psychoanalytic account of sacredness/origin of the sacred: an “embracing the void” orientation inseparable from the demand of love, but not reducible to mere doctrine.

Concluding Implication

Boothby’s overarching report is that religion, in a Lacanian psychoanalytic framework, is best understood as:

  1. A confrontation with the void/unknowing in the other
  2. Followed by defensive institutional formations
  3. With Christianity—especially as mediated by Paul—showing the most extreme historical contradiction between a love command and systematic violence

Presenters / Contributors

  • Richard Boothby (presenter; Professor at Loyola University Maryland)
  • Lorenzo (discussant from the prior session referenced)
  • Professor Budby (mentioned as a mis-transcription of “Boothby”)
  • Lacan (primary theorist discussed)
  • Sigmund Freud (primary theorist discussed)
  • Moises / Moses / Moses in Lacan’s reading (textual/thematic contributor)
  • Abraham (textual/thematic contributor)
  • Yahweh (textual/thematic contributor)
  • Homeros / Homer (textual/thematic contributor)
  • Paul / Saint Paul (textual/thematic contributor)
  • Jesús / Jesus (textual/thematic contributor)
  • Thomas Jefferson (quoted)
  • Alfred Sohn-Rethel (mentioned via audience question; transcribed as “Sithl”)
  • Walter Benjamin (mentioned via audience question)
  • Søren Kierkegaard (mentioned via audience/lecture references)
  • Friedrich Nietzsche (mentioned via audience and Boothby’s Paul critique)

Original video