LAST WEEKEND I was in San Diego, at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR)—a massive conglomeration of scholars that’s more or less facilitated my relationship to the field since I started attending in 2008.
To me, ceasefire also has the implication that the underlying problem has not been solved, but people have agreed to stop making it worse. That seems to me to resonant with the approach of a number of contemporary thinkers. I'm thinking in particular of Agamben, as discussed by Adam Kotsko recently (https://itself.blog/2024/11/24/the-katechon-the-man-of-lawlessness-and-the-most-important-election-in-our-lives/): specifically, his view that the idea that (a certain class of) political problems can be solved "once and for all", rather than remaining contested, is a tempting illusion which must be renounced.
To me, ceasefire also has the implication that the underlying problem has not been solved, but people have agreed to stop making it worse. That seems to me to resonant with the approach of a number of contemporary thinkers. I'm thinking in particular of Agamben, as discussed by Adam Kotsko recently (https://itself.blog/2024/11/24/the-katechon-the-man-of-lawlessness-and-the-most-important-election-in-our-lives/): specifically, his view that the idea that (a certain class of) political problems can be solved "once and for all", rather than remaining contested, is a tempting illusion which must be renounced.