Why I asked about Pentecost, Continued...

Professor Kearney,
You are right about my interpretation of Babel. [See posting of April 2nd]. I suppose I have been influenced by Richard Clifford (at the STM) and his reading of the passage (beyond the etiological one, that of language diversity) that in fact the city is more important than the tower itself [Clifford argues that human activity at Babel is not just a repetition of the Fall in Gen. 3 (humans trying to be like gods/God), but a rejection of the previous command in Genesis to “fill the earth and subdue it” (in 11:4, the citizens of Babel say, “otherwise we’ll be scattered all over the earth;” in other words, they know God’s will and refuse to do it), hence the line in v. 8: “Thus the Lord scattered them from there all over the earth”]. Human beings are to inherit the earth (for their sustenance, their promise-laden future); the land is life. And, as you note, this scattering will be reversed in the eschatological recollection and redemption.
I am fascinated by your question about the kingdom speaking with one Logos or many. I appreciate the allusion to Perichoresis and the image of the Trinity in an endless dance, a resistance against a totalizing force to one voice/being/church/Logos. I suppose I would respond, with Augustine, with an image of the Trinity as being fundamentally relational and, at bottom, communicative. What is the one thing we can know about God? That God speaks; God communicates with us (Augustine follows this claim to assert that human beings exist by communicating, that is, expressing ourselves). God speaks with one Logos in terms of content; but stylistically, this takes different shapes in different socio-cultural contexts. Will these differences be maintained or overcome in the Kingdom? We learn that the blind shall see and the lame will walk (Isaiah 26:19; 29:18); does this mean that the many tongues and translations will be reduced to one? My short answer would likely be: in style, no; in content, yes. So the polyvocal tongues and translations will persist, but they will speak the same message.
[It’d be interesting to follow this line of thought to make connections to what we’ve been recently discussing, especially in light of “being and time.” Communication is rooted in time; we can’t even say the word ‘present’ in the present (by the time we say the word, the ‘present’ is already gone; it barely exists). Augustine says we are able to transcend the limits of being and time through communication (being: we step out of ourselves into another’s world; time: memory re-presents the past, we can anticipate the future and speak of tomorrow). Of course, within the limits of time, perfect self-expression is impossible (in part, because we are constantly becoming); the only perfect self-communication is beyond-time (which God alone can do). Thus God is the perfect communicator, and our goal is to do what God does: communicate our essence to others. A project now, a promise to be fulfilled in the eschaton.]
Does the Pentecost event indicate that the kingdom speaks with more than Logos? I cannot pretend to know, except to reconnect this back to the church (the sacrament of the Kingdom on earth). At Pentecost, we see the Spirit initiating and sustaining communication and communion for the church. Within the image of the church as the Body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:13), we are reminded that unity does not mean an undifferentiated whole, but that unity differentiates (as in marriage!) and that this is in fact the generative work of the Spirit. Of course this raises the question of reception: how do we receive the Spirit as an ongoing, communal, communicative act? Hans Küng would suggest an image of “common return” (reconciliation one to another as our central reality and ultimate destiny). This is not a totalizing force; catholicity demands differences; in this way, the church grows into the pleroma (fullness) of Christ. Instead of thinking in terms of reconciling our differences, perhaps we can consider reconciliation amid difference.
So I agree that we cannot have real peace unless we account for the differences (and tensions) between multiple tongues and translations. These differences are not insignificant reflections of how the Logos is inculturated in specific time(s) and place(s). These differences, at least in my view, reflect the richness and fullness of the church catholic. But the first mark of the church is that it is one. This reflects our common origin and destiny and the Logos (Jn 1:1, 14) that inspires and sustains us along the journey as a pilgrim people.
peace,
marc

Link to the story Freud made (un)familiar...

Here is a link to a version in English of the ETA Hoffman short story The Sandman that Freud analyzed in his essay The Uncanny.

http://www.fln.vcu.edu/hoffmann/sand_e.html

TEC

Aesthetics: praxis versus poesis

Dear Prof. Kearney,
In the introduction to your book Poetics of Modernity, you discuss the Greek sense of ποιησις as 'any productive activity having an end or value beyond itself.' Now, as far as Angelus Silesius' famous couplet 'The rose is without why, it blooms because it blooms/It pays no attention to itself, asks not whether it is seen', I've read somewhere that Jorge Luis Borges understood it to be a negation of Aesthetics.
Given your summary of poetry, & extending it to aesthetics at large, it seems that Angelus' 'without why' would disarm the rose/poetry/aesthetics. Poetry can still produce effects, even without a why, just like the rose can still bloom (& be seen, smelt, etc.). But poetry without a why would reject its effects as defining itself as poetry (pace Aristotle). The rose blooms whether or not it's seen, & poetry is poetics whether or not it has effects. It would exist not for its effects, nor even for itself, but just because it is. Is Angelus' couplet legitimately applicable? Can aesthetics/poetics be negated?
Gabe

Dear Gabriel,
This is an excellent question and I don't really know how to answer it as I have never thought it through myself.
I do not know the Borges reference but I suppose he means that if Aristotle is right in the Poetics that poiesis produces something beyond its own activity, a final product that can be seen (theatre) or read and heard (epic/lyric), then Silesius' 'blooming of the rose', as an act in itself, is more praxis (for Aristotle, an act which is its own end) than poiesis. Remember also that God is defined in Aristotelian and later metaphysics as 'pure act subsisting in itself' (actus purus non habens aliquid de potentialitate). So, by the Aristotelian account, divinity is closer to praxis than poiesis. This might explain Silesius’s thinking as that of a Christian mystic.
On this account, the 'without why' of Silesius' rose might be seen as a sort of mystical-divine praxis in and for itself.
On the other hand, you could read the 'without why' in a sense more inclined to poetry than praxis if you interpret according to a fin-de-siecle aesthetics of art for art’s sake (see Oscar Wilde and the symbolists etc). Or even according to Sartre's definition of 'poetry' in What is Literature - namely,  as a form of linguistic self-absorption, self-regard and passivity - indulgent, solipsistic, antipathetic to real social and political action (the task of 'prose'). For Sartre and the social realists, in short, poetry is less than prose because it is an end in itself: without why. Against this, Sartre argues for a politically committed art which uses language as a loaded gun that aims and fires at its target - prose in order words which dismisses poetry as a useless, impractical, mystical (or bourgeois) luxury.
    Hope that helps a bit?
    Best,
    Prof Kearney

let it be...

“to look after a ‘thing’ or person in its essence means to love it, to favor it…Such favoring is the proper essence of enabling, which not only can achieve this or that but also can let something essentially unfold in its provenance, that is, let it be” (“Letter on Humanism” in Basic Writings, Harper Collins, 220)

Giving Up the Ghost

I.

Let me be completely clear. No, really, I want to make myself clear. I want to be transparent with you. As transparent as a ghost, actually, one who can pass easily through all that which divides us, all those walls and thresholds, without losing anything of himself. I want to be this ghost that passes back and forth between author and reader, between original and translation, that lives in the flesh of each, of self and other, and makes finally possible their adequation. But I can't be this ghost, this ghost that is locked, encrypted, within language. And who is dead anyway. Why did I ever want to be this dead thing? I guess I cannot be completely clear with you, nor do I really want to be. But we could make something, you and I, in all our difference. We could "construct a comparable," a world in which we could mutually (if not perfectly) co-dwell. We could share a horizon for a while, like in those Corona commercials. I would flick a lime wedge with my finger and you would hear it plop into the ocean, and we'd know that we'd shared something, which, for all of its elusiveness and vitality, for all its endlessness, is worth a lot more than that damn ghost ever was. How could we share if we were exactly the same? That's the ghost's dream, not mine. He still haunts me though, haunts this Corona horizon of ours. This beach might be a burial ground, in the end. When we leave we'll take him with us, even though we don't see him. He might have been what we shared all along. A secret, one which we keep but can't know. But that was him, alright, haunting up the place. We'll ferry him to the next place we say with words, like pallbearers of a closed, Times New Roman casket. He was a good man, they'll say at the funeral, and died tragically. Killed, really, at Babel, when the tower fell. Why is it that towers are always falling? Now he's just a ghost, something I could never be, not until I'm dead myself. But I have put so much of myself in this new horizon, the one that we share, the one with the Coronas, that I am not sure I could ever die, so long as people are reading my words. I won't be a ghost anyway, I'll be a different kind of dead, or not dead at all. It doesn't seem so great anymore, to be that ghost.


II.


Pentecost strikes me as one of the moments in scripture so overdetermined, so symbolically freighted that it threatens to unhinge itself from the canon. Marc, your theological interpretation of this moment in Acts (that's where I find it anyway) is very much illuminating; an articulation of the multiplicity of voices within the church, a plurality treated as gift rather than as fracture. If I may play it fast and loose for a moment, I see some extra-ecclesiastical postmodern commentary running through this episode. Actually, more than postmodern commentary, it seems a comment on postmodernity.

To suddenly hear the primordially familiar--one's birth language--coming from the mouth of the other. This would be shocking. Implicit here is a refiguration of authenticity, dislodged from its dogmatic filliation to the idea of origin. Authenticity's source is found sub contrario, flowing upstream, so to speak, from the other to the self. In this way, It appears to me that the Pentecost episode in Acts narrates the "construction of the comparable," as Ricoeur terms it, an intersubjective space wherein the self and the other may participate in some experience of mutuality. Over and against Ricoeur's "third text," the ghastly absolute text which perfectly indexes the self and other--what Benjamin calls the messianic horizon of translation--this intersubjective space is a fourth text. [To numerate: not the text of the self (1), the other (2), the divine/ghost (3), but a 4th.] The fourth text is imperfect, immanent, concrete and collaborative. In this privileged-if-not-sacred space, the self and the other may experience the epiphany of corroboration, that is, the recognition of the self in the other, the closure of what had previously been perceived as an infinite distance separating the two. As the Pentecost illustrates, this closure occurs in language. To invoke Ricoeur again, the self and other mutually indwell what he elsewhere terms the "world of the text," which could also be termed the world of translation. Here the self and other are witness to a shared truth, or perhaps a truth shared in pieces, one among many. Authenticity is, then, not so much linked to the content but to the mode of that truth's disclosure, i.e., translation; the construction of the "comparable" and intersubjective fourth text, whereupon we may project our ownmost possibilities.

So, to just lay it on you, I think that Pentecost documents the new filiation of authenticity to translation, a moment which is concomitant with 1) the interment of what Ricoeur termed the absolute "third text," and 2) the invention of a "fourth text." This fourth text, an intersubjective space of mutual discovery, is what we call literature. The annulment of the absolute text did not yield silence but rather a proliferation of tongues; of truths. Literature does not precede translation, but, as Acts suggests, miraculously proceeds from it. It is in literature, in this infinite elegy for the absolute, where we find each other, and thus also our authentic selves.

Zach

PS
Please excuse these free associative wanderings.

Why I asked about Pentecost

Just a note to explain what I was thinking when I raised the question of what Pentecost might bring to bear for our conversation in class this past week:

Pentecost is often used as an example of the church's catholicity (note lower-case 'c'): unity amid diversity without uniformity. For me, this is an interesting contrast to the chaos at Babel for precisely this reason; as Yves Congar writes, “Through the mission and gift of the Spirit, the church was born universally by being born manifold and particular. The church is catholic because it is particular and it has the fullness of gifts because each person has their own gift.”

I’m not arguing for an absolute contrast between Babel/Pentecost (or that Pentecost solves the problem of Babel), but I do find it intriguing to consider how Pentecost might be a model for coming together amid diversity/plurality to authentically share something in common. In that way, Pentecost is not just an eschatological ideal. Pope John XXIII, calling for the Second Vatican Council in January 1959, described it as a “new Pentecost.” During Vatican II, in the decree Ad Gentes (On the Mission Activity of the Church), the council affirmed that Pentecost represents the birth of the church: “The Church was publicly displayed to the multitude, the Gospel began to spread among the nations by means of preaching, and there was presaged that union of all peoples in the catholicity of the faith by means of the Church of the New Covenant, a Church which speaks all tongues, understands and accepts all tongues in her love, and so supersedes the divisiveness of Babel” (§4).

Obviously this is much more theological than philosophical, but the point of my question was to suggest that there are alternatives to the chaotic paradigm of Babel. I’m not sure that Pentecost has practically superseded Babel (as Ad Gentes asserts), but with the gracious guidance of the Holy Spirit, we might construct wider communion and share clearer (and linguistically faithful) communication than simply accepting the “scattering-confounding” state of affairs following Babel (this is Steiner’s view, not Ricoeur’s; On Translation, 12). I was curious what the class might think of considering the value of Pentecost in this light and was grateful for the conversation on Tuesday night and anything that follows …

peace and all good,
marc

Sodom Revisited Part II

This story of Lot continues on a for a few more verses than what we’ve concentrated on so far. The Sodomites reject Lot’s offer of his daughters, demanding the men. As the Sodomites move to attack Lot & break into his house, Lot’s two guests ‘reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them, and shut the door.’ They then strike the Sodomites blind.

Interestingly the Sodomites’ response to Lot’s daughters is ‘You, Lot, came here as a foreigner, and now he would play judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them.’ – the Sodomites, the strangers, accuse Lot of setting them in his ethical system (to their detriment). The Sodomites (as strangeness) are so offended by Lot’s imposition of his worldview on them (as Lot did to the two men) that their hostility is increased dramatically. The Sodomites move to assault Lot (thereby destroying the totalizing worldview) – they reject Lot’s hierarchy in which he is willing to give them his daughters, & they will accept nothing less than the highest, the two men (& in the two men, Lot’s entire hierarchical system of hospitality).

At this point of Lot’s destruction, however, his two guests take a new role in the story. They take Lot into the house; a reversal of the first part of the story in which Lot takes them into the house. Now, finally, the two men have the opportunity to approach Lot. They can finally interact with Lot while retaining their strangeness, but only because Lot’s hierarchy has been undermined. Not only have the Sodomites pushed Lot to the edge of his system by rejecting anything less than everything, but Lot is no longer master of his house; it is not for Lot to shut the door & ward off the attackers, but he must allow the two men to save him, to host him.

Similarly to Mary, maybe Lot could have rejected the divine strangers, could have sent them away; but by allowing the divine to work, salvation comes. So the stranger can be preserved, but only when the stranger chooses to come; the stranger cannot be forced to be hosted & still remain a stranger. By taking Lot’s place as masters of the house, the two men undermine Lot’s hierarchical ethic just as much as the Sodomite could have by their force; but with the two men the loss of ethics leads to Lot’s salvation not destruction.

This leaves open the original question of whether there can be an ethical system for the stranger. I tend to think that it is impossible, but ethics really is not my forte. Lot’s story continues with the devastation of Sodom & the infamous episode of incest, which may be signs of the horrour that comes with the complete loss of an ethic of strangeness. But I’ll leave this to be worked out by someone with more intelligence than myself.

-Gabriel

Sodom Revisited Part I

Fellow Hermenauts,

This morning I devoted a bit of time to rethinking my reading of the Lot story we've discussed over the past few weeks. Specifically, I wondered if there wasn't a space that could be cleared between the totalizing strangeness and familiarity of Lot's guests. Is there a way that Lot's guests can be inscribed within Lot's ethical framework without losing all their strangeness? The question formed as to whether there can ever be any kind of ethic of the stranger; can Lot ever have an understanding of how he should act towards the stranger qua stranger without neutralising strangeness?

It's an interesting question, both within the Lot narrative & in the larger philosophical discussion, but here I'm mainly interested in the narrative. After turning the issue around in my mind a good bit, I remain in the opinion that there is no possibility for a such a space in this story. Lot's 'because they have come under the shelter of my roof' still denies foreignness to the guests; i.e. the guests are still completely inscribed within Lot's worldview/selfhood.

My reasoning here is that Lot does not see the two men as strange, but as The Strange - i.e. as hypostasised strangeness which, by taking a form to fit within his worldview, loses its aspect of strangeness. This is apparent at their first meeting. The two men don't approach Lot, rather he approaches them; they do not ask hospitality, rather Lot offers it, in fact he insists (another circumscribing of the men's strangeness?). I have trouble reconciling the fact that Lot approaches the strangers with an ethic of strangeness. If the strangers were really strange, they would have to approach Lot (at least partially).

I think the Annunciation is a good picture of interaction with strangeness which allows the stranger to remain strange. Mary doesn't seek out or pursue the stranger, but is approached by the stranger. Regardless of how much freedom Mary has to say 'no' after being approached, there would be no chance for the 'no' without the initial approach by the stranger. This approach lets the stranger come as they are & bring what they have (viz. strangeness). Lot's approach to the stranger, as friendly as it is, lets him totalize the identity of the men as his guests. So the upshot is that Lot's initiative shows that he is inscribing the two men in his ethic & preventing any space of strangeness from being cleared.

-Gabriel

Pentecost

Here's a translation of Acts 2:1-13 and (not that anyone has to agree with them, but hopefully they will be helpful) a few words from Richard Pervo's new Hermeneia commentary:

On the day of Pentecost the entire group was together. A sudden noise from above, like the roar of a strong rushing wind, filled the house in which they were sitting. Phenomena resembling jagged fiery tongues appeared. One of these settled upon each person. All were filled with Holy Spirit and, all, directed by the Spirit to give utterance, began to speak in foreign tongues.

Among the residents of Jerusalem were devout persons from every country under the sun. In response to the noise a crowd flocked together, for each and every one of them heard these people speaking in their native languages. In absolute bewilderment they exclaimed: "Aren't all these people who are speaking Galileans?" How can it be that each of us is hearing our own language? There are Parthinans, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, [__], Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Egypt, residents of Cyrenean Libya, visiting Roman citizens, Jews by birth and Jews by choice, Cretans and Arabs. Yet we are hearing these Galileans glorifying God in our own languages! Al were bewildered and perplexed, constantly asking one another, "What is going on?" Although there were some who made fun of the whole business by announcing, "They're full of cheap wine."

Pentecost may be the most exciting and least comprehensible episode in Acts. The story collapses at the slightest breeze. It begins with a group gathered in a house, perhaps for a devotion... These (12? 120?) persons experience a complicated epiphany that issues in inspired speech, possibly glossolalia (vv 1-4). Somehow this noise within a house becomes loud enough to attract a crowd evidently composed entirely of non-native residents who somehow pervieve that the speakers are from Galilee, although they hear neither ecstatic speech nor Palestinian Aramaic (which may have betrayed a Galilean origin to the experienced ear), but, to their utter amazement, a religious message in their respective native tongues (5-12). In a logical narrative, each would have heard (a group?) speaking Latin, Egyptian, or the like, leading to a conversation in which on e participant says to another, "Do you know what language that is?" It's Phrygian." To which another replies, "Oh no. that's the indigenous language of rural Cyrene," and so forth. The narrative telescopes such conversation, reporting that all spoke these words in unison, somehow grasping the precise distribution of the ethnic origins among them. Some could not determine what all this meant, but others were clear: "they're drunk" (v. 13). That charge would fit glossolalia, and Peter assumes that it is the opinion held by the entire audience (vv. 14-15). Most amazingly - and quite revelatory from the narrative perspective - nothing specific is said about the content of the message they heard.

This is a confusion worthy of babel. A redactional solution almost leaps from the page: Luke had a story about ecstatic speech that he transformed, either out of distaste for glossolia or to expound universalism, or both, into a linguistic miracle focusing on what was heard. This remedy recognizes the presence of conflicting elements and posits a likely source, but it is more of a description of the problem than an unraveling of it.

Some Commentary on Genesis

I though people might be interested in some of the commentary I found on the narratives in Genesis 18 and 19. I thought about quoting the passage as well, but that would make an already too long post even longer - and I think most people will be able to find a bible or an online link.

Here's what Robert Alter has to say about the opening of Genesis 19:

1. came into Sodom at evening, when Lot was sitting in the gate. The whole episode is framed in an elegant series of parallels and antitheses to Abraham's hospitality scene at the beginning of chapter 19. Both men are sitting at an entrance - the identical participial clause with the same verb - when the visitors appear. Lot's entrance is the city gate: he can sit "in" it because Canaanite cities had what amounted to a large chamber a the gateway; here people gathered to gossip, to do business, and above all to conduct justice; the gate would have given on the town square, the area referred to by the messengers in verse 2. There is an antipodal thematic distance from tent flap to city gate, as the narrative quickly makes clear. Abraham's visitors, moreover, arrive at midday, where as Lot's visitors come as darkness falls - a time when it is as dangerous to be out in the streets of Sodom as in those of any modern inner city.

2. turn aside. Lot resembles his uncle in the gesture of hospitality. He uses the verb "turn aside" (sur) instead of Abraham's "go on past" ('avar) because unlike the solitary tent in the desert, there are many habitations here, in addition to the public space of the square.

set off early. This may merely be merely to emphasize that he will not delay them unduly, but it could hint that they can depart at daybreak before running into trouble with any of the townsfolk.

3. a feast...flatbread. Perhaps an ellipsis is to be inferred, but this is a scanty looking "feast." In contrast to Abraham's sumptuous menu, the only item mentioned is the lowly unleavend bread (matsot) of everyday fare, not even the loaves from fine flour that Sarah prepares.

4-5 the men of the city, the men of Sodom...We are the men. Throughout this sequence there is an ironic interplay between the "men" of Sodom, whose manliness is expressed in the universal impulse to homosexual gang rape, and the divine visitors who only seem to be "men."

8. I have two daughters who have known no man. Lot's shocking offer, about which the narrator, characteristically, makes no explicit judgement, is too patly explained as the reflex of an ancient Near Eastern code in which the sacredness of the host-guest bond took precedence over all other obligations. Lot surely is inciting the lust of the would-be-rapists in using the same verb of sexual "knowledge" they had applied to the visitors in order to proffer the virginity of his daughters for their pleasure. The concluding episode of this chapter, in which the drunken Lot unwittingly takes the virginity of both his daughters, suggests measure-for-measure justice meted out for his rash offer.

for have they not come under the shadow of my roof beam? This looks like a proverbial expression for entering into someone's home and so into the bonds of the host-guest relationship. But "roof-beam" implies a fixed structure and so accords with the urban setting of Lot's effort at hospitality; Abraham, living in a tent, in the parallel expression in his hospitality scene, merely says, "for have you not come by your servant?"

9. came as a sojourner ... sets himself up to judge! The verb "to sojourn" [which, for what it's worth, in french is translated étranger] is the one technically used from resident aliens. "Judge," emphatically repeated in the infinitive absolute (wayishpot shafot), picks up the thematic words of judge and just from God's monologue and His dialogue with Abraham in Chapter 18.

That's as far as Derrida goes with the story ... he then jumps (deceptively, if you ask me) to Judges 19, which is it's own can of worms, and I can throw out some commentary on that, if we'd like. But I think these comments are interesting and would love to see what people hermeneutically do with them.

Derrida's Paternal Imagery

Dear Professor Kearney,
I was wondering if you could explain why, as Derrida argues, hospitality is an act initiated by the familial despot (149).  Derrida's emphasis on acting from the norms of rights or obligations (the "pact") seems to belie the very spirit of hospitality as being spontaneously volitional, generous, even excessive.  If we were seeking means congruent with the end of hospitality, I would imagine they'd be more democratic than despotic (though I'm aware the 'master' of the house is the one in best position to extend the offer of hospitality -- I just wonder if despotic language befits the contemporary household).  I find Derrida's paternal imagery all the more striking/surprising when I think of how hospitality has been reclaimed (in theology and ministry) as part of a feminist critique (I am thinking of someone like Letty Russell, for example).
Marc

Dear Marc
Excellent question. When Derrida speaks of hospitality as predicated upon a sovereign paterfamilias who decides which strangers to host, he is speaking of conditional hospitality. That is, hospitality as understood by Benveniste, as a pact between two sovereign clans or warriors. For this to occur, the host has to have power over his own home so as to control who comes in or out. Lot can welcome angels, keep out Sodomites and hand over daughters. So yes, there is an implicit despotism and violence inherent in all forms of conditional (or practicable) hospitality.
This is why, arguably, Derrida needs absolute and unconditional hospitality to safeguard the hope of hosting strangers beyond sovereignty, reciprocity and power. Such 'pure' hospitality is, of course, impossible for Derrida. But it always remains a promise or desire of justice-to-come, a justice (and perhaps love) which would transcend and transgress the laws and rights of ordinary, impure hospitality.
To return to your question then, democratic hospitality would always be a promise of 'democracy-to-come', the promise of a Messianicity more 'feminine' (like Derrida's khora) than paternalist. In short, the kind of hospitality more likely to come from Lot's daughters than from Lot himself, from the concubine than from the Levite master or her knife-wielding spouse...
Hope that helps? We can return to this in next class.
Best,
Prof Kearney

Guests in the Story of Lot: Competing Unconditional Demands?

Dear Professor Kearney,
I was interested in your reaction to the reading I proposed yesterday on the story of Lot - where the two visitors are inscribed within Lot's ethical system & cease to be guests, becoming part of Lot's narrative, while the Sodomites take the role of the Stranger demanding hospitality from Lot. Something I forgot to mention is that I feel that if Lot had said 'No, you can't have these men, because... I don't know why, you just can't.' the two visitors would have remained guests; however, since he gave a reason ('they have come to me for hospitality') he has inscribed them within his ethical system.
I'm curious for your response, since I give seems to break down the possibility of ethics (while preserving the possibility of morality) in a way that I'm not sure is compatible with your own reading; so a critical response would be most welcome.
Gabe


Dear Gabe,
Interesting...
But isn't Lot himself a 'guest' of the Sodomites who originally host him....' a foreigner (ger) come to stay (gur) with the Sodomites' (OH, p 251)?
So when the Sodomites (Lot's hosts) ask him to hand over his own guests they are abusing both the right of their guest (Lot) and of his guests (the two angels). A case of double betrayal of the law of hospitality?
I am not sure about your distinction between ethics and morality here; unless you mean that if Lot protects his guests he is observing the ethic of hospitality but if he hands over his daughters as 'gifts' to the Sodomites (his hosts and perhaps now, perversely, his guests who know at his door?) he is breaking the moral rules of family kinship and protection?
By this reading the biblical story would illustrate the trumping of familial morality by an ethics of unconditional hospitality? But does not the rhetorical force of the narrative suggest that this is not a great thing....to sacrifice your daughters to rapists? Or I imagining the biblical scribes to be more moral than they were?
It is true, of course, that Abraham was ready to sacrifice his son....to God? But what kind of God? A God of rapine who insists on child sacrifice or a God of mercy who is teaching Abraham a basic moral lesson: you just shouldn't do that kind of thing with your children, even if you think it is God knocking at the door and demanding you hand them over. So put away that knife and take your son home with you to Sarah and grow up!In other words, 'I am not a God of sacrificial bloodletting like the gods before me, but a God of love and justice'!
--Wishful thinking on my part? Kant and Girard would agree with the moral reading....but they are weird, so maybe the three of us are wrong and the sacrificial reading of both Abraham and Lot wins out? Give the gift of your children unconditionally to the one who asks but protect your guests no matter what? (Abraham receives the angels - God - unconditionally under the Mamre tree when they bring the gift of a son, Isaac, to him and the barren Sarah...but Abraham is then willing to give Isaac back again (offer him up!) to the same God when He asks. Benveniste's reading of hospitality as exchange of gifts? Potlach. You gave something to me, but I am now giving something more to you etc).
Perhaps that opens up new questions for discussion?
Best,
Prof. Kearney

Snake

Psyche is seduced by Amor. She has never seen him, although she recieves him each night - her sisters poison her with doubt, say she is making love to a dragon who will eat her up in the end, at any rate, that she should check. She betrays him - she lights the oil lamp one night and a drop of oil burns him awake: he leaves. (And what could be worse than the flight of Amor?)

Marie-Louise von Franz interprets this story in her book on redemption motifs. She says that the animal and the divine are very close ("above and below the human level") and one of the things that unites them is their being "touchy about being seen in the light of consciousness". 'Dragon' is synonymous with 'snake' here. The voice of the sisters is the voice of hasty consciousness, Lawrence's "accursed human education". It is also the voice of 'conditional hospitality'.

Normally we think of bringing something to light as positive (especially as philosophers). Marie-Louise von Franz isn't saying that consciousness is bad, rather, she says instead "in this light of recognition there is a 'nothing but' attitude", and we must be careful of this. Otherwise, like Psyche, we might roam all over the world in pursuit of the vanished stranger who was a lover and might have been a husband.

(This is a psychological interpretation of the story of a meeting, which I think is convincing, but I would like to add that an actual meeting with a snake needs no 'interpretation' to mediate the sense of meeting one of God's more dubious sons.)

simone weil

The essay on genocide has much in common with the philosopher Simone Weil. There will be a conference on her work at BC on April 23-24, in case any of you are interested.

Fanny

Force of Face

Dear Professor Kearney (and classmates),

Quick question: I've been trying to think about Levinas' face/ethics in relation to Derrida's "Force of Law," and I am wondering where/when the face 'does its work.' I'm in Los Angeles, and don't have the text with me, but from what I remember, in "Force of law" Derrida sets up three movements toward justice (1) Suspention (epoché) of the Law (2) Ghost of undecidability (3) Urgency to act. If that's a fair reading/remembering, when does Levinasian ethics do its work? Is it present in all three steps of these? Does it cause me to suspend the law because ethics happens without a 'third'? Does it cause the haunting of undecidability because I have no way of relating to the Other? Does it demand that I act, as it puts me in the accusative asking me where I am and demanding that I "do not kill" or whatever else it might say? Does it do its work before all of this? Or is comparing these two just a category mistake?

thank you,

Mike

Levinas & Genocide

Yesterday we didn't get to the second article which dealt with Levinasian ethics in view of genocide, particularly the Rwanda Genocide. But I was so confused by this article that I would regret very much missing the chance to ask about the point of this article. Particularly, I'm not sure how genocide fits into Smith's presentation of Levinas. Maybe someone with keener eyes than mine can correct my error, but I didn't see Smith ever discuss genocide in his paper. He discussed homicide quite a lot (despite using the word genocide for it), but genocide doesn't seem to appear except in a brief synthesis of Heidegger's Das Man with Levinas' ethic (a synthesis which he later casts aside as outside the realm of the essay).

So I'm left without exposition and without clue as to how genocide could fit into Levinasian ethics which seem to be very concentrated on the person, the I. Since the I, the single person, can't commit genocide (unless she's very efficient with her time!) but can only participate or command a genocide, I don't understand how any personalist ethic can really be fit neatly to the issue - i.e. it seems that it would require quite a bit of molding to fit Levinas into a discussion of genocide.

And in the end, I'm confused as to the very choice of genocide as a test-case. Assuming that the word still means anything at all aside from being a caricature of everything we don't like in human behaviour (a very generous assumption, in my opinion), I don't understand why Smith chose to address genocide rather than the more applicable-to-Levinas homicide. He seems to insinuate that genocide is an obvious site of radical evil, but aren't there any number of other examples of radical evil in the world? So what makes genocide so special? Is it just the fact that to discuss genocide increases the level of spectacle in a way that discussing infidelity, child abuse, rudeness, &c. wouldn't?

-Gabriel

Pathos and the Strange

Dear Dr. Kearney,
As PhD student in the Theology and Education program, I am interested in a "theology of neighbor."  I've been thinking about how our readings and discussions connect with the parable of the Good Samaritan (where neighbor becomes more than fellow Jew, and even beyond that, more than object but subject, when Jesus concludes the parable with the question, "Who was neighbor to the robbers' victim?").
I found myself thinking about the parable of the Good Samaritan this week because the Samaritan encounters the other and is moved with compassion.  In Luke’s Gospel, the word 'compassion' only appears in two other accounts: in Jesus, when he raises the widow’s son (7:13) and in the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son (15:20).  In light of the essay by Waldenfels, in the section "Strangeness as Pathos" (p. 8), the author seems to hint that we are passive to the strange, or at least subject to the strange encountering us.  I wouldn't disagree; it seems rather unlikely that we can initiate an experience with the strange from within ourselves.  But I keep thinking about the contrast between the Samaritan (out, on the road to Jericho) and the Prodigal Father (as one might call him) (out, waiting for his prodigal son to come home).  There's something strange about a Samaritan caring for a Jew who has been beaten and robbed.  That's not to say it isn't strange to have the younger son ask for his inheritance (what inheritance?), spend it, and then get welcomed back with open arms. Waldenfels says, alluding to Nietzsche, "what is strange comes when it wishes, not when I wish."  Waldenfels follows this with a point about learning from the strange, but doesn't this first require an openness to the strange, a posture of welcome or even hospitality?  Isn't that the difference between the priest and Levite and the Samaritan; the Samaritan is open to and engages with the strange (whereas the priest and Levite cross to the other side of the road).  Likewise, the Prodigal Father accepts the strange (the younger son who asks for the inheritance to which he has no claim; the son who has spent what was not his to spend).  I'm not sure these are good examples of hospitality (the Samaritan stumbles upon the robbers' victim in the road and the Prodigal Father is irresponsibly lavish with his son), but there is something of hospitality in their responses to the strange.
I was wondering if you'd care to comment on this disappointingly brief section in Waldenfels' essay.  True, strangeness as pathos is something we cannot initiate or always anticipate, but isn't it more important/interesting to consider the pathos in our response to the strange?
Thanks for your time and insight.
pax et bonum,
marc

Dear Marc,
In terms of our discussion in class on Tuesday, I suppose the neighbor is an example of the stranger who looks 'towards us' (rather than the hidden face that withdraws) - hence our pathos, namely, our reception of the face of the stranger as a foreigner who address us. This pathos may in turn become an active praxis to the extent that we respond hospitably to the face that calls us. This praxis would refer to the caring response to the Jew by the Samaritan (the foreigner to Jews) in the good Samaritan story;  and, in the second story,  to the  forgiveness/hosting/welcoming back of the estranged prodigal son by the father.
Praxis in each case actively responds to a prior pathos of receptivity or passivity which 'suffers' the stranger to come unto us (or come back to us, come home, in the case of prodigal son). Better still, I think we could say that in these two examples the pathos and praxis of hospitality occur both as once.
The question of Jesus is: who is my neighbor? Namely who is the one who is near, next door, a fellow citizen, a familiar in some way? And Jesus replies to the question by making it the question of the stranger from afar, the estranged one, the alien or foreigner who only becomes near through an act of healing and pardon.....The Jew's own neighbors pass him by while it is the Samaritan stranger who becomes near from afar, familiar from unfamiliar, heimlich from unheimlich, who cares and thus becomes the good neighbor.
It is interesting, moreover, that the Samaritan brings the wounded Jew to a hostel, hospital, hospice - thereby showing how a situation of violent hostility is converted into hospitality. The parable thus seems to be saying that the alien/enemy/foreigner of the nation becomes a neighbour by hosting his stranger (the Jew) so that he (the stranger Samaritan) can become a guest in turn - that is a true neighbour to Jews in their homeland.
One might also compare the good Samaritan story with Jesus's exchange with the Samaritan woman at the well, or the healing of the lepers--when it is only the Samaritan leper who returns to say thanks for Jesus's hospitality in welcoming him in all his 'strangeness' (disease as well as foreignness).
Hopes this helps a little?
with thanks and best wishes
     
Prof Kearney

I just thought I'd put this up to see if people had thoughts. I can't get it out of my head, but I don't know what to make of it eitherThank you, Chris, for a thought provoking presentation.

Anatheistic Distinctions

Dear Prof Kearney,
I had a quick question about your model of anatheism, particularly discerning between the secular & the sacred spheres of life. You make a big point of the necessity of a non-reductionist union between the sacred & the secular (which comes to a head on pp. 139-142) - a union in which the two come together without be absorbed into each other. An engagement which preserves distance.

Throughout the Anatheism, you discuss how to bring the sacred & the secular together into dialogue with one another, & you give several examples (Day, Gandhi, &c.); but you never discuss with the same rigour how one might keep them apart (at one point, which I cannot now find, you do give a few generic distinguishing features of the two spheres).

My question is if you think that it's possible to distinguish the sacred from the secular in a practical way in any given thing/action/life. 'Anatheism is the attempt to acknowledge the fertile tension between the [sacred and the secular], fostering creative cobelonging and "loving combat"' (141). Is it possible to discern where the fault lines lie in this tension or are the combatants so dependent upon each other that they make up every aspect of the world to the point that it's impossible to say 'That's secular' or 'This' sacred'?

-Gabriel

The Agency of the Foreigner

Our discussion of the stranger and hospitality has been primarily focused on the agency of the host. And with good reason, as it is from the position of host that the ethics of encountering a strange other takes place—for the most part. However, it seems to me that the discourse of hospitality demands a more robust formulation, especially when we take into consideration the events of Hurricane Katrina, the Tsunami that hit East Asia, and most recently the earthquake in Haiti. While Derrida’s discussion of hospitality extends from the idea of a Messianism, that is to say, the indeterminable arrival of the absolute Other, it seems in light of these aforementioned events that Derrida has overlooked the possibility that the Other’s arrival—that which calls forth this ethical situation—may in fact require us to assume the agency of the foreigner. In other words, the mode of hospitality may be flipped and require that a person leave the comforts of the home he or she has sovereignty over and gift him or herself to the strange other without any qualifications. The other may reject the gift or may take advantage of it, but just as with the host, one must accept this vulnerability if they are to give just heed to the other’s strangeness. I am not proposing a reformulation of the stranger in its many manifestations. As we have decided, strangeness is always already imminent in a number of different persons. Rather, I am suggesting that we must also consider the positive ethical implications that come along with the agency of a foreigner. It is he or she that provides the host the opportunity to resign his or her sovereignty, thus allowing the ethical experience of an absolute welcome to occur—‘if there is such a thing’. Moreover, it is an ethical gesture in its own right to offer oneself over to the other when he or she needs your help—or perhaps even when you yourself need help. Therefore, it would seem the offering of the foreigner to the host is an indispensable component of any account of hospitality and to consider this alternative mode of agency is to fully appreciate the reciprocal agency that hospitality requires.

Disappearances

Well it's Valentines day, and my baby left me. She just went to do errands, but all the same, it got me thinking about disappearances.

Thinking about Baudrillard's piece in conjunction with Oedipus, there seems to be a structural kinship between these narratives of disappearance. As Derrida sketches out for us, Oedipus doesn't allow Antigone to know his final resting place. It is a secret, one which prevents her mourning from taking its natural course. She mourns for her inability to mourn, an indefinite mourning, almost a ghostly mourning; to borrow J.C. Mellencamp's formulation, a mourning which goes on long after the thrill of dying is gone. Without any localized point of grief to organize his rites of departure, Oedipus continues to haunt Antigone, haunt Thebes, haunt the text. He is, I want to say, everywhere because he is nowhere.


Oedipus is not unlike the Twin Towers in this respect. After the events of 9/11, what Baudrillard would call one of many deaths of the Real, several things happened:
1) The fall of the towers led to the radical multiplication of their image-- in newscasts, in homemade memorials, in magazines. In conversation, too, I suppose. I remember I was in my sophomore year high school math class when the first plane hit, and to be honest, I didn't really know what the World Trade Center was. I had probably seen the Twin Towers, but I hadn't really thought about them until they were on fire. And like some sort of amoeba, the image of the towers was reproduced at an alarming rate upon their destruction, their division. Most illustratively, kids in my high school (kids in lots of high schools) began to fold $20 bills in such a way that, somehow, an image of the burning towers would appear (see attached picture). The image of the Towers, then, did not only spread across space, but across time as well. As we discussed in class, prefigurations of 9/11 are everywhere, in movies like Fight Club, which Baudrillard uses as evidence of the inevitability of this event to end all events. As seen in the image of the $20 bill, the system's downfall was inscribed within itself. I see this a bit differently, though. Has the system died? Not at all. The World Trade Center was destroyed, it has disappeared, but the hegemony of capital was not affected. Capital didn't die, it was resurrected without having to die, now charged with the energy of the real, sanctified as a sort of deathless martyr. So I disagree with Baudrillard here (but I also feel like I am being more Baudrillardian than he is, so maybe I am just reading him wrong): The system did not portend its own death so much as its resurrection. Less like a snake shedding its skin than a skin shedding its snake, the system built its own destruction within itself, and carried on after its death as if it were part of the plan--the most important part of the plan. In this sense, the symbolic behavior of capital has mirrored exactly the religious designs of the terrorists: The system anticipated its own demise, but also penned the terms of its resurrection. In other words, the symbolic freight of death itself was utilized by both parties in question. With the disappearance of two buildings in New York, capital's symbolic capital has been extended, renewed, reborn, baptized, galvanized, and sanctified. Where before 9/11 it was just business, now it's sacred, now it's religion. As Baudrillard wrote, "I set out to produce a Requiem, but it was also, in a way, a Te Deum" (p. 52, n4).

2) Following the radical proliferation the Twin Towers was their erasure. Films released shortly after 9/11 cut scenes that featured shots of the Towers. Spider-man was the most famous example. More poignantly, the Towers were erased from movies and television shows films before 9/11. (You can read a little bit more about that here: http://www.entertainmentnutz.com/tv/tvbites/destroying_a_memory/ , and for a more neutral take, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_audiovisual_entertainment_affected_by_the_September_11_attacks). This is, in a way, a second disappearance, an erasure of the past. Maybe ironically (and maybe depending on whether you are a Marxist philosopher or a Fortune 500 CEO) the idea was that images of the Twin Towers would be upsetting, and thus these films and shows would lose dollars. A third disappearance, we could say, is the continued absence of a memorial or monument or even new set of towers at 'Ground Zero". The combined effect of these three difference sorts of disappearances is a sort of rapture: the transcendence of capital. Like Oedipus, the symbolic power of capital is, by virtue of its disappearances, its deathless death, everywhere felt. Like Antigone, we cannot so much mourn and move on as mourn our inability to mourn, which has taken the form of the interminable 'War on Terror."

Zach Smith

Confronting Girard and Baudrillard: what if globalization is also a Myth?

I'm wondering if we cannot put Girard in conversation with Baudrillard and vice-versa: Baudrillard makes the point that terrorism is an immoral response to the immoral system of globalization; the implication being that the latter conditions the former. So, with that all too neat hypothesis, can we not apply Girard's point that all myths are cover-ups for (actual) violent foundational acts to Baudrillard's understanding of the globalization/terrorist relationship by teasing out the myth(s) of globalization and exposing the immoralities within the system and, in so doing, begin to unravel the riddle of terrorism (globalization's shadow/double/twin etc.)? Although I really don't like working with such sweeping terms as "the system" and "globalization," Baudrillard, nonetheless, has a point which becomes much clearer when we approach globalization qua myth rather than monolith. As far as potential "foundational acts" (they seem more like gestures) concerning globalization: the creation of the World Bank, IMF, NAFTA, Patriot Act. But at the heart of globalization--and not surprisingly a key aspect of Baudrillard's early thought--is consumption, the underlying force that binds the global society. I cannot to point to a specific act and say "this is the foundational act for what will become a rampant consumer culture," I'm sure there are many to explore (although right now the only thing jumping out at me is the rise of plastics--i.e. The Graduate--so I hope there are better examples or this whole email is shot!) At any rate, there are more myths about globalization than there are students in the class, and I am certainly interested to hear any and all interpretations! Sorry for rambling a bit, but unraveling the "myth(s) of globalization" was not something I wanted to take on as a solo project...Matthew P.

Marion's Saturate Phenomenon: Options for Rebuttal?

Dear Prof Kearney,

Thank you for your challenging reply – I would have been disappointed with anything less! If I may be allowed to play the part of Hippomenes, I’ll run with you a bit longer.

First, I think that perhaps you misunderstood my comment on earl grey. I was referring to the tea named earl grey, not the beer named Guinness. Also in regards to Paul & the religions, I hope that I’m not being too presumptuous in thinking you’d agree with me that Christ is not to be found in any specific dogmatic formula, or ecclesial hierarchy, or even liturgical rite. Even beyond a simple creedal confession, there is a space for an unconscious, but demanded ‘yes’ (one may think of Rahner’s anonymous Christianity here; or the equally confessed anon-Hinduism, anon-Zoroastrianism, &c.).

To be honest, any drive to preserve pure (total?) freedom of choice sounds almost like an attempt to break free of the hermeneutical circle – hermeneutics ‘goes all the way down’ & so it is conditioned all the way up by its structure as the hermeneutical circle. Just like Angra Mainyu has corrupted all the elements of the world to a greater or lesser extent, even touching the high purity of fire, all of our freedom & freedom of interpretation is touched to a greater or lesser extent by the world in which we live. In fact, it doesn’t seem that anything like freedom can exist without a marriage to the unfreedom of given phenomena. Otherwise it would be like Kant’s dove wishing for the easy flying conditions of a void; otherwise this unrestricted freedom still seems to descend into arbitrariness. Furthermore, if all our choices are touched by some non-choice, it seems reasonable to think that some of our ‘choices’ could have a small-to-null degree of free choice because of exposure to saturated phenomena, even to the point that it seems like no real alternative is available (‘some of our choices’, not all; not every phenomenon is saturated).

Perhaps the crux is that I’m still foggy on your position to the saturated phenomenon itself. You sound like you affirm that saturated phenomena do exist; but if that’s so, would you also agree with Marion that the I is constituted by these phenomena (which seems to me a vital part of saturation). And if the I is constituted as such, then the actions of the I would also seem to be constituted by the phenomena. The ‘yes’ is no longer Mary’s yes, but a yes which she can say because she has already been saturated by the call. I’m reminded here of the great emphasis in God without Being on the inability to say ‘Jesus is Lord’ without the grace of God.

-Gabriel

Oedipus' burial

One of the questions that Prof Kearney raised was the reason for the mysteriousness of Oedipus' burial. Among the answers that we considered was that Oedipus is somehow transformed at the moment of his death, and so must not be associated with a single "place" but with all "places." Just today, I was reading Felix Budelmann's classics work The Language of Sophocles: Communality, Communication, and Involvement (Cambridge) and found his reflection on the choice of Sophocles' language to speak of the buried Oedipus. 

The line to which Budelmann gives attention is Colonus 1760-1763, which reads:

"Girls, that man (keinos) instructed me that no mortal should go near those regions or address the sacred tomb which that man occupies (hen keinos echei)."

Budelmann notes that the use of the indeterminate "keinos" to name Oedipus, who is no longer called by his proper name there, reinforces the sense of a supernatural transformation that occurs with Oedipus (as do the clap of thunder and the divine voice mentioned at 1621-1628). He goes on to say: 

"Oedipus is last named at 1638, around 150 lines before the end....If names are anything to go by, he is not the man he used to be. By failing to name him, Theseus makes Oedipus a rather numinous kind of figure" (p. 43). 

So it seems Sophocles' language of Oedipus from his death afterwards refers to his very being as no longer limited by his proper name, but as transformed into something more like the protective power of the city which he becomes. A strange stranger indeed!

Marina McCoy

Marion's saturated phenomenon: options for refusal?

Dear Prof. Kearney,

As I understand your objection to Marion, you feel that saturated phenomena do suggest a course of action, but also leave open the space for interpretation ('one can have both a passive and an active response'). I can certainly see how it could at least appear to a person that there is a passive & active component. However, to really have a truly active component, it would seem that you would have to preserve at least a part of the subject apart from the phenomenon. That is, there would have to be a part of the subject which is not constituted by the phenomenon to which it responds. Maybe you can correct me (& I'm definitely open to correction!) but this seems to be denied by Marion. I'm reading here especially §22 of Being Given, under the heading 'The Paradox and the Witness' ('Far from being able to constitute this phenomenon, the I experiences itself as constituted by it.'). By preserving a part of the I, isn't the saturated-ness of the phenomenon undermined?

I'm also thinking loads about the possibility of saying 'no' as well as 'yes' to the phenomenon. While it would seem that a 'no' may be possible, it also seems that a 'yes' is the only real option - the only answer which would be authentically addressing the phenomenon (authentically addressing oneself to the phenomenon). For example, if you set a cup of Earl Grey in front of me, in theory I can refuse it, but that is not really an option for all practical purposes. Slightly less facetiously, I'm reminded of St Paul's discussions on attaining freedom by submitting to slavery - by becoming a slave to Christ I am set free. My ability to address the world properly (through the Logos) is dependent upon my renunciation of my ability to say 'no' to Christ.

Discernment may well have a place here ('discerning the Spirit' etc.), but to bring it down to a solid situation: you dislike discussion that speaks of '"when" Mary receives the Word, never "if" she agrees to receive it.' But isn't that somehow correct? Without this 'when, never if', is the phenomenon really saturating? Wouldn't some part of Mary have to be kept apart from the phenomenon, arbitrary, higher than God? And wouldn't introduction of the arbitrary ruin the phenomenon or at least the response to it, whichever response it is? As a final point, it seems that God/grace/the saturate phenomenon is much more pervasive and invasive than an either/or situation allows. Don't the stories of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, Paul on the road to Damascus, and (perhaps the most telling) Jonah on the road to Nineveh show of situations where 'a simple no' is not really an option for the travelers?

-GA

Dear G-

1) In depriving the self of the power to say no to the saturating phenomenon, Marion is denying human freedom. Here he follows Levinas's notion of a 'passivity beyond all passivity' which, in my view, is a recipe for masochistic passivism. Indeed when Levinas says that the most ethical subject is the most hostaged and persecuted - depriving the subject of choice, will, freedom - I think he is anticipating Marion's notion of the witness as 'interloqué' - the interlocuted (almost electrocuted!) self: speechless, powerless, invaded, overwhelmed by the saturating tsunami of the incoming Other.

It is no accident, moreover, that Marion's other favorite word for the saturated witness is 'l'adonné' - an ambiguous term in french meaning both the 'gifted' one (one involuntarily in receipt of a saturating gift - like Heidegger's Es Gibt?) and the 'addicted' one. As AA teaches, the addict is one who is 'powerless' over his/her condition. I have a real problem with the Marionesque claim that we have no freedom to say yes or no - a criticism spelled out on pages 198-199 of 'Anatheism', as discussed in class. It champions divinity by compromising humanity.

2) You give the example of not being able to say no to a cup of Earl Grey? Really? If someone puts a cup of cold, syrupy, malodorous liquid in front of me (as you can gather I don't like Earl Grey), why can't I say, 'thanks but no thanks'? I don't agree at all with Paul's claim - if it is true - that one has no freedom to say no to Christ? What about half the religions in the world? What about agnostics and atheists? Or many Christians who believe they 'do' have freedom to believe or not believe? Did not Christ say we were 'friends not slaves'? Did he not say he came 'to serve not be served'? Did he not identify himself as a starving stranger in the street rather than a Lord of Power and Glory' (see Matt 25 and Dostoyevsky's 'Grand Inquisitor'). Otherwise is not the washing of the disciples feet a charade?

The reason I quoted the three poets of the Annunciation scene - Levertov, Hudgins and Semonovitch - in second seminar (and first chapter of Anatheism) is precisely because they emphasize the radical freedom of Mary to say yes or no. As Denise Levertov writes: 'She was free to accept or to refuse/ choice integral to humanness'. One does not have to espouse these poets' feminist' readings (though I do) to resist the notion of divine rape, which is surely the only interpretation of the Word as 'invasive' rather than 'persuasive', as imposition rather than invitation, as coercion rather than call.

You call this freedom 'arbitrary' but I do not agree. It is 'motivated' as Husserl or Merleau-Ponty would say, but not determined or predetermined, it is inspired and solicited by incoming Word but without compromising human freedom in any way. That is why I argue in 'Anatheism' for reading of sacred stranger as grace rather than fear, as a free 'if' rather than an ineluctable 'when' (to return to my rejection of Marion's reading of annunciation).

If I had to choose I would prefer humanity to have power and divinity to have none. The Omni-God of a certain metaphysics - omnipotent and omniscient - is a pretty tyrannical god in my opinion who has done countless damage to human beings for millennia. I prefer the powerless god who knocks at the door and waits for the human host to open or refuse to open (as so beautifully captured in Rilke's poem, and in Revelation). The alternative is an Invincible Superintendent of the Universe. In other words, if I had to chose between host and guest in this matter, I would prefer to think of humanity as host and divinity as guest. The contrary, it seems to me, is inhuman and very undivine.

Hope that helps?

keep those great questions coming

yours in prolixity,

Prof Kearney

The overlooked feminine...

Dear Prof. Kearney,
When Aeneas founds Rome, he has to go past Carthage - in fact he wouldn't have founded Rome unless the goddess of love (his mother) hadn't convinced Zeus to order him away from a marriage sanctioned by Hera (although performed in the shelter of a cave during a thunderstorm) - in Carthage Dido offers him hospitality, and he accepts her love. When he leaves he forsakes her, she burns herself, he becomes the founder of Rome. So with Theseus - it is Ariadne who welcomes the enemy, saves him from the Minotaur, and when he has taken her love - and the girl herself - as far as Naxos, he forgets her, goes home and becomes the hero under whom Athens is united! Why are these women forgotten? In Theseus' case the death of his father has sometimes been understood as punishment - in the form of a second forgetting: twice immemor. But we have been reading Theseus as a victorious hero - one who isn't just the saviour of the city once, but finally. Why the Minotaur doesn't come back as a plague is probably explicable in terms of the two puzzles: a) the sphinx puzzle is dissolved: being known by Oedipus the sphinx destroys herself, but will resurface later b) the labyrinth puzzle is solved: in order to get to the minotaur Theseus traces the pattern of the maze with a thread, he lays it out, walks through it - kills the beast himself - and then retraces the path that is the puzzle (and its solution). I would even add that it is the feminine that Theseus addresses in the labyrinth with Ariadne's thread, that Oedipus fails to deal with with the sphinx - that for Oedipus the feminine is split between the monstrous hostility of the sphinx and the appalling hospitality of his mother, and so finds no resolution...The victorious hero deals with the feminine, accepts hospitality to a point, and then leaves. But why is this the resolution? Why is Ariadne abandoned? Why does Aphrodite condemn Dido to such a hell? Is it because the city is always (can only be?) founded in that way? By rejecting - the dark feminine? African Dido, Cretan Ariadne half-sister of the Minotaur? This is the nightmare of the host(ess)! That the stranger will accept your love, love you, take you, with him as guest, and then leave you on the beach while you sleep...At which point we might say, if only you'd stuck to justice! The stranger shouldn't be named, you might fall in love!
Frances

Dear Frances,

Wonderful ideas. I have to concur with the idea that there is a feminine side here missing in these stories, and can’t help also think of Medea and Jason, who so callously uses Medea much as Theseus uses Ariadne. Quite a while back, I read the following article by Melissa Mueller on the way in which Medea expects a charis relationship of mutual exchange between her and Jason, but Jason denies her one...here is the link, which you can probably access by the web through bc libraries. Essentially she sees Jason as an equal in gift giving exchange, and he thinks of her favors as disposable: http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/american_journal_of_philology/v122/122.4mueller.pdf
Prof McCoy

Kierkegaard & the Call of the Other

Dear Prof Kearney,
I am confused about your criticism of Kierkegaard. I understood you to be saying that because we must be able to recognise the stranger who comes to our door - even if this recognition is not a conscious deduction, but no more than a smell - our faith cannot be blind. We are required to interpret the call of the other? That that is part of the response? I'm not sure if this is what you're saying, but, if it is close at least, wouldn't Kierkegaard agree completely - isn't Kierkegaard's point that the ethical is about disclosure, about understanding, bringing to consciousness etc: the paradox is that, when this fails us and we are reduced to blindness (when we can only smell and intuit but not know? - when we cannot express the problem in the universal?) we still have to welcome the stranger (almost unethically, because ethics has failed us already?). So for Kierkegaard we do have to do the hermeneutic work, and the bizzare and contradictory thing about faith is that it somehow defies our duty? Frances


Professor Kearney's response:
Frances, your point is well made and I agree with most of what you say with regard to Kierkegaard.
My point about carnal hermeneutics is that it operates already in the very moment of the leap of faith - both after we have left the knowledge and understanding of the Universal behind and before we return to the universal after the leap. The carnal 'reading/flairing/smelling/sensing' of the stranger is already at work in the first facing of the stranger - that is, in the primal moment of faith as troth and trust. This can occur in the middle of the night, as with Jacob wrestling with angel - and while it may often be mistaken it is never 'blind'. A leap in the dark does not mean we cannot read. In fact, Derrida once said to me in the conversation in Villanova that 'we can only read in the dark'. Darkness is not blindness. Sense means both sensing and making sense, passive and active, receptive and interpretive. And the french 'sens' even has the third intriguing sense of 'direction'. Tu vas dans quel sens? Carnal sensing as orientation...going this way rather than that, like Mary or Abraham or Jacob recoiling or advancing, retreating or embracing...
That is the wager of hospitality.

Does that help a little?

Carnal Hermeneutics and Fallibility

Dear Professor Kearney,
[...] I completely understand how bodily hermeneutics can be temporally primary and prethematic. But it seems that the body can be just are erroneous as any cognitive hermeneutic. For example, one may be positively disposed towards a charming rapist or be repulsed by an angel. If I understand you correctly that the body may provide reliable discernments at times when cognitive hermeneutics cannot, I don't see how these moments of bodily discernments can themselves be discerned, given the body's ability to deceive (e.g. as charmed by a demon). [...]

Prof. Kearney's response:
A really interesting question. It is precisely because of the fallible/tentative/tacit/inchoate nature of our carnal discernments/readings (that is why I called it a hermeneutic 'flair' rather than 'judgment' ) that the primary hermeneutic of embodied imagination and sensation needs to be supplemented by a critical hermeneutics of reasonable discernment (Kant's aesthetic reflective judgment) and practical wisdom (Aristotle's phronesis). My point is that a primary leap of emotion, faith or flair is not 'blind' but already interpretative...In other words, hermeneutics goes all the way down...
hope that helps a little? We must come back to this in class as several other students asked me similar questions after seminar was over....