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
dear Gabriel
ReplyDeleteGreat question
Apologies for delay in responding but I have been traveling abroad,
I will respond shortly
Prof Kearney
Dear Gabriel,
ReplyDeleteIf I might take an example from our seminar, I would say that the stranger who arrives in our home may be respondeded to as either secular or stranger, or both.
In so far as the stranger comes with recognizable rights of sojourn - rights which make him/her identifiable and nameable - we have a secular experience of conditional hospitality.
To the extent that this same stranger appears to us (also and at same time) as epiphany, wonder or surprise, we may say he/she comes as a sacred other (unconditional hospitality).
The sacred in the stranger is that which always remains radically other, transcendent and irreducible to our secular expectations (Levinas' face).
This is similar to Derrida's distinction in the Dublin Dialogue ('Forgiveness and Hospitality' which we will be discussing in our forthcoming Derrida dialogue) between 1) 'invitation' where we control and determine the arrival of the stranger; and 2) 'visitation' when we open ourselves to the unbidden advent of the other.
But the point is that the secular and sacred are both experiences of the same person at the same time in the same place. The stranger as Janusface looking in two directions at once... So in this sense secular and sacred are united while remaining distinct.
Hope this helps?
best
Prof Kearney
Thanks Prof Kearney, that's quite clear! When I thought of this question, I especially meditated on the example of an audience listening to Fauré's Requiem in a symphony hall, or the Carmina Burana in a church. This music explicitly might be heard either from a sacred or a secular standpoint depending on each individual in the audience, but neither view could be held without the other (in the Requiem, the secular aesthetic couldn't exist without Fauré's religious intent, but the sacred couldn't exist without the symphony and hall).
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