I have occasionally complained about the waning of theological discourse in the blogosphere as a number of the ‘big names’ have continued to track downward in frequency and substance over the years. There are still a number of notable sites which most people know of but I have come across a few I was not aware of that still seem to have a low profile. In any event I have enjoyed following the following;
Enjoy!
There is a man who says he has faith, but now he wants to make his faith clear to himself; he wants to understand himself in his faith. Now the comedy begins. – Concluding Unscientific Postscript (211)
In many ways Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous Stages is the easiest to summarize. The book is framed as a collection of ‘found’ pieces published by Hilarius Bookbinder. The pieces include ‘In vino veritas’, ‘Reflections on Marriage’ and ‘Guilty? / Not Guilty’. These pieces all address particular relationships between man and woman, with man being the subject. The first section is likened to a remaking of Plato’s Symposium. Men gather around the banquet table drinking and making speeches about love. This is a poetic account in which man, woman and love are abstracted and never engaged in particular. The second second section is an ethical account of a man married to a woman. It includes an exploration of love in terms or duties, natures and ideals. Marriage is no abstraction. It is the concrete and the temporal. The third section explores a man’s internal processing of realizing that his engagement to a woman must be broken due to his internal movement or desire towards the religious. He understands that the two of them do not fundamentally understand each other and to proceed with marriage would be of greater harm to the woman than to break off the engagement and so the man explores how best to break the engagement for the sake of the woman. This section is framed as a series of journal entries. There are morning and midnight entries. The morning entries recollect events that occurred a year ago on that day while the midnight entries reflect on current circumstances.
All three sections have their moments in terms of literary expression or conceptual insight. However, it is the ‘fourth’ section that really engages the movement of ‘stages’. The final section is an account by the ‘author’ of the third section in which he reveals his intention in writing the piece which is to explore the phenomenon of the religious. This is difficult because the movement of the religious cannot be secured externally. In the case of his account there is nothing keeping the couple from having a happy marriage, no obstacle that is, except for an internal movement in the man. The result of the inwardness is a qualitative misunderstanding that cannot allow for a happy marriage. I would be curious to know more about the history of ‘understanding’ as it functioned in marriage relationships as it still crops up as reason to enough to end marriage (though Kierkegaard is careful to distinguish different sorts of ‘misunderstandings’). Also, a clear critique could come in Kierkegaard giving a masculine priority to thinking about ‘important things’ rather than a feminine (esthetic) immediacy that he characterizes the woman as having.
At one point the author makes the comment, “The religious is simply and solely qualitative dialectic and disdains quantity” (443). This abolishes the significance of the external (which is important for creating a level playing field) and demands an ongoing movement in which “the believer continually lies out on the deep, [and] has 70,000 fathoms of water beneath him” (444)
However long he lies out there, this still does not mean that he will gradually end up lying and relaxing onshore. He can become more calm, more experienced, find a confidence that loves jest and a cheerful temperament – but until the very last he lies out on 70,000 fathoms of water (444).
The stages from esthetic to ethical to religious are not linear and final once ‘accomplished’. The movement is always towards the qualitatively dialectic which is not determined by external conditions. And as dialectic one can never ‘rest’ in having arrived at the religious. There is such an emphatic emphasis on ‘inwardness’ that it is hard to not criticize it. This emphasis is only amped up in the climax of his ‘first authorship’ Concluding Unscientific Postscript. I continue to read Kierkegaard at his word that there is indeed a spiritual or religious subjectivity. This subjectivity is then lived actually and this is what must continually be emphasized in Kierkegaard’s writing, namely that the whole push is for philosophical and religious thought to take existence into account.
Well I am pretty much at the mid-way point and staying on track!
I hate feeling at the mercy of other specialists. I am not thinking so much about my occasional visit to the doctor’s office. I am thinking particularly of the specialists who trade in information about the state of the world, the whole world that is. How does one become such a specialist? How does one negotiate the perspectives coming from the humanities, social and natural sciences as well as economics? All this to say that I have been sitting with an article from last Saturday’s Winnipeg Free Press in the back of my mind for the last couple of days. It is an op-ed piece entitled “The world is not running out of natural resources” (May 28) by Brian Lee Crowley. As the title suggests the article outlines the false notion that there is an imminent crisis in global resources. The main thesis of this position is that most accounts do not take seriously the ongoing capacity for humans to innovate and change course when necessary. This is the reason why past prophecies of collapse and destruction continue to miss their mark. This thinking reflects the first half of the article. I suspect this sort of voice is necessary to counter the type of mindless hysteria that may actually serve advertising firms more than other ‘good’ causes. But even here I really have no good idea. I trust soundbites and articles such as these. It is in the second half that my reservations begin to intensify.
The second half of the article makes a dramatic shift to the economic in stating that since 1800 global economic product has increased 50-fold and “this increase in human wealth has improved the state of humanity throughout the world.” This is of course patently false as I think it could be argued that it has not improved the state of the First Nations community in Canada (I will not try and speak beyond my borders). His point however is proved by statistics. Yes, I suppose statistical improvement is difficult to deny as it has the power to ignore the cost of the marginal who literally do not figure in. I am reminded of Kierkegaard’s thoughts on statistics near the end of Stages,
With the help of statistical tables one can laugh at all of life. . . . After all, a person can shut his door on the poor, and if someone should starve to death, then he can just look at a collection of statistical tables, see how many die every year of hunger – and he is comforted.
Sorry. Off track. As Crowley begins to conclude things really come off the rails in my mind. Crowley holds wealthy nations as the beacon of what direction the world should be moving in. “The richer countries become, the cleaner their environment. So economic growth is the key factor allowing us to reduce most of the problems facing humanity. . . . [T]he right human institutions, such as private property, the rule of law, contract, incentives and human intelligence all work together reliably to solve those problems.” Is it just me or should it be hard to make such statements (at least without some gag-reflex kicking in). I have no doubt that I would be quickly silenced under the statistical ‘facts’ that Crowley would load on me if I tried to refute this thinking. And again, I have little hard evidence with which to enter this conversation. However, take the statement of correlation between wealth and environmental cleanliness. Is this not simply a matter of a nation’s ability to bring in and then off-load undesirable content and processes such as manufacturing, recycling and disposing of the junk wealthier nations desire for temporary pleasure? Can Crowley continue to say these things under the tenuous economic conditions that still (seem to) exist in the US? Is it possible to speak of an ‘improved state of humanity throughout the world’ by statistics? Seriously, I am no expert. Does it even make sense to enter this argument using the same methodology? I mean Crowley moves from the natural sciences to economics to existential well-being without any necessary transition, they are all seamless in his conception. Is this just the worst of ‘ivory tower’ thinking that does not live alongside those whose lives have gone from okay to shit while some larger global trend tracks in a rising graph according a ‘human well-being index’? Again, I don’t know. Any global everything specialists out there that can help me?
[This is a (rather lengthy) sermon I preached this past Sunday on John 16:5-15 and Revelation 1:9-19.]
I just finished my second year of college, papers were submitted and exams completed. In honour of this occasion my roommates and I thought it would be good to hit the town a let loose a little. So three of us headed downtown ready for a little mischief. Now granted we were renting a house in [the small Mennonite town of] Steinbach [the fictional setting of Miriam Toews’ Complicated Kindness] so heading downtown may have limited our options a little. In any event we hit the 7-11 for some Slurpees. We pulled a stuffed racoon across the road by string when cars drove by. You know, wild and crazy college stuff. In any event as the night wore on we began to wander aimlessly around when eventually we heard some shouting. We went to get a closer look. Eventually we came across a man and woman fighting on the driveway. We were quite close at this point. Eventually the fight ended, they parted and the man got into his car to drive away. We quickly hid behind a bush on the next yard. Now as the man turned the headlights on and backed out of the driveway the car paused for a moment and in that moment lined up directly with the bush we were hiding behind. The car lights lit up the bush like a light bulb clearly revealing three figures cowering behind it. The engine was shut off and the door opened and we heard him get out with a yell. And in that same moment we turned and ran with him coming after us. Running down a back alley we eventually split up and I found myself running alone, well that is with an angry man coming up behind me. Now I need to make clear that I am not runner, a sprinter at best, but I knew I could not keep my pace up. And in those brief moments I needed to make a choice. Bear in mind I had no idea how big or small, young or old this guy was. I decided to stop. As I stopped I turned around, folded my hands behind my back to face and see my pursuer. I’ll leave it there for now.
It is the thought, not the incidentals of expression, that essentially makes an exposition unpopular. . . . Socrates was the most unpopular man in Greece because he said the same thing as the simplest person but meant infinitely much by it. To be able to stick to one thought, to stick to it with ethical passion and undauntedness of spirit, to see the intrinsic duplexity of this one thought with the same impartiality, and at one and the same time to see the most profound earnestness and the greatest jest, the deepest tragedy and highest comedy – this is unpopular in any age for anyone who has not realized that immediacy is over. But neither can what is essentially unpopular be learned by rote
This, then, is the task I have assigned myself: an unhappy love affair in which love is dialectical in itself (that is, there is no external obstacle to the love affair being happy) and in the crisis of infinite reflection acquires religious aspect. It is easy to see how different this task is from any other unhappy love affair; it is easy to see if one looks at both parts at the same time – otherwise one will perhaps not see either of them. Stages on Life’s Way, 415-416 (parenthesis added).
Every now and again this thought reflects a sneaking suspicion I have about the Bible.
It always happens that way – so charitable, so rich is life: the less one has, the more one sees. Take a book, the poorest one written, but read it with the passion that it is the only book you will read – ultimately you will read everything out of it, that is, as much as there was in yourself, and you could never get more out of reading, even if you read the best of books.
– Kierkegaard – Stages on Life’s Way, 364.
Over at AUFS they have just concluded a book event engaging Adam Kotsko’s recent work Politics of Redemption. Adam has just posted a response to the event and in it engaged one of the topics raised which is the highly debated but perhaps hardly debatable question of transcendence/immanence. I thought the response was quite diplomatic without interest in any sensational jabs (the jabs were quite under-stated but still present . . . well fine perhaps ‘jab’ isn’t even the right word). In any event I thought of commenting directly there but it would not have been in keeping with the event as a whole and since I am still waiting for a copy of the book I don’t have much to contribute.
I did, however, want to pick up on one line. Adam writes,
Even at its best, though, I can’t see how one can argue for divine transcendence — it’s always going to be an argument from authority, because it’s fundamentally an argument in favor of authority.
About ten years back I was the caretaker of an apartment block that a church had renovated to provide low-rent stable apartments in Winnipeg’s West End. The visionary and work-horse of this and many other projects was the late Harry Lehotsky. I can still remember coming back to the apartment one evening seeing two facing peering out of what should have been an empty basement suite. I went to check it out and there was Harry and the superintendent who oversaw all the blocks. They were on a ‘steak-out’ of sorts waiting to see if . . . well I can’t remember what they were watching for . . . something suspicious I am sure. We chatted for a while and in the course of the conversation we talked about why people would want to intentionally live in a neighbourhood like this (the caretaker before me was murdered). Harry said a few things but I remember one line being, “It’s part carnal and part spiritual.” Some people may not resonant with that statement but I do. In addition to the (preventable) hurt that I see this neighbourhood there is also an allure a particular drama that is not performed (much) in the suburbs or the country. I suspect some of you recognize this drama as well.
I don’t know very much about the classic categories of comedy and tragedy but this is my take on them. Comedy exists to the extent that it can flirt with the boundaries of destruction and meaninglessness while tragedy is destruction by meaninglessness or meaningless destruction. There is a sort of dramatic attention that humans give to both comedy and tragedy. I find these elements both amply present in the West End and most ‘inner-city’ contexts that I have experience; two recent examples.
We were out for a walk when I saw a bike pass us. Well that was a first a glance. It was an adult riding the bike . . . with another adult riding on the handle bars . . . with a bottle of alcohol in his hands . . . in the middle of the street . . . going the wrong way down a one-way. Once I put all those things together I had to pause in amazement at the seemingly unconscious achievement performed by these men. Really I am almost afraid to ask what more they could have added to the comedic but nearly tragic performance? All I could think was something to the effect of there goes trouble.
The second scene could have been taken out of a Kids in the Hall sketch except, well, it wasn’t. I was walking back to my house more or less keeping my head down and as I approach our gate I looked up and saw a man walking towards me. He was walking with purpose and determination, with some agitation perhaps. There was a sort of dullness in his appearance. His clothes were a little worn and maybe had not been cleaned recently but from the top of his head was the unmistakeably pure colour of blood red. This only seemed to be partially bothering him. I was a little shocked Holy geez man are you okay? I asked. He was a little disoriented. I got him a towel and told him to put pressure on where it was coming from. I drove him to my intended destination of the hospital but as we approached he said he lived close by and asked to be dropped off there. I didn’t argue. As he left the car I realized afterwards that his disorientation and pain had crystallized into vengeance and anger. I suspect that his next stop was not the hospital. Tragic.
This perhaps one of Kierkegaard’s more famous quotes and well-known for good reason. Here we see with pointed clarity the difference between knowledge and understanding; between objective and subjective. It is taken from Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions. Note that Kierkegaard does not assume that knowledge deceives but that that being deceived by much knowledge is dreadful.
If you actually are further along, then do not let yourself be delayed, but if not, then consider that one is dreadfully deceived if one is deceived by much knowledge. Let us imagine a firstmate and assume that he has passed with distinction all the examinations but as yet has not been out to sea. Imagine him in a storm: he knows exactly what he has to do, but he is unacquainted with the terror that grips the sailor when the stars disappear into the pitch darkness of the night; he is unacquainted with the sense of powerlessness the pilot feels when he sees that the helm in his hand is only a plaything for the sea; he does not know how the blood rushes to the head when in such a moment one must make calculations – in short, he has no conception of the change that takes place in the knower when he is to use his knowledge (36).
David CL Driedger 