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At the corner of comedy and tragedy

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.

A preface to Kierkegaard’s preface of Prefaces; And, create me and let me begin

Well it has been a relief from the dense and demanding Concept of Anxiety into the satirical Prefaces.  The book is what the title suggests.  Prefaces is a collection of prefaces with no books.  The author of these prefaces believes it is high time for the preface to push back from being ‘elbowed aside’ so that it might finally ‘liberate itself’. (4)

The preface as such, the liberated preface, must then have no subject to treat but must deal with nothing, and insofar as it seems to discuss something and deal with something, this must nevertheless be an illusion and a fictitious motion (5).

Continue reading “A preface to Kierkegaard’s preface of Prefaces; And, create me and let me begin” →

Unanticipated discrepancy

Things have been humming along fairly well in my Kierkegaard reading project for this year (that is except for keeping up on posting about it).  I have run into a series of shorter volumes which has  made me feel optimistic.  I did order a couple of volumes for myself and they arrived yesterday and reminded me that my ‘two volume a month’ pace may not have been well thought out in terms of consistency.

Inwardness or Inwardism?

I have quite enjoyed following Jeremy Ridenour’s blog.  I find his contributions reflect a clarity and charity (sorry those were the two best words I could think of) that is seldom found in this nook of the blogosphere.  In his final comment on a recent engagement with Adam Kotsko’s The Politic’s of Redemption a thought has continued to linger in my mind.

He concludes his post,

Comments: On a personal note, yesterday I taught Bonhoeffer’s religionless Christianity in Sunday school at my mainline church. The class seemed to take quite nicely to his critique of Barth and Bonhoeffer’s idea of a suffering God. However, most were quite uncomfortable with the idea of abandoning piety and a personal relationship with God. I think Bonhoeffer’s critique is Lutheran in character because he worries that this turn inward is a false start. Luther continued to emphasize that Christ is found on the cross not inside the heart of the individual believer. If Bonoheffer’s ultimate aim is to promote a Christianity that is solely focused on living in this world, then we have to come to terms with the fact that inwardness is an obstacle to being in communion with one another. It breeds narcissism and self-righteousness. Encountering God on the cross requires that the body of Christ tear down the crosses society has erected to serve the disenfranchised. God can only be found in the midst of suffering because God in Christ has let Godself be pushed out of the world onto the cross.

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Guitierrez on the split of spiritual exprience

I have been picking my way through Gustavo Gutierrez’s We Drink from our own Wells.  While much of the exegesis offered there feels like well-worn territory now I was struck by his description of spiritual growth in response to God’s call to the poor.

The harsh reality of everyday experience causes breaks with the past and launches persons on new quests.

1. To the measure that solidarity with the world of the poor grows and matures, old securities collapse and fixed reference points crumble away – underpinnings that used to provide a certain tranquility in the midst of  new experiences and challenges.  A growing insecurity seems to undermine, from within, the patterns of spiritual life that guided our earlier steps.  Many continued in their original commitment for a long time, relying on the solid protection of their religious community, a Christian environment, and a particular way of understanding life according to the gospel.  The shock of reality, and the effort to enter into it to an ever fuller degree, darkened what was once a clear horizon.  Familiar paths now lead to impasses.  Those who, nonetheless, refuse to be discouraged seek more fruitful paths, but the price they pay is dissatisfaction, fear, and sometimes even frustration.  And in every case there is a keen sense of insecurity that is perhaps inevitable but that also must pass because it is not possible to build a solid and lasting spirituality on a sense of insecurity.

2. The result is a painful split in spiritual experience.  Persons begin to live in a somewhat dichotomized fashion.  On the one hand, they feel the need of a sure spiritual way; this is especially the case perhaps in those who have had a more systematic formation in this area.  On the other hand, daily life with its demands for commitment seems to run on a tangential track; it does not initially conflict with the spirituality one has acquired, but neither does it enrich it.  In the long run, this kind of dual existence is highly unsatisfactory.  Upon the disappearance of the fixed points that should give unity to everyday activity, persons live at the mercy of events, unable to establish fruitful links between them and are forced simply to jump from one to another.  They are convinced that they have learned a great deal from solidarity with the poor and from carrying out their work of evangelization among them, but when they try to express this perception they fall back on categories that begin to seem increasingly alien and remote.  The problem results from the fact that they have not reexamined these categories in the light of their new experiences or, more exactly, that they do not have another path that can replace the one that no longer seems to lead to the goal. (16-17)

The violent religious man of faith . . . and Abraham

Kierkegaard’s religious self, that is his conception of the self in a religious stage, has a few qualifications.  By nature it can bar no one entry on the basis of external achievement.  There is no aesthetic mood, ethical act or intellectual understanding that can stand as a gatekeeper to faith.  The movement of faith is qualified internally.  This continues to be a troubling prospect.  I still maintain that most criticisms of Kierkegaard as some demon of individualism are misguided and lack a substantial understanding of his work.  However, I am struggling with repeated refrain of Fear and Trembling which is that “the single individual is higher than the universal.”  This is the story of Abraham as told by Kierkegaard.  The ethical is the universal and must be intelligible and communicable to all or else it is not universal.  If there is faith then it must be in absolute duty to God and as such related to the individual and as such is then elevated above the universal.  But because it is now above the universal it also now rendered unintelligible by others.  Kierkegaard asks whether it was ethical for Abraham to withhold his plans from his family.  Kierkegaard ends by asserting that for the expression to remain in the realm of faith Abraham could not express his plans to anyone.  To render them intelligible would be to make them universal and therefore return them to the domain of ethics and foreclose the movement of faith.  Faith becomes paradox and Isaac restored by virtue of the absurd.  Abraham’s act is faithful but as such it demonstrates ‘the teleological suspension of the ethical.’

Dorothy Soelle in Suffering has criticized this reading of Genesis 22.  She characterizes K’s readings as advocating that,

There are situations in which the ethical orientation breaks down, situations in which people carry out a religiously based suspension of the ethical.

She notes acts of protest which were essentially ‘ineffective’ as belonging to this category (Edith Stein’s choice to go to the gas chamber when she could have escaped).  Though she says these do not point to the ‘absurd’ will of God.  She then goes on to say,

God is not the one who desires or commands such sacrifices, even if we admit that in certain situations such sacrifices exhibit clearly the truth of God beyond the sphere of the ethical.  This explanation of the story contains a masochistic understanding of humanity, or perhaps more accurately, an understanding of devotion that can go all the way to the sacrifice of one’s own life.  A theory about suffering derived from this explanation will seek in all suffering conscious and obedient sacrifice.

While I just happened to be reading this work by Soelle alongside Fear and Trembling (and have benefited from it) this seems to be a clear misreading of Kierkegaard (though perhaps not of his interpreters).  First of all Soelle assumes that description of the ethical and the religious are both equally possible.  Kierkegaard denies this.  Second, Kierkegaard is not interested in determining situations in which it is appropriate to go beyond the ethical (to do so is to remain in the ethical).  Third, Kierkegaard paints no picture of the ‘knight of faith’ as some masochist suffering.  Kierkegaard is quite clear that a person of faith may well look like some ‘bourgeois philistine’ (hardly the prototype for self-inflicted sufferer).

Going beyond Soelle it is possible to add further clarification that would keep zealots from reading F&T and then go off and shoot people.  Kierkegaard’s next work is Repetition.  Repetition occurs not in recollection or replication but in perpetual restoration.  The common example is the married couple trying to ‘re-ignite’ the passion by re-creating their first date.  To the extent that they replicate this event to the tee it will likely not end in repetition.  To re-ignite the passion there would have to occur a situation in which the same resulted from a difference.  In any event, we now have the cultural understanding and prototype of the crazy religious nut who does things because God told him to.  Its been done.  To do it again is recollection and not repetition.  A faithful act will always be that which rises above the universal and therefore can only be considered in retrospect (a theology of scripture?).  To even attempt to ‘send a message’ by such an act is to disqualify it.

This leads me to another line of thinking as I am working through Kierkegaard.  To what extent is he just extremely gifted in ass-covering (using faith as the foil)?  It seems like there would always be a way out when someone would claim to have properly critiqued him (ie his claims to the intellectual inaccessibility of faith).  And that I suppose it part of the point in that his aim is not convince but to create movement where movement is possible.

Soren K meet Chuck D; Or, How you sell soul to a soulless people who sold their soul

Kierkegaard’s Upbuilding Discourses have not always been engaging but they have offered what I think is a helpful corrective or supplement to much of my contemporary reading.  I hope to post more on some earlier discourses but I am now about halfway through the eighteen and have come across his reflections on the soul, namely how to gain and preserve your soul in patience.

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