Non intratur in veritatem nisi per caritatem. St. Augustine
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
Does a study of the NT itself show that that the apostles unequivocally believed that Christ’s return was imminent in their lifetime? Is it the case that as a result of this belief, the apostles and their early followers lived a radically devout life of prayer, contemplation etc. and likewise de-emphasized “worldly” (for lack of a better word) endeavors? Although this interpretation has been at times accepted and promoted by the Church, I am not convinced that NT itself sustains such a position. It seems to me that one could make a strong case for a development of the early Church’s view on eschatology within the Pauline letters themselves.
As current Pauline scholarship emphasizes, St. Paul’s eschatological orientation was rooted in his Jewish, Pharisaic past. Christians were not the only ones who looked forward to the resurrection of the dead and a final judgment—the Pharisees did as well. Their position was rooted in the OT, in God’s promise of a glorious future (e.g., 2 Sam 7, Isaiah). St. Paul, already operating within this Jewish eschatological, apocalyptic framework, reinterprets the schema in light of the Christ-event. That is, with the death and resurrection of Christ—the key Christian eschatological event and new “hermeneutical lens”—the future age is in part brought into the present. Put slightly differently, in the Christ-event and the experience of the Holy Spirit, God’s followers experience prolepticly the future age. So the eschaton of Jewish expectation had already arrived, but it is arriving in two stages: stage one is the Christ-event, the first coming, and the second coming is the second stage. Hope then becomes the fundamental virtue connected with the Christian eschatological vision. This hope is not a fleeting, sentimental hope, but a hope grounded in the reality of the Christ-event. In short, St. Paul has transformed a traditional Jewish eschatological schema Christologically—the eschaton has become partially present now, and the gift of Spirit is God’s assurance of better things to come (2 Cor 5:5).
With this brief background in mind, I can return to my claim of development or a revised eschatological view within the NT, particularly in St. Paul (the undisputed letters) and other “Pauline” texts. Most NT scholars today consider 1 Thessalonians to be the first of St. Paul’s epistles (c. 50-1 A.D.). An interesting way to read the letter—not “the” way but a way—is to focus on the triad of theological virtues mentioned twice in the letter. The triadic order in this letter, in contrast to, 1 Corinthians 13 where we have faith, hope and love, is faith, love and hope. The last item in the list becomes thematic and is related to the specific epistolary occasion of the letter. (For example, the Corinthians had all kinds of divisions within their community; they were puffed up with pride etc. and needed to be reminded about the importance of love). The situation is quite different in 1 Thessalonians. In this letter, hope is thematized and is closely related to eschatology, as eschatological themes permeate the letter. As a pastor of a newly formed (mostly) Gentile flock, St. Paul wanted to communicate to this fledgling Christian community the importance of eschatology to the Christian life.
There are many examples from the epistle that I could cite to show that eschatology is a major theme of the letter. However, let me mention two very important passages. First, 1 Thess 1:9-10, which reads:
For the people of those regions report about us what kind of welcome we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming (NRSV).
Here we may infer that St. Paul was likely addressing a largely Gentile Christian audience, as he states that they “turned to God from idols.” This, of course, would not apply to monotheistic Jews who had “converted,” as they already worshiped the true and living God, YHWH. Then St. Paul mentions the second coming (“to wait for his Son from heaven”) and the “wrath” to come—again, eschatological themes. Scholars have postulated that verses 9-10 are perhaps a summary of what St. Paul preached when he first visited Thessalonica. So he is reminding these new Gentile converts of what he taught them previously. Since they did not have an eschatological framework (as the Jews did), they needed to be reminded of the significance of eschatology for Christian existence.
Second, we have 1 Thess 4:13-5:11, which is the eschatological “heart” of the letter. Here St. Paul is addressing concerns of the local community. Because some within their community have died, questions have arisen regarding the status of dead Christians. Was there something wrong with them? Are they second-class? Etc. These questions then naturally raise concerns about the parousia. Perhaps this early group did in fact have an imminent expectation of the parousia. If so, they were now unsure as to the status and meaning of fellow Christians who had died prior to the parousia. St. Paul has been made aware of their concerns and is responding to their questions in this letter.
The literary framing of the letter is by way of the aforementioned triadic inclusion of faith, love and hope (the first instance occurs at 1:3 and the final instance at 5:8). Then if you turn to the middle, exhortation part of the letter, you find an incomplete triad at 3:6. Here St. Paul encourages the Thessalonians regarding their faith and love, but hope is not mentioned. Why? The Thessalonians are struggling with this Christian virtue, and St. Paul as a pastor wants to encourage them. He tells them specifically grieve, but don’t “grieve as others who have no hope.” The resurrection and the coming parousia[1] are sources of Christian hope, and St. Paul wants them to draw from these sources and to encourage one another with them.
Here I enter into highly “problematic” territory, but philosophers tend to do this, so here I go! The authorship of 2 Thessalonians, of course, is disputed. There are, in my opinion, very good arguments on both sides. Given that I am not a NT scholar etc. etc., my personal view regarding the authorship is open—perhaps it was St. Paul, or perhaps it was written by a later Pauline follower under the pseudonym, “Paul.” Either way, what interests me is the development of the eschatological views presented in 2 Thessalonians. Here, particularly in chapter two, “Paul” addresses concerns of false reports that “the Day of the Lord” has already occurred. “Paul” denies that it has come and says that certain signs must happen prior to the end (2 Thess 2:2-9). (How does one reconcile this claim with the statement in 1 Thess 5 that the day of the Lord will come like a “thief in the night?”). Likewise, in 2 Thess “Paul” exhorts rather sternly those in the community who have stopped working (3:6-15). Why have they stopped working and are now idle? Presumably, because they believe that the end is near; thus, “furthering” their career is pointless. There is, however, no clear indication in the text for that inference. Nonetheless, given the eschatological themes linking 1 and 2 Thess, it is a plausible suggestion. At any rate, it does appear that some kind of revision has taken place regarding the imminent return of Christ. The parousia could still happen at any time (now only following certain “signs”), but a space has opened for the possibility that the event may occur in the distant future, a future beyond the life-span of the early Christians.
I’d really like to hear from my NT scholar friends and readers. Please send your thoughts/comments!
Notes
[1] Regarding the
parousia, Thessalonians seem to have many questions—questions that focus on orderings of end time events; see, for example, 4:14-15 where St. Paul’s response indicates that he was responding to some very specific questions.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
Rowan Williams’ little book on the church, Why Study the Past? The Quest for the Historical Church, is a must read for anyone interested in understanding the historical and theological complexities of the continuity and discontinuity of the Church. As usual, Williams does not offer overly facile solutions, nor does he tell a triumphalist story in which the Church marches forward untainted, having never soiled herself along the way. Rather, Williams admits the various failures of the Church—from the early fathers 
misogynistic tales to historic Protestantism’s “embarrassing record of collusion with uncritical nationalism” (73) to the Church’s overall failure on the issue of slavery. Nonetheless, Williams does not leave one in despair. He emphasizes throughout that the Church is founded and sustained by divine action, particularly one divine action which is both “a set of historical events and an eternal act, the self-giving of the Son to the Father in the Trinity” (96). If the survival and resilience of the Church depended solely on humans, the story would have ended some time ago. Thankfully, it doesn’t; yet, Christians must be active and continue to put themselves, the Church and the world into question. We must study our past, our tradition, our Scriptures, (and, as St. Thomas taught us, truth wherever it is found) bringing to light our failures and learning how to translate what is true, good and beautiful into our present contexts. Williams, attentive to the interplay between historical contingencies and the ways in which history “makes” us on the one hand, and the reality of transcultural (yet contextually-applied) truths on the other, denies that we are stuck in a hermetically-sealed present or unable to break into a hermetically-sealed past. As he explains,
To engage with the Church’s past is to see something of the Church’s future. If we relate to the past as something that settles everything for us, something whose meaning is utterly and finally plain, it is to treat the texts of the past as closing off history, putting an end to our self-awareness as historical persons involved in unpredictable growth. If we dismiss the past as unintelligible, if we read its texts as closed off from us by their alien setting, we refuse to see how we have ourselves been formed in history; we pretend that history has not yet begun. And in the specifically theological context, we shall on either count be denying that we can only grow in company, can only develop because summoned by a word that is not ours. That word is made concrete and immediate for us in the human responses that have constituted the Church’s history; all of this has made our present believing selves possible. T.S. Elliot, faced with the glib modern claim that ‘we know so much more than our ancestors’, riposted, ‘Yes; and they are what we know.’ As was said in the first chapter, we must become aware of our hidden debts for who we now are (94-95).
If only Williams’ critics would actually read his works with care.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
In the middle of a paragraph discussing how sex gradually became a discourse, Foucault writes,
Silence itself–the thing one declines to say, or is forbidden to name, the discretion that is required between different speakers–is less the absolute limit of discourse, the other side from which it is separated by a strict boundary, than an element that functions alongside the things said, with them and in relation to them within over-all strategies. There is no binary division to be made between what one says and what one does not say; we must try to determine the different ways of not saying such things, how those who can and those who cannot speak of them are distributed, which type of discourse is authorized, or which form of discretion is required in either case. There is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, p. 27).
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
A commenter recently asked a good question related to this post on Fanon. The person asks whether Kant’s categorical imperative might militate against Carter’s accusation that Kant manifests a “possessive-tyrannical disposition” in his writings. Since this is a natural question that anyone who has at least some familiarity with Kant might raise, I have decided to post my (slightly edited) response.
I assume you have in mind Kant’s formulation of the categorical imperative which states that we must always treat human beings as ends and never as means. On the surface, of course, this sounds great. However, when you place it within Kant’s larger philosophical schema, it is problematic (at least for the Christian who rejects racism and all forms of racialized essentialism). As Robert Bernasconi has shown, Kant’s hierarchical view of race, in which whites are superior and all other “races” inferior to various degrees, does not sit well with his cosmopolitanism, unless one is willing to admit that the only true, fully autonomous and hence free individuals are a particular group of white males. Also, the Christian claims that humans ought not to be instrumentalized because they are created in God’s image, which is of course a claim based on divine revelation. Neither in prelapsarian paradise nor in the eschaton are human relationships characterized by domination. Slavery, then can be understood as something that comes about due the Fall. In his text, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant speaks of the “kingdom of ends,” which refers to the moral universe created by rational humans willing the moral law. (The moral law is willed from “pure reason”). Kant claims that in this moral universe/kingdom of ends, each rational person is equal and sovereign. People are equal in so far as they will the moral law in accordance with reason, and they are sovereign because by doing so, they each contribute to the building of this “kingdom” or “moral universe.” From this idea of a kingdom of ends, Kant comes up with a variation on his first formulation of the categorical imperative. This version reads as follows, “For all rational beings come under the law that each of them must treat itself and all others never merely as means, but in every case at the same time as ends in themselves.” Here Kant explicitly articulates the sovereignty and dignity of the (rational) individual, and he states that we are always to treat others as ends not as mere means. Again, on the surface this sounds great. After all in this formulation of the categorial imperative, Kant declares that we must never use other people or treat them as tools for our purposes because to do so is to disallow their participation as equal, sovereign individuals in the moral universe and likewise to deny their dignity. Yet, in Kant’s writings on race he indicates that Indians, Africans and more or less any non-European (white) ethnic group can in fact be used as tools. According to Kant’s estimation, American Indians are “uneducable,” the “race of Negroes can educated, but only to the education of servants,” Hindus are “educable to arts and not to sciences. They will never achieve abstract concepts”; however, “the race of whites contains all motives and talents in itself” (of course he means white males of a certain sort) [Menschenkunde 1781/82]. In short, Kant’s problematic views on race are in serious tension with his cosmopolitanism and his ethical views, and the more I study the literature “from the underside of modernity” the more I believe his position as a whole to be un-salvable. For an excellent theological critique of Kant’s view of race, see chapter two of J. Kameron Carter’s book, Race: A Theological Critique.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
In Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon presents his two-fold schemata, the historico-racial (schéma historico-racial) and epidermal racial schemata (schéma épidermique racial) as a corrective to Merleau-Ponty’s corporeal schema (schéma corporel). In brief, Fanon’s historico-racial schema brings to light the historical contingencies and mythological narratives imposed upon blacks, whereas the racial-epidermal schema speaks to the sedimentation of the so-called “black essence.” In other words, once the (white-imposed) narrative of what it means to be a black person, which includes the various meanings that have been assigned to phenotypic differences, has become fixed, ossified and even naturalized in the social consciousness, various “scientific” discourses, and cultural and legal practices, the black essence has been “successfully” created.[1]
When the transition to the racial-epidermal schema takes place, the all-pervasiveness of the white gaze—here understood broadly as the white mythological narrative as manifest in the cultural consciousness and systematically expressed in the cultural institutions and practices of a given society—functions like a Panopticon, keeping the black person under constant inspection. Though speaking of the incarcerated, Foucault’s description applies quite well to the black person’s situation vis-à-vis the white, European other, “he is the object of information, never a subject in communication.”[2] As soon as the racial-epidermal schema has come to fruition and the black essence fixed, the requisite racial machinery has likewise been established to ensure “proper” social boundaries and to keep the white mythology unchallenged. In a way similar to the Panopticon’s ability to “disindividualiz[e] power” and distribute it through various socio-cultural and legal structures, institutions and people, Fanon’s schemata point to the systemic racial structures of colonized Europe.[3] These racialized disciplinary practices, though not identical to the disciplinary practices Foucault describes, nonetheless share close family resemblances with “a machinery that assures dissymmetry, disequilibrium, difference.” [4] The racial-epidermal schema, broadly construed to include these systemic, disindividualized power structures, enables even the most vulnerable and innocent members of society—the child on the train—to be an instrument of and even operate the racial machinery.[5]
When the white mythology has its way, it gives birth to black subjugation, which has both an external and an internal dimension. The external aspect is socio-political in nature and is often manifest in discriminatory legislation and unequal educational and employment opportunities. The internal aspect comes when the black person can no longer bear the weight of the white alienating gaze and internalizes the narrative. To return to Foucault’s metaphor, when the black person breaks down and accepts the white mythos, there is a sense in which the panoptic surveillance is no longer needed.[6] In Fanon’s description of his self-fragmenting descent, he draws attention to the sense of powerlessness that he felt in a colonialized context wherein mis-recognition by the white other was the norm. “Disoriented, incapable of confronting the Other, the white man, who had no scruples about imprisoning me, I transported myself on that particular day far, very far, from myself, and gave myself up as an object.”[7]
Fanon is cognizant, in other words, of the black person’s participation in this already-given white-scripted history. His statements, “I transported myself” and “gave myself up as an object,” acknowledge his active involvement in accepting the white mythology. Although this particular act is negative, it nonetheless highlights the fact that the black person in a colonialized or similarly oppressive context is in reality not a mere res, a thing determined from the outside and lacking genuine freedom. Fanon, in fact, makes numerous statements affirming his freedom—a freedom that involves his ability to creatively re-script his own narrative and to refuse to be shackled by a pre-given white narrative.
I find myself one day in the world, and I acknowledge one right for myself: the right to demand human behavior from the other. And one duty: the duty never to let my decisions renounce my freedom. […] I am not a prisoner of History. I must not look for the meaning of my destiny in that direction. I must constantly remind myself that the real leap consists of introducing invention into life.[8]
These declarations in no way undermine Fanon’s schemata, particularly his account of the coming-into-being of a fixed black essence once the racial-epidermal schema has been established. This is the case because his genealogy of racial sedimentation (i.e., black essentialism) or the giving way of Merleau-Ponty’s corporeal schema to the racial-epidermal schema is not a necessary but a contingent event, which qua contingent can (in theory) be undone or at least significantly dismantled.
In other words, Fanon’s agonized cry of alienation, although genuine and intensely felt, should not be interpreted as a despairing last word. Rather, Fanon calls for a counter-narrative which refuses to be frozen in a white-scripted past.
Notes
[1] On the movement and interpretation of Fanon’s schemata, I concur with Weate’s analysis, which characterizes the racial epidermal schema as “a later stage in psychosomatic disintegration and alienation” (“Fanon, Merleau-Ponty and the Difference of Phenomenology,” p. 174). Weate goes on to discuss the movement to the epidermal schema as Fanon’s attempt to trace a “genealogy of racial essentialism” (p. 173). As he explains, “[b]y marking the two stages of the ‘historico-racial’ and then the ‘racial-epidermal’, he is therefore contesting the view that essentialism, and in particular black essentialism, is grounded in a biological problematic. For Fanon, the essentialization of blackness is the product of a concealed perversion of history. It is only once this concealment is consolidated (through epidermalization) that questions concerning the
biological ground of race arise. The distinction he makes between the two stages of schematization or epistemic enframing therefore allow biologistic discourses around race to be seen as phenomena derivative upon a prior perversion of history that is subsequently concealed” (
Ibid., pp. 174-75).
[2] Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 200.
[3] See, e.g., Fanon’s critique of Monsieur Mannoni in chapter four of Black Skin, White Masks. Contra Mannoni’s claims, Fanon draws attention to the fact that the very “structure of South Africa is a racist structure” (p. 68).
[4] Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 202.
[5] In his chapter, “The Lived Experience of the Black,” Fanon recounts his experience on a train of being “fixed” by a white other—an other which happened to be a child who had already been habituated to see blacks as defined by the white imagination. As the child’s refrain, “Look! A Negro!” crescendoed forth and came to a close with a fearful questioning of the “Negro’s” next move, Fanon not only experienced the gaze of the white other, he also began to see himself through the white gaze. See Black Skin, White Masks, p. 92.
[6] See Weate, “Fanon, Merleau-Ponty and the Difference of Phenomenology,” p. 176. See also, Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, p. 92. Again, Foucault’s account of the effects of being constantly seen but never seeing share similarities with the experience of a black person in a white-dominating context. “He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection. By this very fact, the external power may throw off its physical weight; it tends to the non-corporal; and, the more it approaches this limit, the more constant, profound and permanent are its effects” (Discipline and Punish, p. 203).
[7] Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, p. 92.
[8] Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, pp. 203-4. Fanon goes on to say, “[t]he density of History determines none of my acts. I am my own foundation. And it is by going beyond the historical and instrumental given that I initiate my cycle of freedom” (p. 205).
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
As Carter shows, Maximus the Confessor’s Christological vision has much to contribute to contemporary 
discussions on race, both theological and otherwise. Love for Maximus is central to all actions, divine and human. The “otherness” of creation came into being not by necessity but through unconstrained divine love and generosity. Human beings, though the pinnacle of God’s creation because they image or reflect God in a unique way (imago Dei), chose to turn from their Creator, which resulted in a triple alienation. Instead of intimate communion with God and one another, we experience discord, fragmentation and even hostility. Instead of a respectful, cultivating relationship with the created order, we manipulate nature, giving little or no thought to its telos and purpose in God’s cosmic plan of redemption. With God no longer our primary love, our “love” becomes self-focused and tyrannical. This misdirected love is transposed into a dominating, monotone key in which polyphonic harmonies have no place. Carter, in his appropriation of Maximus’ reflections on love, argues that distorted self-love (philautia) has the propensity to harden into a disposition of ‘possession’.[1] If such a disposition becomes entrenched in the social consciousness, we have at least one of the essential ingredients for large-scale mechanisms of oppression.[2] Carter believes that certain core teachings of the Enlightenment, especially those traceable to Kant, not only gravitate toward the possessive-tyrannical disposition, but are also integrally related to the emergence of various racialized mechanisms of modernity.[3]
For instance, in a colonialized situation, ‘philautia functions as a substitute for a doctrine of creation inasmuch as the self-constituting I creates a reality and draws all else into it by making it utility or assigning it a use value in the world of the I.’[4] Bringing Maximus’ theological critique to bear on the modern problem of racism, Carter interprets the modern self, driven by its misdirected self-love and armed with its Enlightenment, pseudo-scientific teachings of racial hierarchies, as a variation of Adamic transgression but translated onto the socio-political level. That is, just as Adam (and Eve) unsatisfied with their sub-creator roles in God’s story, sought to become narrators of their own story, so too the Enlightenment discourse on race offers its own narrative of origins and human destiny. This narrative, however, is rigidly monochromatic. When taken up by certain misguided Christians, it transmutes into “a narrative of how human beings came to be bearers of race and how within this narrative whiteness became theologically supreme as a modality of religious dominance and world commerce.”[5]
As both ancient (Maximus) and modern (Fredrick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr.) Christian witnesses proclaim, the Christian narrative, which begins with creation out of love and climaxes with re-creation through the resurrected life of Jesus Christ, is not inherently a discourse of oppression. It does, however, involve suffering, the shedding of blood and even violent death. The Christian scriptural account does not present us with stories of perfect human beings. Rather, it portrays humans—including those who are part of God’s covenant people—in their failings and achievements, in their faithfulness and recalcitrance. Perhaps the most inexplicable part of the story is why a completely sufficient, content Trinitarian God willingly decides not only to begin and to continue the story but likewise to enter into the story and to assign himself a seemingly tragic role in which he suffers and dies at the hands of those whom he came to save. Even so, when the Word became incarnate and made himself vulnerable to the vicissitudes and strains of human existence—misunderstanding, rejection, and even death-by-crucifixion—he proclaimed to the world that his Lordship was not the way of colonization or domination. Rather, this omnipotent Lord set aside his privileges and became a slave, dying a slave’s death yet simultaneously conquering death, of which his resurrection is the definitive sign.[6]
With the incarnation and humiliation of Christ, the corporeal schema and the master/slave dialectic are undone, nullified and ultimately replaced by an inexplicable ‘logic’ of love wherein, paradoxically, a seemingly tragic death opens the way to life. Christ’s particular, poor, Jewish flesh becomes, in Carter’s words, ‘the site of God’s wealth,’ the place where ethnic, class and even gender ‘binaries’ no longer serve oppressive purposes.[7] In other words, Christ’s flesh becomes the place where human diversity finds unity—a unity that saves difference. We see this unity-in-diversity in the New Testament itself. For example, Jewish Christians are not forced to relinquish their Jewish heritage and practices, though both must be re-interpreted in light of the Christ-event. Nor are Gentile Christians compelled to become Jews and adhere to traditional Jewish customs (e.g., circumcision). Rather, Christ’s particular Jewish flesh opens the way for all to participate in Trinitarian life. Unlike philosophical schemata that flatten difference for the sake of unity (or vice versa), Christian conceptual categories, particularly those related to the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, provide a model for a unity that upholds difference. For instance, the horizontal one-and-many union between Christ and his people—people of diverse languages, ethnicities, and social classes—is an image of the one-and-many reality of the Trinity. At the heart of Christian teaching is the proclamation that vertical and horizontal “communities” of unity-and-difference can (and in the case of the Trinity do) coexist in non-violent, non-dominating, reciprocal relations of love.
In light of the organic relationship that Christianity has with Judaism, the significance of Christ’s Jewish flesh must not be overlooked—a point that brings us back to Fanon. In his critique of Merleau-Ponty’s generic corporeal schema, Fanon drew attention to the ways in which the white-scripted narrative (mis)colors black skin with multiple negative connotations. Fanon’s analysis shares structural similarities (and dissimilarities) with the Christian’s emphasis on the importance of Christ’s particular embodiment as a Jew; however, the particularities involved are not racial in the modern, biological meaning of the term. Christ’s Jewish flesh, nonetheless, exhibits the same polysemous and metonymic capacities—encompassing within it Israel’s covenantal history and reconfiguring that history in light of the central events of his embodied life: Incarnation, death and resurrection.[8] Unlike the white-imposed narrative which closes off the black person’s freedom, Christ’s Incarnation and invitation to intimate union break down barriers of exclusion and thus open possibilities of freedom which transcend anything philosophy has to offer.
Notes
[1] J. Kameron Carter,
Race: A Theological Account, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 345. Carter goes on to say that the ‘basic structure of colonialism’ is “grounded in a will-to-possess and intellectually sustained by a will-to-forget” (p. 345).
[2] Of course numerous other factors would have to be taken into account in order to give an adequate explanation of the rise of colonialism and racism.
[3] See also Robert Bernasconi, ‘Who Invented the Concept of Race? Kant’s Role in the Enlightenment Construction of Race’, in Robert Bernasconi (ed), Race, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001). Bernasconi argues that although Kant was not the first to use the term “race,” he was the first to give the term definitional precision. ‘By setting out clearly the distinction between race and variety, where races are marked by hereditary characteristics that are unavoidable in the offspring, whereas the distinguishing marks of varieties are not always transmitted, Kant introduced a language for articulating permanent differentiations within the notion of species’ (p. 17).
[4] Carter, Race, p. 345.
[5] Carter, Race, p. 348. See also Carter’s commentary on Maximus’ Epistle 2 and the ways in which it ‘becomes an interesting and unexpected resource for probing whiteness as a racial-colonialist way of ordering the world, that, in fact, deploys the discourse of Christian theology to do its work’ (p. 345).
[6] ‘Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited [ἁρπαγμόϛ], but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross’ (Phil 2:5-8, NRSV). See also 1 Cor 15 and Rev 1:18.
[7] Carter, Race, p. 368. St. Paul says something along these lines in his epistle to the Galatians. Describing the new reality of God’s people, those baptized into Christ who now form an alternative community operating against the grain of the world’s logic, St. Paul says, “[t]here is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28, NRSV). Of course, I am not suggesting that this alternative community has been realized. According to Christian belief, the full actualization of such a community will occur only in the eschaton. However, even in the midst of the already-not-yet eschatological tension that characterizes the Christian life in via, the redemptive benefits of the Christ-event make possible proleptic glimpses of communal life in Christ’s kingdom.
[8] See Luke 24:27 where Jesus says that the law and all of Hebrew Scripture must be re-interpreted Christotelically. In addition, though Carter does not develop this idea, the giving of Christ’s flesh in the Eucharist is another significant way that the many are continually made one in their present already-not-yet eschatological existence.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud’s folding.
He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.
He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.
He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.
*From Light Unlocked: Christmas Card Poems, edited by Kevin Crossley-Holland and Lawrence Sail, published by Enitharmon . Originally from The Poems of Rowan Williams, published by Perpetua Press
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
In the closing section of Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon emphasizes the need for the black person to be future-oriented and to actively reject the white-scripted narrative into which he was born while creatively carving out a new present and future. For Fanon, this meant a willingness to employ violence and to risk his own life so that human beings would no longer “be enslaved on this earth”.[1] Yet, his vision also included a call to human solidarity, a call to blacks and whites and to all human beings to “move away from the inhuman voices of their respective ancestors so that a genuine communication can be born”.[2]
Does his appeal to human solidarity, his repudiation of the past and his refusal to allow the “density of History to determine” his acts mean that Fanon has no interest in his ethnic roots or that he sees no value in highlighting the distinct contributions of people of color?[3] One need not draw such conclusions. Rather, because he is acutely aware of the power of socio-historical forces to create systematic, racialized mechanisms and eventually essential-ize a people group, Fanon understood the need for a “disalienation” to occur.[4] This disalienation requires that the black person break the bonds of his historical (white) inscription and begin to write his own narrative. Here we should not overlook Fanon’s affirmation of human free agency even in extreme situations of oppression. As human beings, we are not determined completely by socio-historical conditions. However, in the colonial situation where skin color defines in advance a person’s value and his or her place in society, abstract philosophical schemata—such as Merleau-Ponty’s corporeal schema and Hegel’s mythological master/slave dialectic—come up short because they fail to consider the existential reality of racial difference.[5]
Among other things, Fanon’s account of his experience in a white-scripted world points to the human need to understand oneself as part of a larger narrative—a narrative in which both human freedom and cultural and ethnic diversity are valued and respected. Though the context was slavery and not colonialism and the dissimilarities between the two should be acknowledged, it is instructive to consider the ways in which some African Americans re-constituted their identity by bringing an ancient narrative of oppression and liberation into conversation with their present circumstances. As Rowan Williams observes, if the dominant group takes on the role of defining the out-group’s identity, we should not be astounded if the latter’s response is, “‘We don’t need you to tell us who we are’. Certain kinds of separatism are necessary to highlight the reality of a difference that has been overridden by the powerful conscripting the powerless into their story”.[6]
In fact, such a response in the form of counter-narratives of non-white-defined identity and creative strategies of resistance was precisely how many African-American slaves chose to struggle against white oppression and the brutality of American slavery. Given the theological and specifically Christian approach that my account will discuss, it is necessary to acknowledge that Christianity has not been faithful to its own best teachings related to the issue of slavery. In fact, under the banner of Christianity and with the “justification” of Scripture, many proclaiming the name of Christ fought to preserve the inhumane institution of slavery.[7] Nonetheless, in spite of such oppression, the African spirit resisted a reduction to white sameness.[8]
This resistance took many forms from physical violence to seeking a new life in free territories to purposely disrupting work routines. Whatever shape the opposition took, a common conviction driving the slaves’ subversive maneuverings was a refusal to accept the degraded, sub-human existence imposed on them by white masters, coupled with a commitment to assert a self-defined, rather than an other-defined account of black identity.[9] Another area in which resistance manifested itselfwas in what we might call the specifically religious sphere. “Slave religion”(Cone’s term), which continually asserted the dignity of blacks because they too are created in God’s image, not only affirmed “freedom from bondage” but also “freedom-in-bondage”.[10] That is, though Christian slaves did seek an ultimate end to their sufferings in the next life, they also believed in and sang spirituals about a God who was actively involved in history now—in their history—“making right what whites had made wrong. Just as God delivered the Children of Israel from Egyptian slavery, drowning Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea, he will also deliver black people from American slavery”.[11] The spirituals are often inspired by biblical passages which emphasize God’s care for and active involvement in liberating oppressed people, as well as his willingness in the Person of Jesus Christ to enter into an exiled existence and even physically touch the untouchables.
While the black spirituals communicate an abiding trust in God’s promise to deliver his people, they also provide an avenue for the slaves to cry out in their suffering, thus creating their own version of Israel’s “How long, O Lord?”[12] Here we not only have an eschatological hope on the basis of who God is and what he has done in history and is doing in the present, but we likewise have an acknowledgment of the eschatological tension experienced now where injustice often prevails. When the day finally came and the slaves were freed from their bonds, these African American believers experienced an “eschatological freedom grounded in the events of the historical present, affirming that even now God’s future [the eschaton] is inconsistent with the realities of slavery. Freedom, for black slaves, […] was a historical reality that had transcendent implications”.[13] In other words, even though a form of liberation had come—a proleptic view of the eschaton—the very fact that slavery existed and thus required a decree of emancipation underscores the dislocated character of our present world. In short, one of the central theological themes of black spirituals is the belief that God has not forsaken his people, coupled with the conviction that he will one day deliver them from their unjust human oppressors. However, it must be stressed that the faith in view here was not a mere passive waiting for divine deliverance but involved creative strategies of active resistance to a white-defined identity. “Resistance was the ability to create beauty and worth out of the ugliness of slave existence. Resistance made dignity more than just a word to be analyzed philosophically”.[14]
Notwithstanding the genuine differences between Fanon’s colonial (and postcolonial) context and the African-American’s enslaved (and segregated) context, the oppressed in both situations are given an other-scripted narrative—a narrative which is one component of a socio-political, racialized apparatus that seeks to destroy difference. Whether the narrative comes from “enlightened” Europeans or “Christian” slaveholders, the latter having more in common with the former than with the teachings of Jesus the suffering servant, the goal is domination and a reduction to white sameness. If in fact colonialism and modern institutions of slavery are fueled by a desire to possess, destroy and re-make others in one’s own (white) image, and Christians who have supported these projects have been in grave error, is it possible to vindicate Christianity so that it might still be considered a valid option for the possibility of saving difference? J. Kameron Carter believes it is possible and has recently made a case for rescuing Christianity from its perverse instantiations.
In part two, I shall discuss Carter’s reading of Maximus the Confessor.
Notes
[1] Fanon,
Black Skin, White Masks, p. 202.
[2] Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, p. 206.
[3] Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, p. 205.
[4] Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, p. 206. This is not to deny the complicity involved in the black person’s internalization of the negative other-scripted narrative.
[5] This is not to suggest that Fanon’s critique resulted in his repudiation of all philosophical analyses and methodologies. Rather, Fanon’s project can be seen as a needed corrective and expansion of the philosophical tradition. On Fanon’s original contributions to the master/slave dialectic, see Nigel Gibson, ‘Dialectical Impasses: Turning the Table on Hegel and the Black’, parallax 8 (2002), esp. pp. 33-41. As Gibson explains, ‘[r]eciprocity in the colonial experience is not so much deformed as closed off. The colour barrier stops the dialectic. Fanon further maintains that the slave cannot win recognition through labour; since the master wants only work, he is not at all interested in recognition’ (p. 36).
[6] Rowan Williams, ‘Nobody Knows Who I Am Till the Judgement Morning,’ in On Christian Theology, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), p. 281.
[7] See, e.g., James Cone’s discussion of slave catechisms created by white ‘Christians’ for the purpose of producing docile slaves and to attempt to convince slaves that they were in fact created to be slaves (The Spirituals and the Blues: An Interpretation. (New York: The Seabury Press, 1972), pp. 22-23. Here one sees more continuity with Aristotle’s notion of ‘natural slaves’ than the biblical teaching that all humans are created in the image of God and are therefore equal before God.
[8] As Cone explains, ‘[w]hen white people enslaved Africans, their intention was to dehistoricize black existence, to foreclose the possibility of a future defined by the African heritage. White people demeaned black people’s sacred tales, ridiculing their myths and defiling the sacred rites. Their intention was to define humanity according to European definitions so that their brutality against Africans could be characterized as civilizing the savages. But white Europeans did not succeed; and black history is the record of their failure’ (The Spirituals and The Blues, pp. 23-24).
[9] Cone, The Spirituals and The Blues, p. 25.
[10] Cone, The Spirituals and The Blues, p. 28. In chapter two, ‘The Black Spirituals and Black Experience’, Cone highlights the numerous ways in which African-American slaves actively resisted the white-imposed narrative and refused to accept the biblical hermeneutic of their ‘Christian’ masters. ‘The slaves were obliged to create their own religion out of the remnants that were available and useful, both African and Christian. These elements were woven together to provide a historical possibility for human existence. While white religion had taught blacks to look for their reward in heaven through obedience to white masters on earth, black slaves were in fact carving out a new style of earthly freedom’ (The Spirituals and The Blues, p. 28; italics added).
[11] Cone, The Spirituals and The Blues, p. 32.
[12] Commenting on the slaves’ expression of faith in the midst of unjust suffering, Cone writes, ‘[f]aith in the righteousness of God was not easy for black people, since God’s liberating work in the world was not always when they expected it. Their faith did not cancel the pain of enslavement’ (The Spirituals and The Blues, p. 35).
[13] Cone, The Spirituals and The Blues, p. 42.
[14] Cone, The Spirituals and The Blues, p. 27.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
Walter Lammi, Kathleen Wright, Brice Wachterhauser and others have highlighted Heidegger’s influence on Gadamer. Gadamer readily acknowledges his indebtedness to Heidegger, after all he was a student of Heidegger’s for many years. In Truth and Method, Gadamer mentions his use of Heidegger’s “hermeneutical circle” (an on-going movement between whole and part and part and whole in our interpretative endeavors) and embraces Heidegger’s understanding of truth as aletheia (a dialectic of concealment and 
unconcealment), yet Gadamer is also critical of Heidegger. For example, Gadamer rejects Heidegger’s Seinsvergessenheit thesis (the “forgetfulness of being”) and denies that the Western metaphysical tradition necessarily culminates in nihilism. In fact, Gadamer detects nihilistic tendencies in Heidegger’s views in the latter’s separation of questions of Being from questions of the human good. According to Gadamer, Heidegger’s critique of the Western metaphysical tradition fails because he employs a univocal understanding of metaphysics. Here Gadamer’s study of Plato, particularly the later dialogues causes him to reject Heidegger’s read of Plato as a “metaphysics of presence” advocate. Gadamer sees the later Plato as endeavoring to work out an ontological vision that overcomes a certain misread of his theory of Ideas, viz. the interpretation that the Ideas constitute a separate realm (i.e. a view of the Ideas that suggests a strong dualism in Plato). Instead, Gadamer interprets the later Plato as sharing similarities with Aristotle (non-dualistic) and developing what subsequent thinkers have called the “transcendentals” (good, true, unity, beauty etc.). Gadamer argues that the center of Plato’s thought is not the theory of the Forms but rather the relationship of the One and the Many. On Gadamer’s read, there is a kind of “movement” in the Forms in that when they reveal themselves they simultaneously conceal themselves (i.e., in their relation to the whole, that is, the other Forms and of course the ever-elusive Form of the Good). Thus, for Gadamer, Plato does not promote a “metaphysics of presence” philosophy. Rather, he acknowledges our finitude and our incomplete (yet real) grasp of the Forms.
Reappropriation of Platonic Insights: “Metaphysics of Light”
At the end of Truth and Method, Gadamer turns explicitly to Plato’s view of beauty and self-validating truth. Beauty is that which draws us to itself; it shines forth and presents itself as tangible in its visibility. Truth likewise exhibits radiance and manifests itself in the beautiful, thus functioning as a “mediator” between the ideal and the real. Given his rejection of the modern foundationalist project and its attempt to make knowledge completely transparent along with its search for a “method” to justify its every move, Gadamer suggests that an appropriation of this ancient version of self-validating truth, in which knowledge is not identified with certainty, is a possible way beyond the impasse of skepticism and the ruins of (modern) foundationalism.
In keeping with the overall vision of his dialogical, hermeneutical project, Gadamer continues his “fusion of horizons,” interacting with both ancient and modern thinkers and philosophical traditions and suggesting a way forward through an appropriation of the past and present so that the tradition can continue to speak, flourish and “surprise” us and generations to come.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
Another key aspect to Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics is his emphasis on human finitude. Here Gadamer’s understanding of history and language comes into play, as these function as two conditions of our all our knowledge endeavors. We cannot fully comprehend these conditions, as their origins stretch back into a past that escapes our complete grasp. Yet, Gadamer believes firmly that we do in fact have some, though limited and partial, knowledge of these conditions even if we cannot make either fully transparent to ourselves. In this vein, Gadamer speaks of Wirkungsgeschichte (“effective history”). For example, we are not fully aware of the extent to which language shapes and “makes” us. As Gadamer puts it, “Language is always out in front of us.” The same is true of culture, tradition and customs. (If you have ever spent any significant time outside of your own culture, this cultural “shaping” becomes readily evident). Likewise, we see “effective history” in the various ways in which different communities of inquiry employ certain analogies, as well as choose (and reject) certain metaphors etc. Language, in other words, is pregnant with tradition, culture and in fact opens up a world to us (Heidegger)—a world unlike the mere “environment” of non-rational animals who lack the kind of freedom we as linguistic, rational beings have.
Here I should discuss Gadamer’s well-known but often misunderstood statement, “Being that can be understood is language.” First, Gadamer does not mean that words create reality. As Charles Taylor, B. Wachterhauser, Joel Weinsheimer and Robert Sokolowski argue, Gadamer is not a linguistic constructivist. On Gadamer’s account, both language and reality “participate” in intelligibility. The function of language (at least one function) is to enhance the intelligibility of the already intelligible world. There is no re-doubling of the interpreter in the otherwise uninitelligible world in Gadamer’s account. Rather, language functions as a lens that makes reality come into sharper focus than would be the case if language were absent. Thus, language does not stand between us and reality, as a kind of shroud or hindrance. Language functions instead as a “medium” through which we gain access to the world—it has a kind of “iconic” function. I emphasize the world to highlight the fact that Gadamer is a realist (cf. Wachterhauser, Beyond Being: Gadamer’s Post Platonic Ontology, and Robert Sokolowski, An Introduction to Phenomenology). Though we no doubt have our horizons, are conditioned by culture, history and language, we are not trapped in our horizons or imprisoned by our prejudices and thus cut off from the things themselves. Gadamer is adamant that as rational, linguistic beings, we are free to step back, reflect and allow the world (and texts) to disconfirm our “projections”.
In addition to the intelligibility of both language and reality, Gadamer emphasizes the Zugehorigkeit (“belongingness”) of language and thought. What may come to as a surprise to many is Gadamer’s interaction and largely positive, though not uncritical, appropriation of both the ancient and medieval traditions. In Truth and Method, Gadamer devotes significant space to a discussion of the “theology of the verbum,” interacting with Greek theories, as well as, the teachings of Augustine, Aquinas and Nicholas of Cusa. Gadamer rejects the medieval view of a pure, mental language, as in his account we always think in a particular (natural) languages. Yet, Gadamer employs the medieval, Christian teaching of the unity of the Father and the (pre-incarnate) Son, as well as St. Thomas’ discussion of the “processual” nature of this relationship in order to explicate his own theory of the “belongingness” of thought and language. Just as the Father and the Son/Word share exhibit both a unity (in substance) and diversity (they are different Persons), thought and language share a similar unity or prior accord prior but are not reducible to each other. As the Word “proceeds” from the Father (non-temporally), so thought unfolds “within” the mind (think of the way deductive reasoning unfolds) which is an image of the discursive nature of our thinking. Yet, as noted above (and here the dis-anaologies enter), Gadamer rejects Augustine and Aquinas’ view of a pure, mental language, focusing instead of the various “incarnations” of natural languages (even prior to their utterances “outside” the mind). Here Gadamer appeals to the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation in which Christ’s taking to Himself of human flesh (and one might add à la J. Kameron Carter, Christ’s particular Jewish flesh) in no way de-values his divinity. Similarly, the incarnation of thought by particular natural languages does not hinder intelligibility; yet, given our finitude, each language opens up partial yet true views of the world. (In this section and with regard to our finitude, Gadamer highlights the difference between the discursive nature of our knowledge and God’s knowing in one intuition).
Wachterhauser provides another way to understand Gadamer’s notion of the “belongingness” of thought and language and the “productive” function of language in connection with reality. Gadamer speaks of language as symbol, that is, as a symbolon in the Greek sense. In ancient Greece, a member of one family would break a piece of pottery into two halves, keeping one half and giving the second to the member of the other family. The pieces were then handed down through the various generations of each respective family. If a member of one family (born at a later date) presented his half of the broken piece of pottery to a member of the other family, the pieces would be re-united, showing the prior accord of their families. The pottery functioned not as a mere empty sign but actually effected what it symbolized. Similarly, language and thought exhibit a unity prior to the various (extramental) utterances and dialogical encounters with others in which language gives us access to and enhances (already intelligible) reality.
Wachterhauser then turns to Plato’s Symposium and Aristophanes’ myth of how humans have to come in their present state to further elucidate the unity of thought and language, as well as the “achievement” of language—here emphasizing its creative function as employed by free, rational beings. As Aristophones explains, originally humans were spherical and needed no “other” to complete them sexually or otherwise. However, due to their arrogance they upset the gods who then divided them and turned their sexual organs outward (as we find humans in their present form). Given this “fall” and division, humans now seek an “other” for completion, and here the emphasis is on sexual completion. Just as the two halves of the lovers share a prior unity, so too do thought and language. Yet, the new completion for which the lovers seek is not predetermined or predestined. That is, a kind of achievement or work of sorts must occur. Here the analogy turns to the work required for true hermeneutical engagement and transformation. In order for the interpreter to be transformed by the alterity of the text, s/he cannot exhibit the characteristics of a false lover. A false lover is not interested in what the other has to say; rather, s/he simply re-creates her/himself in the other. By contrast, a true lover allows the other to speak, to call her/him into question and thus is open to the “event” of understanding which exhibits a “surprise” character.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
As mentioned in my opening post, Gadamer’s overall project in Truth and Method is plausibly understood as an attempt to work out the notion of identity-and-difference as manifest in hermeneutical experience. That is, on Gadamer’s view the “being” of texts (and works of art and music) exhibit a flexibility which allows for multiple, true interpretations, as different communities of inquiry approach the text with new questions. Yet, these multiple, true and very diverse (yet non-contradictory) interpretations are of the very same text or work or art/music and thus exhibit an identity through time. In this view, interpretation is not mere re-production but involves a productive aspect given the new questions and new “horizon fusings” that take place as various communities of inquiry engage the texts of the tradition over time. Here Gadamer speaks in phenomenological language, using terms like “aspects” (=the multiple, true interpretations) and “things themselves” (=the subject matter of the text).
As I’ve suggested on numerous occasions, a helpful way to understand what Gadamer has in mind with his view of the expansive “being” of texts is to consider a musical analogy . In jazz, the performer works with a “lead sheet” (something akin to a text) which contains a given melody and harmonic progression. Thus, there certain givens/structures to which the performer must submit. However, various performers interpret the (very same) piece differently and bring out new aspects not seen—or rather heard—up to that point. This is not to suggest a kind of hermeneutical anarchy, as the interpretation/performance must be recognizable by particular musical community/tradition as a valid instance of that particular piece. Likewise, the performer cannot simply impose onto the piece whatever harmony s/he chooses. To do so would be to produce an illegitimate interpretation, just as imputing any meaning onto a text would likewise not count as a valid interpretation. Because the “being” of musical works (like texts and works of art) contain this built-in-flexibility, multiple, true interpretations are not only possible but to be expected. However, in order to count as valid, legitimate, true interpretations, they must exhibit continuity with the tradition in that each (to use Gadamer’s term) “aspect” manifests the thing itself in its presentation, though no two aspects are exactly the same. This flexibility allows the tradition to grow and continue its influence through time, as the “being” of texts and works of art show themselves differently in different historical epochs, yet they retain continuity with the tradition. (Though some scholars have begun to explore the ways in which Gadamer’s work might be brought into conversion with the development of religious traditions, including Christianity, there is certainly room for additional work in this area. Those working in biblical hermeneutics have, of course, already enjoyed the fruits of his labors).
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
In his magnum opus, Truth and Method, Gadamer displays his knowledge not only of the modern tradition (Kant, Heidegger, Hegel, Schleiermacher) but likewise his knowledge of and interest in the ancient and medieval traditions (Plato, Aristotle, Neoplatonism, Augustine, Aquinas, Nicholas of Cusa). Gadamer, unlike many moderns and postmoderns, believes that the ancient and medieval tradition still has something to teach us. Yet, he also sees value in thinkers like Heidegger and Hegel. Gadamer’s entire project might be understood as a “fusion of horizons” (to be explained later) between the ancient (and medieval) and the modern (and postmodern) traditions. One might also rightly characterize his efforts in Truth and Method as the working out of the notion of identity-in-difference as manifest in hermeneutical experience.
Rejection of the Enlightenment Prejudice Against Prejudice
Gadamer finds the Enlightenment’s rejection of authority and tradition an impossible and pointless path to trod. According to Gadamer, though many key Enlightenment thinkers reject tradition, claiming it an impediment to the progress of true Enlightenment (e.g., Kant’s essay, “What is Enlightenment?”) and riddled with unjustified prejudices, Gadamer turns their critique back on them and shows that they in fact hold rather dogmatically to a “prejudice against prejudice.” As Gadamer explains, the Enlightenment has so stressed the negative aspect of the word, “prejudice”, that its positive meaning, “pre-judgment” (Vor-urteil) has been lost. One can in fact (and here Gadamer appropriates insights from Aristotle) by way of proper upbringing, customs and embracing one’s tradition, hold true “prejudices” and biases. Thus, for Gadamer, just because one cannot justify (or as Aristotle might say, give the “why”) of one’s beliefs, it does not follow necessarily that these beliefs are wrong, false or misguided. Because of his positive view of tradition, many contemporary thinkers (Derrida, Caputo) have labeled Gadamer a “dogmatist.” On this point, it seems that some postmoderns have not thrown off the prejudices of modernity either.
On a more positive note, Charles Taylor in his essay, “Gadamer and the Human Sciences,” highlights Gadamer’s rejection of key Enlightenment notions, particularly the desire to make knowledge conform to the image of science or what Taylor calls, “scientific knowledge of the object.” In contrast to this model, Gadamer argues for “coming to an understanding” through a dialogic encounter where the modus operandi is question and answer (here Gadamer draws explicitly from Plato). Gadamer’s model is characterized by the following three features: (1) bilater-ality, (2) party-dependence, and (3) an openness to goal-revision. Regarding (1) and (2) the text or Other is not a silent “object” to be mastered; rather, it “talks” back and can put the interpreter into question, thus challenging her “prejudices” and horizon and allowing for potential self-transformation. Regarding (3), because one’s prejudices and biases can be altered (i.e., if one is open) by a dialogic encounter with the text (Gadamer views texts as a kind of dialogue partner), one must be willing to revision his or her objectives.
Fusion of Horizons
By “horizon” Gadamer does not mean that we are sealed off from others due to our cultural, historical and linguistic conditioning; rather, taking his cue from Husserl, upon whose concept of “horizon” he builds (see Walter Lammi, “Gadamer’s Notion of Horizon”), Gadamer understands horizons as fluid and ever open to new expansions. Consequently, a dialogical encounter with a text, work of art, or an Other involves a “fusing of horizons,” as the text or Other is also constituted by a horizon. Given the fluidity of horizons, Gadamer rejects the notion of radical incommensurabilty between communities of inquiry. According to Gadamer, though “translation” between communities is often difficult, there is enough common ground to allow for a fusion to occur. Thus, it is a mistake to label Gadamer a “strong” relativist and to group him with contemporary philosophers like Richard Rorty.
As we’ve seen, openness to goal-revision is part of a true hermeneutic experience, as horizons are characterized by fluidity. On this point, as Joel Weinsheimer in his commentary on Truth and Method observes, we see Hegel’s influence on Gadamer. That is, Gadamer follows Hegel’s understanding of experience as essentially negative. As Gadamer puts it, “the experience of negation has a curiously productive function.” By “negative” Gadamer draws our attention beyond the confirmation aspect of true experiences, which include hermeneutical experiences, and to the disconfirming aspect in which our expectations are often disappointed or shattered. For example, we approach a text (or an Other) with a certain expectation of what the text means; yet, in the process of attempting to understand the text, we run into problems as our “projections” (as Heidegger would say) do not seem to match the text. If we allow the text to speak to us and respect its alterity, we must revise our projected expectations. This process of expectation, negation, and newly revised expectation characterizes our hermeneutic experience unless we grow “static” and become closed to new experiences. The truly “experienced” person, according to Gadamer, is not a dogmatist who is unwilling to listen and be changed by the Other (which includes texts), but one who is open to the “event” of interpretation where surprise plays an essential but sometimes painful role. (Perhaps one could appeal to the experience of the freed prisoner in Plato’s allegory of the cave as appropriate analogy here).
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
Below are excerpts from a post on catholicanarachy.org. I find the reflections both provocative and worthy of serious consideration.
Thanksgiving in the united states is a holiday observed by pious Christians without much thought. What could be more Christian than thanking God for the blessings God has given us? The reality of this “secular” feast day is, of course, much less innocent and much more monstrous than we assume. [...]
…aside from the holi-day’s idolatrous core, there remains much to be concerned about. One is the obviously troubling history of the holiday and its relation to Native peoples. The story that is celebrated by mainstream white america is a lie, and indeed is not the story remembered by those who originally inhabited this land, which is a white supremacist story of extermination. And we Christians should not forget and should not fail to repent the fact that Christians and Christianity were complicit with this genocide, explicitly providing the theo-ideological justification for it.Secondly, the “blessings” that “we” (white, middle and upper class americans) celebrate are simply not shared by significant portions of the american population, let alone much of the rest of the world. Indeed, the poverty and misery experienced by many both inside and outside of the united states is not an accident of history, but is rather the dark underside of the “blessings” we feel so inspired to celebrate here in the so-called First World.
Third, in its “secular” form, this holi-day’s concept of “giving thanks” has become virtually unintelligible when God is taken out of the picture. This should make Christians concerned about who exactly we are thanking on such a holiday. In the absence of the Creator, what fills the “empty shrine” (in the words of Bill Cavanaugh) of the american empire on this holiday? Who or what are “we” thanking for “our blessings?” The fact is, the holi-day is delightfully vague, and this vagueness is precisely part of what makes american civil religion work.
Fourth, in the absence of any intelligible sense of true “thanksgiving,” we are left with a holiday that tends to be reduced to “being with family and loved ones,” something that is, of course, nice to do, but which can quickly become an opportunity for the virtual worship of family and blood ties, another important aspect of american civil religion. Jesus, despite what the Religious Right has done to him, could hardly be called a “family values guy,” and resisted such notions of blood ties in his own day. [...]
Pro-life Christians who choose to be thoughtful about such things should be deeply troubled by the reality of Thanksgiving. Indeed, it is perhaps the holi-day par excellence of the culture of death [e.g. the slaughter of Native Americans]. Of course, the best option for Christians would be simply not celebrating Thanksgiving at all. After all, Christians have their own thanksgiving, only we use its Greek name, eucharist. It is a celebration of liberation and resurrection, not invasion and extermination. It is a celebration that embodies new familial relationships not based on blood or nationality but our common life in Christ. It is a celebration whose purpose is not to say “thank you for all the stuff we have when others are not so fortunate,” but rather “thank you for inviting all of us to this table.” And of course, the one we thank is the Author of Life, the One who is not to be replaced by sentimentalism or the idols of state, of “freedom,” of “choice” and the like. No wonder Jesus made the eucharist a vegetarian feast, a true foretaste of the banquet of the Kingdom of God.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
The history of black people, as mentioned previously, is simultaneously erased and re-written by the white imagination. This new history defines what a black person is—intellectually inferior, in need of a (white) master, incapable of contributing positively to (white, European) society and culture. The black person does not create this narrative, but is scripted into it and constructed by it. Nonetheless, a time comes when a black person is confronted with the white mythos by way of a particular, concrete and often painful encounter and thus begins to accept and internalize the mythology. In Fanon’s words, “[d]isoriented, incapable of confronting the Other, the white man, who had no scruples about imprisoning me, I transported myself on that particular day far, very far, from myself, and gave myself up as an object.”[1]
Fanon’s dramatic re-telling of the train episode and the pre-theoretical, racial assumptions apparent in the child’s remarks about Fanon serve a two-fold function. First, the narrative calls attention to the deficiencies of Merleau-Ponty’s corporeal schema. Second, the narrative highlights the way in which phenotypic or so-called “racial” differences—as negatively interpreted by the dominant group in a given historical epoch—close off or a least severely hinder the possibilities of freedom, as well as personal and cultural transformation for the oppressed group. Hence, Fanon offers his historico-racial schema as a corrective. Yet, his account also includes the racial-epidermal schema. Whereas the historico-racial schema brings to light the historical contingencies and mythological narratives imposed upon blacks, the racial-epidermal schema speaks to the sedimentation of the so-called “black essence.” In other words, once the new narrative of what it means to be a black person, which includes the various meanings that have been assigned to phenotypic differences, has become fixed, ossified and even naturalized in the social consciousness and cultural and legal practices, the black essence has been successfully created.[2]
Once we transition to the racial-epidermal schema, the all-pervasiveness of the white gaze—here understood broadly as the white mythos as manifest in the cultural consciousness and systematically expressed in the cultural institutions and practices of a given society—functions like a Panopticon, keeping the black person under constant inspection. Though speaking of the incarcerated, Foucault’s description applies quite well to the black person’s situation vis-à-vis the white, European other, “he is the object of information, never a subject in communication.”[3] Once the racial-epidermal schema has come to fruition and the black essence has been fixed, the requisite racial machinery has likewise been established to ensure “proper” social boundaries and to keep the white mythology unchallenged. In a way similar to the Panopticon’s ability to “disindividualiz[e] power” and distribute it through various socio-cultural and legal structures, institutions and people, Fanon’s schemata points to the systemic racial structures of colonized Europe. These racialized disciplinary practices, though not identical to the disciplinary practices Foucault describes, nonetheless share close family resemblances with “a machinery that assures dissymmetry, disequilibrium, difference.” [4] The racial-epidermal schema, broadly construed to include these systemic, disindividualized power structures, enables even the most vulnerable and innocent members of society—the child on the train—to be an instrument of and even operate the racial machinery.
Notes
[1] Fanon,
Black Skin, White Masks, p. 92.
[2] On the movement and interpretation of Fanon’s schemata, I follow Weate, who views the racial epidermal schema as “a later stage in psychosomatic disintegration and alienation” (p. 174). Weate describes the movement to the epidermal schema as Fanon’s attempt to trace a “genealogy of racial essentialism” (p. 173). As he explains, “[t]he epidermal marks the stage where historical construction and contingency is effaced and replaced with the facticity of flesh. The colour of skin now appears to be intrinsically significant. With the outset of epidermalization, we are at the edge of being-for-others sedimenting into an essence, a ‘fact’ of blackness. Fanon is therefore demonstrating that essentialism is a discourse derived from a perversive repression of history. By marking the two stages of the ‘historico-racial’ and then the ‘racial-epidermal’, he is therefore contesting the view that essentialism, and in particular black essentialism, is grounded in a biological problematic. For Fanon, the essentialization of blackness is the product of a concealed perversion of history. It is only once this concealment is consolidated (through epidermalization) that questions concerning the biological ground of race arise. The distinction he makes between the two stages of schematization or epistemic enframing therefore allow biologistic discourses around race to be seen as phenomena derivative upon a prior perversion of history that is subsequently concealed” (“Fanon, Merleau-Ponty and the Difference of Phenomenology,” pp. 174-75).
[3] Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 200.
[4] Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 202.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
In his book, Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon challenges Merleau-Ponty’s inclusive notion of a 
corporeal schema and substitutes his own schemata, first an historical-racial schema, and second an epidermal racial schema. Briefly stated (and more on this later), Merleau-Ponty’s corporeal schema describes the way in which the body’s agency makes manifest the historical world. For Merleau-Ponty, our bodies are not objects in space, rather they inhabit space and through them we experience the world and the other. In so far as the body is able to participate in and transform its historico-cultural horizon, it is free; in so far as its capacity for expression and its ability to alter its own history and given context are denied, it is not free.[1]
With this background in mind, we turn to Fanon’s text in order to understand why he substitutes his historical-racial schema and epidermal racial schema for Merleau-Ponty’s notion of a corporeal schema. Fanon argues that a phenomenology of blackness—the experience of skin difference and of being the black other—can only be understood in the encounter with whiteness or more precisely, the white imagination.[2] That is, in a mostly black community in the Antilles, Fanon was “content to intellectualize these differences”; however, once he entered the white world and felt the weight of the “white gaze,” he experienced his otherness and became aware of pre-theoretical racial attitudes which up to that point had not existed for him.[3] In his chapter, “The Lived Experience of the Black,” Fanon recounts his experience on a train of being “fixed” by a white other—an other which happened to be a child who had already been habituated to see blacks as defined by the white imagination. As the child’s refrain, “Look! A Negro!,” crescendoed forth and came to a close with a fearful questioning of the “Negro’s” next move, Fanon not only experienced the gaze of the white other, he also began to see himself through the white gaze.
I cast an objective gaze over myself, discovered my blackness, my ethnic features; deafened by cannibalism, backwardness, fetishism, racial stigmas, slave traders, […] Disoriented, incapable of confronting the Other, the white man, who had no scruples about imprisoning me, I transported myself on that particular day far, very far, from my self, and gave myself up as an object. What did this mean to me? Peeling, stripping my skin, causing a hemorrhage that left congealed black blood all over my body. Yet this reconsideration of myself, this thematization, was not my idea. I wanted simply to be a man among men.[4]
As Fanon takes up the white view of himself, he experiences its all-encompassing reach. That is, his becoming a white-defined black other involved more than his present encounter with the child on the train; in essence, he entered into the white erasing and re-scripting of black history. Not only is his present fixed by the white other, but his past is fixed as well. The child’s unison refrain gives rise to polyphonic lines of “cannibalism, backwardness, fetishism” and the like.
A few paragraphs before his description of the train episode with the child, Fanon mentions Merleau-Ponty’s corporeal schema, highlighting the difficulties that a black person experiences in a white-scripted world because of his skin color and the various meanings that have been given to these and other embodied differences. In Merleau-Ponty’s account, the reciprocal and fitting relation between body and the world gives rise to the possibility of a mutual constructing and transforming of both. The body is not a mere object in space, but rather is our way of being in a spatio-temporal world; it is the background “always tacitly understood.”[5] With his corporeal schema, Merleau-Ponty emphasizes the body’s free agency in its ability to both disclose and transform the historical world.[6]
Fanon, however, is not satisfied with this generic schema and thus introduces his historical-racial schema, which is imposed on him by the white other. For Fanon, Merleau-Ponty’s inclusive, universal rendering of the corporeal schema through which the self and world emerge does not account for the disparity of experience between whites and blacks with regard to their ability to actively participate and transform themselves and the world. As Jeremy Weate explains,
In the interracial encounter, the White is able to participate in the schematization of the world, whilst the Black may not, for his skin difference closes down the possibility of free agency. A white mythos inserts itself between the black body and its self-image, becoming the ‘elements used’ in a reflexive understanding of black subjectivity. In contesting the terms of Merleau-Ponty’s account of bodily freedom, Fanon provides a genealogy of the existential unfreedom of the black body in the racialized encounter.”[7]
Notes
[1] Admittedly, I am speaking of the body in a reified way; however, body should not be understood as a
res, but rather as a crucial aspect of the psychosomatic whole, which constitutes a human being.
[2] Weate, “Fanon, Merleau-Ponty and the Difference of Phenomenology,” p. 171. See Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, p. 89. In addition to Merleau-Ponty, Fanon perhaps also has Hegel and Sartre in mind, particularly the former’s dialectical understanding of recognition and reciprocity. See Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, pp. 191–97. For an analysis of Fanon’s reflections on Hegel’s master-slave dialectic, see Turner, “On the Difference between the Hegelian and Fanonian Dialectic of Lordship and Bondage,” in Fanon: A Critical Reader, ed. Lewis R. Gordon et al., pp. 134–51.
[3] Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, p. 90.
[4] Ibid., p. 92.
[5] Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p. 115. Elaborating his notion of body schema, Merleau-Ponty explains, “[b]odily space can be distinguished from external space and envelop its parts instead of spreading them out, because it is the darkness needed in the theatre to show up the performance, the background of somnolence or reserve of vague power against which the gesture and its aim stand out, the zone of not being in front of which precise beings, figures and points can come to light. In the last analysis, if my body can be a ‘form’ and if there can be, in front of it, important figures against indifferent backgrounds, this occurs in virtue of its being polarized by its tasks, of its existence towards them, of its collecting together of itself in its pursuit of its aims; the body schema is finally a way of stating that my body is in-the-world” (Ibid., p. 115).
[6] Fanon describes with ironic overtones Merleau-Ponty’s account as follows, “[a] slow construction of my self as a body in a spatial and temporal world seems to be the schema. It is not imposed on me; it is rather a definitive structuring of my self and the world” (Black Skin, White Masks, p. 91)
[7] Weate, “Fanon, Merleau-Ponty and the Difference of Phenomenology,” p. 172.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
“By the time the first texts in the New Testament were being written, Christians were aware of tensions over whether they still shared the same identity as Jews; there were no short answers (there still aren’t in some important respects). There was, they believed, fulfillment; there was also redefinition. And while these texts were being written and developed and responded to, the dramatic events which marked the end of Jewish political independence (the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE) added a further element in Christian interpretation, with some long and unhappy consequences.
Thus what we read in the New Testament is not a simple record of what happened, but also a hugely creative and innovative attempt to make one story out of a set of memories that covers events of great disruptive force. Jesus brings the earlier history to a climax, yet in such a way that the history is seen quite differently; what mattes in the earlier story will be different depending on the point of view of the telling, and passages and incidents that did not necessarily occupy the foreground now take on fresh significance. This, incidentally, is why Jewish-Christian dialogue can be very complicated: the Christian will read Hebrew Scripture looking for answers to questions that the Jewish reader isn’t asking. But the point is that the New Testament writers know quite well that they have to present a story that is both coherent in essential ways and yet does justice to the novelty of what happens in the life and death of Jesus. They cannot unequivocally say either yes or no to the history of God’s people as the Hebrew Scripture they were reading sets it out.
In this, they are doing nothing that is not already happening in the Old Testament itself, which goes on rewriting its own history. Look, for example, at Hosea 1:4, where the massacre of Jezreel, implicitly celebrated elsewhere as the triumph of orthodox faith over idolatry, is roundly condemned. Because God works in a long and varied historical process, the perspective within the Hebrew Scriptures is necessarily one that is constantly developing and moving; if Jesus is the culmination of that process, his life and death will provoke an unprecedentedly far-reaching shift of perspective, and thus a major essay in historical revision” (Why Study the Past? The Quest for the Historical Church, (pp. 6-7).
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
Descartes is often referred to as the “father” of modern philosophy and for good reasons. In several of his works, Descartes speaks openly of his frustrations with his philosophical predecessors, highlighting the various ways that they contradict themselves and leave one in a state of skepticism and despair. Although embracing fervently the scientific revolution of his day and hoping to clear away the clutter of the philosophic past, Descartes, despite his own intentions, retains much of the previous tradition. Like Beethoven, who mediates the Classical and Romantic eras of music history, Descartes functions as a transitional figure mediating the medieval and modern periods. Many scholars have noted that his Meditations are modeled after the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius. (Cf. Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, “Experiments in Philosophic Genre: Descartes’ ‘Meditations’. Rorty discusses the various meditational traditions that Descartes brings together in the Meditations). Although literary analyses of the Meditations vary and suggest complex, multiple levels at work in the Meditations, it seems safe to say that Descartes’ concern in that work is with certainty (a common quest of the modern period) rather than spiritual growth. In light of the new scientific discoveries of the 17th century, Descartes is convinced that he must make a break with the past (Aristotelian/medieval) tradition and build a new, more secure philosophical system on the model of geometry and compatible with modern science.[1] One of the components of his razing project involves the use of methodological doubt. (As Gadamer highlights in Truth and Method, the search for the “right method” is a common quest of the modern philosophers). Having shown that the various possible avenues of knowledge can be deceptive or called into question (senses, mathematical knowledge [cf. the evil demon exercise], various authorities etc.), Descartes finally arrives at his indubitable truth, viz., that he cannot doubt his own existence, as doubting presupposes thought and thought presupposes existence. From this supposed Archimedean point, Descartes attempts to construct a philosophical system that will yield the certainty lacking in views of his predecessors.
Ironically, Descartes, though criticizing past thinkers, continues to rely on ancient and medieval theological and philosophical insights. We see this especially in Descartes’ various arguments for the existence of God, one of which is a version of St. Anselm’s ontological argument. In the other arguments for God’s existence, Descartes takes the causal principle as self-evident, viz. there must be at least as much formal reality in the cause of an idea as there is objective reality in the idea itself, where the objective reality of the idea is something like the intentional or representational complexity of the idea. For example, the idea of a computer contains more objective reality than the idea of a plastic screw. In addition, Descartes even engages in a defense of God’s goodness—a kind of theodicy—by appealing to an Augustinian, Neoplatonic understanding of evil as a privation. In meditation IV the question arises, if God a non-deceiving God and is all-powerful, why did he create us as beings capable of going astray? In other words, why not make us incapable of erring? How does Descartes respond to these questions? He appeals to a traditional Neoplatonic-Augustinian answer! First, he says that evil is a privation; it is not a thing but is rather the absence of good. Thus, God does not create evil, as evil is a form of non-being. Second, God created a diverse universe, which contains beings of various sorts and of varying degrees of perfection depending upon how “close” or “far” they are (ontologically speaking) from God who is all-perfect.
In short, though Descartes wants in many ways to “throw off” tradition, both the form and content of the Meditations show how indebted he was to the past,
Notes
[1] Descartes does in fact separate himself from the ancient and medieval past when he replaces Aristotelian empiricism with his own version of rationalism. That is, in Aristotelian empiricism one knows an external object by the process of abstracting a form from it. In Descartes’ rationalism, one knows an external object by grasping it directly through intellectual intuition—as e.g., the way in which I know myself directly as an immaterial substance, a
res cogitans. With regard to external objects, we grasp these directly as well; however, we know them as something extended, a
res extensa. For Descartes, material substance just
is extension. Given this identity, Descartes can then explain why mathematics applies to external reality: as a quantity, extension is describable in purely mathematical terms. Since external objects just are quantities of extension, they are also mathematically describable.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
For Dante the ultimate meaning of human history can be understood in terms of salvation history. That is, Dante believes strongly in God’s providential guidance over human history; yet, within God’s providence there is a place for human freedom and deliberation. God creates humans in his image, which entails the gift of freedom, and this freedom is to be used in the service of God. In the Divine Comedy, Dante tells of how he strayed from his own vocational calling (to be a Christian epic poet) and how, by God’s grace working through figures like Beatrice, he was able to fulfill his calling.
Dante understands the entire created order as sacramental in nature. In other words, beauty, art, images, and the physical all have value in Dante’s worldview. We see this in Dante’s relationship with Beatrice. Beatrice was a particular, historical person, whom Dante at a young age came to admire and even love. Apparently, Beatrice was a virtuous woman who was trying to lead Dante to higher things, the most important of which is the Christian God. From some of his other writings (Convivio), Dante seems to have been “led astray” by false schools of philosophy or by using philosophy wrongly. That is, Dante, instead of using philosophy as a handmaiden to revelation, exalted philosophy to the detriment of revelation. As a result, Dante finds himself lost and in need of guidance.
In the Divine Comedy, Dante (the character) has to journey through hell and purgatory and after the purgation process, finally makes his way to paradise and ultimately experiences the beatific vision. Vergil serves as Dante’s guide through hell and purgatory. This seems to suggest that natural reason can only take one so far (even though one wonders how Vergil has knowledge of Purgatory). This is not to devalue natural reason, as by the proper use of natural reason one can become virtuous. Dante is thoroughly familiar with the Greek tradition of virtue as acquired by practice via the use of practical reason and which then becomes a habit that produces stable character. Humans, in a way unlike any other animals, have reason and are able to deliberate and choose the good in various circumstances. Dante readily acknowledges by his choice of Vergil as his guide and by the appearance of various unexpected characters in Purgatory (e.g., Cato—an expression not only of political freedom but also of moral freedom).
With his depiction of purgatory, Dante brings together the Greek tradition of virtue acquisition with the Christian tradition which stresses our need for the theological virtues of faith, hope and love. The theological virtues do not destroy the natural virtues; rather, they crown and complete them. Dante also affirms the goodness of creation, art and beauty by his positive portrayal of the use of images and the sensory in Purgatory (e.g., singing, liturgical acts etc.). Vergil’s role, however, is limited and after Dante has gained mastery over himself, Vergil hands the torch to Beatrice. Under Beatrice’s guidance, Dante is taught a number of theological truths and undergoes a painful time of confession. One can interpret this confession as Dante’s admission that he had been seduced by Lady Philosophy and has now seen the errors of his ways.
Beatrice plays a special role as a universal-particular. That is, Beatrice was a concrete, historical person—Dante, after all, tells us that she did in fact die and that he knew her as a young boy. Yet, in the pageant scene, she appears in the vision as an image of the integrity of the Church (as she chases off the “heretics” presented as foxes etc.) Though Beatrice is Dante’s guide and is his superior with regard to theological knowledge, she is clear that Dante is not to worship her. When Dante at times stares too fixedly at her, she immediately exhorts him to turn his attention to Christ. (This is in keeping with Dante’s need to fulfill his calling. The fact that he turned away from Christ and made philosophy an idol is the reason for his wandering in the first place).
Dante’s final guide is St. Bernard, a mystic and a poet. With the choice of St. Bernard, Dante gives a literary picture of the traditional Catholic teaching of grace completing nature and the compatibility of reason and revelation. That is, revelation, though supra-rational, is not irrational. The Incarnation, as Dante makes clear at the end of the poem, ultimately cannot be fully articulated by finite, human language. St. Bernard, as a mystic points us to the mystery of the Trinitarian God whose Love opens the way for union with him. With the completion of his Divine Comedy, Dante has fulfilled his life’s calling and thus has participated in the ultimate meaning of human history—to glorify God.
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
Many scholars have commented on the polyphonic (using Bakhtin’s term) character of Augustine’s Confessions, particularly his use of biblical allusions, quotations and the like. In this post, I focus on Augustine’s superimposition of key texts from the classical tradition, specifically, Virgil’s Aeneid. If we consider some of Augustine’s main geographical movements, we see that they mirror Aeneas’ journeys. For example, Augustine moves to Carthage, one of the most important cities of the Roman Empire, in order continue his studies. In the opening paragraph of book III, he describes Carthage in a not so positive light:
So I arrived at Carthage, where the din of scandalous love-affairs raged cauldron-like around me. I was not yet in love, but I was enamored with the idea of love, and so deep within me was my need that I hated myself for the sluggishness of my desires. In love with loving, I was casting about for something to love; the security of a way of life free from pitfalls seemed abhorrent to me, because I was inwardly starved of that food which is yourself, O my God (III.1, 1; Boulding trans., p. 75).
When Augustine moves to Carthage, he is a young man and describes himself as “in love with being in love.” He finds himself enticed by certain activities available in the city and is particularly fond of the theater. He enjoys “connecting” with the characters on the stage and even weeps at their misfortunes. But as he reflects on his activity, he finds a contradiction of sorts. He weeps for these imaginary, non-historical characters, but he fails to weep for his own, very real wanderings from God. Literarily speaking, Augustine has focused on Carthage because Carthage is where Aeneas landed and began his love-affair with Dido. Augustine is in a sense replicating Aeneas’ journey. So the question becomes, what will Augustine do? Will he follow the way of Aeneas, leave his own Dido, and ultimately do what he is destined to do, or will he be ruled and enslaved by his own (mis-directed) passions?
In book V, we have a second Aeneas-inspired movement, viz., the journey from Carthage to Italy (then eventually to Milan). Again, we find a parallel with Aeneas’ life. The move from Carthage to Italy is the same one that Aeneas makes after his affair with Dido. In other words, Augustine, like Aeneas, is leaving something/someone behind, and is on the way to better things. Aeneas’ destiny was fated by the gods and one wonders whether his path could have been altered. In Augustine’s case, though no doubt guided by God’s providence and strengthened by God’s grace, a genuine choice was involved. In book V, after his disappointing encounter with Faustus, Augustine meets Bishop Ambrose, who teaches him how to read Scripture “spiritually,” and he eventually comes to know the One to whom Scriptures point, Jesus Christ.
Augustine’s use of Virgil’s text is a continuation of a long tradition of taking up various threads, narratives etc. from previous texts and then re-writing them for one’s present purposes. Virgil does the same thing with Homer, as Aeneas non-repetitively re-traces Odysseus’ steps. Of course, Virgil re-writes his story in order to bring the past to bear on the present (the glorious reign of Augustus).
By Cynthia R. Nielsen
Gadamer understands language as having an ability to enhance the intelligibility of reality and thus make the truth of things more evident. Wachterhauser offers a way into Gadamer’s claim by turning to the latter’s claim that language and reality belong together, as language has a symbolic function. Here Gadamer has in view the Greek understanding of a symbol (symbolon) in which a simple object, such as a piece of pottery, was broken and one half was given to the host and the other kept by the guest. As Wachterhauser explains, this symbol
was originally given as a gesture of friendship and hospitality between households that were able to visit each other only rarely. […] If on some date, far in the future, a descendant of the original recipient presented this token of friendship, it was acknowledged as a symbol of the accord and bond of hospitality linking both families over generations. The key idea is that such a ‘symbol’ represents a prior accord and the presentation of the symbol functions not only as a sign of that accord but it actually functions to make that accord palpable and real. In this sense, the symbol is not a mere symbol or a sign that has no essential effect on the reality it stands for. In this case, the ‘symbol’ completes the pledge; it plays an integral role in fulfilling the promise once given. What was not manifest—the bond of hospitality between households—becomes manifest with the presentation of the symbolon. The ‘symbol’ actually has an effect on making the bond between households real (Beyond Being, 100).
Similarly, language has a symbolic function (in the sense indicated above) in that it makes manifest both the prior accord or unity of thought and language, and it affects reality by making reality more intelligible. In short, language affects reality by bringing it into sharper focus and enhancing the already-existing intelligibility of the thing itself. Watcherhauser builds upon Gadamer’s notion of symbolon via a discussion of Plato’s Symposium. In Plato’s dialogue, Aristophanes gives a mythological account of how humans how come to be in their present “incomplete” form. Originally, humans were spherical and whole in themselves, needing no other to complete them sexually or otherwise. However, their self-sufficiency soon turned into pride that led to their downfall. As punishment for their arrogance and autonomy-gone-astray, the gods cut them in half and turned their sexual organs outward (in their present form) so that they would seek their completion in an other. Connecting this myth to Gadamer’s understanding of the belongingness of language, thought and reality, Wachterhauser writes,
The relevance of this myth for language is that in Gadamer’s terms language stands to reality like these two lovers stand to each other. Language belongs so closely to intelligible reality that although it is never synonymous with intelligible reality it is capable of ‘completing’ it in a sense by enhancing its intelligibility. Understanding is never merely a receptive act in which the intelligible form is, as it were, poured into us from without, but also always an achievement of language. Reality and language ‘belong together,’ like two lovers each of whom is essential to the other. This ‘belonging together’ that lovers experience is never simply experienced as ‘fate,’ as if it were preordained that they find each other and ‘complete’ each other. Such a ‘belonging together’ of lovers is also an achievement and a work of the lovers themselves. I say “also an achievement” because it is never solely their achievement. Love between two people cannot be forced; it depends on a prior disposition of each person, which allows them to ‘fit together.’ But love also does not succeed automatically; such ‘elective affinities’ require work and always remain, in part, a genuine achievement of the persons involved with each other (Beyond Being, 101).
Just as the two lovers must have a prior compatibility, so too must language and reality have this prior unity so that they might contribute to the other’s good rather than do violence to the other. In other words, just as a false lover by re-creating himself in the other is not really interested in what he can learn from the other, and how he might be transformed by the truth of the other, so too linguist theories that deny the intelligibility of reality in itself simply re-double the interpreter and leave no room for genuine reciprocity. Yet, as mentioned previously, on Gadamer’s view, language does not merely reflect reality, it also has a productive role which allows new insights to emerge. For example, when Richie Beirach (an amazing jazz pianist) plays Chopin’s Prelude Op. 28, No. 20 in C Minor, his performance is not identical to Chopin’s—it’s not a re-production or a mere repetition (as if such were possible). Beirach’s version adds something new to Chopin’s piece; yet, this something new in no way destroys the identity of the work, as anyone listening and familiar with the piece immediately recognizes it as Chopin’s Prelude Op. 28, No. 20 in C Minor.
