Volf on Innocent Victims

In these moments, as we struggle to come to grips with violence, both local and global, my thoughts return to Volf's "outrageous contention" that there are (almost) no innocent victims:

But what about the victims? Are not they innocent? No doubt, many a person has been violated at no fault of his or her own. Yet even if they are not to be blamed for the violation suffered, should we call them innocent? Let us assume that they were innocent before they were violated. Will they remain innocent after the act? Will they stay innocent as they are drawn into a conflict and as the conflict gathers in momentum? Some heroic souls might, but will the rest? Moreover, rather than entering conflicts at their inception, people often find themselves sucked into a long history of wrongdoing in which yesterday's victims are today's perpetrators and today's perpetrators tomorrow's victims. Is there innocence within such a history? With the horns of small and large social groups locked, will not the "innocent" be cast aside and proclaimed "guilty" precisely because they seek to be "innocent"? The fiercer the battle gets the more it is governed by the rule: "Whoever is not fighting with you is struggling against you." Can victims sustain innocence in a world of violence? [Exclusion and Embrace, 75-76].

Something in me revolts against this very analysis. However, I understand what he is after: among other things, the soiling effect of wanton violence consists in the fact that innocent people are sucked into cycles of rage, hatred, and vengefulness. This is not about blaming victims; it is about expanding the scope of harm that violence inflicts. I think.

Life Fragments and the Divine Counterpoint

One thing that I always found appealing in Bonhoeffer's writings is his frequent utilization of musical imagery. Terms such as polyphony, counterpoint, and cantus firmus frequently pop up. For instance, in one of the letters written from prison he reflects:

What matters, it seems to me, is whether one still sees, in this fragment of life that we have, what the whole was intended and designed to be.... After all, there are such things as fragments that are only fit for the garbage... and others which remain meaningful for hundreds of years, because only God could perfect them, so they must remain fragments—I’m thinking, for example, of [Bach's] the Art of the Fugue. If our life is only the most remote reflection of such a fragment, in which, even for a short time, the various themes gradually accumulate and harmonize with one another and in which the great counterpoint is sustained from beginning to end—so that finally, when they cease, all one can do is sing the chorale “Vor deinen Thron tret’ ich hiermit” [“I come before thy throne”]—then it is not for us, either, to complain about this fragmentary life of ours, but rather even to be glad of it.

I really love this image of how our fragmentary experiences—the spiritual spurts and frequent failures, the notable achievements and glaring disappointments, the noble aspirations and limiting realities—are held together by the unifying theme of divine love. Indwelling that vision enables us to be content and dwell in the present, with gratitude, rather than being incessantly ravaged by different forms of arrival fallacy. (The term was coined by the Harvard psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar to denote “the illusion that once we make it, once we attain our goal or reach our destination, we will reach lasting happiness.")

Faith as Peripatetics

This is a follow-up elaboration on “Existential Inventions.”

I understand existential theology to be a form of theological peripatetics; an adventure of sightseeing, journeying, pilgriming, and departing. Such theology is nomadic in style, a form of “Abrahamic voyage” certain about the destination but unclear about the true path. It is inquisitive and never quite certain (except about a few “grounding” facts), yet aims at bringing everything, perceptually and constructively, into the domain of God. It resonates with de Certeau’s image of walking the city, of inhabiting that urban body of interlaced texturology (Michael de Certeau’s wonderful neologism referring to the “texture” of city life, in turn, functioning as a metaphor for the culture at large). As such, it is interested in backside alleys, museums, centers of, commerce, tenement halls, subway stations, and soup kitchens. In other words, in all the comings and goings of humanity. The homeless woman on the street, shopping centers as shrines of affluence and style, theaters and the politics of art, sirens of emergency vehicles, Chicago Streetwise vendors, the ant-like traffic of uniformed merchants and corporate hagglers—all these afford not just different perceptual objects but also states of consciousness, civilizational aspirations and failures, an intermingling of utopian dreams and dystopian premonitions. Here the intertext of sign and story rises to the level of voice and image that peripatetic or existential theology both inhabits and departs, critiques and elaborates on. Such a theology is not just prophetic, but also voyeuristic and inquisitive. It questions and discovers, it proclaims and connects, it denounces and repents.

What I have in mind, therefore, is a discursive idiom, a way of thinking that recognizes the importance of strangeness, liminality, foreigners, and marginality, all of which, without resorting to needless self-victimization, explains certain autobiographical elements of my life. From my early experiences of growing up in Germany as a child of immigrants, to coming to age in a fatherless home, to the experienced animus against religion in socialist society, to the war in the former Yugoslavia and the Balkanization of identity, to being a foreigner in South Africa and the US—these and other factors have shaped me in profound ways...

Predrag Matvejević in his The Other Venice explores the famed city from "below", as it were, instead of from the perspective of the usual tourist attractions such as the Doge’s Palace or the Rialto Bridge. In the book he dwells on Venice’s graveyards, abandoned monasteries, neglected gardens, and back alleys, and examines them for the historical and symbolic significance, I like that approach because I too find myself scouring for the hidden or unappreciated shreds of underground Christianity, things that we have much fun parodying and debunking. I do so because I think that one of the tasks of faith and theology is to unearth these scraps from their over- and underuse, to imaginatively and critically resharpen them, to create a platform for cultural criticism and cultural engagement.

Memorization, Creativity, and Invention

One thing that strikes me as profoundly misguided is the trend to disparage memorization in educational and other contexts. While rote memorization certainly is problematic, there is no way to creativity and expertise but through careful curation of memories. (No hyperinflation of class discussions as a proxy for learning can muzzle that truth.) Nor is there a self to be had apart from memories. It was that reminder that struck me as I read Foer's Moonwalking with Einstein. Among other things, he notes that

remembering and creativity seem like opposite, not complementary, processes. But the idea that they are one and the same is actually quite old, and was once even taken for granted. The Latin root inventio is the basis of two words in our modern English vocabulary: inventory and invention. And to a mind trained in the art of memory, those two ideas were closely linked. Invention was a product of inventorying. Where do new ideas come from if not some alchemical blending of old ideas? In order to invent, one first needed a proper inventory, a bank of existing ideas to draw on. Not just an inventory, but an indexed inventory. One needed a way of finding just the right piece of information at just the right moment. This is what the art of memory was ultimately most useful for. It was not merely a tool for recording but also a tool of invention and composition. (203-204)

When I read those words, I took them to heart, validating that they were of my personal experience.

Relating to Truth

What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know, except in so far as a certain understanding must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do…. What good would it do me if the truth stood before me, cold and naked, not caring whether I recognized her or not, and producing in me a shudder of fear rather than a trusting devotion? Must not the truth be taken up into my life? That is what I now recognize as the most important thing.

So wrote Søren Kierkegaard in his 1835 journal entry. In a way, these words can be taken as an epigraph to his life as a whole, offering numerous gestures towards his key preoccupations: his critique of Hegelian idealism and abstraction in general, his disparaging of aesthetic existence, his loathing of religious formalism, intellectualism, and hypocrisy, to name but a few. In a way, it also speaks to a central element of the craft of living—the opening up to the demands of existential truth upon our lives, the whole question of one’s relation to truth. “Relation”—that’s the word! It encompasses, at the very least, our perceptual capacities (the ability to see the truth), existential appropriations (understanding it as it is for us), and responsible action (the enactment and inhabitation of truth).

And it is here that the enormity and difficulty of the whole issue come to the fore. After all, what do we even mean by such a univocal term as “truth”? That is, what kind of truth do we have in mind here? Are Kierkegaard’s words to be taken in an exclusively religious sense? If not, what possible other meanings could be implied? And then, what do we mean to say that truth has a “claim upon us”? What does it consist of? Finally, if I were to accede to the “claim” of truth after recognizing or perceiving it as such, how is the “taking up” of truth to take place? What kind of attitudes, qualities, and shaping does it imply? How could an askesis (training) in truthfulness be conceived off? Does it even make sense to talk about it in some generic sense?

I am asking this because I want to know and because I want to live it. I want to discover more of what it means to live truthfully.

Wolterstorff on the Virtue of Disagreement

Nicholas Wolterstorff's wonderful autobiography that I have been reading on and off, is filled, as expected, with nuggets of deep insights. As when he reminds us that

the ability to separate person from argument is essential to my profession of philosophy. Philosophy lives on disagreement; consensus would kill it off. When I taught an introduction to philosophy course, it always almost turned out that there were a few students in the class have who have not acquired the ability to separate the person from the argument. Someone would say something in class discussion, another member of the class would disagree with what he or she had said, whereupon a look of dejection would cross the face of the first student, sometimes tears.

He goes on to tell how he took it as his mission to teach students to separate person from argument. As good an educational goal as any other!

PS: I remember early in my teaching career telling a student during a class that she was wrong, as in having "wrongly reasoned." I might have as well insulted her by derogatory namecalling, that's how my quite innocent retort was perceived.

Coming into Being through Attentiveness

There are a number of reasons why Heidegger's thought matters to me, but perhaps the central reason is his following key insight: our presence enables the manifestation of the world. In other words, he stresses that

not only are we in direct contact with the people and things of this world, but also that our presence matters for how they are made manifest — how they come into presence — in the full potential that is associated with the sort of beings that they are. This is not our presence in a physical sense, but rather in the sense of how we are engaged as living, experiencing human beings — what Heidegger famously refers to as our “being in the world.” The thought is that our worldly presence matters for how things actually unfold, well beyond any physical or physiological processes that would purport to be the ultimate basis for human activity. So, for example, when we feel that someone is really listening to us, we feel more alive, we feel our true selves coming to the surface — this is the sense in which worldly presence matters. (Lawrence Berger )

People “coming into being” through our attentiveness! Right there, a life calling filled with purpose and wonder.

Existential Inventions

As an example of contrapuntal improvisation, inventio is the quintessential form of a musical exercise. In J. S. Bach’s work, inventions (or Aufrichtige Anleitugen) usually entail a short exposition, a longer development, and, sometimes, a short recapitulation (Invention # 5, for example). In contrast to the fugue, inventions do not generally contain an answer to the subject in the dominant key. They are less developed, less complete, not so grand. Frequently, the recapitulation is left open, hanging as it were, unfledged and without finality. Inventions are meant for developing students, for personal development of competence, and as a rule do not aspire to the limelight of concert halls, although many outstanding recordings of Bach's inventions exist (Glenn Gould!). When practiced regularly, they form the body to respond adequately to the stimuli of notes and measures, keys and metronomes. They require an embrace of askesis, a disciplined reiteration of practices whose stated aim is to turn us into proper practitioners, masters of the fundamentals of music performance. In a sense, they are both initiation rites and “technologies of the self” (Foucault), preludes to greater musical complexities with their balance of innovation and structure, predictability and surprise.

I want to utilize this simile of inventio as a symbolic shortcut for a particular existential style, a way of thinking about God, culture, and self through a cluster of interrelated metaphors: elaboration, incompleteness, discipline, practice, thematic unity, and performance...