Читать книгу Human Being and Vulnerability - Joseph Sverker - Страница 8

My contention is that the political theorist and philosopher Judith Butler, the psycholinguist Steven Pinker and the systematic theologian Colin Gunton each will in various ways help to shed light on and challenge the polarization between social constructivism and biologist essentialism. And while Butler and Pinker respectively can readily be associated with one of these positions neither can be said to belong to it in any simplistic way. They do shed light on the positions as “insiders,” but not without some qualifications.

Interestingly, both Butler and Pinker engage with the nature/culture dichotomy, but to my mind unsatisfactorily in some important ways. Thus, close attention to their respective arguments will better substantiate the constructive engagement that I aim for. The selection of these thinkers will be motivated further, but first something needs to be said about the interdisciplinary approach of this book.

Christian theology is part of the constructive suggestion in this book. My view is that Christian doctrine is a resource for critical and constructive engagement with questions of the human being even when other perspectives are more pervasive and influential in what could be called a post-Christian society.9 But this hinges upon whether theology as “[a]n explanatory language has relevance in people’s lives,” as Dennis Bielfeldt put it.10 I hope to show that this is the case.

The second part of this book will show that Christian theological language has explanatory relevance. But in terms of Christian theological content, I think it could and perhaps even should be a living11 part of a post-Christian culture, if theologians are also aware of the problems, historical and contemporary, of such claims highlighted by, for example, feminist thought.12 For what would the self-professed polyvocality of the post-Christian society be worth if non-secular voices must remain silent unless they leave all normative claims behind?

Explanatory relevance is not only a challenge for theology, however. It can be argued that the weakness of interdisciplinary studies lies in not being informed enough about any of the respective fields. Yet, if theologian Philip Hefner is correct about the interconnectedness of all reality,13 then one must at least attempt an interdisciplinary study of reality. But what reality are we talking about?

I agree here with Charles Taylor that the level of enquiry when trying to understand the human condition should be on that of lived experience, the human lived reality.14 As William Desmond argues, there is something in the immediate experience of being, or in my terms, the immediate experience of the human lived reality, that demands an explanation of the wholeness of that experience.15 This reality is no doubt a “pluralism of intermediations,” to borrow a phrase from Desmond,16 and as such it is complex. But I think it can be explained in a more holistic way than is the case in, for example, the division between the social and the biological. There is, then, something fitting and even necessary about accounts that attempt to bring different disciplines together to explore the human lived reality.

The task is not so much to make the different perspectives understandable to each other as it is to make them interact. Yet this will not happen by itself. The aim here is therefore to be, in Eugene d’Aquili’s words, “deeply interdisciplinary.” As he writes, “[b]y deeply interdisciplinary I mean that the data from various disciplines are presented in an interpenetrated manner rather than simply juxtaposed.”17

As such, I do a close reading of the material in order to bring into interaction the thinkers with each other and with the issue I am concerned with here.18 Since this interaction does not happen on its own, “interact” should be seen as an active verb so that “interacting” Judith Butler, Steven Pinker and Colin Gunton demands activity from me as the interpreter. This does not mean that I seek to force meanings onto texts that are foreign to them, only that the act of interpretation is just that, an activity.

Problems in interdisciplinary studies can occur, though, in the translation between disciplines. Translation always contains its own difficulties, as expressed in the Italian saying, traduttore, traditore: translator, traitor. In different disciplines the same term can have different meanings and one term that might be central in one discipline carries no meaning whatsoever in another. But as J. T. M. Miller points out, this should not be an insurmountable difficulty to overcome.19 What is required is for the researcher to read enough to spot these differences in terminology, understand them and then “translate” them in relation to the other discipline and “deep” interdisciplinary interaction ensues.

The point is not to “translate” everything, though. Not everything that Butler, Pinker or Gunton have written will be relevant. My interest is in what they state about the human being and, secondly, what in their thought contributes to the said goal and how. My point is to see if all three perspectives can contribute to the resolution of the problem I want to address and, therefore, the aim is to treat all three thinkers on an equal footing. I do propose that theology brings some particular insights into this, but the “lead” in the constructive argument is taken by Butler, Pinker and Gunton variously and interchangeably, which means that the final product is an interwoven net of voices difficult to disentangle from each other.

As a starting point, some central questions are posed to the thinkers. Firstly, what are the most significant features in their respective views on the human being with regards to the question of social constructivism versus biologist essentialism? Secondly, what are the inherent weaknesses, or inconsistences, in each view with regards to questions of biology and culture? Thirdly, what resources can be found in the theories in order to move beyond a division between social constructivism and biologist essentialism on the question of the human being? And lastly, how can these resources be brought together to construct a fuller conception of the human being beyond the constructivism versus essentialism dichotomy?