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Abstract
The paper continues an unfinished conversation with Pamela Sue Anderson on affectivity as a major feature of fundamental vulnerability. While Anderson was concerned mainly with the ethical dimension in the reciprocity of being affected and affecting others, the following deliberations begin with a phenomenological exploration of affectivity followed by a theological exploration. Andrea Bieler begins with the apophatic quality of affectivity that manifests itself in the oscillation of Leib-Sein and Körper-Haben. In this oscillation I do not fully know myself nor the other that I am encountering. It is in this apophatic twilight that a sense of being alive emerges as well as existential feelings that linger in the background and finally emotions that are driven by affective intentionality and certain tendencies towards action. While the poetics of the psalms hold the capacity to express existential feelings in relation to God and to the world, it is particularly the biblical understanding of divine affectivity that is important for a theological reflection. God’s mercy and steadfast justice resonate with God’s movability and capacity to be affected that are expressed in stories and images that reflect divine passions and love. Bieler suggests from a theological perspective that this understanding should inform the myths we live by.
disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 I encountered Pamela Sue Anderson in the Enhancing Life Project in the summer of 2015. I found her to be a scholar with a particular gift to develop ideas collaboratively. Pamela was an amazing listener who was willing to enter my cosmos of unfinished thoughts. Probably I fell short of being such a listener to her. I felt profound joy in the midst of our conversations. This joy still sticks with me when I think of her. I truly miss her collegial friendship. See <http://enhancinglife.uchicago.edu/blog/remembering-enhancing-life-scholar-pamela-sue-anderson> (accessed 27 Dec. 2019).
2 Pamela Sue Anderson, “Arguing for ‘Ethical’ Vulnerability: Towards a Politics of Care?” in Exploring Vulnerability, eds. Günter Thomas and Heike Springhart (Göttingen and Bristol, VT: Vandenhoeck, 2017) 147.
3 See Andrea Bieler, Verletzliches Leben. Horizonte einer Theologie der Seelsorge (Göttingen and Bristol, VT: Vandenhoeck, 2017) 147.
4 Anderson, “Arguing” 147.
5 Ibid.
6 In Verletzliches Leben I distinguish between fundamental vulnerability as the dimensions that are constitutive for all of human life and situational vulnerability that arises from particular circumstances (23–66).
7 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1968) 136–42.
8 See also Erinn Gilson, The Ethics of Vulnerability: A Feminist Analysis of Social Life and Practice, Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory (New York: Routledge, 2014) 26: 131–32.
9 See Andrea Bieler, “Enhancing Vulnerable Life: Phenomenological and Practical Theological Explorations” in Exploring Vulnerability 71–82. See Bieler, Verletzliches Leben 27–32.
10 See Bieler, “Enhancing Vulnerable Life” 78.
11 Chris Boesel and Catherine Keller, eds., Apophatic Bodies: Negative Theology, Incarnation, and Relationality (New York: Fordham UP, 2010).
12 Mayra Rivera, The Touch of Transcendence: A Postcolonial Theology of God (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2007) 73.
13 Thomas Fuchs, “The Phenomenology of Affectivity” in Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry, eds. K.W.M. Fulford et al. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015) 2, doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199579563.013.0038.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid. 2–3.
16 Matthew Ratcliffe, Feelings of Being: Phenomenology, Psychiatry and the Sense of Reality (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008) 68.
17 Psalm 31, New Revised Standard Version Bible (1989).
18 See Ratcliffe 67.
19 See Fuchs 7.
20 See ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 See ibid. 8.
24 Ibid.
25 Pamela Sue Anderson, “Creating a New Imaginary for Love in Religion,” ed. Paul S. Fiddes, in Love and Vulnerability: Thinking with Pamela Sue Anderson, ed. Pelagia Goulimari, Spec. issue of Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 25.1–2 (2020) 47]. She refers to Mary Midgley, The Ethical Primate: Humans, Freedom and Morality (London: Routledge, 1994) 109, and The Myths We Live by (London: Routledge, 2004).
26 Anderson, “Creating a New Imaginary for Love in Religion” 48.
27 Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets [1962] (New York: HarperCollins, 2001).