Back to Benedict: L’Arche and Form-of-Life

Abstract

This article is explorative in that it seeks to say something about the theological and philosophical meaning of that form-of-life L’Arche represents; the form-of-life in which life within L’Arche is the constitutive element of and inseparable from its form and rule/s that define it. It is vital to note at the outset that characterizing L'Arche as a form-of-life is not an injunction against characterizing it as a practice in an Aristotelian sense, as has been done by several writers (Hauerwas, Reinders, and Swinton). Instead, my intention is to nuance prevailing ways of speaking of L’Arche to highlight how L’Arche is not only a milieu of living traditions where practices are embodied in ways that make the display of moral virtues and moral vices intelligible but also a form-of-life “that is of a life that, in its sequence, makes itself that very form, and coincides with it” and, in particular, how this life in its sequence constitutes the reality of a rule identified with its form-of-life. To speak of L’Arche in this way allows us to name the ethos (both habitus and dwelling) of L’Arche as a human form of life (singular) and disability as a plurality of forms therein where the becoming human of the human being occurs relative to its form-of-life. Methodologically, this framework makes it possible to characterize L’Arche as a form-of-life in relation to the way L’Arche lives. Such characterization is predicated on the presumption that the life L’Arche lives constitutes the reality of a rule and ethos identified with its form-of-life from which L’Arche draws its name, through which it is sanctified by means of time, and in which care is constitutive element.

Keywords:

• Jean Vanier
• L'Arche
• Rule of St. Benedict
• Giorgio Agamben
• form-of-life
• care

Acknowledgments

The author and publisher are grateful for permission to reprint a distillation of the account of Claudia’s discovery of her true self in relation to others within L’Arche. Used by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers. www.wipfandstock.com.