Human Being and Vulnerability : Beyond Constructivism and Essentialism in Judith Butler, Steven Pinker, and Colin Gunton 9783838273419

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Joseph Sverker

“The vexed issue of nature versus nurture continues to stir up controversy across the Humanities. In this carefully crafted study, Joseph Sverker stages a cross-disciplinary conversation between Judith Butler, Steven Pinker, and Colin Gunton. Although it never happened in real life, this conversation has practical and profound, real-life consequences. Sverker’s proposal for a ‘kenotic personalism’ is required reading for anyone interested in philosophical and theological anthropology.”— Ulrich Schmiedel, Lecturer in Theology, Politics and Ethics, University of Edinburgh “Joseph Sverker’s Human Being and Vulnerability is an original and multi-focused analysis of the relations between the social and the biological. In bringing into conversation the disparate works of Judith Butler, Steven Pinker, and Colin Gunton, he explores the cultural, evolutionary, and theological dimensions that need to be addressed not only conceptually, but also pedagogically. We cannot properly address the complexities of the relations between biological, theological, and social life without understanding how these terms work together.”—Elizabeth Grosz, Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University

Joseph Sverker is a lecturer in Systematic Theology and Church History at Stockholm School of Theology on University College Stockholm. ISBN: 978-3-8382-1341-5

ibidem

HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY Beyond Constructivism and Essentialism in Judith Butler, Steven Pinker, and Colin Gunton

HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY

“Joseph Sverker engages the cultural constructivism of Judith Butler and the biological essentialism of Steven Pinker in a spirited interactive reading with Colin Gunton’s relational ontology, rooted in the personal interrelations of the Trinity and mediated in the particularities of an embodied, temporal creation. The surprising result is that such a conversation, which takes ‘openness to the other’ as the defining characteristic of the spirit, is able to overcome the initial contradictions in order to explore the possibilities of mutual cross-fertilisation. In his own proposal of a kenotic personalism Sverker shows that self-giving and vulnerability are crucial and complementary aspects of our being as persons in relation, most disturbingly and movingly disclosed in the person of Christ. This book is a compelling example of how sustained self-critical theological conversation can help to overcome the divisions and fissures in our worlds of discourse and meaning which shape the lived reality which we share.”—Christoph Schwöbel, Professor of Systematic Theology, School of Divinity, University of St Andrews

Joseph Sverker

Theology, Politics and Society, vol. 1

ibidem

Joseph Sverker

Human Being and Vulnerability Beyond Constructivism and Essentialism in Judith Butler, Steven Pinker, and Colin Gunton

THEOLOGY, POLITICS AND SOCIETY Edited by Jonas Kurlberg 1

Joseph Sverker Human Being and Vulnerability Beyond Constructivism and Essentialism in Judith Butler, Steven Pinker, and Colin Gunton ISBN 978-3-8382-1341-5

Joseph Sverker

HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY Beyond Constructivism and Essentialism in Judith Butler, Steven Pinker, and Colin Gunton

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Cover image: "Boy’s face behind torn paper". © 2020 by Joar Gunnarsmo. Cover design: Joseph Sverker.

ISBN-13: 978-3-8382-7341-9 © ibidem-Verlag, Stuttgart 2020 Alle Rechte vorbehalten Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Dies gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und elektronische Speicherformen sowie die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

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Table of Contents Acknowledgments ................................................................................ 8 Introduction.......................................................................................... 13 Interactive interdisciplinarity and human lived reality ......... 18 Social constructivism and biologist essentialism? ................... 22 Chapter 1: From interpellated subjecthood to recognized vulnerability ................................................................................. 35 On the human being, or becoming ............................................ 37 Gendered to be human ................................................................ 38 Performativity and human identity........................................... 40 Relationality and the constitution of humanity ....................... 50 The problematic body .................................................................. 52 Actions ........................................................................................... 57 Judith Butler and the person....................................................... 58 Desire and personhood ............................................................... 64 Recognition, personhood and grievability ............................... 67 Chapter 2: Being human nature ........................................................ 75 Language: window to human nature ........................................ 77 Nature/nurture ............................................................................ 81 Unique environment .................................................................... 85 Genes, personality and behavior ............................................... 87 Computationalism and the individual ...................................... 91 Webbed causality ......................................................................... 93 The individual and human nature............................................. 98 Death of the self again? ............................................................. 100 Openness and relationality in evolutionary psychology? .... 107 Chapter 3: Persons becoming in relations .................................... 111 Ontology of the person .............................................................. 114 Relationality, space and freedom ............................................. 118



6 TABLE OF CONTENTS Personalist and relational theological anthropology ............ 127 The divine and the human ........................................................ 131 The triune Creator and the anthropological significance of Christ .................................................................................... 136 Embodied human persons ........................................................ 144 “spirit,” sin and the question of ethics .................................... 151 Chapter 4: Going beyond: relationality, evolutionary theory and time............................................................................................... 157 Establishing a weak ontology of relationality ........................ 157 Re-reading the theory of evolution .......................................... 162 Evolution as performativity ...................................................... 174 Time matters ............................................................................... 176 The reality of body ..................................................................... 183 Chapter 5: Kenotic personalism ..................................................... 193 Primacy of “person”? ................................................................. 194 Kenosis, vulnerability and persons: the significance of selfgiving relations ................................................................... 200 Relation, mediation, interpellation .......................................... 202 Called in time .............................................................................. 208 The Gift of Vulnerability ........................................................... 212 The giving between persons ..................................................... 216 Kenosis and feminism ............................................................... 222 Kenosis and resistance ............................................................... 226 The gift of freedom..................................................................... 228 The most vulnerable?................................................................. 230 Conclusion: persons, individuals and institutions..................... 235 AI: artificial individualism? ...................................................... 235 Disclosing the nature/nurture problem ................................. 241 Back to school.............................................................................. 246 Individualism and personalism in school .............................. 248



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A love supreme? ......................................................................... 256 Bibliography ...................................................................................... 259 Index .................................................................................................... 287











Acknowledgments Learning is fascinating. Take school for example. When a lesson starts, one teacher and maybe 25-30 pupils are present. If all goes well everyone will know something they didn’t know at the beginning, and if things go really well the pupils also know why they should know what they have learnt and the teacher knows what the pupils have learnt. Steven Pinker stumbled into a rabbit hole when he studied language. It was one of those Alice in Wonderland rabbit holes where a world opens up behind it. For Pinker the verb system is an opening to the whole human mind. For Colin Gunton, in many ways it is the doctrine of the Trinity and for Judith Butler it is that some human lives are not recognized as human lives that open up vast vistas of thought and insights. For me learning in school came to be that rabbit hole that brought me to think about the whole human being. Learning happens all the time and everywhere and it is not restricted to the classroom. Learning is to understand more, to think anew, to be able to think differently or to acquire and perfect a skill. Learning can make someone change their mind or make new decisions for life. And most of the times learning is by small steps. I will be very happy if this book can be such a small step for some reader. As a teacher I rarely get to know if my courses have any impact on the students and I suspect that the same goes for books. Neither will my pupils and students know how much they have taught me throughout the years. I would have learnt much, much less were it not for you. So, thank you! What I do know, however, is the people that have had an impact on me, both as teachers and – since I’m writing a preface to a book after all – for the completion of this book. I am first of all very happy for the stimulating and constructive context in which this book was conceived, the research seminar of Systematic Theology at Uppsala University. I would like to thank Mattias Martinson, Katarina Westerlund, Thomas Ekstrand, Maria Essunger, Ida Simonsson, Ulf Bergsviker and Fredrik Wenell in particular. I also want to thank Petra Carlsson especially, warmly valued colleague and

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friend at the Stockholm School of Theology, for many insightful conversations. An especially warm thank you to my dad, Per-Axel Sverker, for reading and commenting on my texts throughout the years. The same goes for Jonas Kurlberg, who has also been the editor of this book. It has been a pleasure to mix friendship and work over this whole process. Many people have been willing to read separate chapters, or all of them, and given much valued comments. For that I am very grateful. Many thanks in particular to Lovisa Nyman, Mikael Lindfelt, Karin Johannesson, Kjetil Haftstad, Arne Rasmusson, Stephen Holmes and John Webster. I was deeply saddened by Professor John Webster’s passing; he encouraged me immensely the few times we had the opportunity to meet. The book is much improved by all your comments, and if it is not without faults, that only means that I can still learn more. Considering that this book starts off with a reflection on the relation between teachers and pupils in the context of school, I want to take the opportunity to thank some of the teachers that have been especially important to me. They might never read this and some will never get to know how much they have inspired and encouraged me, but I still want to mention Staffan Södergren at Almby högstadium, Dixie Ericsson at Karolinska läroverket and Staffan Nordin at Kulturskolan Örebro. I am also particularly grateful to Lish Eves and Peter Hicks who taught at the London School of Theology. They showed that lecturers can be not only brilliant theologians, but also wonderful people with deeply caring hearts. But my primary model as a teacher is in all reality my mum, Kristina Sverker. My gratefulness to her extends way beyond that of course, but she is my greatest inspiration as a pedagogue, not only for the self-giving love she had for her pupils but also because of her passion for pedagogy and determined belief in everyone’s capacity to learn. If she would have been alive when I started to think about the questions in this book, maybe it wouldn’t have taken so long to figure these things out. This book is in memory of her.







In memory of Kristina Sverker









[O]ur social personality is created by the thoughts of other people. […] We pack the physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we have already formed about him, and in the complete picture of him which we compose in our minds those ideas have certainly the principal place. In the end they come to fill so completely the curve of his cheeks, to follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the sound of his voice that these seem to be no more than a transparent envelope, so that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is our own ideas of him which we recognise and to which we listen. - Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way











Introduction The human being is between many things. Life takes place between birth and death, between the home and the political, between who I am and who I want to be, or, perhaps, as for Marcel Proust, between you and the idea of you. For some, the human being is also between God and creation. But the “between” that will be explored in this volume is that of biology on the one hand, and the social on the other. This particular “between” appears difficult to maintain in our contemporary society for one is often privileged over the other. There seems no easy way to reconcile the two. I intend to constructively engage this divide between biology and the social by conversing with critical theorist Judith Butler and psycholinguist Steven Pinker. With these two divergent perspectives, another seemingly conflicting account will be brought to the table, that of Colin Gunton’s theological anthropology. Why three such different thinkers? While it should be acknowledged that most theorists working on this question do reject simplistic binaries, much contemporary thought still maintains a dichotomy between the biological and the social. I hope that this study will shed some light as to why this division is so prominent in our society, not least in the school context. I have also chosen these thinkers because their different theories, when brought together in conversation, can inform a view of the human being in which the distinction between the biological and the social is less polarized. As Proust illustrates in my epigraph,1 the dichotomy between nature and nurture has concrete relevance in the meeting between people and I agree. I want to argue that theoretical discussions on this issue are of practical interest, particularly in institutionalized societies, and not least in the context of school. Teachers’ engagement with pupils is a pervasive feature of school, as it should be. And in their interaction with pupils, teachers

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Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, vol. I: Swann's Way, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin, & D. J. Enright (London: Vintage Books, 2005), 20.

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conceptualize the pupils throughout the day. But in this conceptualization of and engagement with the pupil there is an underlying anthropology, a theory of the human being, that is rarely expressed or made explicit. When I contemplated this as a teacher in Sweden, I realized that the implicit anthropology underlying professional discussions in school was incoherent. To clarify, when my colleagues and I conferred in what is called a pupil welfare meeting to discuss certain learning problems, such as dyslexia, we tended to switch our minds to a biological, not to say biologist, frame where the frontal and lateral lobes of the brain were in focus. But, if we instead were discussing a problem such as an eating disorder, we seemed to switch our minds to a social or cultural mode, thinking in constructivist terms of societal pressure, family situation and so on. However, when back in the classroom the teacher has to find a way to respond to the issue at hand, for in meeting the pupil the teacher needs to somehow make sense of the pupil’s biological and social sides in his or her practice. In the meeting between the teacher and the pupil a dichotomization between biology and the social is likely to be unhelpful but, as is shown here, turns out to even be problematic when coupled with wider questions of anthropology.2 One such problem that will be addressed already here is what I want to call the “addition model” of nature/nurture, where nature plus nurture equals a self as if two otherwise separate domains magically merge to create a whole. Philosopher and feminist theorist Elizabeth Grosz has similar concerns when she writes that “[b]iology is somehow regarded as the subject minus culture, as if this could result in anything but an abstraction or bare universal category.”3

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Fraser Watts, “The Multifaceted Nature of Human Personhood: Psychological and Theological Perspectives,” in Niels Henrik Gregersen, Willem B. Drees, & Ulf Görman (eds.), The Human Person in Science and Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000) and Sara Arrhenius, En riktig kvinna: om biologism och könsskillnad (Stockholm: Pocky, 1999). Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 191.



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This common “solution” to the nature/nurture dichotomy is unsatisfying and problematic,4 but I was not able to fully clarify why this should be so. This prompted me to look further into the question and my “school experience” worked as the entry point into the issue of the dichotomy between nature and nurture. Questions of ontology and anthropology on the nature/nurture divide are important in the school setting, but because the emphasis lies

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I am of course not alone in having this concern, nor in acknowledging the prevalence of the distinction between biology on the one hand and the social on the other. One would, for example, need to cite almost every single prominent feminist thinker from Simone de Beauvoir to Judith Butler and beyond for an extensive list. But to cite some influential thinkers, Donna Haraway and Anne Fausto-Sterling, as well as Elizabeth Grosz, should be mentioned for a particularly deep engagement with biology and the theory of evolution. See Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991); Donna J. Haraway, Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium.FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouse™: Feminism and Technoscience (New York: Routledge, 1997); Anne Fausto-Sterling, Myths of Gender: Biological Theories about Women and Men, 2nd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1992); Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sex/Gender: Biology in a Social World (New York: Routledge, 2012); Elizabeth Grosz, The Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution and the Untimely (Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2004); Elizabeth Grosz, Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power (Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2005); Elizabeth Grosz, Becoming Undone: Darwinian Reflections on Life, Politics, and Art (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011). From the Scandinavian side, see Toril Moi, “Vad är en kvinna? Kön och genus i feministisk teori,” Res Publica 35/36, no. 1-2 (1997): 71158; Toril Moi, “What Is a Woman? Sex, Gender, and the Body on Feminist Theory,” in Toril Moi, What is a Woman?: And Other Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) and Åsa Carlson, Kön, kropp och konstruktion: En undersökning av den filosofiska grunden för distinktionen mellan kön och genus (Stockholm: Symposion, 2001). From a more biological perspective, see Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides, & John Tooby (eds.), The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Henry D. Schlinger, “The Almost Blank Slate: Making a Case For Human Nurture,” Skeptic, 11, no. 2, 2004; Judith Rich Harris, The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do, 2nd ed. (New York: Free Press, 2009); Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (New York: Penguin, 2003). Within theology see Philip Hefner, The Human Factor: Evolution, Culture, and Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993).



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on the interaction between humans and the relation between the human being and institutions, the concerns I raise here are relevant to other areas too. Considering that many societies are institutionalized, meaning that the state’s influence over citizens becomes materialized in particular buildings and bureaucratic structures where someone will represent the state, the role of institution demands consideration. Here the school is a particularly good place to start as an institution of learning. As I hope to show, learning itself, when institutionalized, highlights the dichotomy between biology on the one hand and the social on the other. Thus, what follows is primarily an analysis that reveals what the foundational questions behind the nature/nurture dichotomy are. I also suggest ways in which the three thinkers can be of help to overcome that gap. My contention is that only by understanding why biology and the social consistently are pigeonholed into two distinct categories in today’s society will it be possible to move beyond a dichotomy of biologist essentialism on the one hand and social constructivism on the other. Many others have treated this question with much insight and without polarizing biology and the social. Examples can be found in epigenetics and the postgenomic development within biology to the New Materialist development within, for example, feminist thought and critical theory.5 I will broach this as a theologian, for I

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For examples see Maurizio Meloni, Simon J. Williams & P. A. Martin (eds.), Biosocial Matters: Rethinking Sociology-Biology Relations in the Twenty-First Century (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2016) and Maurizio Meloni, John Cromby, Desmond Fitzgerald & Stephanie Lloyd, The Palgrave Handbook of Biology and Society (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Many emphasize the area of epigenetics for this question (see Samantha Frost, Biocultural Creatures: Toward a New Theory of the Human (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016). Although sharing a similar interpretation of evolution (see ch. 5) I will not enter that field since my concern is in the main a discussion with evolutionary psychology. On New Materialism, see for example Grosz, Volatile; Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007); Stacy Alaimo & Susan J. Hekman (eds.) Material Feminisms (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008); Vicki Kirby, Quantum



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want to argue that there are also valuable resources in Christian theology that are largely ignored in secular discussions about the human being.6 Aspects of theological anthropology are relevant for thinking about the human being in contemporary society, particularly as a critical resource.7 But theology will here also work constructively with the other fields of enquiry. The purpose of this book, then, is to investigate two central issues concerning contemporary anthropological conversations. I want to bring the inconsistency in the underlying anthropological conceptions to the fore in order to return to the question of the concrete relation between the teacher and pupil. What I aim to do is to analyze the divide between a biologist essentialist and a social constructivist understanding of the human being with the help of resources from Christian doctrine and constructively elaborate a



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Anthropologies: Life at Large (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011); Vicki Kirby (ed.) What if Culture was Nature all Along? (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017) and Diana Coole, “Rethinking Agency: A Phenomenological Approach to Embodiment and Agentic Capacities,” Political Studies 53, no. 1 (2005): 124-142. Interestingly, sociologist Vicky Kirby has already pointed to how a nature/culture division is masked and maintained within a poststructuralist framework (Kirby, Quantum. See also Kirby (ed.), What if and Alaimo & Hekman (eds.), Material). There are of course other theologians that relate to New Materialism in different ways than what I propose here. One difference is the starting point from a context of radical theology or process theology as seen in, for example, John Reader, Theology and New Materialism: Spaces of Faithful Dissent (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and Petra Carlsson Redell, Foucault, Art and Radical Theology: The Mystery of Things (London: Routledge, 2019) or Susan Hekman, “Feminist New Materialism and Process Theology: Beginning a Dialogue,” Feminist Theology 25, no. 2 (2017): 198-207. My suggestion is not in any direct sense an attempt to correlate culture and Christian theology but rather to integrate theology with a culturally relevant question where theology has social effects (Hefner, Human, 17ff, 25f, 217ff; Mattias Martinson, Postkristen teologi: Experiment och tydningsförsök (Göteborg: Glänta Produktion, 2007), 10; Christoph Schwöbel, “Where Do We Stand in Trinitarian Theology?: Resources, Revisions, and Reappraisals,” in Christophe Chalamet & Marc Vial (eds.), Recent Developments in Trinitarian Theology: An International Symposium (Augsburg: Fortress Press, 2014), 11.



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perspective on the human being where the polarization of commonly opposed explanations, such as biological, constructivist and theological, is not maintained. In this there is a connection between anthropological conceptions and ethics as well as ontology and ethics. But the ethics that need to be developed as a consequence of my work can only be hinted at here.8

Interactive interdisciplinarity and human lived reality 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.

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But important here are Alasdair C. MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (London: Duckworth, 1999); Catriona Mackenzie, Wendy Rogers, & Susan Dodds (eds.), Vulnerability: New Essays in Ethics and Feminist Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Erinn C. Gilson, The Ethics of Vulnerability: A Feminist Analysis of Social Life and Practice (London: Routledge, 2014) and Sofia Morberg Jämterud, Human Dignity: A Study in Medical Ethics (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2016). For a good overview of the relation between ethics and vulnerability, see Catriona Mackenzie, Wendy Rogers, & Susan Dodds, “Introduction: What Is Vulnerability and Why Does It Matter for Moral Theory?,” in Catriona Mackenzie, Wendy Rogers, & Susan Dodds (eds.), Vulnerability: New Essays in Ethics and Feminist Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).



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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

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Martinson, Postkristen. Whether our society is “post-Christian” or “post-secular” the position and place of Christian theology in it needs to be carefully clarified (Ola Sigurdson, Det postsekulära tillståndet: religion, modernitet, politik (Göteborg: Glänta produktion, 2009)). Dennis Bielfeldt, “The Peril and Promise of Supervenience for the Science-Theology Discussion,” in Niels Henrik Gregersen, Willem B. Drees, & Ulf Görman (eds.), The Human Person in Science and Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 142. See John Webster, “Theological Theology,” in John Webster, Confessing God: Essays in Christian Dogmatics, Vol. II (London: T&T Clark, 2016). For a critique of this position see Mattias Martinson, “Silence, Rupture, Theology: Towards a Post-Christian Interdisciplinarity,” in Heather Walton (ed.) Literature and Theology: New Interdisciplinary Spaces (Burlington: Ashgate, 2011). See John Webster, “Theological Theology,” in John Webster, Confessing God: Essays in Christian Dogmatics, Vol. II (London: T&T Clark, 2016). For a critique of this position see Mattias Martinson, “Silence, Rupture, Theology: Towards a Post-Christian Interdisciplinarity,” in Heather Walton (ed.) Literature and Theology: New Interdisciplinary Spaces (Burlington: Ashgate, 2011).



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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

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Hefner, Human, 151. See also William H. Newell, “A Theory of Interdisciplinary Studies,” Issues in Integrative Studies 19, no. 1 (2001): 1-25. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 4f; Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989). See also Christian Smith, Moral, Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). William Desmond, Being and the Between (New York: State University of New York Press, 1995), 7. In Desmond’s argument, it is when our lived experience is “given” to us in this process of self-reflection that we also can receive it, a “beholding of” wholeness. That is, we become aware of it as an experience of being through self-reflection (Desmond, Being, 10). William Desmond, God and the Between (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 10.



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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

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Eugene d’Aquili, “Apologia pro Scriptura Sua: Or, Maybe We Got It Right after All,” Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 28, no. 2 (1993): 251-266, as quoted in Hefner, Human, 264. As Dawn Youngblood points out, interdisciplinary studies are often problem-oriented, as is mine (Dawn Youngblood, “Interdisciplinary Studies and the Bridging Disciplines: A Matter of Process,” Journal of Research Practice 3, no. 2 (2007)). J. T. M. Miller, “Methodological Issues for Interdisciplinary Research,” Postgraduate English: A Journal and Forum for Postgraduates in English, no. 23, Sep. 2011 (2011), 8.



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INTRODUCTION

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?

Social constructivism and biologist essentialism? It is worth pointing out from the outset that neither Butler nor Pinker clearly identifies with either “social constructivism” or “biologist essentialism” as exclusive categories. Therefore, some clarification needs to be offered regarding their respective relations to, as well as a definition of, these terms even if Gunton’s position can more readily be identified as a theological anthropological view. Despite its short history as a concept, “social constructivism” has had a widespread influence on both academic disciplines and the general public. The term came into use following Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s seminal book The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge.20 But “social constructivism” is no unified term and I follow largely the definition, as well

20

Peter L. Berger & Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1966).



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY

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as the distinction, of “weak” versus “strong” social constructivism advanced by sociologist Christian Smith.21 Smith defines “weak” social constructivism as the view that [a]ll human knowledge is conceptually mediated and can be and usually is influenced by particular and contingent sociocultural factors such as material interests, group structures, linguistic categories, technological development, and the like – such that what people believe to be real is significantly shaped not only by objective reality but also by their sociocultural contexts.22

The “strong” version of social constructivism embraces the weak version in the main, yet is characterized, as Smith sees it, by an idealist and not a realist view of reality. Reality itself for humans is a human, social construction, constituted by human mental categories, discursive practices, definitions of situations, and symbolic exchanges that are sustained as “real” through ongoing social interactions that are in turn shaped by particular interests, perspectives, and, usually, imbalances of power – our knowledge about reality is therefore entirely culturally relative, since no human has access to reality “as it really is” […] because we can never escape our human epistemological and linguistic limits to verify whether our beliefs about reality correspond with externally objective reality.23

Smith’s definition of a “strong” social constructivism moves somewhat from ontology to epistemology but provides a useful continuum within which different constructivist theories can be placed. This avoids the question of whether there are thinkers who adopt an extreme position of social constructivism, in which “everything” is understood to be socially constructed.24 Thus, “weak”

21

22

23 24

Christian Smith, What is a Person?: Rethinking Humanity, Social Life, and the Moral Good from the Person Up (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010), 121ff. Smith, Person?, 122. Smith calls the weak version of social constructivism the ‘realist’ version, linking it thus with the other essential epistemological starting point in his argument, namely, critical realism. Smith, Person?, 122. Ian Hacking, The Social Construction of What? (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1999), 24ff. Smith’s view of ‘strong’ constructivism comes close to what Ian Hacking, in reference to John Searle’s work on social constructivism, calls ‘universal constructionism’ that would claim that ‘everything’ is socially constructed (Hacking, Social,



24

INTRODUCTION

and “strong” constructivism are not used here as two mutually exclusive categories. Rather, they provide a continuum in which even individual thinkers travel closer and further from the “weak” and the “strong” poles. In this view, Judith Butler is placed toward the strong end of the social constructivist spectrum, but she is no linguistic idealist. Butler herself critiques “radical” or “linguistic” constructivism on the basis that “[t]he radical constructivist position has tended to produce the premise that both refutes and confirms its own enterprise,”25 The main question for a “position of linguistic monism,” according to Butler, where “everything is only and always language,”26 is who is the agent, who is doing the construction? This type of constructivism, for Butler, “not only presupposes a subject, but rehabilitates precisely the voluntarist subject of humanism that constructivism has, on occasion, sought to put into question.”27 Butler’s solution is instead a type of constructivism which maintains a great skepticism toward any such subject, or doer of the construction who would be temporally and spatially “prior” to construction.28 Butler might still belong within the range of a strong constructivism,29 but this needs to be developed in the next chapter since



25 26 27 28 29

24). But, the term ‘strong’ is to be preferred over ‘universal’ since it indicates a continuum and with no necessary decisive point of transition from ‘weak’ to ‘strong’ versions of constructivism. Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the discursive limits of “sex”, Special Indian ed. (New York: Routledge, 2011), xv. Butler, Bodies, xv. Butler, Bodies, xvi. Butler, Bodies, xvi. See Lena Gunnarsson, On the Ontology of Love, Sexuality and Power: Towards a Feminist-Realist Depth Approach (PhD, Örebro University, 2013), 25, chs. 3 and 6. However, there is no consensus on how to categorize Butler. Lois McNay, political theorist, sees Butler’s view on subject, psyche and agency as a “constructivist perspective” (Lois McNay, “Subject, Psyche and Agency: The Work of Judith Butler,” Theory, Culture & Society 16, no. 2 (1999): 175-193, 176). The political theorist Moya Lloyd, on the other hand, argues that Butler should be called a “deconstructionist” (Moya Lloyd, Judith Butler: From Norms to Politics (Cambridge: Polity



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY

25

Butler’s critique of radical constructivism is closely linked with questions of the human subject.30 Even if Butler cannot be seen to represent all types of social constructivism, she is helpful for understanding problems and potentials with a social constructivist view of the human being in relation to biologist anthropologies. And considering that Butler challenges the division between sex as natural and gender as cultural, and attempts to move beyond the polarization between biology and the social herself, it is of interest to engage with her argument. In contrast to “social constructivism,” the term “biologist essentialism” has no real wide currency. I use it as a compound of two concepts, “biologism” on the one hand and “essentialism” on the other. Cultural critic Sara Arrhenius defines “biologism” as the “confident conviction that biology can encompass the whole human being.”31 Being a worldview, biologism makes wider claims than the scientific field of biology. The distinction from the science of biology is important since it clarifies biologism as a framework within which the human being should be understood. It is not then a case of “science versus the humanities,” but rather two discourses



30

31

Press, 2007), 72). However, as sociologists John Hood-Williams and Wendy Cealey Harrison point out, Butler does not use Derrida in a particularly deconstructivist way but rather uses Derrida’s ideas methodologically (John Hood-Williams & Wendy Cealey Harrison, “Trouble with Gender,” The Sociological Review 46, no. 1 (1998): 73-94, 81). And theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid, sees Butler as interrogating materiality as constructed through performativity (Marcella AlthausReid, “Bodily Citations: Religion and Judith Butler,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 22, no. 3 (2007): 416-418, 416. Political theorist Stephen K. White also views Butler as a constructivist thinker, but, importantly, with weak ontological assumptions (Stephen K. White, Sustaining Affirmation: The Strengths of Weak Ontology in Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 85). Vicky Kirby is correct, in my view, that “[t]he difficulty in Butler’s project is considerable, for she has to juggle a critique of construction while still defending its most basic tenets” (Vicky Kirby, Telling Flesh: The Substance of the Corporeal (New York: Routledge, 1997), 105). But Axel Honneth’s critique is not quite on the mark (Axel Honneth et al., Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea, The Berkeley Tanner lectures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 69). Arrhenius, Riktig, 20 [my translation].



26

INTRODUCTION

that are compared when social constructivism and biologism confront each other. “Essentialism” as a term is traditionally connected with the question of the soul as the essence of the human being. However, as philosopher Elizabeth Grosz points out, essentialism can also be seen as the attribution of fixed essences and can therefore be connected with biologism.32 As philosopher of science Susan Oyama points out, essentialism enters in many disguises and in biology it is found in the assumption of innate traits. Oyama writes correctly that “[i]nnate” characters are thought to be internally generated and trebly static: immutable in individuals, uniform across generations, and/or universal in individuals. They are attributed to genetic programs “for” those features, and are frequently assumed to be either inevitable or changeable only at heavy cost.33

Thus, there is an innatist assumption in exploring internal traits of a universal human psyche or nature.34 This innatist view of the gene is by no means the only view presented by biologists,35 but it is influential within evolutionary psychology.

32

33 34

35

Elizabeth Grosz, Space, Time, and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies (London: Routledge, 1995), 47-49. See also Kirby, Telling, 68, 171. The problem of biologism and feminism links back to the neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, according to Kirby. Here biologism, the thought that the woman is her body, was strongly established and later developed by Charcot’s colleague, Sigmund Freud (Kirby, Telling, 59). Susan Oyama, Evolution's Eye: A Systems View of the Biology-Culture Divide (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 82. “Universal” here is well defined by the psychologist David Buss as “[f]eatures found across cultures, races, and populations are assumed to be more part of human nature than those features that are unique to certain subgroups or individuals” (David M. Buss, “Evolutionary Biology and Personality Psychology: Toward a Conception of Human Nature and Individual Differences,” American Psychologist 39, no. 10 (1984): 1135-1147, 1138). See also Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (London: Phoenix, 1996), 45f. See Sarah S. Richardson & Stevens Hallam (eds.), Postgenomics: Perspectives on Biology After the Genome (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015) and Haraway, Simians.



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27

Evolutionary psychology, which owes much to John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, and which Pinker shares, is worked out in opposition to a particular understanding of the social sciences. Tooby and Cosmides argue that the starting point of the Standard Social Science Method (SSSM) is to state that all is culture, culture is the autonomous agent of change.36 Against this is proposed a clear actor who acts upon culture, rather than is acted upon by culture. Further, essentialism is apparent in another main principle of evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology proposes that the human genome evolved over a long period of time in the conditions of the Pleistocene era,37 but went through a “population bottleneck […] fairly recently in evolutionary history,” as Steven Pinker puts it.38 After that “population bottleneck” there was no more significant change in the human genome to alter human psychology. Even if human nature is not unchangeable evolutionarily speaking, it is nonetheless assumed that the change is so slow in terms of the essential constituents of the universal human nature that it is insignificant for all important purposes. The essence of human nature is found in the genes of which the human body is the “vehicle.”39 To sum up, evolutionary psychology is essentialist in that all human beings share a particular and unchanging human nature. It

36

37

38

39

John Tooby & Leda Cosmides, “The Psychological Foundations of Culture,” in Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides, & John Tooby (eds.), The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 23-26; Pinker, Blank, 30-104. Interestingly, see Christian Smith for a not dissimilar critique, but from the area of sociology itself (Smith, Person?, ch. 1). Yet Smith does not agree with theories such as Tooby and Cosmides’ that he calls “naturalistic positivist empiricism” (Smith, Person?, 4). John Tooby & Leda Cosmides, “Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, Part I: Theoretical Considerations,” Ethology and Sociobiology 10, no. 1–3 (1989): 29-49, 34f. Pinker, Blank, 143. For a problematization of that description, see David Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past (New York: Pantheon Books, 2018). For a discussion on replicators versus vehicles and ‘survival machines’, see Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 30th Anniversary ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 19.



28

INTRODUCTION

is a biologist essentialism since it assumes that human nature is based on a shared human genome. And, from the vantage point of genes as “replicators” and the human body as “carriers” of the gene, evolutionary psychology also relies on a dualism, as theologian Conor Cunningham has argued convincingly.40 On a final note, biologism as well as essentialism, in certain traditions, are decidedly pejorative terms. It is not my intention to use them with any such undertones here. Also, if I were to transfer the terms “strong” and “weak” used for constructivism, then biologist essentialism is a weak essentialism since the proposed essence is not ontologically unchangeable or of a different essence from the body.41 Interestingly, just like Butler, Pinker argues that his understanding of the human being renders the distinction between nature and nurture obsolete. Indeed, some argue that this is an inherent feature of evolutionary psychology itself.42 My point, however,

40

41

42

Conor Cunningham, Darwin's Pious Idea: Why the Ultra-Darwinists and Creationists Both Get It Wrong (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2010), 42. See also David L. Hull, Science as a Process: An Evolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual Development of Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). Although, as Cunningham argues, if one maintains the replicator/vehicle dualism as part of the theory of evolution then, as he phrases it, one introduces a “pre-Darwinian essentialism” (Cunningham, Darwin's, 67) into the theory of evolution that is in conflict with, in Cunningham’s words, the “very dynamic nature of the biological world, spelled out so well by Darwin” (Cunningham, Darwin's, 58). For how this anti-essentialist understanding has emerged in the last three decades and its implications for the view of nature/nurture, see Maurizio Meloni, “How biology became social, and what it means for social theory,” The Sociological Review 62, no. 3 (2014): 593-614 and further developed in Maurizio Meloni, Impressionable Biologies: From the Archeology of Plasticity to the Sociology of Epigenetics (New York: Routledge, 2019). Jaime C. Confer et al., “Evolutionary Psychology: Controversies, Questions, Prospects, and Limitations,” American Psychologist 65, no. 2 (2010): 110-126, 116. Rightly, David Bjorklund and Anthony Pellegrini state that evolutionary developmental psychology has “come to rephrase the nature-nurture issue, asking not ‘how much’ of any characteristic is due to nature or nurture but rather ‘How do nature and nurture interact to produce a particular pattern of development?’” But, as they continue, “simply restating the question in this way advances the



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is that while this is a positive development in biology, in the end, just as with Butler, there are problems, but also indeed useful insights in Pinker’s accounts of the human being. What about theological anthropology then? As theologian Michelle Voss Roberts succinctly puts it, treating “topics such as human nature and purpose, freedom and sin, and difference and gender, this doctrine [theological anthropology] deals with what it means to be a human being in relation to our divine source.”43 The inclusion of the divine distinguishes theological anthropology from social constructivism and biologist essentialism. This distinctly non-secular starting point of theological anthropology entails, as suggested by John Webster, “the dogmatic



43

argument little. The developmental systems approach specifies how biological and environmental factors at multiple levels of organization transact to produce a particular pattern of ontogeny” (David F. Bjorklund & Anthony D. Pellegrini, The Origins of Human Nature: Evolutionary Developmental Psychology (Washington: American Psychological Association, 2002), 335). Similar claims were made for the theory preceding evolutionary psychology, namely that of sociobiology. There was a lively debate about the claims of sociobiology in the late 1970s and early 1980s and much attention was placed on the issue of nature and nurture. See Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1975); George W. Barlow & James Silverberg, Sociobiology, Beyond Nature/Nurture?: Reports, Definitions, and Debate (Boulder: Westview Press for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1980); Michael Ruse, Sociobiology: Sense or Nonsense? (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979); Ashley Montagu & Jerome H. Barkow, Sociobiology Examined (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980); John D. Baldwin & Janice I. Baldwin, Beyond Sociobiology (New York: Elsevier, 1982); Marshall Sahlins, The Use and Abuse of Biology: An Anthropological Critique of Sociobiology (London: Tavistock Publications, 1977); and Ullica Segerstråle, Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Michelle Voss Roberts, Body Parts: A Theological Anthropology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), xxiii.



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INTRODUCTION

depiction of human identity as it is shaped by the creative, regenerative and glorifying work of the triune God.”44 But theological anthropology cannot completely be separated from its secular counterparts. For as theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg points out, theology and anthropology are inseparable and theologians “must begin their reflection with a recognition of the fundamental importance of anthropology for all modern thought and for any present-day claim of universal validity for religious statements.”45 For Pannenberg, this is not to say that theology is anthropology, the argument famously put forward by Ludwig Feuerbach,46 but rather that anthropology is a central concern for theology.47 The theological anthropology that is of most interest here is what could be called a “relational” anthropology.48 The meaning of this concept will be expounded in much greater detail in chapter 4 and also part II, but can in brief terms be said to be the view that the human being becomes who she centrally is only in and by the relations in which she finds herself. The starting point for this anthropology is often an interpretation of the Genesis creation account together with a “social” understanding of the Trinity, but more recently there has been much

44

45 46

47 48

John Webster, “Eschatology and Anthropology,” in John Webster, Word and Church: Essays in Christian Dogmatics, 2nd ed., vol. I (London: T&T Clark, 2016), 263; Webster, “Theological,” 24ff. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Anthropology in Theological Perspective, trans. Matthew J. O'Connell (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1985), 16. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. George Eliot (New York: Harper & Row, 1957 [first published 1841]). See also Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, trans. Richard Crouter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996 [first published 1799]). For this, see also John Macquarrie, Principles of Christian Theology, revised ed. (London: SCM Press, 1977). See F. LeRon Shults, Reforming Theological Anthropology: After the Philosophical Turn to Relationality (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2003) and Bo Sandahl, Person, relation och Gud: Konstruktionen av ett relationellt personbegrepp i nutida trinitarisk teologi (PhD, Centrum för teologi och religionsvetenskap, Lunds universitet, 2004).



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critique of “social trinitarianism(s).”49 Further, Marc Cortez, a main voice within theological anthropology today, sees some problems with a relational interpretation of Genesis 1 and sides therefore more hesitantly with a relational theological anthropology. Nevertheless, he concludes that “despite criticisms about the exegetically unfounded nature of the relational imago, it remains a viable candidate for understanding this important concept,“50 if, as Cortez argues, theological anthropology is founded on christology rather than by analogy with the doctrine of the Trinity.51 This point, emphasized by many theologians also before Cortez and which is the “traditional” route to theological anthropology,52 is an important argument for this book. Gunton rarely refers to the nature/nurture question explicitly but pays much attention to what he sees as a confused relationship between culture and nature in Modernity and late Modernity.53 Gunton views this as a theological problem due to Modernity’s, as

49

50 51

52

53

As only one example by a former PhD student of Colin Gunton, see Stephen R. Holmes, The Holy Trinity: Understanding God's Life (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2012). Marc Cortez, Theological Anthropology: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 27. Marc Cortez, Christological Anthropology in Historical Perspective: Ancient and Contemporary Approaches to Theological Anthropology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016) and Marc Cortez, “The Madness in Our Method: Christology as the Necessary Starting Point for Theological Anthropology,” in Joshua Ryan Farris & Charles Taliaferro (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Theological Anthropology (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015). Kathryn Tanner is just one example, but her impressively concise book, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity: A Brief Systematic Theology, sums it up well, together with relevant historical references (Kathryn Tanner, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity: A Brief Systematic Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001)). Colin E. Gunton, The One, the Three, and the Many: God, Creation, and the Culture of Modernity, The Bampton Lectures 1992 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), xiii. Gunton views “culture” as the result of “human activity” and the relationship between “culture’ and ‘nature” is that “culture takes shape in the context of what is sometimes called nature.” So that, for Gunton, “[t]he created world provides the framework within which human activity takes place” (Gunton, The One, xiii).



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INTRODUCTION

he states, “displacement of God.”54 While Gunton’s critique of Modernity will be challenged below, certain aspects of his theological engagement with culture are helpful. In chapter 1 Judith Butler’s theory of performativity is explained in relation to its implications for her view of the self and the subject. I argue that the human subject is constituted by norms outside of the subject’s control. For Butler, one is called, or interpellated, into subjecthood. As such, Butler develops a relational view of the human where vulnerability and precariousness become more and more significant, as does embodiment. I show how this embodied relationality even takes on an ontological meaning in Butler. Notions such as interpellation, vulnerability and “the other” will thus be discussed in some detail. The next chapter expounds on Pinker’s understanding of evolutionary psychology and its implications. I suggest that Pinker’s interest in language provides the link between biology and culture in his account of the human being. I also argue that there is a duality to Pinker’s thinking about the human being. The prominent side of this duality is biologist essentialist with genes as “atoms” of evolution and an emphasis on innate traits. The other, less developed, side has an opening toward the relational with concepts such as “group identity” and “unique environment.” Chapter 3 turns to Colin Gunton’s theological anthropology. For Gunton, this is linked with the doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine of creation, as well as christology, and these notions must be dealt with to understand Gunton’s view of the human being. The idea of a relational ontology is key for his thinking and in this a

54

Gunton, The One, 28. Gunton’s view of Modernity is one that states that Modernity in its very definition should be understood as the rejection of God. As numerous thinkers have pointed out, the view that Modernity is anti-religious and necessarily secularist is more a part of a secularist self-understanding itself rather than an accurate description of the development of Modernity. See Taylor, Secular; Michael Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008); Martinson, Postkristen, 12, 69ff; Sigurdson, Postsekulära; Jayne Svenungsson, Guds återkomst: En studie av gudsbegreppet inom postmodern filosofi (Göteborg: Glänta Produktion, 2004) and Joel Halldorf, Av denna världen? Emil Gustafson, moderniteten och den evangelikala väckelsen (Skellefteå: Artos & Norma bokförlag, 2012).



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strong stress is put on the concept of the person in his anthropology. I then argue that the relation between human persons and the divine is strongly linked to christology for Gunton and this has important implications for the constructive discussion between these thinkers. In the following three chapters I bring Butler, Pinker and Gunton into interaction with one another. In particular, a relational reading of evolutionary theory, of time, materiality and the body will be advanced. Chapter 4 gathers some general aspects from the three theories to show that a polarization of relationality, nature, and the body from the three perspectives is not necessary. This is done with a particular focus on the theory of evolution, and aspects of time and materiality. What is developed is a relational ontology, but I propose a “weak” ontology in contrast to Gunton’s “strong” ontological claims. This more general groundwork leads to a discussion focused on the human being in chapter 5. My “interactive” reading attempts to bridge the gap between nature and nurture on the one hand, and ontology and ethics on the other. If human lived reality is constituted relationally, then ethics and being are closely related, or so I argue. I present what I call a kenotic personalism that emphasizes the person as the fundamental concept for the human being, but personhood as a gift that occurs through particular and bodily relations between human beings. Considering our fundamental vulnerability, the relation that constitutes the human person is that of self-giving love, or kenosis. Chapter 6 brings the threads together and firstly works out the relation between personalism and individualism to then return to the school example with which everything began. I argue that the question of a divide between the biological and the social in the context of school opened up a more basic issue, namely that of institutions’ individualization of fundamentally vulnerable and dependent human body-persons.





Chapter 1: From interpellated subjecthood to recognized vulnerability “There is an ethics that is performed through her [Butler’s] mode of inquiry, which is committed to beginning from the margins and the marginalized to query the social norms and structures that condition, enable, and animate forms of marginalization.”1 These words by philosopher Annika Thiem summarize Butler’s main concern well. Throughout Butler’s work ethics and politics are difficult to disentangle,2 and the main concern for her is to make visible the processes which dehumanize, marginalize and refuse to give recognition to some humans.3 Here, Butler argues that both the idea of “nature” and “the natural” as primary concepts and the idea of an

1

2

3

Annika Thiem, Unbecoming Subjects: Judith Butler, Moral Philosophy, and Critical Responsibility (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 8. See also Chambers & Carver, Judith Butler, 8. Whether ethics and politics should be placed in opposition or not in Butler is a complex question. See Judith Butler, “Politics, Power and Ethics: A Discussion between Judith Butler and William Connolly,” Theory and Event 4, no. 2 (2000): 24-36 where Butler purports to be disturbed by the “turn to ethics” (5). Yet, as Lloyd points out, Butler has revised that position somewhat lately (Lloyd, Butler, 154). See also Moya Lloyd (ed.), Butler and Ethics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015); Moya Lloyd, “Towards a Cultural Politics of Vulnerability: Precarious Lives and Ungrievable Deaths,” in Terrell Carver & Samuel Allen Chambers (eds.), Judith Butler's Precarious Politics: Critical Encounters (London: Routledge, 2008), 102-104. Interestingly, in Butler’s most recent work she wants to work toward “the ethical in the political,” see Judith Butler, The Force of Nonviolence: The Ethical in the Political (London: Verso, 2020). Judith Butler, “Precarious Life: The Obligations of Proximity,” in The Neale Wheeler Watson Lecture (Nobel Museum, Stockholm, 2011); Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004), 205; Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso, 2006), xv. See further Sara Salih, “Introduction,” in Sara Salih & Judith Butler (eds.), The Judith Butler Reader (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 3; and Saba Mahmood, “Agency, Performativity and the Feminist Subject,” in Ellen T. Armour & Susan M. St. Ville (eds.), Bodily Citations: Religion and Judith Butler (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 180.

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FROM INTERPELLATED SUBJECTHOOD

origin have to be challenged in order to give recognition to those who are now not recognized.4 As such, her main concern with the structures of recognition and misrecognition is directly linked with her anthropology. Judith Butler (1956-) calls herself a “latecomer to the second wave,”5 and positions herself within “feminist poststructuralism.”6 She is the Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature and the Co-director of the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley. But Butler does not explicitly write about either rhetoric or comparative literature. She is instead mainly a political and critical thinker and philosopher where gender, sexuality and political inequality are main concerns.7 All of these are in some sense linked to Butler’s view of the human being.

4

5 6 7

See Butler, Force, based on Butler’s 2018 Gifford lectures, where this argument is sharpened even to reject the exception of self-defense in a commitment to non-violence (Judith Butler, “My Life, Your Life: Equality and the Philosophy of Non-Violence,” The Gifford Lectures (University of Glasgow, Glasgow, 2018). Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004), 176. Butler, Undoing, 194. Butler has had a significant impact in a wide variety of subjects, though, from her very earliest work up until today. See for example Linda M. G. Zerilli, “Feminists know not what they do: Judith Butler’s gender trouble and the limits of epistemology,” in Terrell Carver & Samuel Allen Chambers (eds.), Judith Butler's Precarious Politics: Critical Encounters (London: Routledge, 2008), 28-29; McNay, “Subject”; Margaret Sönser Breen & Warren J. Blumenfeld (eds.), Butler Matters: Judith Butler's Impact on Feminist and Queer Studies (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005); Bronwyn Davies, “Subjectification: The Relevance of Butler's Analysis for Education,” British Journal of Sociology of Education 27, no. 4 (2006): 425-438; Ellen T. Armour & Susan M. St. Ville (eds.), Bodily Citations: Religion and Judith Butler (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), vii; Miriam David et al., “Troubling Identities: Reflections on Judith Butler's Philosophy for the Sociology of Education,” British Journal of Sociology of Education 27, no. 4 (2006): 421-424; Terrell Carver & Samuel Allen Chambers (eds.), Judith Butler's Precarious Politics: Critical Encounters (London: Routledge, 2008) and Samuel A. Chambers & Terrell Carver, Judith Butler and Political Theory: Troubling Politics (New York: Routledge, 2008), 3ff.



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On the human being, or becoming Precisely because “female” no longer appears to be a stable notion, its meaning is as troubled and unfixed as “woman,” and because both terms gain their troubled significations only as relational terms, this inquiry takes as its focus gender and the relational analysis it suggests. Further, it is no longer clear that feminist theory ought to try to settle the question of primary identity in order to get on with the task of politics. Instead, we ought to ask, what political possibilities are the consequences of a radical critique of the categories of identity?8

Here Butler ties together many strands central to her understanding of the human. Firstly, the critique of the concept “woman” and “female” as stable categories of identity is clear. This is also linked to a critique of universalist and essentialist categories of human identity overall. Any concept of humanity for Butler has to be formed out of a radical critique of the current categories because these limit the possible ways of being a human. Secondly, Butler focuses on politics and performativity. There is no essence or human nature, but rather human identity is constructed and how this is done is of primary importance. Thirdly, and lastly, the quotation points to the importance of human identity as a relational concept, an idea that is developed throughout her thinking. On the constructive side, a radical critique of the categories of human identity should, for Butler, enable further ways of being human. Yet Butler is hesitant to be normative because, as she sees it, “the range of its [the self’s] possible forms is delimited in advance” by every possible discourse.9 Or, as Sara Salih phrases it, Butler



8 9

Butler came to the fore in the early 1990s and became one of the leading thinkers in queer theory, but her thinking is not limited to gender issues (Elena Loizidou, Judith Butler: Ethics, Law, Politics (London: Routledge-Cavendish, 2007), 5; Gill Jagger, Judith Butler: Sexual Politics, Social Change and the Power of the Performative (London: Routledge, 2008), 1). Butler, Gender Trouble, xxxif. Judith Butler, “What is Critique? An Essay on Foucault's Virtue,” in David Ingram (ed.) The Political: Blackwell Readings in Continental Philosophy (Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), 226 [emphasis in original].



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“regards resolution as dangerously anti-democratic, since ideas and theories that present themselves as self-evident ‘truths’ are often vehicles for ideological assumptions that oppress certain groups of people in society.”10 Determining what such an “unresolved” human identity might mean is the purpose of this chapter. The question of human identity for Butler cannot be separated from the question of gender. I will, therefore, firstly deal with the connection Butler draws between gender and being human. This leads to her theory of performativity in relation to human identity and personhood. Following this, I treat Butler’s concept of the human as relationally constituted and then the question of norms before I enter into the question of the body. Lastly, the notion of relationality returns with Butler’s turn toward vulnerability in a context of actions, identity, desire and recognition.

Gendered to be human Butler makes a strong connection between gender norms and what it is to be human in her early thinking.11 The reason for this is that for Butler gender norms “establish what will and will not be intelligibly human, what will and will not be considered to be ‘real,’ they establish the ontological field in which bodies may be given legitimate expression.”12 But, how do gender norms affect human identity more precisely? Butler argues that “gendering” is “constructed through relations of power” and “normative constraints,” and that the “materiality of sex is constructed through a ritualized repetition of norms.”13 Gender norms construct human identity through

10

11 12 13

Sara Salih, Judith Butler, Routledge Critical Thinkers (London: Routledge, 2002), 4. See also Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New York: Routledge, 1997), 161; Butler, Gender Trouble, 196f. The emphasis on gender lessens somewhat in later writings but is never abandoned. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2006), xxv. Butler, Bodies, ix.



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repetition (reiteration/citation). As Butler sees it, the repetition materializes the norms in society. She writes that [t]he practice by which gendering occurs, the embodying of norms, is a compulsory practice, a forcible production, but not for that reason fully determining. To the extent that gender is an assignment, it is an assignment which is never quite carried out according to expectation, whose addressee never quite inhabits the ideal s/he is compelled to approximate. Moreover, this embodying is a repeated process. And one might construe repetition as precisely that which undermines the conceit of voluntarist mastery designated by the subject in language.14

For Butler then, repetition of norms underlies how gender is produced which also affects how we understand sex, or “natural” identities, as will become evident. Gender is never natural nor stable since this assignment of norms through repetition “is never carried out according to expectation.” This process of “assignmentation” needs therefore to be constantly repeated or reiterated and, therefore, undermines any notion of a voluntarist, that is, a choosing and wilfully acting, subject. Instead, norms working from “outside” of the subject constitute the subject. Sociologists John Hood-Williams and Wendy Cealey Harrison argue that, as Butler sees it, the acts that are interpreted as “gender acts” will lead to form a gender identity that, by extension, will be seen as ontological or original for what is constituted as human.15 It is not that norms are these acts, but norms decide which acts count as acceptable, and hence constitute a livable identity.16 This process in which norms become “naturalized” is, of course, Butler’s theory of performativity. Gender identity is one example of how a “model of power,” that is, gender norms, works to constitute an identity. Butler argues that it is important to act with great care and awareness when one wants to make any parallels between how, for example, racial differences are constituted on the one hand, and gender differences, on the other.17 Different “models of power” or “vectors of power”

14 15 16 17

Butler, Bodies, 176 [emphasis in original]. Hood-Williams & Cealey Harrison, “Trouble,” 84. Butler, Undoing, 41f. Butler, Bodies, xxvi.



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such as race, sexuality and gender all have their own history and work in distinct ways, while, at the same time, they “deploy each other for the purpose of their own articulation.”18 This difference also comes down to how norms are established through particular performative action. So how does performativity construct identities for Butler?

Performativity and human identity Performativity is an explanation, or a particular figure of thought for Butler, of how these norms by a repeated acting out can be constituted as “natural” or mask themselves as an “origin.” This is also how the human subject is constituted for Butler. Here sometimes the term “signification” is used,19 denoting when language assumes a willing agent of speaking or the acts.20 For Butler grammar creates the notion of an agent, a “doer” behind the deed.21 But the underlying thought or overarching concept is that of performativity.22 For example in terms of gender identity, Butler argues that “[t]here is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results.”23 For Butler, identity is constituted by the acts one might think are the result. This sounds like lifting oneself by one’s own bootstraps; how can something be constituted by itself? Yet maybe it is easier to think of performativity along the lines of learning. With learning, once we know something previously unknown, it can be difficult to remember what it was like not to have that knowledge or skill.

18 19 20 21 22

23

Butler, Bodies, 123. Butler, Gender Trouble, 54, 13f. Butler, Gender Trouble, 60. Butler, Excitable, 7f. Some good introductory works to Butler’s theory of performativity are Vicki Kirby, Judith Butler: Live Theory (London: Continuum, 2006); Lloyd, Judith Butler; Salih, Judith Butler, 60-64 in particular; and Anita Brady & Tony Schirato, Understanding Judith Butler (London: SAGE, 2011). Butler, Gender Trouble, 34.



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To give an example: once we have learned how to ride a bike it is difficult to “not be able to ride a bike.” One could argue that in learning, as with performativity for Butler, there is a type of closure once a skill has been acquired. The how of the process of learning is no longer important for the having of the skill itself.24 But you become a “bicycle-rider” through the repeated practice of learning how to ride the bike. With bike riding, so with identity for Butler, it can appear “closed” or “settled” or “primary,” while in “reality” it is a product of the very process itself.25 After having learnt a skill, one’s perception is that the skill has always been “there.” Yet Butler’s point is that identity derives from the very process that we now use to improve our skill, but that this is the case is lost to us and we now experience it as an origin.26 The difference is that while, in terms of bike riding, most of us have a clear memory of what it was like to learn how to ride a bike, with all the falls, bruised knees and tears, when it comes to identity formation this is not a memory people tend to have. This loss of memory is explained through a re-conceptualization of psychoanalysis for Butler by a reworking of Freud’s concept of melancholia.27 In short, this means, as Butler argues, that the primary desire in the child is to be with the parent of the same sex. When this homosexual desire in the child is repressed then it turns into a heterosexual desire due to the child’s identification with the desire of the parent of the same sex and that is now perceived as “natural.”28 If identity formation belongs to early childhood it

24 25 26

27 28

The awareness of that how is of course essential if one is to teach that skill, but that is a different matter. Butler, Gender Trouble, 30. Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 119; Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (London: Verso, 2009), 140. Butler, Excitable, 180, n. 17; Butler, Gender Trouble, ch. 2. Butler, Psychic, 132-50, 167-98; Salih, Judith Butler, 54-58. Rothenberg is strongly critical of Butler’s use of psychoanalysis in terms of subject formation and argues that Butler’s reading of loss is the reverse of that of psychoanalytic thinking (Molly Anne Rothenberg, “Embodied Political Performativity in Excitable Speech: Butler’s Psychoanalytic Revision of Historicism,” Theory, Culture & Society 23, no. 4 [2006]: 71-93, 81-88).



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explains why it is difficult to remember how one “learned” one’s identity. However, this loss of memory is only true, for Butler, for those who more or less fit into the governing norms of a society. A person with heterosexual desire within a discourse of normative heterosexuality will feel as if his or her heterosexual identity is the “natural” expression of sexuality. But, in contrast, “those who understand their gender and their desire to be nonnormative” live with a “pervasive sense of their own unreality,“29 so that no “naturalness” is natural in any non-constructive or non-performative sense for Butler. Therefore all desire constantly needs to be reiterated, or recited, for its own “naturalness” to be established and maintained; “identifications are never simply or definitively made or achieved; they are insistently constituted, contested, and negotiated,“ as Butler puts it.30 Consequently, this apparently stable identity, for Butler, “will be at once an interpretation of the norm and an occasion to expose the norm itself as a privileged interpretation” because the very need to reiterate the norm “perpetually reinstitutes the possibility of its own failure.”31 Herein lies the reason for the incessant need to reiterate norms and acts of the normative identity: the sense of it not quite having been constituted fully the previous time. This instability, which is also a refusal to settle in a fully formed identity, is embraced by and searched for by Butler.32 An “unsettled” identity upholds the otherness of the other since the other, who constitutes my identity, can never fully be fathomed by me. Butler writes: [a]s we ask to know the other, or ask that the other say, finally or definitively, who he or she is, it will be important not to expect an answer that will ever satisfy. By not pursuing satisfaction and by letting the question remain open, even enduring, we let the other live, since life might be understood as precisely that which exceeds any account we may try to give of it.33

29 30 31 32 33

Butler, Undoing, 219. Butler, Bodies, 44 [emphasis in original]. Butler, Bodies, 71; Butler, Psychic, 93. Judith Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), 17. Butler, Giving, 42f.



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The way norms are being constituted is not dissimilar, or unrelated, to the question of human identity; rather, norms play an essential part in the constitution of the human. But, having said that, it is not possible within the scope of this book to enter into detail on Butler’s view of the regulatory function of power and norms. The question must instead be how, if human identity somehow emanates through the materialization of norms, does the performative process make that happen? The Subject is dead, long live the subject Butler is careful to avoid any active individualistic agency: one is not free to “choose” or “perform” one’s identity. As this point is sometimes ignored in the reception of Butler,34 she is keen to correct such misunderstandings. She writes that “performativity must be understood not as a singular or deliberate ‘act,’ but, rather, as the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects that it names.”35 For Butler, the volitional and independent Subject is dead and in its place enters “the subject,” constituted in dependence on discourse and grammar. How identity is formed is instead explained by something called interpellation. To begin with, and this is the flaw for example in Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist theory,36 the problem is that a “doer” is assumed by de Beauvoir, and many other feminists, according to Butler.37 Such an agent is impossible for Butler because, in her words, “there is no recourse to a ‘person,’ a ‘sex,’ or a ‘sexuality’ that escapes the matrix of power and discursive relations that effectively

34 35 36

37

For example in Jens Rydström, “Queer teori och historia,” Lambda Nordica 2, no. 3/4 (1996): 81-99. Butler, Bodies, xii. See also Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts (Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2015), 15. Judith Butler, “Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex,” Yale French Studies, no. 72 (1986): 35-49; Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” Theatre Journal 40, no. 4 (1988): 519-531; Butler, Gender Trouble, 34. And in terms of de Beauvoir, the problem refers even more to existentialism (Butler, “Sex and Gender”; Butler, “Performative,” 522).



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produces and regulates the intelligibility of these concepts for us.”38 This means that, and Butler quotes from Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals here, that “there is no ‘being’ behind doing, effecting, becoming; ‘the doer’ is merely a fiction added to the deed – the deed is everything.”39 In other words, the deeds of a willing agent cannot constitute an identity since those deeds are the product of a discourse. The willing subject only exists as subordinate to the power of performativity and discourse in Butler. Choice “comes late” in the process of subjectivation.40 The becoming of a subject is the act of subjectivation, a term Butler borrows from Foucault. It is originally the term assujettissement in French, which is directly translated as subjugation but is variously translated as subjectivation, subjectification or subjection. Butler understands assujettissement in Foucault as a paradox in that, in Butler’s words, it “denotes both the becoming of the subject and the process of subjection – one inhabits the figure of autonomy only by becoming subjected to power, a subjection which implies a radical dependency.”41 For Butler, in subjectivation, the subject is created in his/her resistance to or, alternatively, acceptance of, the subjugating powers in the society and juridical law.42 Butler

38 39

40 41

42

Butler, Gender Trouble, 44. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Arnold Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), 45, as quoted in Butler, Gender Trouble, 34. Judith Butler, “Rethinking Vulnerability and Resistance,” in Lecture at the Instituto Franklin, University of Alcalá, 24 June: Madrid, 2014. Butler, Psychic, 83. For more on Butler’s view of Foucault see Judith Butler, “Subjection, Resistance, Resignification: Between Freud and Foucault,” in John Rajchman (ed.) The Identity in Question (New York: Routledge, 1995) and Deborah Youdell, “Subjectivation and Performative Politics: Butler Thinking Althusser and Foucault: Intelligibility, Agency and the Raced-Nationed-Religioned Subjects of Education,” British Journal of Sociology of Education 27, no. 4 (2006): 511-528; Davies, “Subjectification”; and David Dudrick, “Foucault, Butler, and the Body,” European Journal of Philosophy 13, no. 2 (2005): 226-246. See Youdell, “Subjectivation,” 515f; Amy Allen, “Discourse, Power, and Subjectivation: The Foucault/Habermas Debate Reconsidered,” The Philosophical Forum 40, no. 1 (2009): 1-28; Amy Allen, “Power, Subjectivity, and Agency: Between Arendt and Foucault,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 10, no. 2 (2002): 131-149; Noela Davis,



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questions a willing agent since there is no longer anyone making any choices in the formation of the subject in subjectivation. Rather, power constructs the subject,43 which becomes the site in which identity can be formed.44 She also asks the question of how power structures not only subjectivate us but also “individuate” us, make us individuals.45 It is thus a very relevant question from Butler’s perspective whether or not the school is one institution whose subjugating powers form the identity and autonomy of the subject. Importantly for Butler “the individual,” “the subject” and “identity” are not identical. Rather, the subject is seen as a “site.” This “site of the subject” is the result of the process of interpellation, a notion that Butler borrows from the philosopher Louis Althusser. Interpellation establishes the “site” where identity can be formed.46 This site is relational in that it comes into existence through relations and by being “called” into it.47 To form an identity, one needs to become a subject through interpellation. It is this calling and interpellation that makes Butler focus on language rather than on volitional action in subjectivation. She argues for the “I” as a grammatical placeholder, where “I” is linguistically presumed before any “real” “I” has been established.48 Here what grammar does is that it “governs the availability of persons in language.”49 This means that, in Butler’s thinking, “I am not outside of the language that structures me, but neither am I determined by



43

44 45 46 47 48

49

“Subjected Subjects? On Judith Butler's Paradox of Interpellation,” Hypatia 27, no. 4 (2012): 881-897, 881; and Butler, Undoing, 50. Butler, Force, 2; Kirsten Campbell, “The Plague of the Subject: Subjects, Politics, and the Power of Psychic Life,” in Margaret Sönser Breen & Warren J. Blumenfeld (eds.), Butler Matters: Judith Butler's Impact on Feminist and Queer Studies (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 81f. Butler, Undoing, 48. Butler, Force, 30. Butler, Excitable, 24. Butler, Excitable, 159f. Judith Butler, ““How Can I Deny That These Hands and This Body Are Mine?”,” in Judith Butler, Senses of the Subject (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015), 25. Butler, Gender Trouble, xxvi.



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the language that makes this ‘I’ possible.”50 In other words, the “I” cannot be extracted from grammar as some property independent from language. But this does not make Butler into a linguistic idealist,51 for what it does mean is that there is, as Butler puts it, a “difficulty of the ‘I’ to express itself through the language that is available to it.”52 The primacy of the “I,” or the self, is put under suspicion by Butler’s line of argument, and what is challenged in particular is the thought of a self with an internal origin that moves outward to the external world.53 The “I” is not outside language since the only tool to express the “I” as intelligible is language. However, the “I” is never fully determined by language since norms that constitute the identity of “I”54 can never be fully materialized and never completely expressed by language.55 More recently, Butler has challenged her own priority of the grammatical by what she calls a social ontology. She writes that the grammatical “I” that I am “is already social” and that “[t]he dependency that constitutes what I am prior to the emergence of any pronoun underscores the fact that I depend on the ones whose definition of me gives me form.”56 More on this social ontology will be said later, but it emphasizes what Butler terms dispossession of our self so that we are other to ourselves. There is always a failure of comprehension and a lack of completion in Butler.57 Consequently, the “I,” rather than being constituted by the actions of its own choosing, as in de Beauvoir, is constituted by

50 51 52 53

54

55 56 57

Butler, Gender Trouble, xxvi. Butler, Excitable, 38. Butler, Gender Trouble, xxvi. Judith Butler, “Merleau-Ponty and the Touch of Malebranche,” in Judith Butler, Senses of the Subject (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015), 45f. Butler, Bodies, xix; Robert G. Dunn, “Self, Identity, and Difference: Mead and the Poststructuralists,” Sociological Quarterly 38, no. 4 (1997): 687-705, 690-700. Butler, Excitable, 40f. Butler, Force, 101. Butler, Undoing, 3.



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actions not of its own choosing.58 Herein lies an essential difference between Butler and much second-wave feminism.59 But if the “I” is no longer constituted by his or her own choices, how can it come to being? Has Butler answered that question by stating, with Foucault, that the subject is a product of “historically specific discursive conditions and power relations?”60 Butler is not fully content with that and that is why she takes support from Althusser’s idea of interpellation. In Althusser, interpellation occurs when a representative of the law calls, or “hails,” an individual. In the response to that hailing the individual is constituted as a subject. Althusser writes: I shall then suggest that ideology 'acts' or 'functions' in such a way that it “recruits” subjects among the individuals (it recruits them all), or ‘transforms’ the individuals into subjects (it transforms them all) by that very precise operation which I have called interpellation or hailing, and which can be imagined along the lines of the most commonplace everyday police (or other) hailing: ‘Hey, you there!’61

Essential in this is the distinction made between the “subject,” on the one hand, and the “individual,” on the other.62 But one problem is obvious from the outset since “the individual” is prior to “the subject” in interpellation. Althusser’s response is to state that, “an individual is always-already a subject,” since even before someone is born they will be destined to have a name, and thus interpellated into a subject.63 For Butler this will not do and she argues instead that the subject, rather than be identified strictly with the individual, ought to be designated as a linguistic category, a placeholder, a structure in formation. Individuals come to occupy the site of the subject (the subject

58 59 60 61

62 63

Judith Butler, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2015), 96. Butler, “Sex and Gender.” Jagger, Judith Butler, 39. Jagger paraphrases Butler from Benhabib et al., Feminist, 137-141. Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation),” in Lenin and Philosophy, and Other Essays (London: Monthly Review Press, 1971), 170-177, 174. Althusser, “Ideology,” 174. Althusser, “Ideology,” 176.



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FROM INTERPELLATED SUBJECTHOOD simultaneously emerges as a “site”), and they enjoy intelligibility only to the extent that they are, as it were, first established in language.64

Here Butler radicalizes Althusser’s view of the individual-asalready-a-subject by stating that the individual is a consequence of the subjectivization through language.65 The individual is necessary only as a grammatical category rather than as an ontological one and emerges as a “placeholder” from the establishment of the subject. Therefore, for Butler, “[t]he grammar of the subject emerges only as a consequence of the process we are trying to describe.”66 Annika Thiem points out here that, important in Butler, “is the claim that there is no individual subject that precedes its formation through subjection. But even though there is no existence apart from discourse and power, this does not mean that norms and discourses arbitrarily and randomly give birth to subjects.”67 But not all are convinced that Butler solves the dilemma Althusser provides her with. Noela Davis makes the point that Butler, with the act of interpellation, fails to explain the constitution of the subject and states that it is “an enigmatic process, and it appears that no explanation we could devise would be adequate to explain it.”68 But here it should be pointed out that it is not that “the subject,” “the individual,” or “the body” does not exist for Butler;69 it is simply that they are unknowable in any other sense than as a linkage to the

64

65 66 67 68 69

Butler, Psychic, 10f; Samuel A. Chambers, “'Sex' and the Problem of the Body: Reconstructing Judith Butler's Theory of Sex/Gender,” Body & Society 13, no. 4 (2007): 47-75, 48f. See further Butler, Excitable, 1-41. Kirby, Judith Butler, 94f. Butler, Psychic, 117 Thiem, Unbecoming, 28. Davis, “Subjected,” 892. Vicky Kirby is critical of Butler’s view of the body here, but she still acknowledges the fact that Butler does not reduce matter to language (Kirby, Telling, 101-103 and Vicki Kirby, “When All That is Solid Melts into Language,” in Margaret Sönser Breen & Warren J. Blumenfeld (eds.), Butler Matters: Judith Butler's Impact on Feminist and Queer Studies (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 43). However, this point by Kirby is missing in Halewood (Michael Halewood, “Butler and Whitehead on the (Social) Body,” in Roland Faber & Andrea M. Stephenson (eds.), Secrets of Becoming: Negotiating Whitehead, Deleuze, and Butler, 1st ed. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2011), 108-112).



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subject-to-be which occurs through interpellation.70 In some sense, Butler is simply quiet about that for which there is no language. Importantly then, to be human, for Butler, one needs to be knowable.71 Human identity, for Butler, is the intelligibility of the subject, but the subject needs to be “an other” to “the other” and even other to itself to be knowable.72 This is achieved by reflexivity and self-reflexivity. Much in line with psychoanalytic thought, Butler concurs that in the awareness of the prohibition of one’s will there is a necessity for the subject to become an object to him- or herself to be intelligible.73 This is why interpellation is so important to Butler because self-reflexivity is enabled in the response to the call. Not only is the subject constituted by the hailing of an other as a social agent,74 the subject also becomes aware of him- or herself as a subject. Human identity must consequently be seen as a socially and relationally constituted concept for Butler. She writes: [c]alled by an injurious name, I come into social being, and because I have a certain inevitable attachment to my existence, because a certain narcissism takes hold of any term that confers existence, I am led to embrace the terms that injure me because they constitute me socially.75

To summarize, the way performativity constitutes human subjecthood, for Butler, is through the act of interpellation, which is that process through which language constructs a social position for the subject established by recognition by the other. The calling is part of a repetitive practice of a materialization of norms that shapes the subject. It needs to be repetitive since in the recognition of a subject there is always also a failure embedded in that recognition, what Butler calls misrecogntion. In an extreme misrecognition, the human being is not a subject at all, but an abject.76 Despite the risk of abjection, human life can only be recognized by means of

70 71 72 73 74 75 76

Butler, Excitable, 10f. Butler, Undoing, 3. Butler, Psychic, 103. For a more detailed analysis of Butler’s use of psychoanalysis on subject formation see Campbell, “Plague (2005).” Butler, Excitable, 153. Butler, Psychic, 104. Butler, Bodies, xiii; Lloyd, Judith Butler, 74-6.



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performativity and interpellation, at least early on in Butler’s thinking.

Relationality and the constitution of humanity After the death of the autonomous Subject, the notion of a subject is resurrected, or interpellated, as a social and relational concept by Butler. This whole process from interpellation of a subject to the constitution of a self is expressed well when Butler writes, [i]f I am first addressed and then my address emerges as a consequence, animated by a primary address and bearing the enigma of that address, then I speak to you, but you are also what is opaque in the act of my speaking. Whoever you are, you constitute me fundamentally and become the name for a primary impressionability, for the uncertain boundary between an impression from outside that I register and some consequent sense of “me” that is the site of that registering. Within this founding scene, the very grammar of the self has not yet taken hold. And so one might say, reflectively, and with a certain sense of humility, that in the beginning I am my relation to you, ambiguously addressed and addressing, given over to a “you” without whom I cannot be and upon whom I depend to survive.77

Interestingly and importantly, “the caller” in this instance is not a representative of the law or not necessarily so at least. Rather, the quote opens up for a more interpersonal understanding of who that interpellating other can be. The other can here be another subject, or as in Butler’s later writing, a person.78 But for now, since Butler dismisses voluntarist and essentialist views of the self, the self is established by a complex network of factors that relate to each other in such a way that a self is formed by them. At the same time, Butler maintains that “[i]t does not suffice to say that I am promoting a relational view of the self over an autonomous one, or trying to redescribe autonomy in terms of relationality. The term ‘relationality’ sutures the rupture in the relation we seek to describe, a rupture that is constitutive of identity itself.”79 In the light of what has

77 78

79

Butler, Giving, 80f [emphasis in original]. Judith Butler, Gary A. Olson, & Lynn Worsham, “Changing the Subject: Judith Butler's Politics of Radical Resignification,” JAC 20, no. 4 (2000): 727-765, 760. Butler, Undoing, 19.



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been said about interpellation and reflexivity how is one to make sense of the latter statement? The word “suture” is a good place to start. “Suture” means “to join,” “seal,” or “close” something. So what does Butler mean when she says that “relationality” joins, seals, or closes the rupture (breach/rift) that is constitutive of identity itself? And how should Butler’s view be understood then, if not as “promoting a relational view of the self over an autonomous one”? To understand this, it is necessary to look at Butler’s view of agency once more. After all, Butler writes that, “[i]f I have any agency, it is opened up by the fact that I am constituted by a social world I never chose.”80 One is “dispossessed” by the other.81 And this dispossession is a way of “being for another, or indeed, by virtue of another,” for Butler.82 The self, then, for Butler, must be seen as outside of our possession. In Butler’s words, that “we are impinged upon primarily and against our will is the sign of a vulnerability and a beholdenness that we cannot will away. We can defend against it only by prizing the asociality of the subject over and against a difficult and intractable, even sometimes unbearable relationality.”83 Clearly, Butler promotes a relational view of a kind, but what kind is it if she also rejects a relational view that sutures the rupture in identity that Butler wants to maintain? If Butler offers a view of the relationality of the self, which it must be said that she does, it is a relationality in some sense located “outside” of the subject, and is one of vulnerability. What Butler rejects is use of the term “relationality” to mask or soften the unbearability of the social constitution of human life, which it could easily do in Butler’s view. The constitution of the self through relation is not neat, or safe; rather, one’s self is constituted by being dispossessed in an unbearable vulnerability. Only in an unbearable relationality and vulnerability does the corporeality of the subject emerge. Butler cannot promise any suture of the rupture that the other’s relation to me will cause. And the later we get in Butler’s

80 81 82 83

Butler, Undoing, 3. Butler, Notes, 97. Butler, Undoing, 19; Butler, Precarious, 24. Butler, Giving, 100 [emphasis added].



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writing the more she stresses how this is not merely a psychological effect. It is very much a bodily relationality too.84 This is also one of the most contested areas in Butler’s thinking: Butler and the body.

The problematic body When writing about the body, Butler acknowledges that she “kept losing track of the subject” for she “could not fix bodies as simple objects of thought” since “bodies tend to indicate a world beyond themselves.”85 Anyone reading Butler’s early writings on the body is likely to share that sense of frustration.86 But this frustration is not necessarily due to a failure on Butler’s part, nor does it have to come down to the complexity of her language.87 Rather, in the context of Butler’s thinking, this frustration is a natural consequence of the elusiveness of the body because the “body” is situated in a particular discourse, always affected by norms.88 In Butler’s view, the body is constantly shifting the boundaries of how we can understand what it is and, as such, it is only natural that there is a sense of frustration if we want to pinpoint what the body is, since that does not allow itself to be done. Noteworthy is that while for Foucault discourse is closely related to genealogy, Butler makes discursive analyses political and ethical and not “archaeological” as in Foucault. Butler argues that power relations in a discourse affect the formation of the body.89 She writes that “the body is not an independent materiality that is invested by power relations external to it, but it is that for which materialization and investiture are

84 85 86

87

88 89

See in particular Butler, Notes and Butler, Force for this. Butler, Bodies, viii. Peter Digeser, Our Politics, Our Selves?: Liberalism, Identity, and Harm (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 153-156; Martha Nussbaum, “The Professor of Parody,” New Republic, 22.2.99 1999, 36, 42. For this accusation see, Nussbaum, “Professor,” and Mark Bauerlein, “Bad Writing's Back,” Philosophy and Literature 28, no. 1 (2004): 180-191. However, in defense of Butler see Cathy Birkenstein, “We Got the Wrong Gal: Rethinking the 'Bad' Academic Writing of Judith Butler,” College English 72, no. 3 (2010): 269-283. Chambers, “'Sex',” 57ff. Butler, Gender, 183-193; Chambers, “'Sex',” 48f.



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coextensive.”90 If norms and power relations constitute the body, then there is a sense that this constitution is neither solid nor unchangeable since norms and power relations always change and undermine themselves.91 But if that is the case is it possible to say what the body is for Butler? The what of the body For Butler, norms’ materializing power decides what can be counted as a real human body.92 The body is, in Butler’s terminology, the product of the naturalization of norms through reiteration in the process of performativity. Put differently, gender norms become concrete in the body, and norms therefore determine how we know the body. The more these norms are affirmed by our actions, the more “real” or “natural” that body will be perceived to be, even though the known body “in reality” is the product of the norms themselves. If that is the case, then it is plausible that it is the relationship between embodiment and normativity that should be our focal point for finding out about the body since the “what” of the body is to be found in the actual relation between norms and the body. If norms govern what the body is then it will not be possible to find any “essence” of the body, particularly since there is no access to its “thereness” except through language.93 But language, to complicate matters, is never a direct mediator to the body for Butler. Butler does not deny that the body exists,94 but due to the nature of language, it is impossible to know what it is.95 This is why she writes, “[i]s there a ‘physical’ body prior to the perceptually perceived body? An impossible question to decide.”96 Language and reality are stuck in something of a “chicken and the egg” situation.

90 91 92 93 94

95 96

Butler, Bodies, 9. Butler, Bodies, 37. Butler, Undoing, 15. Butler, Bodies, xvii; Butler, Excitable, 1f; Butler, “These Hands,” 25. Butler, Bodies, 37f. For different critiques of Butler here, see Jessica Cadwallader, “How Judith Butler Matters,” Australian Feminist Studies 24, no. 60 (2009): 289-94. Chambers, “'Sex',” 50. Butler, Gender Trouble, 155. See also Kirby, Telling, ch. 4.



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For Butler, language limits what we can think about ourselves and our reality. Language, however, masks this so that we perceive language as providing access to the body; but, as Butler sees it, what we meet when we meet the “thereness” of the body are different norms.97 Language’s ability to naturalize norms is a way of expressing how norms are materialized in actual bodies and actions in human society. Consequently, for Butler, it is never possible to experience bodies and actions in a direct way outside of norms. To complicate things further, though, Butler includes more than norms as constitutive for the body. The “psychic” also plays an important part in terms of the forming of the body. So, not unlike the quotation by [epigraph from] Proust in the introduction, in Butler’s words, “psychic projection confers boundaries and, hence, unity on the body, so that the very contours of the body are sites that vacillate between the psychic and the material.”98 This is phrased a little differently from what I explained above. In term of the psychic, the body is now that which “vacillate[s] between the psychic and the material”; but, again, the boundaries of the body are in constant flux. Yet, rather than relating norms and materiality, Butler is here concerned with “the psychic” in relation to the body and the psychic is simultaneously a unifying and a dispersing factor in the formation of the body. While Butler primarily relates to Freud here, Foucault’s notion of power as forming the subject is also important. In Butler’s symbiosis of Freud and Foucault, power is internalized so that “power that at first appears as external, pressed upon the subject, pressing the subject into subordination, assumes a psychic form that constitutes the subject’s self-identity.”99 In that way power provides “the very condition of its [the subject’s] existence.”100 The psychic is, for

97 98 99 100

Butler, Undoing, 28 Butler, Bodies, 36. Butler, Psychic, 3. Butler, Psychic, 2. The detour is interesting considering Foucault’s critical stance toward psychoanalysis. See Jacques-Alain Miller, “Michel Foucault and psychoanalysis,” in Timothy J. Armstrong (ed.) Michel Foucault, Philosopher: Essays Translated from the French and German (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992). For a critique of Butler’s understanding of Foucault, see Dudrick, “Foucault.”



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Butler, power that has become internalized as mental self-understanding in the subject. In this way, Butler uses the concept of the psychic as a way to contrast the internal and self-reflecting side of the subject with the social and external world that constitutes the subject.101 Put differently, the psychic, for Butler, is the internalization of external and social norms into the subject’s self-reflection.102 The body is the “site” in which the norms are “read” or taken in.103 “Bodily contours and morphology are not merely implicated in an irreducible tension between the psychic and the material but are that tension,” as Butler writes in Bodies That Matter.104 For Butler, the body is the tension between the psychic and the material so that the psychic is the self-reflectivity of the body’s interaction with the world. The psychic is aware of how the body is constituted by that outside and how the body is vulnerable to, firstly, the world; secondly, to the materialized norms in society; and, thirdly, to the actions of the other. And it is the body that, due to its vulnerability, both contains the sense of a self while simultaneously leaving that self “dispossessed” of itself and open to the world.105 That is why bodily contours are the tension between the psychic and the material. The body is open to the world, so much so that Butler hesitates to call one’s body “one’s own.”106 Butler’s vacillation about the body is evident. The body is at one and the same time the site for the psyche where a self-reflective subject is developed and open to the world to such an extent that the body is dispossessed of itself and vulnerable to the other. The latter is developed by Butler into a “social ontology” of the body.107 The social in this is fundamental. She writes that “the life of the other, the life that is not our own, is also our life, since

101 102 103 104 105 106 107

Butler, Psychic, ch. 6. Butler, Excitable, 110. Butler, Precarious, 23ff. Butler, Bodies, 36. Butler, Precarious, 24. Butler, Precarious, 25. Butler, Frames, 3. See particularly Butler, Notes, 40, 123-153.



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whatever sense ‘our’ life has is derived precisely from this sociality, this being already, and from the start, dependent on a world of others, constituted in and by a social world.”108 On a further note, the social ontology of our bodies motivates Butler to develop an absolute standpoint of (aggressive) nonviolence.109 In this (later) opening toward ontology Butler acknowledges a “what” of the body in somewhat clearer terms.110 But the body, as she writes, “has to be understood […] in terms of its supporting networks of relations.”111 When this social ontology is developed, the body and materiality can play a more essential part in Butler’s thinking than it did in her early writings. She writes that “if we accept that part of what a body is (and this is for the moment an ontological claim) is its dependency on other bodies and networks of support, then we are suggesting that it is not altogether right to conceive of individual bodies as completely distinct from one another.”112 Of particular importance is then the concept of vulnerability and interdependence.113 And after Frames of War Butler starts to explore vulnerability as an ontological assumption, even if the seeds of that thinking are present much earlier, as we will see. But Butler is not developing this ontology to explain the “what” of the body. That is still elusive. Instead, what Butler is most interested in is the “how,” how the body relates to the other and how it is constituted as a body through the other.114 There will be reason to come

108 109 110 111 112

113 114

Butler, Notes, 108. Butler, Force, 40. Butler, Frames, 30; Butler, Precarious, 7, 20. Butler, Notes, 129. Judith Butler, “Rethinking Vulnerability and Resistance,” in Judith Butler, Zeynep Gambetti, & Leticia Sabsay (eds.), Vulnerability in Resistance (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), 16. See also Butler, Notes, 148f and Butler, Force, 32, 197. Butler, Frames, 33. Critique remains about the body though, see Claire Colebrook, “On Not Being Man: The Materialist Politics of Unactualized Potential,” in Stacy Alaimo & Susan J. Hekman (eds.), Material Feminisms (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 72f; Kirby, “Solid,” 53-56; Kirby, Judith Butler, 84f; Kirby, Quantum, 75; and Halewood, “Butler,” 112-4. For an interesting critical response to the critique, see Chambers, “'Sex',”.



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back to this, for this social ontology is conducive to the discussion that lies ahead, but the focus on the “how” relates to Butler’s view of actions.

Actions While for de Beauvoir the active choice constitutes oneself,115 for Butler human identity is constituted by the reiteration of actions that create a sense of an origin in that very same process. This is Butler’s idea of performativity. Here, what she calls a social temporality takes precedence over any individualist agent – against existentialism and individualism.116 She argues that “the ‘I’ has no story of its own that is not also the story of a relation – or set of relations – to a set of norms.”117 Actions and human identity belong together only in a performative way.118 Butler develops the performativity of action into what she calls a “politics of the body.”119 And since it is a politics of the body, politics and ethics collide for Butler since, as she writes, “some ethical claims emerge from bodily life.”120 This goes against Butler’s early suspicion of ethics,121 but the reason for this move is Butler’s growing emphasis on vulnerability and dispossession, as will be discussed below. But in terms of actions the rupture in identity, mentioned above, is evident. For Butler, activity is what enables one to give an account of oneself; at the same time, when one acts one is also in danger of losing oneself as actions break the narrative thread by which one gives an account of oneself to the other. In Butler’s words, “[t]o act is immediately to break the narrative structure and

115

116 117 118 119 120 121

Alice Schwarzer & Simone de Beauvoir, Simone de Beauvoir Today: Conversations, 1972-1982 (London: Chatto & Windus: The Hogarth Press, 1984), 29. Butler, “Sex”; Butler, Force, 40f. Butler, Giving, 8. Butler, Undoing, 3. Butler, Notes, 117. Butler, Notes, 118. Butler, “Politics.”



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so to risk losing a self over whom I maintain narrative control.”122 The self is only constituted in the “giving of an account” of oneself,123 but the narrative both constitutes and dispossesses the self due to its relation to action. Without actions there would be no narrative to tell. Yet, on the other hand, actions, at the same time, break the narrative thread of the self, making the self lose control over his or her account of him- or herself. In both cases, in acting as well as in giving an account, the self is constituted in dependence on and vulnerability to the other. In conclusion, actions constitute the person as something that creates the occasion in which a subject is constituted by giving an account of oneself to the other as an other. Or, put another way, a subject finds him- or herself in a position where he or she is vulnerable to be formed by actions in a discourse. It is because we have a body we call our own that we are vulnerable to actions, and it is actions outside of the body’s control that constitute the human subject.124 As such, it is how that body is related to the other that is constitutive,125 which is why Butler emphasizes concepts such as vulnerability and also grief as essential for the constitution of a human person.126

Judith Butler and the person Judith Butler is critical of “humanist conceptions [that] assume a substantive person who is the bearer of various essential and nonessential attributes.”127 The problem with “person” as a foundation for human identity is when a core, or substance, is assumed with “universal capacity for reason, moral deliberation, or language.”128

122 123 124 125 126 127 128

Butler, Giving, 81. Judith Butler & Athena Athanasiou, Dispossession: The Performative in the Political (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013), 3f. Butler, Precarious, 25. Butler, Force, 30-4. Butler, Precarious, 22-34; Butler, Frames, 15, 97. Butler, Gender Trouble, 14. Butler, Gender Trouble, 14; Judith Butler, “Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of 'Postmodernism',” in Linda Nicholson



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That is an individualist “phantasmogoria.”129 Instead, Butler argues that a person is “relative to the constructed relations in which it is determined.”130 Thus, “person” is a consequence, an outcome of the relations“ which exist between humans. In that way, “person” is contingent upon what she calls “specifiable contexts.”131 The relations in which the person finds him- or herself are always regulated by norms so that there can be no previous existence of a person prior to the materialization, or appropriation of norms.132 “Person” is a product of the materialization of norms or Butler. But if it is defined as such then “person” is a useful and valid concept for Butler. The person, certainly, is constituted relationally,133 but she qualifies this in important ways. As pointed out previously, Butler has an affinity for the term “relationality,” but she wants to develop a language that can enable “a way of thinking about how we are not only constituted by our relations but also dispossessed by them as well.”134 Butler stresses how a person is never in possession of his or her self. And in doing so Butler tries not to set autonomy and community against each other, the critique made by, for example, the sociologist Richard Jenkins and the philosopher Amy Allen.135 Butler argues that community and autonomy are inextricably interlinked so that a struggle for autonomy is also a struggle for something else, namely, in Butler’s words, “a conception of myself as invariably in community, impressed by others, impinging upon them as well.”136 But for Richard Jenkins, Butler understands



129 130 131 132 133 134 135

136

(ed.) Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange (New York: Routledge, 1995), 39. Butler, Force, 35. Butler, Gender Trouble, 14; Butler, Undoing, 25. Butler, Gender Trouble, 14. Butler, Undoing, 58. Butler, Precarious, 22f. See also, Butler, Psychic, 9, 49 & 107f; and Butler, Giving, 81, 88 & 100. Butler, Precarious, 24. Richard Jenkins, Social Identity, 3rd ed. (London: Routledge, 2008); Amy Allen, “Power Trouble: Performativity as Critical Theory,” Constellations 5, no. 4 (1998): 456-471. Butler, Precarious, 27.



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identity as constituted by differentiating oneself from the other. This leads to alienation rather than unity for Jenkins, so that, in his words, “knowing who I am is a matter of distinguishing and distancing myself from you and you, and from that person over there,” which is why he sees Butler as among the “theorists of difference.”137 This emphasis on difference is what informs Jenkins’ critique. He objects to having difference as a main constituent of identity since it fails to establish “any comprehension of the collective dimensions of social life.”138 A similar point is made by Allen. She asks whether it is possible to come to any community in humanity, and formulates the critique concerning social rights movements: “[o]ne consequence of Butler’s radical critique of identity and identity politics is that it becomes difficult to conceptualize such collective power. Indeed, it becomes difficult even to conceptualize collectivity at all.”139 Political theorist Rosine Kelz makes a similar critique of Butler. Kelz acknowledges that grievability might indeed create a “we” from a position of precarious and vulnerable life if persons are affectionately related, but, Kelz writes, “[t]he question is then how one would, from Butler’s position, explain an assumption of responsibility for those to whom one has no affective relationship.” It remains unclear, therefore, continues Kelz, “how to get from the personal to the political realm.”140

137 138

139 140

Jenkins, Social, 19-20. Jenkins, Social, 24. Butler would not agree with this conclusion, even prior to her development of the concept of interpellation. Butler writes in Feminist Contentions: “[t]hat an ‘I’ is differentiated from another does not mean that the other becomes unthinkable in its difference, nor that the other must become structurally homologous to the ‘I’ in order to enter into community with that ‘I.” At the level of political community, what is called for is the difficult work of cultural translation in which difference is honored without (a) assimilating difference to identity or (b) making difference an unthinkable fetish of alterity” (Benhabib et al., Feminist, 140). Allen, “Power Trouble,” 466. Rosine J. Kelz, The Non-Sovereign Self, Responsibility, and Otherness: Hannah Arendt, Judith Butler, and Stanley Cavell on Moral Philosophy and Political Agency (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 123.



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However, Butler stresses interdependency as a way to keep a tension between autonomy and commonality.141 Butler’s emphasis on difference in community means,142 for Butler, that imagining community in this way “affirms relationality not only as a descriptive or historical fact of our formation but also as an ongoing normative dimension of our social and political lives, one in which we are compelled to take stock of our interdependence.”143 This interdependence constitutes the self, but only as an ecstatic notion of the self, a self that is other to oneself. For the social norms that constitute the “I” and the “I” itself become, in Butler’s words, “to a certain extent unknowable, threatened with unviability, with becoming undone altogether,”144 because “the social norms that constitute our existence carry desires that do not originate with our individual personhood.”145 But it is in the realization of our interdependence that the equality of human beings can be worked out, as she argues in The Force of Nonviolence.146 Thus, while Butler wants to avoid making vulnerability the basis for political action,147 for in a certain form that invites paternalism,148 political action must still work from vulnerability as an ontological assumption of how we are constituted as human beings. If we are therefore vulnerable to the other and constituted in our distinction from the other, then norms will inform how I am constituted by the other. Norms decide who is allowed to be conceived of as a human person and who is not.149 Community is embedded in the very constitution of the human being for Butler, for one is constituted by the other even if it is also as an other. The fact that, for Butler, different discourses of power work performatively to establish the contexts in which the person is

141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149

Butler, Force, 47. Butler, Precarious, 27. Butler, Precarious, 27. Butler, Undoing, 3. Butler, Undoing, 2. Butler, Force, 44. Butler, Force, 186. Butler, “Rethinking (2016)”, 22f. Butler, Precarious, 35-38; Butler, Undoing, 32.



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recognized means that the struggle against exclusivist norms is a struggle for existence, a struggle to be allowed to exist as human.150 Norms are in a sense prior to personhood and will therefore affect the person’s self-understanding and the person’s sense of being a person at all. Butler writes: [j]ustice is not only or exclusively a matter of how persons are treated or how societies are constituted. It also concerns consequential decisions about what a person is, and what social norms must be honored and expressed for “personhood” to become allocated, how we do or do not recognize animate others as persons depending on whether or not we recognize a certain norm manifested in and by the body of that other. The very criterion by which we judge a person to be a gendered being, a criterion that posits coherent gender as a presupposition of humanness, is not only one which, justly or unjustly, governs the recognisability of the human, but one that informs the ways we do or do not recognize ourselves at the level of feeling, desire, and the body, at the moments before the mirror, in the moments before the window, in the times that one turns to psychologists, to psychiatrists, to medical and legal professionals to negotiate what may well feel like the unrecognizability of one’s gender and, hence, the unrecognizability of one’s personhood.151

Here the law, but also the social, limits the options or scope for what it is possible to be as a person, both of which will heavily inform one’s self-reflection.152 The laws, but also institutions such as the school one must assume, are, for Butler, concrete manifestations of norms that regulate your self-understanding.153 Yet Butler also argues that “it would be a mistake […] to understand all the ways in which gender is regulated in terms of those empirical legal instances because the norms that govern those regulations exceed the very instances in which they are embodied.”154 Consequently, there are concretizations of gender norms in the society, as we find in the law or medicine and institutionalized forms of power for example, but the law cannot fully manifest the norms.155 Thus all manifestations (law, medicine, sexuality, et. al.)

150 151 152 153 154 155

Butler, Undoing, 32f. Butler, Undoing, 58. Butler, Precarious, xvi. Butler, Undoing, 40. Butler, Undoing, 40. Butler, Bodies, 33, 68; Butler, Undoing, 48.



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of the norms in society are always constituted by norms, yet are not complete expressions of these norms. But the concept of personhood works as a bridge between the societal in the juridical/political and the psychic in the self-reflective for Butler.156 Norms constitute the person in a way not always desired for Butler, but the ability to reflect about oneself, to see oneself as another,157 is also an essential characteristic of personhood for Butler. This is why Butler wants to challenge the way gender norms are made manifest in heterosexual normativity, for example. For any human being outside of that norm will not only be deemed a non-person (abject) by society, but by him- or herself as well.158 As Butler writes, [t]he staging and structuring of affect and desire is clearly one way in which norms work their way into what feels most properly to belong to me. The fact that I am other to myself precisely at the place where I expect to be myself follows from the fact that the sociality of norms exceeds my inception and my demise, sustaining a temporal and spatial field of operation that exceeds my self-understanding.159

To sum up, Butler critiques an essentialist concept of personhood and argues, with qualifications, for a relational understanding of personhood. The person is constituted by relations, not only as an “origin,” but in a continuous and “ruptured” way. The manifestations of norms not only decide who is allowed to be viewed as a person by society, but also how it is possible to think of oneself as a person. For Butler, personhood is “ecstatic” since personhood is located in the psychic as another to oneself as well as in the socially constituted materiality of oneself, called the body.160 Is there then

156 157

158 159 160

Butler, Psychic, 22. I have intentionally quoted the philosopher Paul Ricoeur (Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992)) since Butler’s writing and ideas about the self-reflective, reflexive and ecstatic self is very close to Ricoeur. Yet Ricoeur is, strangely enough, never mentioned in Butler’s writing about the ecstatic self. Butler, Undoing, 32. Butler, Undoing, 15. Butler writes, ‘[m]y reflexivity is not only socially mediated, but socially constituted’ (Butler, Undoing, 32).



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no “inside” to the person? This is a difficult question to answer with regard to Butler, but a way into that question is to look at her view on desire.

Desire and personhood For Butler, personhood is linked with desire, but as Moya Lloyd points out, desire in Butler is disassociated from biology and should instead be understood psychoanalytically.161 Butler’s use of psychoanalysis has been critiqued by, among others, Kirsten Campbell and John Hood-Williams and Wendy Cealey Harrison,162 but for Butler, heterosexual desire, for example, is simply the case of a heterosexual norm that has “naturalized” into heterosexual desire.163 But this sexual desire is not the most central anyhow for Butler. That is instead the desire for recognition.164 She writes that “our very sense of personhood is linked to the desire for recognition, and that desire places us outside ourselves, in a realm of social norms that we do not fully choose, but that provides the horizon and the resource for any sense of choice that we have.”165 Starting at least from Undoing Gender, the desire for recognition is foundational for the formation of human identity and personhood for Butler.166 But the focus on recognition is not a new development in Butler. The interest in recognition comes most likely, as Lloyd points out,167 from her engagement with Hegel’s section in

161 162

163 164 165 166 167

Lloyd, Judith Butler, 43. Kirsten Campbell, “The Plague of the Subject: Psychoanalysis and Judith Butler's Psychic Life of Power,” International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies 6, no. 1-2 (2001): 35-48; and Hood-Williams & Cealey Harrison, “Trouble,” 85ff. Lloyd, Judith Butler, 42ff. See also Butler, Gender Trouble, xxv; and Salih, Judith Butler, 26. Butler, Psychic, 79; Butler, Undoing, 32; Butler, Giving, 24, 33. Butler, Undoing, 33. Butler, Undoing, 32f. Lloyd, Judith Butler, 16.



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Phenomenology of Spirit on Lordship and Bondage that was the basis of her dissertation work.168 For Butler then, the desire for recognition dispossesses the person from him- or herself and, in that dispossession, the person becomes aware of his/her vulnerability, an essential aspect of personhood, according to Butler.169 Thus, desire is the key to the sociality of the person for Butler, in that the person is made ecstatic, outside of him- or herself by the desire for recognition, and thus dependent on, and vulnerable to, the other.170 As such, desire shares much with what Butler writes about the psyche. But desire leads to vulnerability in a double sense for Butler. We are vulnerable, on the one hand, in that we are dependent upon the other to have our desires fulfilled. On the other hand, to act on our desire is dangerous, particularly if it is not the norm, for it is essential that our desires are recognized by the other (society). Only then can one profit from society’s protection from violence.171 It is self-awareness that makes the person hold on to his or her existence, so that the desire for recognition is also a desire for persistence.172 Desire is such a strong factor in what forms the person that even if the desire for recognition threatens self-extinction, the subject will still desire it and be constituted by it. For as Butler writes, twice, “the desire to desire is a willingness to desire precisely that which would foreclose desire, if only for the possibility of continuing to desire.”173 As Butler points out elsewhere, prohibition or the extinction of desire is not an obliteration of desire.174 So vulnerability on the one hand, and persistence, on the other, are in

168

169 170 171 172 173 174

Judith Butler, Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 43-59. The most central section from Hegel is found in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Arnold Vincent Miller, with analysis of the text and foreword by J. N. Findlay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 111-119, §78-96). Butler, Notes, 109f. Butler, Undoing, 32. Butler, Undoing, 33. Butler, Undoing, 32. Butler, Psychic, 61, 79. Butler, Excitable, 117.



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tension. But desire is not the only aspect that makes the self an ecstatic self; vulnerability to the other is also instantiated by our very bodiliness, according to Butler.175 Desire, though, is a complicated and even a sometimes inconsistent affair in Butler’s thinking. The inconsistency lies in how desire relates to norms and discourse on the one hand, and how desire relates to norms and the person’s self on the other. As for discourse, desire at times transcends discourse,176 while at other times desire, for Butler, is the expression of norms in a discourse,177 or even an expression of the self’s desires against the norms in a discourse.178 Desire acquires transcendent qualities counter to Butler’s otherwise strict discursive immanentism.179 Moya Lloyd formulates the central challenge here when she writes: “[f]or while the terms by which persistence – or survival – is made possible are social terms, that is, norms that are the contingent effects of specific power relations, the desire for existence itself, as she deploys it, appears not to be.”180 As I have intended to show, and as Lloyd states elsewhere,181 it is a valid question to ask where desire derives from for Butler considering its varied job description in Butler’s thinking. Yet the focus here is on how the desire for recognition is linked to personhood in Butler for it is this desire that makes the person fundamentally vulnerable to the other for its being. Recognition and vulnerability are therefore closely connected for Butler and this is exemplified in, for example, the concept of grievability.182

175 176 177 178 179

180 181 182

Butler, Precarious, 25-30; Butler, Frames, 3, 14; Butler, Notes; Butler, “Rethinking (2016).”. Butler, Undoing, 15. Butler, Undoing, 2. Butler, Gender Trouble, 96. See also Salih, Judith Butler, 57f, 123. For a critique of Butler’s implicit assumption of transcendence see Sina Kramer, “Judith Butler’s ‘New Humanism”: A Thing or Not a Thing, and So What?,” philoSOPHIA 5, no. 1 (2015): 25-40. Lloyd, “Towards,” 99 [emphasis in original]. Lloyd, Judith Butler, 102. David W. McIvor, “Bringing Ourselves to Grief: Judith Butler and the Politics of Mourning,” Political Theory 40, no. 4 (2012): 409-436, 410.



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Recognition, personhood and grievability The literature on recognition is vast.183 Many commentators refer the concept back to Hegel as a point of departure and the same goes for Butler.184 For Butler, the concept is particularly important given how recognition works to constitute personhood and human identity. As was stated above, recognition is essential for the constitution of the person for Butler.185 But notably, the term is not prevalent in either Gender Trouble or Bodies That Matter.186 There recognition is

183

184

185 186

See Butler, Frames, 4; Honneth et al., Reification, 36. Jessica Benjamin, Nancy Fraser, Axel Honneth, Charles Taylor and Amy Gutmann are main thinkers in this area, many of whom have been in dialogue with each other (Nancy Fraser & Axel Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?: a Political-Philosophical Exchange (London: Verso, 2003)), and with Butler (e.g. Honneth et al., Reification; Nancy Fraser, “Heterosexism, Misrecognition, and Capitalism: A Response to Judith Butler,” Social Text, no. 52/53 (1997): 279-289; Benhabib et al., Feminist; Judith Butler, “Longing for Recognition: Commentary on the Work of Jessica Benjamin,” Studies in Gender and Sexuality 1, no. 3 (2000): 271-290; and Jessica Benjamin, “Response to Commentaries by Mitchell and by Butler,” Studies in Gender and Sexuality 1, no. 3 (2000): 291-308.) Notably, Jürgen Habermas is not mentioned by Butler (e.g. Jürgen Habermas, “Struggles for Recognition in the Democratic Constitutional State,” in Charles Taylor & Amy Gutmann [eds.], Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994)), while she is fully aware of his thinking (Butler et al., Power of Religion); nor is Paul Ricoeur named (e.g. Paul Ricoeur, The Course of Recognition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005)). For a survey see Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch & Christopher F. Zurn (eds.), The Philosophy of Recognition: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2010). Rasmus Willig, “Recognition and Critique: an Interview with Judith Butler,” Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory 13, no. 1 (2012): 139-44, 140. It may be of interest that it is only after her contribution to John Rajchman’s The Identity in Question that Butler emphasizes the concept of recognition (John Rajchman [ed.] The Identity in Question (New York: Routledge, 1995)). Recognition is an important concept for many of the contributors to that conference and publication, and particularly for Cornel West. West uses the phrase “desire for recognition” (Cornel West, “A Matter of Life and Death,” in John Rajchman [ed.] The Identity in Question (New York: Routledge, 1995), 15f). West calls the desire for



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mainly seen as a necessity for avoiding social exclusion.187 Butler points out in Bodies That Matter that recognition might play a part and even has “enormous power” for subject formation, but what defines the human here for Butler is still “the logic of repudiation.”188 Or, put differently, one’s human identity is defined by what differentiates me from you. Butler’s interest is here mainly on how subjecthood is constituted negatively by difference and repudiation, a kind of apophatic theory of subject formation, to borrow a term from theology. Interestingly, however, the more Butler, on the one hand, emphasizes the importance of recognition for identity formation, the less, on the other hand, she appears to stress how identity is constituted negatively. With recognition, Butler opens up for the possibility of identity to be formed positively, by what is affirmed. Even so, recognition is rarely, if ever, completely successful for Butler. Recognition is intimately connected to the act of interpellation but in the interpellation the subject-to-be will not be recognized in his or her entirety. Rather, in every interpellation the subject is also misrecognised.189 Butler writes that a “performative effort of naming can only attempt to bring its addressee into being, but there is always the risk of a certain misrecognition, and if one



187

188 189

recognition a “quest for visibility,” “the sense of being acknowledged,” and “a deep desire for association” (West, “Life and Death,” 16), themes that can be recognized in Butler’s Precarious Life. See also Judith Butler, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, Cornel West, Eduardo Mendieta, Jonathan VanAntwerpen, & Craig Calhoun. The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011) and Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell, Nancy Fraser, & Linda Nicholson. Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange (New York: Routledge, 1995), to see that recognition probably became a growing concern in the mid to late 90s for Butler. Butler writes, for example, “[n]ot to have social recognition as an effective heterosexual is to lose one possible social identity and perhaps to gain one that is radically less sanctioned” (Butler, Gender Trouble, 105). Butler, Bodies, 76. Butler, Psychic, 95f.



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misrecognizes that effort to produce the subject, the production itself falters.”190 Still, whether through misrecognition or recognition, the human person is still constituted in relation to the other. As such, recognition is that which binds together and joins people as well as acknowledges differences for Butler. Recognition is developed by Butler into a central aspect of the constitution of human personhood.191 Whether consciously or not it is a response to the critique about difference and communality outlined above. It is no longer exclusively the case that “the specificity of identity is purchased through the loss and degradation of connection” in difference, or abjection.192 Rather, abjection has, for Butler, become a consequence of the failure of recognition; abjection is the effect of misrecognition.193 Misrecognition forms identity from what was not, or what failed to be. Butler maintains a dialectical thinking concerning recognition so that rejection and renunciation still play an important part for identity, especially in terms of misrecognition. There is an element of self-subversion in recognition since it is impossible to be recognized fully for Butler. Since recognition depends upon the recognition of the other and to maintain the otherness of the other is dependent upon the distinction between you and the other, then you can only be recognized by giving an account to the other. But this account will always be disrupted by

190 191

192

193

Butler, “Subjection,” 238 [emphasis in original]. Most centrally, see Butler, Giving, 19-35, 41-49; Butler, Psychic, 20, 79; Butler, “Longing”; Judith Butler, Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death, The Wellek Library Lectures (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 13-14, 81; Butler, Undoing, 13, 32, 218; Butler, Precarious, 36, 43-45; Judith Butler, “Taking Another's View: Ambivalent Implications,” in Martin Jay (ed.) Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Judith Butler, “‘An Account of Oneself”,” in Bronwyn Davies (ed.) Judith Butler in Conversation: Analyzing the Texts and Talk of Everyday Life (New York: Routledge, 2008), 29-34; Butler, Frames, 4-15; Judith Butler, Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 105; and Butler & Athanasiou, Dispossession, 75-96. Butler, Bodies, 76. Butler, Precarious, 43.



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performative actions since they will inform the “account-giving.” That is why failed recognition still affects the constitution of the person for Butler.194 Recognition is in need of constant reiteration, as all performative acts are for Butler. And this need for reiteration means that one’s identity as a human person is consistently dependent on the recognition of the other for its constitution.195 Hence, personhood is founded through the precariousness and vulnerability of life. This is very similar to how the act of interpellation works for Butler in that it makes the subject dependent upon the other. It is not surprising therefore that Butler brings interpellation and recognition together and writes that “[i]nterpellation is an address that regularly misses its mark, it requires the recognition of an authority at the same time that it confers identity through successfully compelling that recognition. Identity is a function of that circuit, but does not preexist it.”196 Recognition, then, is incorporated in the process of identity formation of the person in the interpellation, but recognition has replaced the concept of abjection in Butler’s development of this process.197 Importantly, with recognition and vulnerability Butler lays more emphasis on the bodiliness of human existence, but in a way that makes the body other to itself. While the claim that our bodies are our “own” is important to Butler,198 at the same time when, as she writes, we struggle for rights over our own bodies, the very bodies for which we struggle are not quite ever only our own. The body has its invariably public dimension. Constituted as a social phenomenon in the public sphere, my body is and is not mine. Given over from the start to the world of others, it bears their imprint, is formed within the crucible of social life; only later, and with some uncertainty, do I lay claim to my body as my own, if, in fact, I ever do.199

194 195 196 197 198 199

Butler, Frames, 10. Butler, Precarious, 27; Butler, Psychic, 143. Butler, Excitable, 33. Butler, Frames, 5f. Butler, Precarious, 25. Butler, Precarious, 26.



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It is this precariousness of the body in political action that prompts Butler’s interest in embodiment.200 Our fundamental vulnerability and desire for recognition (a vulnerability for recognition?) of which this precarity is an expression leads Butler to emphasize the sociality and communality of the human condition even more. She asks: “[f]rom where might a principle emerge by which we vow to protect others from the kinds of violence we have suffered, if not from an apprehension of a common human vulnerability?”201 As Butler puts it, “vulnerability is one precondition for humanization,“ and this “takes place differently through variable norms of recognition.”202 Thus, the social constitution of the body and vulnerability are fundamental for the human condition for Butler because of our desire for recognition. An example of this fundamental vulnerability is what Butler calls grievability.203 Grief is a primary example of both vulnerability and recognition because even the celebration of life presupposes the loss of life, and therefore the precariousness of life comes to the fore.204 In Butler’s words, “[i]f we take precariousness of life as a point of departure, then there is no life without the need for shelter and food, no life without dependency on wider networks of sociality and labor, no life that transcends injurability and mortality,”205 and “one’s life is always in some sense in the hands of the other.”206 As such, along with life’s precariousness, grief is an effect and sign of our dependence upon the other. But it has a sinister consequence for Butler, for if one’s life is not worth being grieved, that is, if it is not grievable, then it has not been a human life at all.207 Here grievability is psychologically as well as bodily fundamental:

200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207

See Butler, Notes, 66-98; Butler, Force. Butler, Precarious, 30. Butler, Precarious, 43. The term “grievability” has a very similar function to “vulnerability” in Butler’s Frames of War (Butler, Frames, 13-15). Butler, Frames, 15. Butler, Frames, 24f. Butler, Frames, 14. Butler, Frames, 38.



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FROM INTERPELLATED SUBJECTHOOD After all, if my survivability depends on a relation to others, to a “you” or a set of “yous” without whom I cannot exist, then my existence is not mine alone, but is to be found outside myself, in this set of relations that precede and exceed the boundaries of who I am.208

My whole self is dependent upon the other and this makes vulnerability, of which grief is an example, an ontological assumption for Butler.209 Or as she writes, “[w]e are then not only vulnerable to one another – an invariable feature of social relations – but this very vulnerability indicates a broader condition of dependency and interdependency which changes the dominant ontological understanding of the embodied subject.”210 This is strongly linked with her ambition to find ways to recognize those whose lives are not recognized as human lives at all. Lately this has developed into an exploration for Butler as to how resistance is possible given the condition of a fundamental vulnerability,211 as well as into a radical commitment to nonviolence to preserve the life of the other.212 To summarize, recognition works as an affirmative concept in the “humanization” and formation of the person. With recognition, Butler stresses how personhood is constituted relationally and socially. With recognition, Butler works out how social concepts of the human body reveal a shared vulnerability that becomes the foundation for actions such as resistance. Embodiment, particularly the body’s dependence on the other for its sustenance, is another notion stressed by Butler due to the desire for recognition. The issue of recognition and the issue of vulnerability bring this section on Butler back to where it started, to the main purpose of Butler’s thinking, namely that of making the unrecognized life recognized and the unlivable life livable.213

208 209 210 211

212 213

Butler, Frames, 44. See also Butler, Notes, 21, 43f, 68, 123-153. Butler, Notes, 40, 108, 109. Butler, “Rethinking (2014)”. Butler, “Rethinking (2016),” Butler, Notes, Judith Butler, “The Big Picture: Protest, Violent and Nonviolent,” Public Books, October 13, 2017, publicbooks.org; and Butler, “My Life.” Butler, Force, 56, 99. McIvor argues that the issues of grief and mourning, which are closely linked to recognition and vulnerability, are a “red thread that connects



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This type of thinking will prove to be significant for the questions of social constructivism and biologist essentialism. The core lies in the question of relationality. Butler dismisses any essentialist solutions to the question of humanity, which leaves her to work and rework the concept of identity as socially constructed. Is she successful in this attempt to work out what could be called a relational or weak ontology of the person?214 Butler does, after all, call for a development of language about identity and personhood.215 Can theology help with this?



214 215

Butler’s early work with her more recent interventions” (McIvor, “Bringing,” 411). White, Sustaining; Kelz, Non-Sovereign. Butler, Precarious, 24.





Chapter 2: Being human nature Evolutionary psychology is the theory that sheds the greatest explanatory light on the human being, from why we act, or want to act, as we do to why we think and feel as we do, and even why we think about ourselves as we do. Evolutionary psychology also explains how the brain developed through evolution so that it now appears designed.1 Or that is Steven Pinker’s claim.2 Pinker defines evolutionary psychology as “the study of the phylogenetic history and adaptive functions of the mind.”3 The goal of evolutionary psychology is, thus, “to explain how evolution caused the emergence of a brain, which causes psychological processes like knowing and learning, which cause the acquisition of the values and knowledge that make up a person’s culture.”4 Steven Pinker (1954-) is the Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, and his claims are almost diametrically opposed to those made by Butler. Like Butler, Pinker has had an extensive impact on people’s understanding of the human being also outside of the academic realm.5 But despite

1

2

3

4 5

Pinker, Blank, 51. Advocates for evolutionary psychology who have been influential in Pinker’s thinking are the psychologists Martin Daly, Margo Wilson and David Buss, the anthropologist Donald Symon as well as the already mentioned Tooby and Cosmides. They all contributed, as did Pinker, to The Adapted Mind (Barkow, Cosmides, & Tooby, Adapted). The book had immense influence for the shaping of the theory and has been called a manifesto for evolutionary psychology by one of the main critics of the view, the philosopher David Buller (Buller, Adapting, 11). Pinker, Mind, 345ff, 469, 517; Pinker, Blank, 54, 263ff; Pinker, Better, 76, 490-491. See also Tooby & Cosmides, “Evolutionary Psychology: Part I.” Pinker, Blank, 51. The Oxford Dictionary defines “phylogenesis” as “[t]he evolutionary development and diversification of a species or group of organisms, or of a particular feature of an organism.” Pinker, Language Instinct, 409. On Pinker’s influence see, David J. Buller, Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 11f. The Blank Slate, for example, was on the New York Times bestseller list as have many others of Pinker’s books. See also

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that, this work is the first comprehensive and systematic engagement with Pinker’s thinking.6 I argue that Pinker presents a



6

Brendan Wallace, Getting Darwin Wrong: Why Evolutionary Psychology Won't Work (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2010), 2f. For Pinker within evolutionary psychology, see John Tooby & Leda Cosmides, “Conceptual Foundations of Evolutionary Psychology,” in David M. Buss (ed.) The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2005), 6; Lance Workman & Will Reader, Evolutionary Psychology: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Douglas T. Kenrick, Edward K. Sadalla, & Richard C. Keefe, “Evolutionary Cognitive Psychology: The Missing Heart of Modern Cognitive Science,” in Charles Crawford & Dennis Krebs (eds.), Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology: Ideas, Issues, and Applications (New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998); and Philippe Huneman & Edouard Machery, “Evolutionary Psychology: Issues, Results, Debates,” in Thomas Heams, et al. (eds.), Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences (Dordrecht: Springer, 2015). There are of course articles and books in social sciences and humanities that engage with Pinker. Many are, interestingly, within the area of theology. See Mikael Stenmark, “Three Theories of Human Nature,” Zygon 44, no. 4 (2009): 894-920; Arne Rasmusson, “Science as Salvation: George Lakoff and Steven Pinker as Secular Political Theologians,” Modern Theology 28, no. 2 (2012): 197-228, and Cunningham, Darwin's, 194-197. See also David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions (New York: Basic Books, 2009). Philosopher David Buller writes extensive critiques of evolutionary psychology itself, in which Pinker is included, as does Kenan Malik (Buller, Adapting; Kenan Malik, Man, Beast and Zombie: What Science Can and Cannot Tell Us About Human Nature (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000)). Further, the writer Cordelia Fine engages with Pinker in his area of cognitive science and psychology in Cordelia Fine, Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences (London: Icon Books, 2010). See also, Brendan Wallace, Getting Darwin Wrong, particularly on the topic of computationalism and modular theory of the brain (Wallace, Getting). Furthermore, Pinker’s claims in The Better Angels of Our Nature received much critique from social scientists and historians, see Linda Mitchell, (ed.), Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques 44, no. 1 (2018). For Pinker’s response, see Steven Pinker, “Response to the Book Review Symposium: Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature.” Sociology 49, no. 4 (2015): 1224-1232, and Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (New York: Viking, 2018).



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biologist essentialist anthropology, but it will become clear that, as with Butler, this is not a straightforward categorization. Pinker labors to explain individuality and particularity on the basis of a clear notion of a shared and universal human nature, rooted in the shared human genome.7 The cultural is therefore set on a firm biological bedrock when it comes to defining and explaining the human being.8 But evolutionary psychology works at the intersection between biology and culture and nothing exemplifies this more than language for Pinker.9 For Pinker, language is a window into human nature and as such is a good place to start to explore Pinker’s anthropology.10

Language: window to human nature Language is undeniably linked to culture since there are thousands of different languages connected to different people groups. Thus far, Pinker agrees. The cultural aspect of languages, for Pinker, is that languages are culturally specific with their own development and history. Yet that does not make language itself a “cultural invention” for Pinker.11 Instead, Pinker argues that language should be understood as an “instinct,” as something inextricably linked to human nature and biology, and not as something predominantly upheld by culture.12



7

8 9 10 11 12

There are, furthermore, extensive reviews of, for example, The Blank Slate, such as Simon Blackburn, “Meet the Flintstones,” Powells, (cited, 21.11.2002) http://www.powells.com/review/2002_11_21.html; Louis Menand, “What Comes Naturally: Does evolution explain who we are?,” The New Yorker, November 25, 2002; Mary Midgley, “It's all in the mind,” The Guardian, 21.09.2002; and Schlinger, “Blank.” Pinker, Blank, xi, 75-78. For an understanding of what ‘universal’ means within evolutionary psychology, see Tooby & Cosmides, “ Psychological,” 82. Much more will be said about this, but see Pinker, Blank, 1-102. Pinker, Language Instinct, 277f; Pinker, Blank, 37. See Pinker, Language Instinct, 407; Steven Pinker, Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language (London: Phoenix, 2000), 235f. Pinker, Language Instinct, 18. Pinker, Language Instinct, 17f, 67. Pinker explains the language instinct as a “complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child



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Pinker argues contentiously against any view of culture that would see culture as an entity in itself disconnected from individual people’s wills. It is, according to Pinker, a certain type of sociology influenced by the thoughts of Albert Kroeber and Emile Durkheim that holds to this view of culture as “superorganic,” floating “in its own universe, free of the flesh and blood of actual men and women.“13 That has, in his view, led to the separation of language from biology, which is one of the problems, for Pinker, with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that language gears our thinking.14 For Pinker, language certainly does not control, or shape, our thoughts.15 Instead, language is a way to understand how we think. It is the expression of thoughts, and by dissecting language linguistically Pinker argues that the way humans think has a universal commonality, based in a shared human nature.16 He writes that, [t]here is a theory of space and time embedded in the way we use words. There is a theory of matter and a theory of causality, too. […] Though these ideas are woven into language, their roots are deeper than language itself. They lay out the ground rules for how we understand our surroundings, how we assign credit and blame to our fellows, and how we negotiate our relationships with them. A close look at our speech – our conversations, our jokes, our curses, our legal disputes, the names we give our babies – can therefore give us insight into who we are.17



13 14

15 16 17

spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruction, is deployed without awareness of its underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual, and is distinct from more general abilities to process information or behave intelligently” (Pinker, Language Instinct, 18). Pinker, Blank, 23. Pinker, Language Instinct, 57. Pinker likewise opposes the philosophy of language that he sees deriving from the tradition of the late Wittgenstein’s language theories such as Jacques Derrida’s and Roland Barthes’ (Pinker, Blank, 207f). Pinker, Language Instinct, 55-82; Pinker, Blank, 207ff. Pinker, Stuff, 428f. Chomsky’s theory of universal grammar is important here (Pinker, Language Instinct, 83-125). Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature (London: Penguin, 2008), vii.



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Language is thus not a prison house for our thoughts for Pinker, but rather “a window into human nature,“18 something deeply anchored in our common psychological makeup. This also exemplifies Pinker’s biologist essentialism for while Pinker acknowledges the existence of cultural differences, language is an instinct constituted by biology. Language arose with the development of a common human nature and is one of many universal human traits, according to Pinker, which then works itself out in relation to an environment.19 Things such as the universality of a “language instinct,” a shared evolutionary ancestry, together with other universal human traits make up a common human psychology for Pinker.20 This psychology developed in a hunter-gatherer context and it is in that context that instincts and traits should be understood and interpreted.21 Cultural variances are different combinations and histories of development of these traits.22 Evolutionary processes thus are central for understanding language for Pinker, but also the universal side of human psychology. For, as he writes, “we are outcomes of natural selection; we got here because we inherited traits that allowed our ancestors to survive, find mates, and reproduce.”23 That does not mean that all traits in the contemporary human being are evolutionary genetic adaptations for Pinker.24 Instead, Pinker argues that only a few genes affect behavior in a direct manner.25 The way genes predominantly work is that they, as Pinker

18 19

20 21 22 23 24 25

Pinker, Stuff, 27; Pinker, Language Instinct, 35. Pinker, Blank, 142f. See further Richard Dawkins’ River Out of Eden for an extended evolutionary argument for the shared ancestry of humanity (Dawkins, River, 35-68). Buller, Adapting, 9. Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes (London: Allen Lane, 2011), 612f. Pinker, Blank, 55 Pinker, Blank, 52. Pinker, Language Instinct, 48f; Pinker, Blank, 53. Steven Pinker, “Why Nature and Nurture Won't Go Away,” in Steven Pinker, Language, Cognition, and Human Nature: Selected Articles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 216.



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states, “ensure that despite variable environments, a constant organ develops, one that is capable of doing its job.”26 Genes develop organs that in turn interact with the environment, and are thus affected by it. For, according to Pinker, “[t]he mind is an adaptation designed by natural selection, but that does not mean that everything we think, feel, and do is biologically adaptive. […] And the ultimate goal of natural selection is to propagate genes, but that does not mean that the ultimate goal of people is to propagate genes.”27 Thus, genes are, mostly, one step removed from behavior for Pinker. He therefore stresses the importance of learning without taking leave of a genetically and biologically framed anthropology. For Pinker, “diversity of the human species is not hard-wired in our genetic code.”28 But learning is still to be understood as linked with biology and a human nature. Learning does not make something out of nothing – like a person out of a blank slate.29 Pinker’s way of seeing it is that “[e]very bit of content is learned, but the system doing the learning works by a logic innately specified.”30 As such, coming back to the example of language, in Pinker’s line of thinking, it has been evolutionary beneficial for genes to develop an organ that deals “instinctively” with language when an organism, such as the human, is set in a hunter-gatherer context. Humans that lack this genetic makeup have tended to be less likely to survive and propagate, which is why, in the end, all humans have this language instinct as a universally common trait.31 Still, when Pinker acknowledges the importance of learning, and emphasizes the fact that learning has a real effect on the constitution of the individual, how can this be reconciled with his idea of genes and evolutionary history as fundamental to understanding the human being? For this, nature and nurture enter the picture, as does a concept Pinker calls “unique environment.”

26 27 28 29 30 31

Pinker, Blank, 90 [emphasis in original]. Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (London: Penguin, 1998), 23f. Pinker, Blank, 78. Pinker, Blank, 25. Pinker, Words, 234. Pinker, Language Instinct, 25-27.



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Nature/nurture For Pinker the question of nature as set against nurture is based on a misunderstanding.32 Nature/nurture is a “tired dichotomy” as Pinker sees it, and it is best to “think around it.”33 The way Pinker “thinks around it” is to allocate different purposes to the two concepts so that nurture contributes “content” while nature contributes “innate circuitry.”34 As Pinker explains it, according to the theory of evolution only the things that are constant enough in the human living condition and that improve the chances of procreation will be inscribed into the human genome and become hereditary traits. Taking language as the example, the ability to speak and understand speech has been beneficial enough to human survival for it to have been favored by selection, which is why it has become a hereditary trait, or instinct, according to Pinker.35 However, communication demands a speaking-partner and that partner will by default have a different history and background, which means that something in the act of communication must be open-ended enough to allow for change and variation.36 This leads Pinker to move away from the very common addition model of nature and nurture. Here Pinker differs from John Tooby and Leda Cosmides whom he otherwise is much dependent upon. Tooby and Cosmides make a distinction between “nature” and “environment” rather than “content” and “innate circuity,” which are Pinker’s preferred terms. Importantly, it allows Pinker to avoid a problematic discussion about causality found in Tooby and Cosmides. For Tooby and Cosmides the stimuli or inputs from the social environment in “social construction” do not “cause” or “compose” behavior. Instead, the stimuli from the social environment merely

32

33 34 35 36

Pinker refers here to Tooby and Cosmides claim that the social sciences have mistakenly made a distinction between “biological factors” and “environmental factors” (Tooby & Cosmides, “Psychological,” 33). Pinker, Language Instinct, 277. Pinker, “Why Nature,” 215. Pinker, Language Instinct, 18f; Pinker, Words, 314. Pinker, Language Instinct, 148, 278.



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“caused it [behavior] to be expressed.”37 The distinction between “cause” and “merely caused it to be expressed” is not defined, though, and in common usage “cause to be expressed” is surely close to synonymous with what a “cause” is. In order to maintain a distinction, Tooby and Cosmides must argue that biological causes are more “primary,” and lie beneath the “lesser causes” from the social environment that merely “cause something to be expressed.” This presents a daunting methodological task, for how will Tooby and Cosmides manage to gain access to those primary causes, if they do not come to expression? This short reference to Tooby and Cosmides is important, for Pinker shares a very similar model in terms of the relation between nature and nurture, but (to his credit) does not enter into a discussion of whether the “causal” influence of the environment should be termed differently than should genetic “causes.” Pinker avoids this question by not using “cause” for either hereditary or environmental influences on the organism. For Pinker, biology’s open-endedness to the environment is necessary for the development of an innate human nature, but it does not make the environment, or culture, an agent in itself that causes behavior. The problem for Pinker with the debate about nature or nurture is that it leads one to think that “there is an environment without someone to perceive it, behavior without a behaver, [and] learning without a learner.”38 Notably, Pinker’s quote is an almost exact reversal of Butler’s Nietzsche quote that “there is no ‘being’ behind doing, effecting, becoming; ‘the doer’ is merely a fiction added to the deed – the deed is everything.”39 Exactly what this means must be left for later, but it is clear that we are dealing with very different notions of culture and agency. “Culture” has no mind or will and can therefore not be an agent of change, which is how Pinker understands the Standard Social Science Method’s view of culture. Pinker instead emphasizes the individual agent, since, as he sees it, in the debate over nature

37 38 39

Tooby & Cosmides, “Psychological,” 117. Pinker, Language Instinct, 407f. Butler, Gender Trouble, 34.



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versus nurture in the SSSM “[t]he organism has vanished.”40 “Organism” here means the human individual. Pinker uses two illustrations to clarify his point ─ two different ways of understanding the relationship between nature and nurture. The first exemplifies Pinker’s understanding of heredity and environment within the social sciences (SSSM), where, as he sees it, there is no “behaver.” The second model illustrates Pinker’s preferred view of how heredity and environment relate, importantly with a “behaver,” or learner.41

heredity causes



behavior

environment causes

Fig 1 environment provides input to builds heredity

innate psychological mechanisms, including learning mechanisms

develops and accesses

skills, knowledge,

values

causes behavior

Fig 2

40 41

Pinker, Language Instinct, 407. Pinker, Language Instinct, 408. For Pinker, this is a simplification too since he is hesitant to make too much of a distinction between heredity and environment at all. (Pinker, Language Instinct, 408).



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Apparent in Fig.2 is the central position occupied by the organism, the behaver, that is the carrier of innate psychological mechanisms and learning mechanisms. Interestingly, Pinker thus equates the individual with innate psychological mechanisms and learning mechanisms. Also, the roles of heredity and environment are redefined somewhat. Neither simply “causes” behavior, but they are allocated different functions for the construction of the organism. Heredity, meaning the consequences of the genetic setup of an individual, constructs the organs that constitute the organism. The environment, on the other hand, provides input or information that the organism can process. It is the organism, then, that after having processed the “input” with the available organs, acts out the behavior. Content is here context-specific and affects behavior through the organism, but, for Pinker, content without any innate circuitry for learning is useless and incapable of affecting behavior.42 This means, for Pinker, that a learner cannot be explained as a “little of each” of nature and nurture since that is to misunderstand how an organism is developed.43 But, a distinction between nature and nurture can still be made.44 What Pinker emphasizes with his models is that their interaction and distinction must be explained correctly and not simplistically – as what I called an “addition model” previously. To move away from that model one needs to involve a learner that has developed through the process of evolution for Pinker.45 But, importantly, when it comes to behavior Pinker argues that, [g]enes do not determine behavior like the punched paper roll of a player piano. Environmental interventions – from education and psychotherapy to historical changes in attitudes and political systems – can significantly affect human affairs. Also worth stressing is that genes and environments may interact in the statistician’s sense, namely, that the effects of one can be

42 43 44 45

Pinker, Words, 235. Pinker, “Why Nature,” 218. Pinker, “Why Nature,” 222-226. Steven Pinker, “So How Does the Mind Work?” in Steven Pinker, Language, Cognition, and Human Nature: Selected Articles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 273.



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exposed, multiplied, or reversed by the effects of the other, rather than merely summed with them.46

And he continues that it is misleading to invoke environment dependence to deny the importance of understanding the effects of genes. To begin with, it is simply not true that any gene can have any effect in some environment, with the implication that we can always design an environment to produce whatever outcome we value.47

Pinker’s response to simplistic understandings of the nature/nurture dichotomy is that genes have inherent qualities that guide the possible outcome for an organism’s encounter with a particular environment. Pinker can therefore attribute an important part for the environment in a person’s development. Even so, there are, as will become evident, problems with Pinker’s model, but necessary for that discussion is an understanding of what Pinker means by the concept of “unique environment.”

Unique environment Pinker is adamant that when he presents percentages of the influence of heredity and environment respectively, it is not about how much the development of a personality can be attributed to each. Rather, percentages are “the percentage of variance in personality that is caused by variation in upbringing.”48 Variance is a statistical term and, as Pinker points out, “variance is a number that captures the degree to which the members of a group differ from one another.”49 As such, what is measured is how much a particular factor, such as heritability, accounts for the difference that is found among the members of the researched group.50

46 47 48 49 50

Pinker, “Why Nature,” 219. Pinker, “Why Nature,” 220. Pinker, Blank, 393 [emphasis in original]. Pinker, Blank, 374. For more on this see Rutter, Genes, ch. 3.



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For Pinker, variation in personality per se most likely has a genetic foundation. He points out that, “[f]or example, we may all develop a sense of generosity if enough of our friends and neighbors are generous, but the threshold or the multiplier of that function may differ among us genetically or at random: some people need only a few nice neighbors to grow up nice, others need a majority.”51 However genetic methods only help “explain what makes people different, but they cannot explain what people have in common, that is, universal human nature.”52 Therefore, when Pinker refers to the influence of unique environment it should be remembered that he has it in mind that a (large?) proportion of what a human being is, is made up by a shared human nature that has evolved according to the laws of evolution. Very particularly for Pinker, “unique environment“ is what the child experiences outside of home. This is as influential as heredity in accounting for variance among different individuals in a group. (Remember the technical, statistical sense of “heredity.”) In contrast, the shared environment (parents and home), according to Pinker, have more or less no long-term effect on personality.53 Pinker’s specific understanding of personality is important here but will be described below. Anyway, what the omission of the shared environment as an effect on personality means is that the effect of environment on personality and behavior comes down not to parents, but to socialization, or peer pressure for Pinker.54 The reason is that “[c]hildren must learn what it takes to gain status among their peers, because status at one age gives them a leg up in the struggle for status at the next, including the young-adult stages in which they first compete for the attention of the opposite sex.”55 The evolutionary logic is clear, but Pinker also relies to a large extent on psychology researcher Judith Rich Harris in his writing on shared

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Pinker, Blank, 260. Pinker, Blank, 377. Pinker, Blank, 384f. Pinker, Mind, 449; Steven Pinker, “Foreword,” in Judith Rich Harris, The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do, 2nd ed. (New York: Free Press, 2009), xxiv. Pinker, Blank, 390.



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environment versus peer pressure and unique environment, what Rich Harris calls Group Socialization theory.56 To conclude, Pinker certainly acknowledges the importance of the environment for personality. But it should be remembered that “unique environment” has a technical sense and accounts for what differs between people. Only with a strong theory of human nature as a backdrop does culture affect human behavior, but with that in place, the effect can be major.57 So it is not quite true that nature determines behavior in the end for Pinker.58 But the shared genome of a common human nature through the process of evolution still constitutes the human being for Pinker. Genes construct (as in build) the human individual, or “behaver,” who computes and acts upon the input from the environment. The universality of human nature together with the variation that derives from heredity and the unique environment of the individuals within the human species make up human identity for Pinker. Central to this are the genes on the one hand, and the will of the individual on the other. So how does Pinker account for these?

Genes, personality and behavior That genes directly cause features such as hair and eye color is uncontroversial. It is just as self-evident that the color of one’s hair, eyes or skin affect who that person becomes or understands himor herself to be in a particular culture. In the latter case, genes only affect personality in a kind of circuitous manner, and Pinker can acknowledge this.59 Simplistically, one can say that genes affect my skin color and culture affects the effects of that skin color on myself and others. Yet, for Pinker, genes are more significant than that even if, as he says, “genes do not determine behavior like the punched paper roll of a player piano.” But how does Pinker

56

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Judith Rich Harris, The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do, 2nd ed. (New York: Free Press, 2009); Judith Rich Harris, “Where Is the Child's Environment? A Group Socialization Theory of Development,” Psychological Review 102, no. 3 (1995): 458-489. Pinker, Better, xxiif, 612. Rasmusson, “Science,” 212. Pinker, Blank, 141-158.



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discriminate between the genes and biological aspects that affect behavior and those that do not? For example, for Pinker, the nursing capacity in women goes deeper, biologically speaking, than race distinctions.60 How is this? To understand the distinction regarding the “depth” of genetic influence on behavior one has to turn to the theory of evolution itself. About evolution Pinker points out that, contrary to JeanBaptiste Lamarck, acquired traits are not inheritable; hard lessons one individual has learnt in his or her lifetime will not be passed on to the next generation (although through culture and learning they are!). Instead, as Pinker emphasizes, inheritable change of human nature occurs through small random genetic mutations.61 Mutations that develop individuals with characteristics conducive for procreation will be selected for.62 Importantly, this works out in a species over time, where “species” is understood as a population of unique individuals over a long period of time.63 But here the concept of personality is telling. For Pinker, personality comes down to five binary pairs of psychological traits, namely, extroversion vs. introversion, neuroticism vs. stability, agreeableness vs. antagonism, conscientiousness vs. undirectedness, and, finally, openness vs. nonopenness to experience.64 Pinker argues that these are “five major ways in which personality can vary,” and abbreviates the five to the acronym OCEAN, Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extroversion-introversion, Antagonism-agreeableness and Neuroticism.65 This theory for categorizing personality is called the Five-Factor Model (FFM) or “the Big Five” in personality studies within psychology and is, as one of its main proponents, John Digman, says, the result of “systematic efforts to organize the language of

60 61 62 63 64 65

Pinker, Blank, 337-371. Although see Buller’s point about “genetic drift” (Buller, Adapting, 3031). Pinker, Mind, 158f. See Buller, Adapting, 29-35, for a detailed account and distinctions in evolutionary theory on selection and adaptation. Pinker, Mind, 325. Pinker, Mind, 448. Pinker, Blank, 375.



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personality.”66 This model is generally attributed to the work done on personality traits in the 1960s by the psychologist Warren Norman.67 The exact meaning and even the number of the different traits have been debated,68 but a detailed introduction to each of these is not necessary here.69 What is important to point out is that, while Pinker argues that this theory universally describes human personality, it does not determine the specifics, such as what language one speaks, what religion one might profess, and so on. Rather, heritable traits, in Pinker’s words, “reflect the underlying talents and temperaments […]: how proficient with language you are, how religious, how liberal or conservative.”70 Yet, for Pinker, this is to a large degree who one is as a human being. Personality traits, for Pinker, account for variation between people and have a strong genetic determinant. And for Pinker, the sum of these traits is the “organism,” or “behaver” mentioned previously. Here how we act is motivated by our genetic makeup and the primary reason for our personal actions and reactions is not cultural, but genetic on the level of personality traits worked out variously in the human individual. Once more, Pinker pays tribute to

66 67 68

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John M. Digman, “Personality Structure: Emergence of the Five-Factor Model,” Annual Review of Psychology 41, no. 1 (1990): 417-440, 418. Digman, “Personality Structure,” 419f. See Robert R. McCrae & Oliver P. John, “An Introduction to the FiveFactor Model and Its Applications,” Journal of Personality 60, no. 2 (1992): 175-215; H. J. Eysenck, “Dimensions of Personality: 16, 5 or 3?— Criteria for a Taxonomic Paradigm,” Personality and Individual Differences 12, no. 8 (1991): 773-790; Michael C. Ashton & Kibeom Lee, “Honesty-Humility, the Big Five, and the Five-Factor Model,” Journal of Personality 73, no. 5 (2005): 1321-1354 and Kibeom Lee, Babatunde Ogunfowora, & Michael C. Ashton, “Personality Traits Beyond the Big Five: Are They Within the HEXACO Space?,” Journal of Personality 73, no. 5 (2005): 1437-1463. For critiques, see Dan P. McAdam, “The Five-Factor Model In Personality: A Critical Appraisal,” Journal of Personality 60, no. 2 (1992): 329361; and Paula S. Derry, “Buss and Sexual Selection: The Issue of Culture,” American Psychologist 51, no. 2 (1996): 159-160. For a brief and helpful explanation of the terms, see John Maltby, Liz Day, & Ann Macaskill, Introduction Personality, Individual Differences and Intelligence (Harlow: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007), 176f. Pinker, Blank, 375; Pinker, Mind, 448.



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the importance of the social for our actions and does not deny culture and society as a contributing factor for personal development. But, considering the importance of innate traits, and the biological grounding of these traits, biology is given priority in terms of what can explain people’s actions for Pinker. At least, it is the biological setup that decides to what degree an individual is affected by the environment.71 Importantly, the effect of genes on behavior is an average effect of genes on behavior and does not decide each particular instance for Pinker.72 Additionally, Pinker argues that it is not possible to exactly determine the outcome of a genetic inner propensity due to the complexity of the social and cultural environment in which the individual finds him- or herself.73 Genes, thus, restrict the effects of the environment, but this is not a genetic determinism as Pinker sees it even if, for Pinker, only certain aspects of an organism’s phenotypes can be said to be controlled by the environment.74 But still, how does the genetic side of behavior work out in comparison with behavior affected by the “unique environment”? This is a particularly pertinent question since Pinker notes that “[t]he brain strives to put its owner in circumstances like those that caused its ancestors to reproduce, […] animals don’t know the facts of life, and people who do know them are happy to subvert them, such as when they use contraception.”75 In a way “genetic behavior” and, for lack of a better term, “environmental behavior” merge in the individual. It is at least difficult to tell which the individual will act upon. For Pinker this is where the willing agent enters the scene, and how the will works is explained by the computational theory of the mind. This, by extension, also says something about the individual and the self.

71 72 73 74 75

Pinker, Blank, 318-332. Pinker, Blank, 114. Pinker, Blank, 114. Pinker, “Why Nature,” 220. Pinker, Mind, 373.



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Computationalism and the individual The computational theory of the mind is a theory of what intelligence is and how the mind works.76 Pinker makes much of the significance of the computational theory of the mind. As he sees it, it solves the age-old mind-body problem of how mind relates to matter,77 as well as making psychology scientific and useful.78 But the reason for stressing computationalism in Pinker’s thinking here is that it not only explains much of what he thinks about the mind but also what beliefs, desire and agency are for Pinker.79 The mind, where Pinker locates thinking, beliefs, desire and choice, or agency, is a computational information processor according to Pinker.80 But, importantly, while computation is found in the human mind as it is in computers, this does not mean that Pinker equates the human mind with a computer. The way a computer computes and the way the brain computes are essentially different; what is shared is that they process information by computation.81 The mind must have some sort of processor, or have some function, that can read and deal with information for Pinker.82 And it is worth

76

77

78 79

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81 82

For the origins of the theory, see Pinker, Mind and, in contrast, Jerry A. Fodor, The Mind Doesn't Work that Way: The Scope and Limits of Computational Psychology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000). Pinker, Mind, 77; Pinker, Blank, 34. For Pinker’s argumentation on this, see Pinker, Mind, 60-131, but also Pinker, Language Instinct, 73-82; Pinker, Blank, 31-34; and Pinker, “So How?” Pinker, Mind, 84. Steven Pinker, “Deep Commonalities between Life and Mind,” in Language, Cognition, and Human Nature: Selected Articles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 297f. Pinker, Mind, 65f; Louise Barrett, Beyond the Brain: How Body and Environment Shape Animal and Human Minds (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 242f, note 41. Pinker, Mind, 23ff; Pinker, Stuff, 259. Steven Pinker & Alan Prince, “On language and connectionism: Analysis of a parallel distributed processing model of language acquisition,” in Steven Pinker & Jacques Mehler (eds.), Connections and Symbols, 1st MIT Press ed. (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1988), 168. He writes that if one is not to end up with a view of the environment as the sole agent of the mind, then “the properties of the units and



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quoting Pinker at length here on how computation is applied to psychology. The computational theory of the mind states that beliefs and desires are information, incarnated as configurations of symbols. The symbols are the physical states of bits of matter, like chips in a computer or neurons in the brain. They symbolize things in the world because they are triggered by those things via our sense organs, and because of what they do once they are triggered. If the bits of matter that constitute a symbol are arranged to bump into the bits of matter constituting another symbol in just the right way, the symbols corresponding to one belief can give rise to new symbols corresponding to another belief logically related to it, which can give rise to symbols corresponding to other beliefs, and so on.83

Key here is that what the mind does is deal with information in terms of symbols. These symbols are processed by a processor, which need be no more than “a gadget with a fixed number of reflexes.”84 “Processing” in terms of behavior is described by Pinker as, “[e]ventually the bits of matter constituting a symbol bump into bits of matter connected to the muscles, and behavior happens.”85 As such, computation occurs when a processor shifts or links one piece of information to another piece of information according to the rules that the processor has to abide by. The benefit of this theory, Pinker continues, is that it “allows us to keep beliefs and desires in our explanations of behavior while planting them squarely in the physical universe.”86 The explicit materialism is helpful in that, as Pinker says, thinking, desire, choice and so on are made physical and belong to the material universe. Here, however, Pinker is at his most biologist and essentialist in his thinking, in that thinking is the inherent capacity of the neurons. But while Pinker’s computationalism brings many aspects of his thinking together, he is not completely consistent. Pinker, on the one hand, argues that the mind is constructed by the processes governed by genes, which in themselves only have



83 84 85 86

connections at the micro-level must suffice to organize the network into something that behaves intelligently” (171). Pinker, Mind, 25 [emphasis in original]. Pinker, Language Instinct, 75. Pinker, Mind, 25. Pinker, Mind, 25.



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the interest of propagation. Yet, on the other hand, Pinker also argues that “the mind” on the level of the individual’s choices (proximate causes) does not necessarily have to be interested in propagation only. But it is difficult to tell what “the mind” is in this latter case if not the “ultimate” inherent qualities of the neurons/genes (ultimate causes). Despite this, Pinker locates agency in “the individual” and not the neurons. This does not cohere. Or, conversely, if neurons are not connected to the “will” of the genes (ultimate causes) then how to explain ultimate causes at all? How does the “atom” of evolution, the gene, connect with its “vehicle” (the proximate level) if thinking is more than the inherent qualities of the neurons? As I will argue later, there is an individualist and essentialist assumption that underlies Pinker’s anthropology that Pinker does not motivate, but that clashes once “the individual” (the atom of society) “meets” the neuron (the atom of the mind). Pinker holds to a strongly individualistic view of society as a collection of individuals. The thinking is analogical to Pinker’s theory of the mind; in society, the individual is the smallest causal component; when it comes to the mind, it is the neuron. But this essentialist, or possibly innatist and individualist view fails to explain actions on the level of the organism. Is this line of thinking conducive then for dealing with the question of nature and nurture? I will argue that it is not, but not by simply placing Pinker against Judith Butler or Colin Gunton. For what Pinker calls the webbed causality of reality points in a different direction.

Webbed causality What is taken away with the right hand of computationalism, reductionism and individualism is provided again by the left with Pinker’s view of causality and something he calls group identity. In contrast to the prior concepts that are innatist or essentialist, the latter concepts emphasize the “webbiness” of reality as well as the social and the cultural in the constitution of personal identity. Still, this stronger acknowledgment of the relational and the emergent aspects of reality is also to be placed within Pinker’s overarching individualism. But on causation Pinker can write that “the world is not a line of dominoes in which each event causes exactly one event



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and is caused by exactly one event. The world is a tissue of causes and effects that criss and cross in tangled patterns.”87 The fabric of reality is characterized by, in his words, a “webbiness of causation.”88 But these “tangled patterns” are explained as threads of causation where each and every thread could in theory be examined and its place shown in the causal network. This results in a one-toone relation between causes and effects for Pinker that could, even though it would not always be meaningful, be understood reductively. There is no theory of emergence in Pinker’s “webbiness” so not much comes out of the relations themselves.89 The complexity lies instead in how different causes make up this webbed reality. Yet, when Pinker discusses empathy, computationality and modularity are not as pronounced. Rather than settling for a solution of “mirror neurons” or a specific center for empathy, Pinker stresses the complex function of empathy and sympathetic concern.90 Also, context matters greatly for how empathy will express itself. If there is a sense of identification with someone, then the empathetic reaction will be a sympathetic concern for the suffering person. If one is antipathetically inclined toward the person, then the reaction is likely to be one of pleasure from that other’s misfortunes. But, and here Pinker phrases this slightly differently from his nature/nurture model, what causes the sympathetic reaction is perspective-taking and the desire to belong to a community and not

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Pinker, Stuff, 215. Pinker, Stuff, 215. Emergence is the idea that particular relations between entities constitute a whole that cannot be reduced to its constituent parts. The emergent whole, such as the social, for example, can then exercise influence down the causal chain so that even if the social is constituted by individual entities such as human persons the social will still have a “downward” causal effect. For example, Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009 [first published 1966]); Nancey Murphy & William Stoeger, Evolution and Emergence: Systems, Organisms, Persons (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); or Philip Clayton, & Paul Davies (eds.), The Re-Emergence of Emergence: The Emergentist Hypothesis from Science to Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). Pinker, Better, 574-580.



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the organism.91 At times, therefore, the webbiness of reality opens up toward a relationality of reality for Pinker where the type of relation, rather than the property of an innate trait, has the constitutive role. Even so, the portrait of reality is still fundamentally individualist or innatist, one where inherent properties reside in the thing itself. Pinker does not explicitly move away from the view that inner properties cause things to happen, and an aggregate of those inherent properties cause events that might be too complex to disentangle, but which are nonetheless dependent only upon inherent traits. Pinker’s later discussion of empathy and sympathy questions something of the individualist and reductionist thinking in Pinker, but actions and choices are still firmly located in the innate traits of the body for Pinker. Genes and ethics: a question of causality If there was some ambivalence in what the body is for Butler, then any such uncertainty is absent in Pinker. This certainty is based on his particular application of the theory of evolution, but not only that. A fundamental principle for Pinker is that we are our bodies. As a consequence, actions do not precisely constitute our selves; rather, action is feedback in the process of dealing with information from the outside.92 Yet the question of how we are to act still arises. It is the question regarding values, norms and morals and whether values and norms influence who we are. And how do values and norms relate to the genetic constitution of the agent? To avoid saying that genes “cause” behavior or morals as a direct expression of the laws of evolution, Pinker makes a strong distinction between is and ought; what morally “ought” to be the case should not be determined by the “is” of nature.93 Pinker supports this distinction from the analogous distinction in evolutionary theory between ultimate and proximate causes. An ultimate cause is, as Pinker phrases it, “why something evolved by natural

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Pinker, Better, 580-592. Pinker, Blank, 32. Pinker, Blank, 162.



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selection.”94 A proximate cause is “how the entity works here and now.”95 As Pinker sees it, people often miss this distinction, particularly in talk about selfishness in evolution. For example, the ultimate cause of sympathetic behavior is indeed “selfishness,” but in the sense that the sympathetic behavior in the organism improved genetic reproduction for the genes. Sympathetic behavior in the organism itself need not be motivated by selfishness even if the genes are.96 “The expansion of the moral circle does not have to be powered by some mysterious drive toward goodness. It may come from the interaction between the selfish process of evolution and a law of complex systems.”97 Thus, morals can be understood and developed on the level of proximate causes for Pinker even if the ultimate cause might be a different one. This is why Pinker can argue for a social contract theory of ethics and unselfishness, if needed, in distinction from, say, the genes’ selfishness as a guiding principle for human morality.98 Pinker takes the is/ought distinction more or less as a given and locates the “is“ in evolutionary theory and the “ought” in moral theory. The former is based “in” biology and the latter “in” society. But this leads to more of a distinction between nature and nurture than is otherwise the case in Pinker. In terms of morals, Pinker argues on pragmatic and utilitarian grounds that a society will be more morally sound and just if an individual is not judged based on his or her belonging to a particular group, be it “woman,” “man,” “homosexual,” “white,” or “Muslim.”99 The ought is the result of a social contract.100 This is an acknowledgment of the power of the social even if agency is firmly located in the individual for Pinker.

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Pinker, Blank, 191. Pinker, Blank, 191. See also Pinker, Blank, 54 and Buller, Adapting, 36. Buller formulates the ultimate cause as the “fitness-enhancing benefit” of a particular behavior. Pinker, Better, 583; Pinker, Blank, 168. Pinker, Blank, 167. Pinker, Blank, 150f. Pinker, Blank, 145-149, 340-346, 50f, 289ff. Pinker, Blank, 285; Pinker, Better, 42, 182f.



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Still, the image is not completely one-sided. In The Blank Slate (2002) individualism is key. But, in The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011), Pinker stresses what he calls “group identity” and the sociality of the human being to a greater degree.101 Here, identity with the group can override individual identity. Or, as Pinker puts it, “contributions to the group’s welfare are psychologically implemented by a partial loss of boundaries between the group and the self.”102 Importantly, how this is so is explained by Pinker as [e]ach group occupies a slot in their minds that is very much like the slot occupied by an individual person, complete with beliefs, desires, and praiseworthy or blameworthy traits. This social identity appears to be an adaptation to the reality of groups in the welfare of individuals. Our fitness depends not just on our own fortunes but on the fortunes of the bands, villages, and tribes we find ourselves in.103

Group identity and sociality are explained by evolutionary theory so that species in need of each other have evolved social minds, or “slots” in the mind so that one can incorporate and be incorporated in a “social identity.”104 Social identity is thus anchored in universal human nature for Pinker. But, as a critical point, when Pinker distinguishes between proximate and ultimate causes like this he also separates the laws of evolution from the moral rules in the lived reality of the organism. The foundational assumption is that, for there to be a being at all that can be caught between proximate and ultimate causes, the genes, through natural selection, develop organs that construct this organism called a human being. The organs as well as the organism, though, need not abide in a one-to-one relation to the laws of natural selection in their motivations, and as such, there is no direct adherence between evolutionary theory proper and our morals.

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Part of this is explained by the purpose of that book. Because Pinker wants to explain why violence has declined while human nature has remained constant, he needs to look at exogenous variables in culture (Pinker, Better, xxiii), as, for example, the introduction of novels (Pinker, Better, 77, 155). Pinker, Better, 522. Pinker, Better, 522. For this see also Melvin Konner, “The Evolutionary Roots of Altruism,” The American Prospect, 26, no. 2, Spring 2015.



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Pinker’s point about altruism, that “the genetic benefit never figures as an explicit goal in her [the altruist’s] brain,”105 and his comment on his self-selected childlessness that, “if my genes don’t like it, they can go jump in the lake”106 are examples of how human beings act on the level of human lived reality (proximate causes). This drives a wedge between natural selection itself and the products of natural selection. While this supports Pinker’s distinction between is and ought, it also supports the idea of an organism that is other than the sum of the actions of the constituent parts since the “product“ is not necessarily governed by the same rules as its parts. By this logic, the same must be said about “society” and its constituent parts, “the individuals,” since that is a direct analogy between the neurons and the mind for Pinker. This “wedge” makes it more difficult to see how social identity (proximate causes) is to be linked with the workings of evolution (ultimate causes). What does this do to the relation between biology and culture? While Pinker balances the relation between genes and environment with regards to behavior and the constitution of the human being, how is this done when it comes to ethics? In ethics, but not in evolution, the social reigns supreme. And while Pinker argues for a social identity on evolutionary grounds it is less clear how this is possible when he maintains the is/ought distinction in morals at the same time. Are there therefore other ways in which the relation between is and ought can be construed with a more congruent relation between the social and the theory of evolution? There will be time to come back to that question, but more must be said about the relationship between the individual on the one hand and human nature on the other.

The individual and human nature In the social sciences, in Pinker’s view, the collective has become an entity in itself that is disconnected from the individual person. The

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Pinker, Better, 583. Altruism does not have to be egoistic on the proximate level for Pinker when benefitting the survival of the species on the ultimate level. Pinker, Mind, 52.



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individual is made obsolete. Pinker states, with some sarcasm, that in anthropology “we should forget about the mind of an individual person like you, that tiny and insignificant part of a vast sociocultural system. The mind that counts is the one belonging to the group, which is capable of thinking, feeling, and acting on its own.”107 For Pinker the SSSM undermines the role of the individual. In contrast, Pinker stresses the part of the individual in society,108 and sees society as a contract where individuals, “surrender some of their freedom to the state to escape the nastiness of anarchy.”109 The individual is the smallest common denominator for, for example, “trends” and societal changes.110 This is quite a contrast to Pinker’s later focus on exogenous variables in culture, but his individualism remains also in The Better Angels of Our Nature. Importantly, individualism itself is a significant factor for the decline of violence and increased justice in a society. Pinker states this as correlation rather than causation, but he argues that a society that treats human beings as individuals is a more just society.111 Importantly, though, he implies that the level of individualism can vary in a society and thus makes individualism less a metaphysical concept than he does elsewhere. As will become evident, the link between fairness and individualism is something to acknowledge in the context of the school, for one purpose of the school is, after all, fair grading. The individual, then, is a composite of universal traits of human nature such as the psychology of status and the traits that come from a specific genetic makeup.112 Pinker does stress that changes

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109 110 111 112

Pinker, Blank, 26 [emphasis in original]. Pinker, Blank, 145ff. The individualistic view of Pinker is perhaps made more understandable in light of discussions within evolutionary theory about “group” versus “individual” selection, where Pinker sides with the latter against, for example, E. O. Wilson. For a clarification of Pinker’s standpoint, see Steven Pinker, “The False Allure of Group Selection” (cited, 18.06.2012) at http://edge.org/conversation/the-falseallure-of-group-selection. Pinker, Better, 166. Pinker, Stuff, 316, 321, 16f. Pinker, Better, 414. Pinker, Blank, 107.



100 BEING HUMAN NATURE in society are due to individual choices, and these choices are explained by the “if-then” actions of the neurons according to the computational theory of the mind. But if the mind is a “read-head””write-head” processor then there is little room for a “self” except that Pinker acknowledges that we experience a self.113 Does Pinker account for the move from the level of traits or neurons to the complex and composite level of the organism or individual? The difficulty, as stated, is how one is to move from the innatist level of neurons or genes to the composite yet autonomous level of the mind and the individual. It is after all on the latter level at which choices are made for Pinker. He is correct to point out that choices need to have some mechanism underlying them.114 But it is a serious question as to how one accounts for the “jump“ Pinker makes from the laws that govern natural selection, on the one hand, to those that govern the organism on the other. How is this move possible if all qualities are inherent in the smallest causal particle? Pinker does emphasize the webbiness of reality as an aggregate of individual causes and choices. That is, to my mind, a step in the right direction, but it needs to be developed further.

Death of the self again? There was much deliberation on how Butler viewed the subject, considering that she, on the one hand, argued for the death of the Subject, but, on the other hand, resuscitated the subject in a different form. With Pinker the subject dies again, or, to be more precise, the self dies, but it is a different kind of death this time. Yet, just as Butler in some ways still “needed” a subject, Pinker is in a similar situation since he is dependent upon a choosing subject, or individuals’ choices, for his view of society. The question is, though, is there a place for a self within Pinker’s biologist essentialism and computational understanding of the mind? Interestingly, Pinker does not deny that there is a very real sense of a self, and he states that free will and consciousness certainly exist as experiences. But they are problematic for

113 114

Pinker, Language Instinct, 73-78. Pinker, Blank, 174-80.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 101 evolutionary psychology and may never be fully explained.115 The self can never be an immaterial “ghost in the machine” for Pinker. Conversely, in Pinker’s view, “cognitive neuroscience is showing that the self, too, is just another network of brain systems.”116 And, to make matters worse for the self, this brain system is unreliable in its self-knowledge. The sense that there is an “I” in control is “an illusion that the brain works hard to produce,” according to Pinker.117 The reason for this being that evolution has favored a certain level of genuine self-deception for the individual to be successfully fraudulent in a group setting and thereby receive benefits in a group where fraud is monitored and punished.118 But, on the positive side (if one wants to strive for honest self-knowledge), there are also mechanisms that, in the correct setting, make one see oneself in a truer light. Namely, when the conscious mind is occupied and we see ourselves from a third-person perspective, “as an other” in Butler’s terms. 119 Pinker realizes that his view raises questions about the self. He paints the hypothetical scenario in which you have finally been able to come to a big decision after much agony, the phone rings, and it is your unknown identical twin. It turns out that your genetic duplicate, the twin, has made almost exactly the same choice as you. Pinker asks, “[h]ow much discretion did the ‘you’ making the choices actually have if the outcome could have been predicted in advance, at least probabilistically, based on events that took place in your mother’s Fallopian tubes decades ago?”120 And the answer is, of course, not much. That this is almost an identical point to the critique Pinker directed against the SSSM (see above) is not commented upon. But Pinker admits that there might well be something “at the top of the

115 116 117 118

119 120

Pinker, Blank, 239f. Pinker, Blank, 42. Pinker, Blank, 43. Pinker, Blank, 255-59, 63f; Pinker, Better, 218f, 491f. See also Robert Trivers, “Foreword,” in Richard Dawkins (ed.) The Selfish Gene, 30th Anniversary ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), xx. Pinker, Better, 492. Pinker, Blank, 51.



102 BEING HUMAN NATURE chain of command” in human decision-making, but that it will be some “master decision rules” or “routines” that follow “just another set of if-then rules.”121 There is no “President in the Oval Office of the brain,” as Pinker quotes Daniel Dennett.122 Pinker has a difficult task ahead in that he wants to emphasize, on the one hand, the importance of genuine individual choices for changes in society, and yet, on the other hand, also argue for an ifthen mechanism of these choices, while maintaining that his stance does not lead to a biologist determinism. Pinker writes extensively in response to charges of determinism. I will not enter into details here, but to mention one interesting point Pinker makes in this discussion. Since it is impossible not to make decisions, Pinker states, “[y]ou cannot step outside it [choosing] or let it go on without you because it is you.”123 Thus, Pinker stresses how the self is fully equated with the body and bodily functions. He acknowledges that this might open up the question of moral blamelessness since we are our biology,124 but, according to Pinker, this is a mistake because if we are our computationalism in the mind, it is likewise true that we are the organism that reacts to punishments and deterrence. We are also the organism with the capacity to think rationally about our actions.125 There is no ontological distinction between who I am and my embodiment in other words. To sum up, for Pinker the self is the material process of computation in the brain, or, at worst, an illusion or an inexplicable byproduct. That is not to say that Pinker thinks consciousness is “explained” or “material” in any simplistic terms. He thinks it is real and is not able to explain it. The awareness of the self is unreliable,126 but the individual is essential for Pinker in that individual choices steer social change. To avoid the charge of determinism Pinker stresses emphatically that we are our bodies, fully and

121 122 123 124 125 126

Pinker, Mind, 144. Pinker, Mind, 144. Pinker, Blank, 175. Pinker, Blank, 176. Pinker, Blank, 181ff. Butler, Psychic, 103; Pinker, Blank, 264.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 103 exclusively. That is not the same as saying that there are no distinctions to be made on the level of genes, though. Universality, differences and genetic “depth” On a purely genetic level, Pinker distinguishes between features that are deeply endowed in the human genome, and others that are later adaptations to the surroundings. That there are great commonalities in the human gene pool is explained by the idea that all humans today derive from a fairly limited number of humans about 100,000 years ago.127 For Pinker, the traits that developed before that point are, in a sense, “deeper” than those that developed during the much shorter time in which humans started to spread over the earth. This is why, for Pinker, racial differences, like skin tone, for example, are “largely adaptations to climate.”128 The differences between the sexes, on the other hand, “are as old as complex life and are a fundamental topic in evolutionary biology, genetics, and behavioral ecology. To disregard them in the case of our own species would be to make a hash of our understanding of our place in the cosmos.”129 Consequently, for Pinker, there are different genetic depths in the commonalities and differences found in human nature, where the difference between the sexes is fundamental.130 At the same time, for Pinker, [o]n evolutionary grounds one might expect men and women to differ somewhat in the neural systems that control how they use those [reproductive] organs – in their sexuality, parental instincts, and mating tactics. By the same logic, one would expect them not to differ as much in the neural systems

127 128 129 130

Pinker, Mind, 201-205. Pinker, Blank, 143. Pinker, Blank, 340. Pinker, Mind, 49. For more on evolutionary psychology and sexual differences, see Margo Wilson & Martin Daly, “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Chattel,” in Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides, & John Tooby (eds.), The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) and David M. Buss, “Mate Preference Mechanisms: Consequences for Partner Choice and Intrasexual Competition,” in Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides, & John Tooby (eds.), The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).



104 BEING HUMAN NATURE that deal with the challenges both sexes face, such as those for general intelligence.131

Sex differences are real and can in no way be ignored, for Pinker, as a biological fact and a significant factor in male and female psychology, particularly regarding concerns of reproduction and mate selection. This has had effects on male and female body size,132 and psychology of aggression and competition, for example,133 but ─ and this is a significant “but” for Pinker ─ in a vast amount of domains in society the difference between male and female is not a relevant distinction.134 But in terms of male and female brains, it is both the case for Pinker that male and female brains “are so similar that it takes an eagle-eyed neuroanatomist to find the small differences between them,” and, on the other hand, that “the minds of men and women are not identical, and recent reviews of sex differences have converged on some reliable differences.”135 These are sometimes great, and sometimes small as Pinker reviews them. Maybe the distinction between “brain” versus “mind” is significant here, but in the main, the point that male and female is not a relevant categorization is based on the is/ought distinction and the argument of an ethics based on individualism rather than group belonging. But to come back to the question of genes, universality and difference, there are, then, within evolution, forces that work toward differences as well as commonalities. Pinker writes: [n]atural selection works to homogenize a species into a standard overall design by concentrating the effective genes – the ones that build well-functioning organs – and winnowing out the ineffective ones. When it comes to an explanation of what makes us tick, we are thus birds of a feather. […] We are all pretty much alike, but we are not, of course, clones. Except in the case of identical twins, each person is genetically unique. That is because

131 132 133

134 135

Pinker, Blank, 144f; Pinker, Mind, 49f, 460-492. Pinker, Mind, 468. Pinker, Blank, 344. However, for a substantial critique of the description of sex differences in evolutionary psychology, see Buller, Adapting, 210, 27-57 and 96-316. Pinker, Mind, 50. This is, once more, based on the idea of the need for a distinction between is and ought. Pinker, Blank, 344.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 105 random mutations infiltrate the genome and take time to be eliminated, and they are shuffled together in new combinations when individuals sexually reproduce. Natural selection tends to preserve some degree of genetic heterogeneity at the microscopic level in the form of small, random variations among proteins. That variation twiddles the combinations of an organism’s molecular locks and keeps its descendants one step ahead of the microscopic germs that are constantly evolving to crack those locks.136

Universality is explained by Pinker as the way in which a species evolves in a particular context where ineffective genes are weeded out, therefore making the species fairly genetically homogenous. Yet genetic differences will occur/be preserved at the microscopic level since that has proved to be an effective way to combat germs. Some of these genetic differences will then lead to differences among individuals in that particular species, and thus, individuality is explained. Here Pinker accounts for individuality genetically in relation to a universal human nature. But from that universal human nature, genetic heterogeneity on the microscopic level, together with personality traits and the effects of peer pressure, constitutes the particularity of individual. Yet there is a further interesting aspect in Pinker’s thought that comes into play in terms of what constitutes human identity. It is interesting because it potentially opens the door to the influence of “the other.” What has been described above all has to do with the question, “What within a particular human being makes that human being unique and distinct from every other human being?” This question is certainly one way to unearth Pinker’s anthropology. But one aspect in Pinker where the human being is in the hands of “the Other,” to borrow a term from ButlerError! Bookmark not defined., is in the human capacity and need for categorization as well as for learning.137 Categorization is essential for our ability to understand our world, according to Pinker, and the way we think is part and parcel of our genetic human nature or mind.138 Learning demands generalization and cannot be an indiscriminate assembling of

136 137 138

Pinker, Blank, 142. Pinker, Mind, 315. Pinker, Stuff, 153-158.



106 BEING HUMAN NATURE experiences.139 As such, categorization and learning are not to be disconnected from Pinker’s modular view of the mind. For Pinker, the way humans categorize is not individual, or cultural. Rather, it is a universal human characteristic that not only helps us to understand the world but also affects how we view the world.140 As such, if humans need to catalog the world to make sense of it, it also means that what the world is, at least to a degree, literally decided by the eye of the beholder. Or, to be more precise, the world is to the beholder what the categories in the mind understand the world to be.141 Pinker points out that most distinctions and definitions made by the human mind tend to be “fuzzy.” What he means by that is that “members of a fuzzy category lack a single defining feature; they overlap in many features, much like the members of a family or the strands of a rope.”142 But together with fuzziness comes the mode of human categorization of the world of thinking in rules. Rules allow the fuzziness of things to be placed in “in-or-out” boundaries, as Pinker phrases it.143 Now, in what way does this affect the individual self? While it is true that the traits of the self are predominantly based in genes for Pinker, the interpretation and understanding of that self are in the hands of “the other.” It is the combination of the fuzziness of our categories together with the tendency to essentialize by which one human being judges and understands another human being.144 Just as with the world, who and what someone is, is not simply decided upon innate traits, but also according to how the categories in the mind that interpret these traits of the individual work. For Pinker, how I am perceived, as a modern human, is dependent upon the traits and epistemological categories that

139 140 141

142 143 144

Pinker, Mind, 315. The Stuff of Thought is devoted to this argument; see in particular Pinker, Stuff, chs. 1-3. Pinker acknowledges his indebtedness to Immanuel Kant here, even if Pinker disagrees with the particulars of Kant’s transcendentals (Pinker, Stuff, 157-163). Pinker, Mind, 126. Pinker, Mind, 308-310. Pinker, Better, 323f.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 107 developed during the formative era of human genetic development. These categories are located firmly in universal psychology for Pinker, and who I am interpreted to be is affected by the innate way of thinking – of the other. This is particularly true the moment I have any relationships with other people and enter into some reciprocal communication with another person. This means that in a social species such as the human the categorizing of the other has great significance for who I am. As with the world at large, the “I” is to the beholder what the categories in the human mind understand the “I” to be. Does this mean that there is some openness to what could be called relationality in evolutionary psychology?

Openness and relationality in evolutionary psychology? It might seem contradictory to talk about “relationality” together with a “biologist essentialism“ since relationality was so closely linked to Butler’s constructivism – although, as I will clarify in chapter 4, evolution itself, viewed in the broad time span, is relational. But that is not what I have in mind here, for with concepts like unique environment, group identity and empathy, there is an opening toward something like “relationality.” However, the distinction between is and ought, ultimate and proximate causes, points in a different direction. I have argued that Pinker’s distinction between is and ought, in effect, means that his ethics is based on social agreement. Furthermore, Pinker argues that genes do not directly cause behavior; rather, in most cases, genes construct the organs which then behave. Pinker concludes therefore that the organs, or organisms that are a result of the genes, do not need to behave according to the “interests” of the genes. A valid conclusion must be that organs’ behavior must be explained on the level of organs. The explanation on the level of genes is instead secondary at best. Thus, the term “ultimate” in ultimate causes is somewhat misleading. Likewise, in Pinker’s argument against determinism he points out that the laws of nature do not determine what can be found in the natural world. Flight is possible, but it has to be explained with regard to the law



108 BEING HUMAN NATURE of gravity. Altruism is possible and should be explained with regard to the theory of evolution. This means that one cannot deduce from the laws themselves what the consequences, outworking or possibilities of these laws are. The theory can provide an explanation, but the cause of the phenomena must be explained otherwise – maybe by the environment in which the organism has found him- or herself? Evolutionary psychology is therefore misleading as a term in that evolution is not the prime explanatory level of what can account for motivations and human psychology. It is a suitable source to provide some explanations of human psychology, just as gravity should not be ignored when one wants to explain flight on earth. That all depends on the type of question one asks, though. In explaining the psychology of a highly social species, the evolutionary psychologist finds him- or herself together with the social scientist and needs to look at the proximate level of activity, with proximate causes. In my terms, the human lived reality is key. There is also a question regarding the level at which evolution works in terms of human psychology. Pinker argues that organisms do not share the same goals as genes, but Pinker claims the opposite when he writes that evolutionarily speaking, there is seldom any mystery in why we seek the goals we seek […]. The things that become objects of desire are the kinds of things that led, on average, to enhanced odds of survival and reproduction in the environment in which we evolved: water, food, safety, sex, status, mastery over the environment, and the well-being of children, friends, and kin.145

Do we share the same goal as genes or not? And if we do, does that not trouble the distinction between is and ought at least somewhat? If Pinker is to uphold a distinction between is and ought he must give precedence to “the social” over evolutionary or genetic “laws” for human morals and behavior. This “social” is the sum of individual wills for Pinker, yet what I have tried to argue is that neither “individual” nor “wills” nor “choices” are fully coherent

145

Pinker, Mind, 143.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 109 concepts in Pinker because of the unaccounted “jump” from an innatism on the level of constituent parts to the function of the organism. Thus, there are two strands in Pinker’s anthropology. One derives primarily from his computational theory of the mind and the emphasis on the individual in society. This is the primary and the most obviously essentialist strand. The second is that which stresses the relation between biology and environment and the “webbedness“ of reality on the one hand, and how the human being as an organism and a whole makes choices, on the other hand. The conclusions of the latter strand are not spelt out fully by Pinker, probably because of the assumed individualism, but I think this more relational aspect should be explored further. To conclude, there are aspects in Pinker’s thinking that have a relational ring to them. However, these parts must be compared and contrasted with the more prominent essentialist and individualist features in Pinker’s thinking, such as universal personality traits, genes, neurons and individuals as “atoms,” and the computational theory of the mind. Pinker’s individualism becomes metaphysical as a consequence of a biologist essentialist anthropology. Not least is this seen in his view of ethics and society, where he argues for a contract theory with an independent individual who gives up some of his or her independence in order to receive protection from the group/society/state. That is the essentialist side. In terms of biologism, it is not simply the heavy reliance upon the theory of evolution, but also the fact that the individual is his or her body for Pinker. The body is the glue that holds Pinker’s anthropology together as a whole. But the body as a “whole” is something Pinker assumes rather than justifies. For the move from the innate qualities of the constituent parts to the motivations of an organism, such as a body, is not fully accounted for. Also, if the individual is the body and that body is an organism, a social one at that, then the body as an organism must be explained more coherently. Butler is one example, but in Butler’s thinking embodiment appears somewhat problematic. Here Pinker is more confident and bases his thinking in evolutionary theory. I think it is possible to move beyond the common dichotomization of



110 BEING HUMAN NATURE these thinkers on questions of evolutionary theory, culture and the body. And for that, some aspects from theology will be helpful.





Chapter 3: Persons becoming in relations Trinitarian theology is important for anyone who wants to understand humanity, past and present; culture; and the world at large. At least this is so for Colin Gunton.1 The much-quoted sentence, “everything looks – and indeed, is – different in the light of the Trinity,”2 makes clear that the value of the doctrine of the Trinity for Gunton is the particular perspective it provides. Theologian William Whitney picks this up and argues that Gunton’s theology is “ultimately practical since it is not primarily about inquiring into the inner nature of God but understanding God’s ongoing relations with that which he has created – and how this impacts human creaturely reality.”3 God’s action toward creation is key. For Gunton, it is in God’s engagement, action in and relation with the world that theology is possible.4 Through God’s acting God reveals God’s being for Gunton.5 If God then is revealed as triune it has implications for how we are to understand the relation between God and creation, and creation itself. Colin Gunton (1941-2003) was professor of Christian Doctrine at King’s College London,6 and had a great, perhaps even a renewing, effect on English systematic theology.7 Part of that came from

1 2 3 4 5 6

7

Gunton, “Theology in Communion,” 33; Gunton, The One, 3-8; Whitney, Problem, 55-65. Gunton, Promise, 4. Whitney, Problem, 100. Colin E. Gunton, A Brief Theology of Revelation: The 1993 Warfield Lectures (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 110. Colin E. Gunton, Act and Being: Towards a Theology of the Divine Attributes (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2002), 112. For a good and brief biography over Gunton see Bruce L. McCormack, “Foreword,” in Paul Louis Metzger (ed.) Trinitarian Soundings in Systematic Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2005). For Gunton’s own description, see Gunton, “Theology in Communion.” On Gunton’s influence see John Webster, “Systematic Theology after Barth: Jüngel, Jenson, and Gunton,” in David F. Ford & Rachel Muers (eds.), Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology since 1918, 3rd ed. (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 261; Bruce L. McCormack, “The One, the Three and the Many: In Memory of Colin

111

112 PERSONS BECOMING IN RELATIONS Gunton’s conviction of the usefulness of doctrine of the Trinity. This emphasis had its influences and Gunton was much dependent on the theologians Karl Barth and John Zizioulas.8 From Barth Gunton brought, among other things, the view that the doctrine of the Trinity is the uniquely Christian concept of God. Zizioulas influenced Gunton particularly concerning a relational understanding of the concept of personhood from a (social) trinitarian starting point.9 The doctrine of the Trinity is important for understanding the human being for Gunton, but just as important, as will become clear, are the doctrine of creation as well as christology. Much criticism has been directed against Gunton’s link between the doctrine of the Trinity and theological anthropology, but perhaps even more so against his patristic interpretations.10 And while I don’t deny the



8

9 10

Gunton,” Cultural Encounters 1, no. 2 (2005): 7-17, 16f; Paul Louis Metzger, “Response to Bruce L. McCormack's Tribute,” Cultural Encounters 1, no. 2 (2005): 19-21; Paul Louis Metzger, Trinitarian Soundings in Systematic Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2005); Robert Letham, The Holy Trinity: in Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship (Phillipsburg: P & R Pub., 2004). Gunton wrote his dissertation on Karl Barth and Charles Hartshorne (Colin E. Gunton, Becoming and Being: The Doctrine of God in Charles Hartshorne and Karl Barth (London: SCM Press, 2001). Gunton and Zizioulas worked together for many years at King’s College London and for the British Council of Churches Study Commission (1983-1988) (B. C. C. Study Commission on Trinitarian Doctrine Today British Council of Churches, The Forgotten Trinity (London: British Council of Churches, 1989)). This proved to be, in Gunton’s words, “of major formative influence” (Colin E. Gunton, “Theology in Communion,” in Darren C. Marks (ed.) Shaping a Theological Mind: Theological Context and Methodology (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 34f). John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1985). Sarah Coakley, “Introduction: Disputed Questions in Patristic Trinitarianism,” The Harvard Theological Review 100, no. 2 (2007): 125-138; Lucian Turcescu, ““Person” versus “Individual”, and Other Modern Misreadings of Gregory of Nyssa,” Modern Theology 18, no. 4 (2002): 527539; Keith E. Johnson, Rethinking the Trinity and Religious Pluralism: An Augustinian Assessment (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2011), 221ff; Scott A. Dunham, The Trinity and Creation in Augustine: An Ecological Analysis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008), see ch. 1



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 113 importance of an accurate reading of tradition for theology this is not the aim of the book. References to patristic and historical theology will therefore only be made when relevant. It is primarily the question of whether Gunton’s theology can contribute constructively to a general anthropology that I want to explore. Here, the influence of the second century Church Father Irenaeus is evident, even if it is, as Christoph Schwöbel formulates it, a “constructive appropriation” of him.11 For Gunton theology is not exclusively a correct exegesis of doctrine,12 and Gunton finds Irenaeus’ concepts of mediation and the centrality of the doctrine of creation particularly helpful. Why this is so will become evident in Gunton’s view of the human person. Gunton’s view of the human being cannot be isolated from other theological areas.13 But by the end of this chapter, Gunton’s anthropology should be made clear even if that is done by reference to the doctrine of the Trinity, creation, incarnation and also, importantly, Gunton’s idea of a relational ontology.



11

12

13

and Conclusion; Bradley G. Green’s PhD dissertation, Colin Gunton and the Failure of Augustine (Bradley G. Green, Colin Gunton and the Failure of Augustine: The Theology of Colin Gunton in Light of Augustine (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2011)); Coakley, “Disputed,” 131ff; Michel René Barnes, “Augustine in Contemporary Trinitarian Theology,” Theological Studies 56, no. 2 (1995): 237-250) and Joshua McNall, A Free Corrector: Colin Gunton and the Legacy of Augustine, Emerging Scholars (Baltimore: Fortress Press, 2015). Christoph Schwöbel, “The Shape of Colin Gunton's Theology: On the Way Towards a Fully Trinitarian Theology,” in Lincoln Harvey (ed.) The Theology of Colin Gunton (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 196. See also Douglas Farrow, “Irenaeus as Model Theologian.” in Myk Habets & Andrew Picard (eds.) T&T Clark Handbook of Colin Gunton (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, forthcoming). Colin E. Gunton, Intellect and Action: Elucidations on Christian Theology and the Life of Faith (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 44; Stephen R. Holmes, “Foreword,” in Colin E. Gunton, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Essays Toward a Fully Trinitarian Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2003), xi. Perhaps the clearest illustration of this is Gunton’s last book: Colin E. Gunton, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Essays Toward a Fully Trinitarian Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2003).



114 PERSONS BECOMING IN RELATIONS

Ontology of the person The doctrine of the Trinity is essential for any relevant engagement between theology and culture for Gunton.14 It is through a correct understanding of the Trinity, which means an emphasis on the relational and personal, that a correct relationship between the created and the creator is worked out.15 Gunton is for this reason routinely placed in the camp of socalled social trinitarians despite his misgivings about that label.16 Lewis Ayres describes a general understanding of social trinitarianism when he writes that it stands “for fairly direct links between accounts of the inner life of God and aspects of human relationships: just as the life of God is X, so should we be.”17 Like Ayres, Gunton would not support this standpoint. For, a little surprisingly perhaps, Gunton is hesitant about any “application” of the doctrine of the Trinity to other areas. Certainly, Gunton is enthusiastic about the wide-ranging potential of the doctrine, yet he is wary that the doctrine of the immanent Trinity is used “for whatever worthy purposes an author wishes to justify.”18 For Gunton the danger lies in a stress on divine essence and traits deriving from human reasoning and that a division is made between the being and person of God.19 Furthermore, Gunton sees a danger of projection, perhaps an even greater one if there is an overemphasis on language’s metaphorical function over and against its ability to describe reality.20

14 15

16 17

18 19 20

Gunton, The One, 7. Colin E. Gunton, Christ and Creation: The Didsbury Lectures, 1990 (Carlisle: The Paternoster Press, 1992), 20, 74; Colin E. Gunton, The Triune Creator: A Historical and Systematic Study (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1998), 141ff, 59; Whitney, Problem, 79. Gunton, The One, 214. Lewis Ayres, ““As We Are One”: Thinking Into the Mystery,” in Oliver D. Crisp & Fred Sanders (eds.), Advancing Trinitarian Theology: Explorations in Constructive Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 109. Gunton, Father, Son, xiii; Colin E. Gunton, “Editorial,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 5, no. 1 (2003): 1-2, 1. Gunton, Act, 92f. Colin E. Gunton, “Proteus and Procrustes: A Study in the Dialectic of Language in Disagreement with Sallie McFague,” in Alvin F. Kimel



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 115 Gunton therefore continues and stresses that “[a]rguments from analogy here tread a slippery slope towards mere projection” unless, as he sees it, the doctrine of Trinity is clearly and thoroughly linked with christology.21 Still, the doctrine of the Trinity is immensely important to Gunton’s whole thinking on the human being. So how is this so? Gunton derives two central concepts from the doctrine of the Trinity that affect his anthropology. “Relations“ or “relationality“ is one and “person” or “personhood” is the other. He writes: [t]o think of persons is to think in terms of relations: Father, Son and Spirit are the particular persons they are by virtue of their relations with each other. That, too, enables us to understand what is meant by relation. A relation is first of all to be conceived as the way by which persons are mutually constituted, made what they are. (That does not mean […] that the concept is limited to the relations we call personal. On the contrary, it is also fruitful for an understanding of the character of the whole of reality.) But we cannot understand relation satisfactorily unless we also realise that to be a person is to be related as an other.22

And Gunton continues to expand on what he means by person: One person is not the tool or extension of another, or if he is his personhood is violated. Personal relations are those which constitute the other person as other, as truly particular. And, finally, persons are those whose relations with others are – or should be, for it is the nature of fallenness to distort our being – free relations. By ‘free’ is not meant what is understood by the reigning conception of the term, a freedom from others. It is [sic] has to do with a free and mutually constitutive relationship with other persons, as well as with a way of being in the world.23

These two quotations contain the core of Gunton’s thinking about the human being. Key here is the primacy of personhood, and Gunton argues this in opposition to a primacy of the individual. But this will need to be developed a little later. For the person is



21 22 23

(ed.) Speaking the Christian God: The Holy Trinity and the Challenge of Feminism (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1992). Here, he reveals a resemblance to Pinker’s view of language in contrast to Butler’s. Gunton, Father, Son, xiiif. Colin E. Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991), 11, [emphasis in original]. Gunton, Promise, 11-12.



116 PERSONS BECOMING IN RELATIONS constituted relationally for Gunton and what this means demands a fair amount of elucidation before the distinction between persons and individuals can be understood. A third thing the quotations makes clear is that the constitutive relations are closely linked to a particular understanding of freedom. And lastly, the frame that enables this kind of thinking is trinitarian theology closely linked to christology. “Person” is for Gunton the most difficult to define of his central concepts of relation, otherness, freedom and person.24 It is even the case that, for him, “the mystery of the person always eludes final definition.”25 Interestingly this mirrors what Butler writes about one of her most central concepts, the body. As Gunton sees it the challenge of defining “person” is integral to the very attempt of working out the fundamentals of reality or being. With “person” as with “being,” there is something that eludes final definition. As such, while Gunton in no way abandons the attempt to formulate an ontology ─ quite the opposite ─ he notes that “the picture looks very different if we eschew the expectation of certainty, universality and infallibility in favour of something more limited, open and tentative.”26 And Gunton suggests that the basis for ontology is what he calls “open transcendentals.” The open transcendentals are worked out in opposition to Kant in that Gunton views them to be, in his words, “ontological rather than merely regulative in character.”27 In Gunton’s view, Kant can in no way be sidestepped, and Gunton appreciates Kant’s contribution, yet he also views the distinction Kant draws between the rationality of science, ethics and aesthetics as a “disastrous limitation.“28 Part of the openness in Gunton’s ontology is to bridge the ontological gap between these. For Gunton this type of open, or rather, relational ontology goes “beyond the absolute opposition of objectivism and subjectivism (and of the related realism and

24 25 26 27 28

Gunton, Promise, 10. Gunton, Act, 95. Gunton, The One, 142. Gunton, The One, 143. Gunton, The One, 141.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 117 idealism),”29 and it might enable a “conversation between the subjective thoughts of the mind and the structures of the world to which they would answer.”30 The openness in Gunton’s open transcendentals is not a move away from universal implications even if they are tentative. As Gunton points out, the tentativeness should not be seen as arbitrary or easily exchangeable. For Gunton, the open transcendental “empowers a continuing and in principle unfinished exploration of the universal marks of being.” Gunton hopes that the transcendentals can be deepened and enriched by continued reflection about reality.31 And here hypostasis32 plays a significant role. Gunton writes: [b]oth persons and things are hypostatic in the sense of being substantial particulars, and rendered such by the patterns of relations that constitute them what they distinctly are: with God in the first instance and with other temporally and spatially related particulars in the second. It is thus that hypostasis, meaning substantial particular, variously taking shape as person and thing and constituted relationally, acquires the status of a kind of transcendental.33

29 30 31 32

33

Gunton, The One, 145. Gunton, The One, 146. Gunton, The One, 142. The terms ousia, hypostasis and perichoresis are all Greek and derive from discussions about God in the early church. They all refer in different ways to the being of God. A distinction was made between ousia and hypostasis, two terms that otherwise have been seen as synonymous by most pre-trinitarian thinkers. The distinction was one where hypostasis was to refer to the distinct identities of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, while ousia is the commonality, the being of God is nothing other than the relations of the hypostasis. Perichoresis is the Greek word for the relationship which enables this unity between the different hypostases. In Latin the terms used were instead substantia and persona. On the exact meaning and understanding of these terms, there is a vast amount of literature, particularly in recent years. For a traditional and general introduction, see J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 4th ed. (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1968), 114f, 36; Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1975), 208f, 219-220. Gunton, The One, 203.



118 PERSONS BECOMING IN RELATIONS Persons and things are then constituted by “patterns of relations.” Reality is hypostatic in that whatever a thing or a person is, it is thus due to patterns of relations. For Gunton ontology and theological anthropology work in tandem in a context of relations. Since relations have ontologically constitutive functions, then relational concepts such as “person” are also ontologically significant concepts. An apparent natural conclusion is therefore that, as Stephen Holmes argues, the way Gunton uses the concept of “person” implies a univocity between the divine and the human.34 This univocity then spills over in the concept of mediation. Mediation in Gunton, as Holmes sees it, allows for an unwelcome collapse of the divine with the non-divine.35 And, for Holmes, Gunton runs the same risk as Zizioulas, namely that, “even if it is only at the eschaton, it seems that for Zizioulas humans may be, by grace, persons in exactly the same sense that Father, Son and Spirit are personal by nature.”36 For Holmes, the conceptual connection between the divine and human persons he finds in Gunton is deeply problematic, if one wants, at the same time, to maintain an ontological distinction between the human and the divine. Gunton denies there to be any univocity of being between the creator and the created. Thus, if “person” is to be used it needs to be further clarified. Even if Holmes’ critique is posthumous to Gunton, the relation between “person” and “mediation“ needs to be clarified if one, like me, thinks that these are useful concepts. The question is also whether Holmes is correct regarding Gunton’s view of mediation, that it entails an ontological collapse between the creator and the created.

Relationality, space and freedom Of the universe as a whole we should conclude that it is marked by relationality rather than sociality. All things are what they are by being particulars

34

35 36

Stephen R. Holmes, “Towards the Analogia Personae et Relationis: Developments in Gunton's Trinitarian Thinking,” in Lincoln Harvey (ed.) The Theology of Colin Gunton (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 41. Holmes, “Analogia.” Holmes, Holy Trinity, 15.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 119 constituted by many and various forms of relation. Relationality is thus the transcendental which allows us to learn something of what it is to say that all created people and things are marked by their coming from and returning to the God who is himself, in his essential and inmost being, a being in relation.37

Here, once more, Gunton sees relationality as fundamental for our understanding of reality as for reality itself. It is also noteworthy how Gunton speaks so confidently about the inmost being of God. It is in these statements that his critics see an all-too-direct link between the being of God and the being of the universe. The assuredness on Gunton’s part is quite striking considering his reservation about the social doctrine of the Trinity. Still, if Gunton has his say, the link is not one of univocity of being, but comes down to relationality and mediation.38 The ambivalence that Hans Schaeffer finds in Gunton’s ontology is well worth noting. As Schaeffer sees it Gunton uses the “immanent Trinity for heuristic purposes.”39 Gunton does state that creation “reflects” and bears “universal marks of being” from its creator.40 Hence, the critique of Gunton is understandable. At the same time, as Schaeffer argues convincingly, Gunton’s use of the words “reflection” and even more so “echo” for the relation between creator and creation indicates not a univocity of being between God and creation, but rather that Gunton wants to maintain a distinction.41 Mediation in that case occurs between two ontologically distinct beings, which is why mediation rather than univocity is necessary for a relational ontology for Gunton. Mediation makes possible a relation between two ontologically distinct beings. Gunton’s emphasis on the ontological as relational is the foundation for mediation between God and creation for Gunton. It is by God being triune that the distinction between God and creation is

37 38 39

40 41

Gunton, The One, 229. Also quoted by McNall, Free, 8f. Gunton, Promise, 74; Gunton, The One, 228f. Hans Schaeffer, Createdness and Ethics: The Doctrine of Creation and Theological Ethics in the Theology of Colin E. Gunton and Oswald Bayer (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2006), 40. Schaeffer, Createdness, 39f. Schaeffer, Createdness, 63.



120 PERSONS BECOMING IN RELATIONS possible.42 For Gunton, the relational in God’s very being is foundational for there to be something other than God. Relationality within God enables creation to be ontologically distinct from God, yet at the same time to be in relation with God without being subsumed into divinity. In this way, the doctrine of the Trinity safeguards relationality and particularity for Gunton. Or, to quote Gunton: God and the world are ontologically distinct realities; but that distinctness, far from being the denial of relations, is its ground. Such relation as there is is personal, not logical, the product of the free and personal action of the

42

David A. Höhne, Spirit and Sonship: Colin Gunton's Theology of Particularity and the Holy Spirit (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 5ff; Karen Kilby, “Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with Social Doctrines of the Trinity,” New Blackfriars 81, no. 957 (2000): 432-445, 438. Gunton’s critique of Augustine’s trinitarian theology as “logical” rather than “ontological” is based on Gunton’s stress on a relational ontology. It is not always clear what Gunton means by a “logical conception” of the Trinity. The critique appears to be that Augustine asked within an Aristotelian setting, “What kind of sense can be made of the apparent logical oddity of the threeness of the one God?”; rather than, as the Cappadocians did, “What kind of being is this God?” (Gunton, Promise, 40f). Gunton returns to the statement that the Trinity in the West has been a “mathematical conundrum” (Gunton, Father, Son, 6). A logical treatment of the Trinity is then the attempt to make mathematical sense of the Trinity, particularly problematic when one assumes God’s oneness as a starting point. That Augustine’s doctrine of the Trinity would be a “logical” treatment of the persons is certainly contested. See Green, Failure, 161-168; Holmes, Holy Trinity, 134; David B. Hart, “The mirror of the infinite: Gregory of Nyssa on the Vestigia trinitatis,” Modern Theology 18, no. 4 (2002): 541-561, 542; Coakley, “Disputed,”; Richard Cross, “Quid Tres? On What Precisely Augustine Professes Not to Understand in De Trinitate 5 and 7,” The Harvard Theological Review 100, no. 2 (2007): 215-232; Matthew Drever, “The Self before God? Rethinking Augustine's Trinitarian Thought,” The Harvard Theological Review 100, no. 2 (2007): 233242; Lewis Ayres, “Augustine on the triune life of God,” in David Vincent Meconi & Eleonore Stump (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 67f; Travis E. Ables, Incarnational Realism: Trinity and the Spirit in Augustine and Barth (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014); and, most recently, Rowan Williams, Christ the Heart of Creation (London: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2018).



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 121 triune God. The world is therefore contingent, finite and what it is only by virtue of its continuing dynamic dependence upon its creator; or, to say the same thing in another way, by the free action of the Spirit on and towards it.43

The point then, for Gunton, is that the relational in a triune God enables a genuine relation between creator and creation, creator and creature. This relation is grounded in the distinction, the otherness between creator and creation, and not their sameness so that the ontological particularity of the creator, on the one hand, and the created, on the other, together with the contingency of creation upon its creator is the very foundation for a relation. Maybe, like Butler, Gunton can be called a theorist of difference here.44 In his words, “[t]he fact that every thing is what it is and not another thing entails the otherness of everything to everything else.” And, he continues, “[t]hat does not mean an absolute otherness, but the kind that involves the affirmation of the belief that people and things are what they distinctively are by virtue of their relations to other people and things: what I would call constitutive relatedness.”45 In terms of God, Gunton prioritizes hypostasis over ousia since God’s substance, or substantiality, should be understood “by virtue of and not in face of their relationality to the other.”46 That is because being is constituted by a “network of relations,” as Gunton calls it at one point.47 In Gunton’s line of thinking there can be no attributes that do not derive from the particular relations in which particular hypostases relate. But, as Richard Fermer asks, “[w]hy can it not be held that there is one God, and that certain attributes are shared in common between the three hypostaseis [sic] of that one God, yet not purely as a result of their relationality, but because of their common ousia,

43 44 45 46 47

Gunton, Promise, 72f. E.g. Gunton, The One, 166. Gunton, The One, 70. Gunton, The One, 194 [emphasis in original]. Gunton, The One, 195.



122 PERSONS BECOMING IN RELATIONS which provides the grammar of unity?”48 To this Gunton might reply as he replied to Plotinus (as we shall see below). But the emphasis on hypostasis as constitutive is a further implication for Gunton. With the emphasis on relations Gunton pays much attention to notions of space and time.49 Gunton thinks that there is a kind of spatiality found in God that is at most analogous to created spatiality. However, rather than to entering into a discussion of what divine space is, what a concept of the spatiality and temporality of divine life does, according to Gunton, is that “it serves to maintain the ontological distinction between God and the world.”50 But also, if the inner relation entails a concept of space, it affects how divine freedom is worked out. For Gunton, with divine space and freedom, God can relate to that which is other than divine and maintain its otherness.51 The human is not subsumed by the divine. As such, even if it is difficult to imagine what divine space is, it is important to stress that a relational ontology, as Gunton sees it, must work out a theory of space, time and freedom, an insight well worth remembering for the later discussion. For Gunton, the similarity between the divine and the created is that their respective beings are constituted relationally, but that they are particular and distinct in what that being is.52 Admittedly, both the world and God are constituted relationally, or perichoretically, yet divine being and created being are particular in

48

49

50

51 52

Richard M. Fermer, “The Limits of Trinitarian Theology as a Methodological Paradigm,” Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 41, no. 2 (1999): 158-186, 166. Colin E. Gunton, “The Triune God and the Freedom of the Creature,” in S. W. Sykes (ed.) Karl Barth: Centenary Essays (Cambridge University Press, 1989), 48f. Gunton, “Triune God,” 48. See also Colin E. Gunton, “Creation and Mediation in the Theology of Robert J. Jenson: An Encounter and a Convergence,” in Colin E. Gunton (ed.) Trinity, Time and Church: A Response to the Theology of Robert Jenson (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2000) for further discussion on this. Gunton, Triune, 36; Whitney, Problem, 76ff. Colin E. Gunton, “The Trinity, Natural Theology, and a Theology of Nature,” in Kevin J. Vanhoozer (ed.) Trinity in a Pluralistic Age: Theological Essays on Culture and Religion (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1997), 102.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 123 themselves, constituted by relations particular to them. That is why, for Gunton, there is no univocity of being between the divine and human. To phrase it in rather Guntonian terms, creation is what it is firstly because of the “dynamism of mutual constitutiveness” and secondly, it is what it is because of the continuous contingency (i.e. relation) of creation on the particular divine being of the triune God. Clearly, for Gunton, there is something relational in the intrinsic rationality or ontology of creation if a relation between creator and creation is to be possible. It is with a relational ontology, rather than one based on essence, that particularity can be maintained as Gunton sees it.53 The loss of particularity in an ontology with neoplatonic tendencies becomes clear in a statement by Gunton on Plotinus (AD 200-270). Gunton writes: imagine some object, like a flower, and remove from it all its qualities – colour, shape, texture, mass, scent. What would remain? […] There would, according to his discussion in the Enneads, remain pure, quality-less matter, a substratum or support for being without any characteristics. This is what Plotinus calls to me on [gr.].54

Gunton contests the idea that something, something more fundamental, like an essence, would still exist when all particular qualities have been removed.55 Gunton does not necessarily ignore substance, but sees it, as has been made clear, relationally.

53

54 55

Colin E. Gunton, “God, Grace and Freedom,” in Colin E. Gunton (ed.) God and Freedom: Essays in Historical and Systematic Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), 133. Gunton, Triune, 33. It is worth pointing out that in Green’s view Gunton does not acknowledge the full implications of Augustine’s discussion of and distinction between substance and accidents, substance-words and relational words. Indeed, Augustine does attribute accidents (qualities in Gunton’s terminology) to substance rather than relations according to Green. Yet, since there is no divine substance “outside” of the triune relations for Augustine, Green concludes that, “relationship itself is a reality which is common to the Godhead, and as such, relationship constitutes what it means for God to be. That is, in Augustine’s trinitarian theology it is completely legitimate to call “relationship” a “substanceword”’ (Green, Failure, 196, [emphasis in original]). Ayres argues similarly in Ayres, “Augustine,” 71.



124 PERSONS BECOMING IN RELATIONS As the above quotation indicates, the problem with essentialism, as Gunton sees it, is that it, perhaps counterintuitively, undermines concreteness: “It is concreteness that is lost in most quests for a concept of substance, which has almost always been for that which underlies: either a timeless substance or a timeless and usually homogeneous plurality of underlying atoms.”56 This thought of basing an ontology of particularity is strongly related to Zizioulas.57 Like Zizioulas, Gunton has been critiqued for ignoring substance as a concept. Richard Fermer certainly directs a relevant critique here against Gunton’s trinitarian theology, seen above.58 But it is incorrect to say, as Bernhard Nausner does, that Gunton “has abandoned the notion of ousia.”59 What Gunton wants to salvage by claiming ontological status for hypostasis is the particularity and concreteness of reality, that a thing can be what it is with relation to other things rather than belong to an “essence” free of characteristics. Of course, such a shift to a relational ontology demands much explaining if it is to be convincing that Gunton saves the concrete and particular by emphasizing hypostasis and perichoresis as ontological. But hypostasis is never far away from ousia for Gunton and it is the priorities that Gunton wants to get correct. This is why Gunton can write that “[h]ypostases and ousia are conceptually distinct, but inseparable in thought, because they mutually involve one another.”60 Not many, if any, note Gunton’s awareness that it is a question of priorities between ousia and hypostasis. In terms of the East/West



56 57

58 59

60

If Green and Ayres are correct, this, firstly, appears to offer some Augustinian support for Gunton in his attempt to formulate a relational ontology and, secondly, Gunton would, as Green points out, need to re-evaluate his critique of Augustine. Gunton, The One, 197 [emphasis in original]. John D. Zizioulas, “On Being a Person: Towards and Ontology of Personhood,” in Christoph Schwöbel & Colin E. Gunton (eds.), Persons, Divine and Human: King's College Essays in Theological Anthropology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991), 41. Fermer, “Limits.” Bernhard Nausner, “The Failure of a Laudable Project: Gunton, the Trinity and Human Self-Understanding,” Scottish Journal of Theology 62, no. 04 (2009): 403-420, 413. Gunton, Promise, 39.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 125 distinction that has been debated in this question,61 the real difference lies not in the starting point between East and West for Gunton but, in his words, “in the way in which the oneness and threeness of God are weighted in relation to one another.”62 Ironically, Sarah Coakley, one of Gunton’s harsher critics on this question, in the very same section where she presents Gunton as a main proponent of those who gives “falsely disjunctive renditions of ‘East’ and ‘West’ trinitarianism,”63 writes that “[t]here is now a certain danger that, in overreaction to the ‘East’-‘West’ disjunction paradigm, the ‘pro-Nicene’ communalities of the Cappadocians and Augustine that [Lewis] Ayres has highlighted will divert attention from what remain as undeniable differences of emphasis between Gregory of Nyssa’s and Augustine’s Trinitarian visions.”64 It is unclear how this conclusion is any different from Gunton’s. Undoubtedly, the Cappadocians’ interpretation(s) of the Trinity are central as theoretical resources for Gunton, but probably even more for John Zizioulas.65 The Cappadocians, as Zizioulas and Gunton read them, initiated, in Gunton’s words, the “ontological innovation” needed for the relational ontology mentioned above.66 But Joseph Lienhard, for one, argues convincingly that the formula “one ousia, three hypostases“ was not the only way, or even the most influential, in which the Cappadocians expressed the distinctions between Father, Son and Spirit.67

61

62 63 64 65 66 67

Michel René Barnes, “De Régnon Reconsidered,” Augustinian Studies 26, no. 2 (1995): 51–79; Barnes, “Augustine”; Lewis Ayres, Nicea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Gunton, Father, Son, 43. Coakley, God, Sexuality, 301. Coakley, God, Sexuality, 301f. Ables, Incarnational, 8 Gunton, Promise, 9. Joseph T. Lienhard, “Ousia and Hypostasis: The Cappadocian Settlement and the Theology of One Hypostasis,” in Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, & Gerald O'Collins (eds.), The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).



126 PERSONS BECOMING IN RELATIONS That the Cappadocian Fathers support Gunton’s and Zizioulas’ reading has been thoroughly contested,68 but the Cappadocians can at least be seen as a conceptual inspiration. So, in light of the mainly fair critique of Gunton’s and Zizioulas’ patristics, Kallistos Ware’s standpoint is instructive for the argument I put forward in this book. Ware writes: we should bear in mind that our present-day understanding of what constitutes a “person” does not exactly correspond to the Patristic interpretation of the terms hypostasis and prosopon. It is entirely acceptable as we develop a relational ontology in the twenty-first century, to make use of this presentday understanding, so long as we do not read it back unconditionally into Patristic or medieval texts.69

Gunton is careful to point out that hypostasis for the Cappadocians is not to be seen as a way of making the Father, Son and Spirit distinct individuals, defined against each other. This point is probably a way for Gunton to distance himself from the claim that a modern concept of personhood is simply collapsed, as Ware mentions, into his concept of hypostasis.70 What is important here is how

68

69

70

See Lewis Ayres, “On Not Three People: The Fundamental Themes of Gregory of Nyssa's Trinitarian Theology as seen in To Ablabius: On Not Three Gods,” Modern Theology 18, no. 4 (2002): 445-474; Michel René Barnes, “Divine Unity and the Divided Self: Gregory of Nyssa's Trinitarian Theology in its Psychological Context,” Modern Theology 18, no. 4 (2002): 475-496; Sarah Coakley, “Re-Thinking Gregory of Nyssa: Introduction - Gender, Trinitarian Analogies, and the Pedagogy of The Song,” Modern Theology 18, no. 4 (2002): 431-443; and Turcescu, “’Person.’” However, see Cristopher Stead, Divine Substance (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977), 131-222 and Green, Failure, 156-165 for an argument that ousia and hypostasis are neither synonymous nor consistently treated as distinct in the patristic period. For a response to the recent critique of social trinitarianism, see Gijsbert van den Brink, “Social Trinitarianism: A Discussion of Some Recent Theological Criticisms,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 16, no. 3 (2014): 331-350. Kallistos Ware, “The Holy Trinity: Model for Personhood-in-Relation,” in John C. Polkinghorne (ed.) The Trinity and an Entangled World: Relationality in Physical Science and Theology (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2010), 125f. Sarah Coakley, “'Persons' in the 'Social' Doctrine of the Trinity: A Critique of Current Analytic Discussion,” in Stephen T. Davis, Daniel



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 127 Gunton himself takes relationality as the primary concept for reality. Phrased negatively, it could be said that without relations there would be no reality, for there can be no distinctions. Nothing can be nor become what it is or is meant to be. Yet, even if it is helpful to think that Gunton is taking his patristic readings as stepping stones to develop a relational ontology, that is not to say, firstly, that his interpretation is unproblematic, or, secondly, that it is easy to understand how the purported relational ontology works. How is one to conceptualize a thing without assuming some essence as prior to relations? Are there other ways to deal with this type of ontology more conducive to the aim of this book? But that will be for the next chapter to develop. Before that, it is time to pay a closer look at Gunton’s anthropology.

Personalist and relational theological anthropology While hypostasis is predominantly understood as “person” in Gunton’s writing it is not consistently so. At times hypostasis plays a more fundamental ontological role than “person” so that hypostasis enables personhood. The passage can be found above, but it is worth quoting parts of it again in this context. Gunton writes that, “[b]oth persons and things are hypostatic in the sense of being substantial particulars” and that “[i]t is thus that hypostasis, meaning substantial particular, variously taking shape as person and thing and constituted relationally, acquires the status of a kind of transcendental.”71 “Hypostasis” has acquired a certain independence from “person” here because of its status as a transcendental. And interestingly, it is translated as “substantial particular” by Gunton.72 It is interesting because “substantial particular” is reminiscent of Karl Barth’s interpretation of hypostasis as “mode of being,” which Gunton critiques.73 It might be that Gunton’s “substantial particular”



71 72 73

Kendall, & Gerald O'Collins (eds.), The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Gunton, The One, 203. Gunton, The One, 203. Colin E. Gunton & Paul Brazier (ed.). The Barth Lectures (London: T&T Clark, 2007), 87ff. On hypostasis in Barth see, Peter Goodwin Heltzel &



128 PERSONS BECOMING IN RELATIONS can lend itself to place the “person” of the divine, as “personality” in the more modern sense of the word, in God’s ousia, as Barth did.74 In any case, a certain influence from Barth on Gunton’s understanding of hypostasis looks likely here and it is an understanding of hypostasis not found in Zizioulas. This distinction from Zizioulas does not appear to be conscious on Gunton’s part, and it is not picked up by other readers of Gunton,75 but it makes sense because it opens up Gunton’s insistence that persons should not be reduced to relations.76 The question is whether he was successful in doing so. Hypostasis is central for Gunton’s ontology. It is by particular relations that a thing or a person is constituted. For Gunton this relational particularity is primary, and Gunton calls it the priority of the personal,77 which is confusing considering what I just pointed out above. Rather, it should be a “priority of the hypostatic” to be more precise. Nonetheless, this priority of hypostasis is not only a point, but, as Gunton states it, “perhaps the point of trinitarian theology,” and he continues that, trinitarian theology “enables us to develop an ontology of the personal, or, better, an understanding of God as the personal creator and redeemer of the world, and so the basis of the priority of the personal elsewhere, too.”78



74 75

76

77

78

Christian T. Collins Winn, “Karl Barth, Reconciliation, and the Triune God,” in Peter C. Phan (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to the Trinity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 176f. See Bruce L. McCormack, Orthodox and Modern: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 217ff, 270. E.g. Ables, Incarnational; Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay 'On the Trinity' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Holmes, “Analogia”; Sandahl, Person. Gunton, Promise, 94; Sandahl, Person, 98; Najib George Awad, Persons in Relation: An Essay on the Trinity and Ontology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014), 10. Gunton, Promise, 16; Colin E. Gunton, “Trinity, Ontology and Anthropology: Towards a Renewal of the Doctrine of the Imago Dei,” in Christoph Schwöbel & Colin E. Gunton (eds.), Persons, Divine and Human: King's College Essays in Theological Anthropology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991), 54f. Gunton, Promise, 164 [emphasis in original].



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 129 The move from divine persons to humans is not as direct as critics of Gunton have stated it.79 The move from divine persons to theological anthropology needs to be carefully executed. Relations, freedom, space, otherness, particularity and the priority of the person are essential concepts here that must be brought along when it is time to turn more particularly to the question of the human being in Gunton’s thinking; along with the concept of mediation. Gunton wants no ontological univocity between the divine and the human. But while God and creation are distinct in their being both are nonetheless constituted relationally. It is here that the concepts of space, freedom and relations are essential. As stated, Gunton stresses that space is needed for relations to occur.80 This is not space that accentuates independence, but rather space as a prerequisite for relations to have ontological consequences. Without space, Gunton argues that only the options of monism or pantheism are left.81 These are rejected because both monism and pantheism will undermine the particularity of identities for him.82 Space is the concept that enables particularity and freedom for God as well as for creatures for Gunton.83 But neither particularity nor freedom is to be equated with independence. Independence is instead the fundamental problem and cause of the ills of Modernity as Gunton portrays it.84 For, rather than seeing space as separating things, space ensures the possibility to have

79

80 81

82 83 84

Kathryn Tanner, “Social Trinitarianism and its Critics,” in Giulio Maspero & Robert Józef Wozniak (eds.), Rethinking Trinitarian Theology: Disputed Questions and Contemporary Issues in Trinitarian Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2012), 369f; Kilby, “Perichoresis,” 442; Mark D. Chapman, “The Social Doctrine of the Trinity: Some Problems,” Anglican Theological Review 83, no. 2 (2001): 239-254, 248. Gunton, Triune, 143f. Gunton, Promise, 58-62; Colin E. Gunton, “The End of Causality: The Reformers and Their Predecessors,” in Colin E. Gunton (ed.) The Doctrine of Creation: Essays in Dogmatics, History and Philosophy (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), 65. Gunton, Triune, 36-40, 124f; Gunton, Christ, 91. Colin E. Gunton, “Barth, the Trinity, and Human Freedom,” Theology Today 43, no. 3 (1986): 316-330, 317, 327. Gunton, The One.



130 PERSONS BECOMING IN RELATIONS freedom with the other as a freedom of relatedness.85 To borrow an image from Hannah Arendt that Gunton would agree with, space is like a table, it separates people, where each one has a seat, but at the same time, the table is that which brings people together. As such, space for freedom is adamantly not to be understood as unrelatedness or autonomy for Gunton. The idea that choices are free only if they are made completely independently from the influence of others comes, for Gunton, from a faulty understanding of freedom. To think that, as Gunton puts it, “[f]reedom is only truly freedom when the agent creates, ex nihilo,”86 is to misunderstand the concept. Freedom is not free rein in unlimited space. Rather, for Gunton freedom is mediated and space is the medium for freedom. Freedom is a type of relation between people. In Gunton’s words, “[f]reedom […] is not an immediate but a mediated relation to other people and the world which is the realm and object of free human action.”87 For Gunton freedom is not necessarily, then, freedom to do whatever one wishes, but rather, freedom is actions and relations that enable one to become the person one is supposed to become. Freedom is freedom when it works toward a certain telos. “If one way of understanding sin is as enslavement to alienating patterns of relations, freedom correspondingly consists in the constitution of, or liberation to, patterns of relationality in which one’s true being is realized.”88 Space and freedom are contingent upon a relational ontology for Gunton if they are not to implode into pantheism or explode into individualism, or atomism. And this is significant for understanding Gunton’s view of human relations and what constitutes the human being most fundamentally. For it is with this view of space and freedom as, on the one hand, safeguarding particularity, and, on the other hand, enabling relatedness, that the statement that

85

86 87 88

Gunton, The One, 65; Gunton, Act, 104f; Colin E. Gunton, Enlightenment and Alienation: An Essay towards a Trinitarian Theology (Basingstoke: Marshall Morgan & Scott, 1985), 57-70. Gunton, “God, Grace,” 119. Gunton, “God, Grace,” 121. Gunton, “God, Grace,” 131.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 131 the human being should be understood most properly theologically – i.e. in relation to God – makes sense.89 The human person is constituted as person by the particular relation that the relation to the divine establishes. Questions about the relationship between the divine and the human become even more important here, but Gunton’s account is not completely consistent as to how one should understand this. To begin with Gunton, favors “person” as a translation of hypostasis even though this is not always the case, as has been discussed.90 But as Karen Kilby argues, this personalist view of the Trinity is in danger of projecting our ideal views of person onto the divine perichoresis.91 Similarly, Stephen Holmes thinks that Gunton is in danger of projecting a modern concept of “person” onto the Cappadocians’ use of hypostasis and argues forcefully that it should not be so.92 Interestingly, the very opposite critique is made by Douglas Knight, however. He writes: “Gunton’s demand for a transcendental definition of the difference between the human and divine is in danger of being secured by man’s definition of the world as the place where God is not.”93 With such diverse critiques, this certainly needs to be addressed.

The divine and the human As I have already indicated above, in some statements Gunton makes the relation between the divine hypostasis and the human person a rather immediate one. Gunton can write that “[t]he

89

90 91 92 93

The purpose of theology is the knowledge of God for Gunton (Colin E. Gunton, The Christian Faith: An Introduction to Christian Doctrine (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 191; Gunton, Father, Son, xiii), and not the question of humankind. But the questions of God and the human intersect because the human being can only properly be understood theologically for Gunton (Gunton, The One, 3). Ables, Incarnational, 19ff; Kilby, “Perichoresis,” 433. Kilby, “Perichoresis,” 442. Holmes, Holy Trinity, 195, 200. Douglas Knight, “From Metaphor to Mediation: Colin Gunton and the Concept of Mediation,” Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 43, no. 1 (2001): 118-136, 134.



132 PERSONS BECOMING IN RELATIONS uniqueness of every human person is an implication of the facts that the Father is not the Son, etc., and that the love of the three persons of the Trinity is that which establishes each in their particular being.”94 By the sounds of this statement, there is a direct coherence between divine persons and human.95 But as will become evident, this is not quite the case. Firstly, Gunton’s view on mediation and ontology, and secondly, Gunton’s explicit statement that “we must note that whatever the human likeness to God is, it does not appear to license the positing of any continuity between the human and the divine,”96 raise questions regarding an all-too-immediate critique of an ontological collapse in Gunton. Or, to quote him more fully, [t]he text’s [Genesis 1] maintaining of a clear distinction between the creator and his creation, a distinction continued and reinforced by orthodox christology’s ascription of divinity to Jesus Christ uniquely of the human race, rules out any intrinsic endowment or capacity which makes man in some sense inherently divine, whether by virtue of reason or any other similar character. Although in maintaining the indestructibility of the image some doctrine of the divine spark might appear to be a help, it will not do, not only because of its apparent Hellenic presumption of continuity between the human and the divine, but also – the converse of the same syndrome – it calls attention away from the christologically guaranteed physical likeness which must in some way be maintained.97

Gunton argues, in other words, that an understanding of a “divine spark” in humanity undermines the uniqueness of the incarnation. Furthermore, humanity’s ontological continuity is clearly with creation, and against any ontological continuity with the divine.98 Here his line of argument takes an interesting turn important for future chapters. Gunton argues, although not consistently, that

94 95 96 97 98

Gunton, Christian, 45, fn. 12. Tanner, Jesus, 81f; Sandahl, Person, 103, 23. Gunton, Triune, 204. Gunton, Triune, 204f [emphasis in original]. Gunton, Triune, ch. 2-3. So much is acknowledged by Richard Fermer in his otherwise very critical article on Gunton and Zizioulas (Fermer, “Limits,” 171). See also Najeeb G. Awad, “Personhood as Particularity: John Zizioulas, Colin Gunton, and the Trinitarian Theology of Personhood,” Journal of Reformed Theology 4, no. 1 (2010): 1-22, 17f.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 133 what establishes what it is to be human is the idea of “the image of God as address”: “To be human is to be addressed by God, to be called to be in particular forms of relationship with him, with one another and with the rest of the created world.”99 The advantage of such a view, he states, is that, “it maintains the distinction between God and the world while supposing a personal relation,” and that of “underwriting what can be called a dialogical relation of human beings one with another.”100 This is of course highly reminiscent of Butler’s version of interpellation, a point which will be developed. For now, it should be pointed out that Gunton is tentative on this point of address for he sees two problems. Firstly, the emphasis on address has, as Gunton states it, “the perennial danger of minimising the materiality of human created existence.” And, secondly, “such a conception inadequately characterises the human likeness to God implied in the Genesis text, except, again, so far as verbal communication is concerned, a conception dangerously near to the idea of the image as reason.”101 Importantly, however, the concept of address and “calling” enforces the point that the relation between human persons and the divine is established by mediation. Human personhood is established through its relation to God for Gunton in that God relates to the human as persons in their createdness, a point he emphasizes not least in soteriology.102 Gunton does not mean that person is the relation. Rather, concerning the triune persons, “the three are not individuals but persons, beings whose reality can only be understood in terms of their relations to each other, relations by virtue of which they together constitute the being (ousia) of the one God. The persons are therefore not relations, but concrete particulars in relation to one another.”103 As such, persons are persons in relations for Gunton and

99 100 101 102 103

Gunton, Triune, 206. Gunton, Triune, 206. Gunton, Triune, 206. Gunton, Christ, 34. Gunton, Promise, 39.



134 PERSONS BECOMING IN RELATIONS critical voices are not always sensitive to this distinction.104 That said, Uche Anizor and Richard Fermer are still right, as I see it, about Gunton’s failure to successfully clarify what particularity of the person entails and what it means that persons are mutually constituted in and by relations. Does not “something” need to precede relations in order to be in relations, as they ask?105 In Fermer’s view Gunton, and even more so Zizioulas, fails to uphold the distinction between the divine and the human since the relational ontology places God on the same spectrum as all other beings.106 Fermer writes that, “[i]nsofar as the being-as-communion thesis is a thesis of general ontology, it is a thesis about all being, in fact, being itself.”107 This has implications for the relation between divine and human persons as Stephen Holmes notes. He argues that “the logic rather suggests that human and divine persons and relations are to be understood fairly univocally, in that ‘person’ and ‘relation’ become the middle terms in the arguments linking divine and human.”108 Yet, while Holmes is skeptical of the later Gunton’s option for mediation instead of analogy,109 Fermer instead points out that the link between God and creation is not one of ontology, but that God relates to creation as its creator and hence the being in creation might be shaped by God as creator.110 The latter is closer to Gunton’s stress on mediation. Fermer argues that this is still problematic in that ousia and hypostasis are too synonymous in Gunton and Zizioulas, and, importantly, the concept of hypostasis is too closely linked with modern “common sense perceptions” of personhood. There is a logical fallacy here for Fermer. Simply because the divine might share

104

105 106 107 108 109 110

E.g. Coakley, “'Persons',” 123f; Ángel Cordovilla Pérez, “The Trinitarian Concept of Person,” in Giulio Maspero & Robert Józef Wozniak (eds.), Rethinking Trinitarian Theology: Disputed Questions and Contemporary Issues in Trinitarian Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2012), 130ff. Uche Anizor, Trinity and Humanity: An Introduction to the Theology of Colin Gunton (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2016), 79); Fermer, “Limits.” Fermer, “Limits,” 171ff. Fermer, “Limits,” 173 [emphasis in original]. Holmes, “Analogia,” 41. Holmes, “Analogia,” 44. Fermer, “Limits,” 174.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 135 certain qualities with human persons, such as love and rationality, that does not mean that God is of the same kind as the human person.111 Furthermore, Fermer asserts that in the case of human persons we are always embodied and therefore our “nature” precedes our relations. Like Fermer, Hans Schaeffer argues that “[c]reation being ontologically distinct from God implies being related to God; ‘being related’ in turn implies a kind of all-embracing analogy and ontology” in Gunton.112 There is therefore an “apparent internal inconsistency” in Gunton since, “[t]he category of ‘ontology’ by definition can hardly be reasonably used in describing both the distinct realities of God and creation, as being ‘ontologically distinct’, and the relation between them in which the former is a source for the latter, and the latter an echo of the former.”113 As such, it appears that the analogy between the divine and the human entails an ontological sameness for Gunton; human as well as divine persons are constituted relationally. Yet, as Schaeffer acknowledges, Gunton strongly maintains that divine and human persons are ontologically distinct realities. This draws Gunton to emphasize mediation between the divine and the human, which is why christology is key, as will become evident. Fermer’s and Schaeffer’s critiques are relevant not simply with regard to Gunton. They are also important for the forthcoming discussion. Without getting ahead of myself too much, questions of embodiment, christology and mediation have to be carefully worked out in light of the critique of personalist and relational trinitarian thinking. Coming back to Gunton, it should be remembered that, as William Whitney persuasively argues, Gunton’s trinitarian theology must be read in alignment with his doctrine of creation and

111

112 113

Fermer, “Limits,” 178. See also the reference in note 86 to Keith Ward, “Is God a Person?,” in Vincent Brümmer, et al. (eds.), Christian Faith and Philosophical Theology: Essays in Honour of Vincent Brümmer Presented on the Occasion of the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of his Professorship in the Philosophy of Religion in the University of Utrecht (Kampen: Kok Pharos Pub. House, 1992), 260. Schaeffer, Createdness, 97 [emphasis in original]. Schaeffer, Createdness, 97.



136 PERSONS BECOMING IN RELATIONS mediation.114 This calls for a look at God as Creator and the anthropological importance of Christ.

The triune Creator and the anthropological significance of Christ With regard to the doctrine of creation Gunton views Irenaeus as having made a “great contribution, perhaps the greatest of all.”115 The importance lies in Irenaeus’ thought of the Son and the Spirit as “the two hands of God.” For Gunton, that does away with intermediate beings and, as such, it is Godself that is involved in God’s creation.116 This creates “nearness” and an “internal” relation between God and creation.117 However, creation is contingent since there was a time when creation was not. This creates distance, but a distance as otherness, rather than a lack of contact as Gunton sees it.118 The space created by this distance enables, thanks to the mediation of “the two hands of God,” a relation between ontologically distinct beings. Irenaeus’ doctrine of creation provides Gunton with, as he sees it, a credible theological justification for how the human person

114 115

116

117 118

Whitney, Problem, 78-79. Gunton, Triune, 52. For Gunton’s use of Irenaeus see, Farrow, “Irenaeus”; Robert W. Jenson, “A Decision Tree of Colin Gunton's Thinking,” in Lincoln Harvey (ed.) The Theology of Colin Gunton (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 13 and Alan Spence, “The Person as Willing Agent: Classifying Gunton's Christology,” in Lincoln Harvey (ed.) The Theology of Colin Gunton (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 60). Given Gunton’s comment, the relative lack of interest in Gunton’s reading of Irenaeus is noteworthy. Gunton, The One, 158f. Irenaeus is more or less absent in Gunton’s early writing and it is interesting to note how differently the concept of re-creation is treated in 1985 (Colin E. Gunton, “Creation and Recreation: An Exploration of Some Themes in Aesthetics and Theology,” Modern Theology 2, no. 1 (1985): 1-19) and in 1993 (e.g. Gunton, The One). Yet, Gunton’s later writings on creation and re-creation can be found in a nascent state in that earlier writing, which might explain Gunton’s enthusiasm for Irenaeus once Gunton “discovered” him. Gunton, Triune, 54. Gunton, “Between Allegory,” 53-56.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 137 can be defined in relation to God, yet also as a distinct being.119 Gunton wants to avoid any notion of the human being, or creation overall, as subsumed in God. Or as Whitney phrases it, “[t]he distinction from God, while still remaining related to God is a point that Gunton attempts to hold in balance throughout his anthropological proposals.”120 This connection is mediated. Gunton does not intend an ontological univocity in his concept of mediation, even if this is ambiguous at times. He works out his view of mediation in opposition to any ontological collapse of the divine and non-divine. Gunton writes: [t]he only way to avoid either some form of monism or an unstable dualism which collapses into it is by means of a strong doctrine of trinitarian mediation. One can put the matter schematically by saying that christology makes possible a measure of continuity between God and the world, but one centred not on a chain of being but on a person: while pneumatology ensures that the continuity is freely chosen and therefore not monistic.121

Gunton receives this strong emphasis on mediation from Irenaeus. Almost just as important is the Irenaean concept of recapitulation for Gunton. The recapitulatio in Irenaeus, as Gunton uses it, links creation strongly together with the incarnation and with the eschaton.122 The incarnation in this model is not primarily a solution to correct the fall, but rather was God’s plan to model the perfect and mature human being, in contrast to the perfect but immature Adam and Eve. The eschaton is the fulfillment of the maturity and purpose of creation in this scheme.123

119 120 121

122 123

Gunton, The One, 161; Gunton, Promise, 147. Whitney, Problem, 111f [emphasis in original]. Colin E. Gunton, “Flesh and Spirit after Darwin,” in Mark L. Y. Chan & Roland Chia (eds.), Beyond Determinism and Reductionism: Genetic Science and the Person (Adelaide: ATF Press, 2003), 49. Gunton, Promise, 146f; Gunton, Triune, 53f; Gunton, “End of Causality,” 77. Matthew C. Steenberg, Irenaeus on Creation: The Cosmic Christ and the Saga of Redemption (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 1f. Steenberg points out that the doctrine of creation in Irenaeus is “a scattered but consistent story” (Steenberg, Irenaeus, 1), something which might have served Gunton to have taken to mind since Gunton is in some danger of treating



138 PERSONS BECOMING IN RELATIONS A comment is merited here on the Church in Gunton, for time and telos, relations and community are essential concepts in his ecclesiology. While not exclusively so, Gunton’s theological anthropology is closely linked to an idea of the Church as the communion of human beings fulfilling what it is to be persons.124 Gunton stresses the community over any institutional understanding of the Church for it is in and as community persons are constituted.125 Additionally, this community is an eschatological community in that, as Gunton phrases it, “the Church is the body called to be the community of the last times, that is to say, to realise in its life the promised and inaugurated reconciliation of all things.”126 This inauguration of all things is, for Gunton, not “one of return, back to spiritual conditions which prevailed before the world was created, but is a movement forward to the perfection of all things intended by the creator.”127 Time and therefore also development, or maturing, are essential and even indispensable parts of creation for Gunton and this maturity is to be worked out in relation with God. The purpose, or plot, of maturity unfolds necessarily in and through time. A short comment on time, then, before the link between the doctrine of creation and anthropology is made more specific. Gunton was fascinated by modern physics and the shift from absolute to relative time. Time, for Gunton, brings order in that “we are able to relate things as before and after.”128 Time also carries theological significance for Gunton following Irenaeus. Gunton writes that, “[b]y means of his trinitarian conception of the divine economy, Irenaeus was able to allow history to be itself, by virtue



124

125 126 127 128

Irenaeus as a systematic theologian (see Eric Osborn, Irenaeus of Lyons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 10). Colin E. Gunton, “The Church on Earth: The Roots of Community,” in Colin E. Gunton & Daniel W. Hardy (eds.), On Being the Church: Essays on the Christian Community (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), 70. Gunton, “Church on Earth,” 66; Anizor, Trinity, 149. Gunton, “Church on Earth,” 79. Gunton, Christian, 25 [emphasis in original]. See also Irenaeus, “Adversus Haereses,” 4.38.1-4. Gunton, The One, 155; Gunton, Triune, 87.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 139 of its very relation to God.”129 Consequently, Gunton wants to stress the importance and value of history and creation in themselves,130 and quotes Hans Urs von Balthasar saying that “recapitulation gives time itself validity before eternity.”131 Creation does not have its value from a perspective of timeless eternity, but in its own relation to God. This is because God’s purposes are worked out in time.132 Time is essential for Gunton in that it interrelates the creation, redemption and the eschaton with God’s overall purpose, or telos.133 This need for humans to mature in a relation to God from creation through redemption to eschaton means that to be a person is also not a finalized state, at least not in the present. Becoming persons by relations through time is a rejection of personhood as a stable “essence.” Importantly, for Gunton to emphasize the significance of time is to simultaneously emphasize the significance of matter.134 As Gunton puts it: [r]ather than diminishing the importance of the material world, its importance in itself is shown to be established: it, and not some higher “spiritual” world, is the object of God’s actual willing. The fact that the act of

129

130 131

132 133 134

Gunton, The One, 158f. Similar thoughts on time as requiring to be thoroughly linked with creation and God’s purpose are found six years earlier, without reference to Irenaeus, in Gunton’s engagement with Reinhold Niebuhr’s anthropology (Colin E. Gunton, “Reinhold Niebuhr: A Treatise of Human Nature,” Modern Theology 4, no. 1 (1987): 71-81, 79f). Gunton, Promise, 117. Gunton, The One, 159 [emphasis in original]. Quoted from Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, Volume 2, Studies in Theological Style: Clerical Styles, trans. John Riches (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1984), 51. Gunton is elsewhere aware of Feuerbach and Gunton’s view of time is in exact opposition to Feuerbach’s claim that Christianity renders the lived life here and now meaningless in exchange for the eternal life in the eschaton (Ludwig Feuerbach, Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit aus den Papieren eines Denkers; nebst einem Anhang theologisch-satyrischer Xenien (Nürnberg: J.A. Stein, 1830)). Colin E. Gunton, “Universal and Particular in Atonement Theology,” Religious Studies 28, no. 4 (1992): 453-466, 457. Gunton, Christ, 23f; Gunton, Promise, 81. Gunton, The One, 159.



140 PERSONS BECOMING IN RELATIONS creation is directed to the establishment of things whose rationale is their shaping as beings in time and space demonstrates the importance of the created world in and for itself.135

The emphasis on God’s relation to creation is part of the reason why Gunton critiques every notion of a “divine spark” or “essence” – and why he links the imago Dei strongly with Christ. Any other way would undermine the human as created matter. The human person should be understood in relation to how the triune God relates to the human being and, furthermore, in relation to other humans and the rest of creation. And primary for Gunton, and perhaps any Christian theologian,136 in working out how God relates to the human being is the incarnation, even if christology is placed within a strongly trinitarian frame.137 But christology is key to Gunton’s anthropology. Christ as the imago Dei Not surprisingly imago Dei, the human being seen as the image of God, is a central concept for Gunton.138 This is a continuous theme in much of Gunton’s writing. He does not argue for a general characteristic, such as reason,139 or essence, such as a soul, as the basis for imago Dei.140 Rather, relations constitute the human being as the image of God.141 “Likeness to God consists in the fact that human

135 136 137

138

139

140 141

Gunton, Triune, 84. See Tanner, Jesus and Williams, Christ. Colin E. Gunton, Yesterday and Today: A Study of Continuities in Christology (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1983), 136; Schaeffer, Createdness, 34; Whitney, Problem, 89; Paul Cumin, “The Taste of Cake: Relation and Otherness with Colin Gunton and the Strong Second Hand of God,” in Lincoln Harvey (ed.) Theology of Colin Gunton (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 72. Gunton, “Trinity, Ontology,” 55ff; Gunton, Christ, 99-127; Gunton, Promise, 104-121; and Gunton, Triune, 193-211, to simply pick out some of the more extensive sections in which Gunton treats this concept. In this way, Keith Ward’s critique of social theories of the Trinity, that they lend themselves to tritheism by projecting three distinct wills and minds in God, is not quite applicable to Gunton (Keith Ward, Religion and Creation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 326. Gunton, Christ, 102 Whitney, Problem, 118.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 141 beings are persons, while the remainder of the created world is not. We are in certain ways analogous to the persons of the Trinity, in particular in being in mutually constitutive relations to other persons.”142 That the human being should be understood in relation to God, and in its fullness to Christ, means that individualistic understandings of the human being are rejected by Gunton.143 In Gunton’s words, “[t]o be in the image of God is therefore to be in necessary relation to others so made.”144 As such, individual autonomy, or independence, is no answer for what it is to be human for Gunton.145 He stresses instead the calling and particular relation that God establishes with the human being.146 Importantly, however, the doctrine of imago Dei is not solely a reading of the first chapters of Genesis for Gunton.147 Instead, as he puts it, “tradition’s preoccupation with Genesis has led to a serious neglect of other passages, and particularly those in the New Testament which make it clear that Christ is the mediator of creation as of redemption.”148 As such, imago Dei is set in a strong christological frame for Gunton. The trinitarian analogy of mutual constitutiveness, as in the quote above, is possible because of how God relates to the human being through Christ and the Spirit.149 That is not to say that all links by Gunton between the divine perichoresis and human community are made in the context of christology. Yet it is telling that an extensive section on anthropology is concluded by Gunton stating that “[i]t is the utter and complete self-giving of the eternal Word, obedient to the Father and dependent upon the Spirit,

142 143 144 145

146 147 148 149

Gunton, Triune, 208. Gunton, Enlightenment, 63f. Gunton, Triune, 208. This is more or less the main point of Gunton, The One. See also Colin E. Gunton, “Soli Deo Gloria? Divine Sovereignty and Christian Freedom in the ‘Age of Autonomy',” in Colin E. Gunton Intellect and Action: Elucidations on Christian Theology and the Life of Faith (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 168. Gunton, Triune, 198, 206; Gunton, Christ, 112. Gunton, “Between Allegory,” 61. Gunton, “Between Allegory,” 61. Gunton, Triune, 208.



142 PERSONS BECOMING IN RELATIONS that makes the particular historic person, Jesus Christ, at the same time the way of the many to God.”150 Similarly, with the Church as communion in analogy to the divine communion, Gunton still abstains from drawing a direct link between the two and he does not elaborate on what such a link would entail for human communion.151 He does argue that the human person is constituted, like the divine, by particular relations,152 but the christological context for this is continuously emphasized. Gunton does not mean that a human being partakes in, or is in a directly analogous relation to, the divine perichoresis, the divine communion. The logic is rather that the divine perichoresis enables distinction and space in the divine, which in turn ensures otherness between the divine and creation, which, thirdly, is a necessity for there to even be something called relations.153 Indeed, human persons are constituted relationally. But, for Gunton, the human person relates to God through Christ in the Holy Spirit,154 while the triune God is not dependent upon anything but God’s own relationality for God’s being. Christ is the concrete model for the human person, not directly the Trinity. Christ is, for Gunton, the particular and historical Jesus and at the same time the universal “man.”155 In that way, Christ is a second Adam and the fulfilled bearer of the image. God’s inclusion of the whole of creation is in Christ.156 But, at the same time, Christ is concrete and particular, fully human. As such, the incarnation not only

150 151 152 153 154 155

156

Gunton, Promise, 100. Gunton, Promise, 72. Gunton, Promise, 116. Gunton, Promise, 72, 142-176; Gunton, The One, 215-217; Gunton, Christian, 11. Gunton, Promise, 73; Gunton, The One, 206; Gunton, Father, Son, 113; Cumin, “Taste,” 69. Gunton, “Universal,” 453f, 464ff; Gunton, Christian, 98. Gunton has a not particularly convincing argument for continuing to use the term ‘man’ in the creeds (Gunton, Christian, 97). Surely other words will have the potential to hold the meaning of ‘the universal’ and ‘the particular’ that do not make readers connect to the upholding of patriarchal structures within language? ‘Person’ could be one such word. Gunton, Christ, 20.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 143 unites all humanity in the redemptive actions but is also the key for particularity when humanity is united in Christ by the Spirit.157 For Christ, as with Gunton’s view of freedom in general, it is in relationship with the Spirit that Christ has his freedom.158 The emphasis on freedom in relation means that human beings are realized as the image of God in relationship with Christ. That does not make human to human relations insignificant, as will become evident, but it does make Christ central for fulfilled human relations and a model for those.159 For Gunton, Christ exemplifies and re-establishes the correct relationship between humanity and God. There is a link between Christ’s divine self-giving love, the giving in love of Christ’s self to the other, and the re-ordering of human relationships to become fully persons as intended. Our actions are to be understood, as Gunton phrases it, “through the focus provided by the true humanity and self-giving to death of Jesus.”160 And this focus means that Christ’s kenosis, meaning self-giving, that was directed to the other compels us to relate to our other as persons. Ian McFarland captures this type of logic precisely when he writes: Jesus is the one person through whom the personhood of others is visible; not because others have their personhood only through Jesus, but because Jesus claims his distinctive personhood as Lord only through the other. Consequently, what results is not a totalitarian collapsing of every person into Jesus but a movement of release, in which the person of Jesus, precisely in his particularity, compels us to look beyond and beside him to unearth and celebrate the other by whom his own career and destiny are defined.161

Christ’s kenotic love obliges one to relate “self-givingly” to one’s other as a person. The other’s personhood is constituted by the lens provided by Christ.162 This is what I would like to call a

157 158 159 160 161 162

Gunton, The One, 205; Gunton, “Universal.” Gunton, Promise, 70. Gunton, “Trinity, Ontology,” 58f. Gunton, Triune, 192. Ian McFarland, “Personhood and the Problem of the Other,” Scottish Journal of Theology 54, no. 02 (2001): 204-220, 213. McFarland, “Personhood,” 212.



144 PERSONS BECOMING IN RELATIONS necessary “openness to the other” in how persons are constituted for Gunton. An important consequence of the christological emphasis is that if one becomes a fully human person in relation to Christ as other than God,163 then being a human person is not univocal to being a divine person. What imago Dei means for Gunton is that humans can be related to God in such a way that they are constituted as persons; as created persons in contrast to un-created divine persons.164 In Gunton’s thought then, the triune God is essential in constituting the human person, yet it is done in relation as an other. The link, for Gunton, is Christ, hence his point that “[t]he image of God is then that being human which takes shape by virtue of the creating and redeeming agency of the triune God.’165 This is not done “apart” from Christ’s humanity, as Gunton stresses, but due to his fully embodied humanity.166

Embodied human persons As stated above, the human person becomes fully human in relationship with the true imago Dei. But from this Gunton expands the importance of the relational for what it means to be a human person.167 This means that relations to other persons and the rest of creation are essential for the constitution of the person, what he terms “the horizontal” orientation.168 For Gunton, the rather abstract language of the “personal” and “being in relations” leads to the concrete.169 This is in reaction

163

164 165 166 167 168 169

Colin E. Gunton, “The Spirit Moved Over the Face of the Waters: The Holy Spirit and the Created Order,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 4, no. 2 (2002): 190-204, 192f; Gunton, Christian, 24f; Gunton, “Universal,” 453. Gunton, “Trinity, Ontology,” 47, 56. Gunton, “Trinity, Ontology,” 59. Gunton, Christ, 34. Gunton, Promise, 116. Gunton, “Trinity, Ontology,” 59. Gunton, Promise, 10.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 145 against reductionism and any stress on universal traits.170 But Gunton’s talk of relations shares some of Butler’s difficulties in theorizing about the body. In Gunton’s case, it is the elusiveness of the “what” of the person. Inherent traits, as with Pinker, at least have the benefit of a clear “whatness.” Yet this is discarded by Gunton for a priority of the relational.171 For Gunton, the way to understand the body and materiality must start with the particular and not a universal nature.172 He writes: [i]f you are real and important not as you particularly are, with your own distinctive strengths and weaknesses, bodily shape and genetic pattern, family history and structure, loves and sorrows, but as the bearer of some general characteristics, what makes you distinctively you becomes irrelevant.173

“Particularity” again, and “otherness,”’ are fundamental conditions for there to be relations for Gunton.174 Only by an openness to the other is one’s personhood constituted. But in contrast to Butler, Gunton is skeptical about self-reflection as an aspect of otherness because he sees it as insufficient for an ontology of the person. In his words, “[w]hen individual selfcontemplation becomes the basis of the self, rather than the relation to the divine and human others on which our reality actually depends, the self begins to disappear.”175 Thus, rather than self-reflection or recourse to a “nature,” Gunton states that “[a] person, we must learn and relearn, can be defined only in terms of his or her relations with other persons, and not in terms of a prior universal or non-personal concept like species-being, evolution or, for that

170 171 172 173 174

175

Gunton, The One, 46. Gunton, The One, 47; Whitney, Problem, 62f. Höhne, Spirit and Sonship, 4. Gunton, The One, 46. Colin E. Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), 114; Gunton, The One, 49; Gunton, Christian, 66f, 131f. Gunton, The One, 118.



146 PERSONS BECOMING IN RELATIONS matter, subsistent relation.”176 Who I am, as with knowledge of our self, comes from the relations in which we find ourselves.177 It is, partly, from this emphasis on otherness that Gunton sets individualism as a polar opposite to the relational person. In terms of otherness, “[t]he notion is with us still, in the individualistic idea of a person as one who, in some measure already complete, enters into relations with other persons.”178 As Gunton interprets it, in individualism one is more oneself the less one is affected by others because “it teaches that I do not need my neighbor in order to be myself.”179 For Gunton this undermines genuine otherness and freedom with the other, in that individualism, in his words, “is the view of the human person which holds that there is so much space between people that they can in no sense participate in each other’s being.”180 Consequently, the other is to be feared since he or she might dominate and undermine the independence of the individual.181 Gunton sets individualism as a polar opposite to personalism and in the previous chapter I pointed out how Pinker argues for individualism as an important element for the decrease of violence in society as well as in advancing a more just society. I also hinted that this might be an important aspect for school as an institution of grading, even if school is of course not exclusively that. Is it possible to reconcile Pinker and Gunton somehow? Gunton certainly does not attempt this reconciliation, even if I will. But there is potentially more fuel for the fire between Pinker and Gunton with regard to innate universal traits. For as with “soul” or “rationality,” universal traits, for Gunton, undermine the particularity of the person. But Gunton does not reject the idea entirely. He writes that “we are free from any need to couch the doctrine of the image in the terms of – ‘static’ – characteristics or endowments, etc., even

176 177 178 179 180 181

Gunton, Promise, 98. Gunton, Christ, 72f. Gunton, Promise, 156. Gunton, The One, 32, 64. Gunton, Promise, 112. Gunton, The One, 37.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 147 though they may eventually be part of the overall picture.”182 Universal traits might be part of what constitutes personhood, but are secondary for Gunton. Rationality, for example, can be part of the concept of imago Dei, yet not at the expense of other characteristics, and particularly not at the expense of the body.183 For by emphasizing universal innate characteristics, as he sees it, one will, in the end, lose what is particularly you.184 Instead of traits, for Gunton, “what is crucial are the actual relations in which the human creature, as distinct from other creatures, exists.”185 Other persons are of the essence here, as is the rest of creation, for the personal is only possible by the concrete relations between persons, which, in turn, are essential for the exercise of human freedom. Again, Gunton emphasizes freedom as relational rather than autonomous. It is in relation that freedom is exercised according to Gunton: what he calls a “mediated” freedom rather than an “unmediated” freedom. Unmediated freedom means “complete freedom of choice,”186 and as “subsisting in some form of unmediated relation to the universe.”187 Instead, Gunton suggests, freedom is mediated, “a mediated relation to other people and the world which is the realm and object of free human action.”188 Mediated freedom is key to how the personal should be understood. In Gunton’s words, “it is only personal agents who can be conceived to have the capacity to enter into relations, even causal relations, with others in such a way that their freedom is preserved.”189 So freedom, like person, is a relational category which is why Gunton argues against notions of freedom as independence and proposes a view of freedom as dependence and communal. But most importantly, true freedom, for Gunton, is that which does not undermine the particularity of the person. Ultimately, the enabler of this

182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189

Gunton, Triune, 207. Gunton, Triune, 194. Gunton, The One, 196. Gunton, Triune, 207. Gunton, “God, Grace,” 119. Gunton, “God, Grace,” 120f. Gunton, “God, Grace,” 121. Gunton, “Introduction (1995),” 4; Gunton, Christian, 45.



148 PERSONS BECOMING IN RELATIONS type of freedom, for Gunton, is the Holy Spirit who restores creation to its purpose.190 Therefore, what Gunton writes about freedom has implications for his view of sin. Gunton has been accused of not taking sin seriously enough. Some critique Gunton for this with regard to his anthropology and others for Gunton’s view of culture.191 In William Whitney’s view, Gunton does not underplay the significance of sin. What Whitney shows is that Gunton was highly critical of individualist understandings of sin, but not sin itself as a concept.192 It is worth noting that Gunton calls sin an “almost self-evident truth.”193 Whitney writes that, for Gunton, sin “is a social reality because certain sins are inherited from complex relational patterns and social settings in which persons live.”194 The primary problem with sin is not sinful actions, but that sin affects human freedom. Or, as Gunton phrases it, “[t]he misuse of freedom renders the agent in certain major respects unfree, a slave to self and to necessity.”195 And Gunton concludes that “[i]f one way of understanding sin is as enslavement to alienating patterns of relations, freedom correspondingly consists in the constitution of, or liberation to, patterns of relationality in which one’s true being is realized.”196 Sin is real in that patterns of relations that otherwise are intended to constitute the person constructively are now destructive. A main point, then, of this idea of freedom as “freedom with” rather than “freedom from,” is that it should maintain, respect, and

190 191

192 193 194 195 196

Gunton, “God, Grace,” 131f. Maurice F. Wiles, “The Triune Creator: A Historical and Systematic Study,” Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 37, no. 1 (2002): 220-222; Paraskevè Tibbs, “Created for Action: Colin Gunton's Relational Anthropology,” in Theology of Colin Gunton (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 124; Bradley G. Green, “Colin Gunton and the Theological Origin of Modernity,” in Lincoln Harvey (ed.) The Theology of Colin Gunton (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 172f; Anizor, Trinity, 80. Whitney, Problem, 125-136. Gunton, “God, Grace,” 123. Whitney, Problem, 128 [emphasis in original]. See also Gunton, Christian, 93. Gunton, “God, Grace,” 123. Gunton, “God, Grace,” 131.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 149 also realize each person’s particularity.197 Again, this is why Gunton reacts strongly against individualism, for he perceives it to emphasize independence, and therefore a loss of personhood, instead of being in relations. The communal view of freedom leads Gunton to emphasize the actual relations that the human person engages in, and these are, incontrovertibly, embodied engagements: “Bodies are those dimensions of our persons by and through which we relate to other human beings and the world.”198 Gunton is not unlike Butler here for he is wary of essentializing the body. Any immaterial “essence” threatens to diminish its value.199 He writes: “[i]f I am a piece of soul or mind-stuff incarcerated in matter, my materiality is what effectively debars me from relation with you, except only by word or reason.”200 Gunton calls this our “necessary embodiment,”201 which, it is worth pointing out, is a positive thing. As Gunton writes, “for evolution and scripture alike we are what we are as bodies; or, more carefully […] embodiment is essential to our being, not only now but forever.”202 The body, for Gunton, is that which safeguards our particularity on the one hand, and, on the other hand, that which enables us to relate to others as persons. “Bodiliness,” which is probably a more apt word than “embodiment,” is essential since our being is constituted by it as bodies. But even the notion of imago Dei is tightly linked to “bodiliness.” Gunton states that “we must realise that our particular embodiment – the sense that in certain respects, however much that has to be qualified, we are our bodies – is inseparable from our being in the image of God.”203 Here Gunton is skeptical of too vivid imaginations about artificial intelligence and computer development, as Gunton sees it, as “if a computer were to be able to think, it would be a person.” He

197 198 199 200 201 202

203

Gunton, The One, 65; Gunton, Act, 105; Gunton, “Trinity, Ontology,” 59. Gunton, Christian, 131. Gunton, Triune, 199. Gunton, The One, 48. Gunton, Triune, 208. Gunton, “Flesh,” 40. Gunton, Triune, 205.



150 PERSONS BECOMING IN RELATIONS continues: “[b]ut is ‘thought’ alone that which makes us personal? What of love, let alone making music and gardening, two activities which involve us in the material world?”204 It is fairly obvious that Gunton wants to stress the importance of our bodies and our materiality for what it means to be a human person. Thus, despite all the abstraction and complexity of conceptualization that a relational ontology might entail, this is how Gunton argues that it affirms the concrete. But there is nothing that says that concreteness and particularity should be conceptually simple or easy to theorize about.205 Rather, as is the case with physics, for all of matter’s manifest concreteness it is theoretically immensely complex. As such, despite the lack of theoretical simplicity, Gunton’s anthropology strongly emphasizes bodiliness, even to such an extent that I want to call it a materialist anthropology. The qualification is, of course, that being “necessarily embodied” is in no opposition to God’s ability to be in relation with the created. But Gunton’s materialism, that the human being is solely material, is nonetheless genuine, which can be seen in the stress on the divine and the human as ontologically distinct. The strong emphasis on a necessary embodiment that derives from a material anthropology is completely compatible with the view that human persons are constituted by their relation to the divine for Gunton. To sum up, Gunton stresses how the human person is created and finite. This means that to be a human person is to be embodied, so much so that for Gunton we are our bodies. Yet, while Gunton speaks very positively about our materiality and the body, he is not always clear about the particulars of what this means. For Gunton, human personhood is established in and by relations, and the primary relation that constitutes the human as a person is that to God mediated in Christ through the Holy Spirit. It is not surprising then that Gunton argues that the concept of “spirit” is, together with the necessary embodiment, essential for our understanding of the human being; “spirit” is also a way into understanding Gunton’s ethics.

204 205

Gunton, Triune, 47. As was evident already in Judith Butler’s thinking about the body.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 151

“spirit,” sin and the question of ethics Openness to the other in relations, and the capacity to enter into relations “in such a way that their freedom is preserved,”206 is what Gunton calls “spirit” with a lowercase “s”: “spirit” is an openness to the other so that, for Gunton, “[t]hat which is or has spirit is able to be open to that which is other than itself, to move into relation with the other.”207 Personhood and spirit are thus almost interchangeable terms for Gunton.208 The “spirit” as openness to the other enables humans to be constituted as persons through relations. How this is so is shrouded in some mystery for Gunton.209 He writes: there are beings who are not only alive but are endowed with that mysterious quality called spirit, received from God’s Spirit. Our being spiritual, however, far from enclosing us in a merely spiritual world, enables us, like God but in our own embodied way, to transcend the apparent divisions within things: to engage creatively with the animal, vegetable and mineral worlds, and so further to enrich the diversity of being, through industry, horticulture and the manifold arts and sciences.210

The “spirit” then relates to the otherness of the other without undermining the particularity or freedom of that other for Gunton.211 Where this freedom should have its fullest expression for Gunton is the Church. But this “mutual constitutedness” through spirit means that Gunton’s ontology is also where his ethics emerges.212 Or, as Whitney puts it, “[s]ince being made in the image of God means to exist in a network of relations, how one relates to the world around her/him is vital for understanding personhood.”213 Put slightly differently, if “spirit” is an openness to the

206 207 208 209 210 211 212

213

Gunton, “Introduction (1995),” 4. Gunton, The One, 181. Gunton, The One, 184. Gunton, The One, 185. Gunton, Christian, 14. Gunton, The One, 170. Schaeffer, Createdness, 241. For how Gunton argues that the doctrine of creation affects all from the view to culture and ethics, see Gunton, Brief, 55; Whitney, Problem, 173-5. Whitney, Problem, 141 [emphasis in original].



152 PERSONS BECOMING IN RELATIONS other that enables person-constituting relations the how of these relations cannot be ignored. It follows also from the personal character of human being that of central significance in our theology of the image of God are two slippery and often misused concepts, love and freedom. If God is eternally love in the mystery of his tripersonal being, then to be personal in his image is to be made to love: it is to be created to be from and for the other.214

Christologically, Gunton argues that a response to the Son’s self-giving is the Christian community’s love of the enemy, without guarantee of reciprocity.215 Importantly, when imago Dei is defined relationally the emphasis moves toward what type of responsibility and relations are to characterize human relation and interaction. As image of God the human person represents, or re-presents, God to the creation, and also conversely, the human person represents creation to God.216 As such, the ethical demand is directed both toward creation and toward God for the human being and these right relations are to be worked out in the present as well as being realized in the end times.217 The Church should be the locus of such realization, but Gunton is, interestingly,218 very cautious in making analogies between the perichoresis of God and the community of the Church. Any analogy can only “be of an indirect kind” worked out christologically and pneumatologically for Gunton.219

214 215 216 217 218

219

Gunton, Christian, 44 [emphasis in original]. Gunton, Christian, 151. Gunton, Christ, 102f. Gunton, “Systematic Triangle,” 80f. Interestingly, given the critique of social trinitarianism and particularly Miroslav Volf’s article “The Trinity is Our Social Program” (Miroslav Volf, “The Trinity is Our Social Program: The Doctrine of the Trinity and the Shape of Social Engagement,” Modern Theology 14, no. 3 (2002): 403-423). For one critique among many, see Mark Husbands, “The Trinity is Not Our Social Program: Volf, Gregory of Nyssa and Barth,” in Daniel J. Treier & David Lauber (eds.), Trinitarian Theology for the Church: Scripture, Community, Worship (Downers Grove: IVP, 2009). A very clearly named chapter title. Gunton, “The Church,” 69.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 153 Whitney has further explicated the link between the doctrine of God, the doctrine of creation and that of ethics in Gunton’s thinking. Whitney points out that in a relational anthropology, such as Gunton’s, the imago is not a quantifiable quality, but “is something that is most fully recognized as humans live out their existence before God and others in relationship.”220 The way God relates to the world, as Whitney understands Gunton, “ultimately fashions patterns of human relationships.“221 While particularly emphasizing the calling of the Church, Gunton nonetheless argues that all are called to relations in “lovein-freedom.”222 The type of relation to the other that is modeled by Jesus is that of self-giving, or kenosis: “Jesus Christ, who was truly God, first took the form of a servant and then behaved, by going to the cross, in ways expressive of that servanthood.”223 And Gunton writes further, “[w]e shall be freed to conceive the redemptive action of God in Jesus as of a piece with his just and sacrificial ordering of all things.”224 Gunton connects the self-giving of God as creator with the sacrificial acts of Jesus as redeemer. In other words, it is in Jesus’ servanthood and self-giving that his divine activity becomes apparent.225 But, importantly for Gunton, “the cross is no act of depotentiation. It is rather the supreme act of divine power.”226 Kenosis thus understood is fundamental in the constitution of human personhood, for self-giving love is the divine expression through which

220 221

222 223 224 225 226

Whitney, Problem, 118. Whitney, Problem, 146, 201; Colin E. Gunton, The Actuality of Atonement: A Study of Metaphor, Rationality and the Christian Tradition (London: T&T Clark, 1988), 149. Gunton, Triune, 210. Gunton, Christian, 82. Gunton, Actuality, 150. Gunton, Christ, 83. Gunton, Christ, 84. No reference is given, but, as will be argued, this is close to C. F. D. Moule’s influential interpretation of Phil. 2 (C. F. D. Moule, “Further Reflections on Philippians 2:5-11,” in W. Ward Gasque & Ralph P. Martin (eds.), Apostolic History and the Gospel: Biblical and Historical Essays Presented to F.F. Bruce (Exeter: The Paternoster Press, 1970)). Many thanks to John Webster for pointing this out.



154 PERSONS BECOMING IN RELATIONS human relations were redeemed.227 This logic is also the example of what human relations should mirror so that inter-human relations realize the person that the other can truly be. Thus, the type of “love-in-freedom” that Gunton has in mind is that of serving and self-giving. Here, of course, the concept of sin becomes important once more in that, for Gunton, all human relations will entail attempts at domination and exclusion.228 Yet, strangely, in The Triune Creator Gunton writes that [t]here appears to be no reason why creation should involve a self-emptying of God if the universe is truly to be itself. […] [T]here is no suggestion in the Bible that the act of creation is anything but a joyful giving of reality to the other […]. This suggests that the metaphor of kenosis has been displaced from soteriology, where it belongs, to the doctrine of creation, where it does not, because it is a concept designed to deal with God’s bearing in relation to a fallen world, not to be applied promiscuously to any of God’s relations to the world.229

Is this counter to what Gunton writes elsewhere about kenosis? Not if it is understood to be directed against the view of kenosis as a “self-emptying,” or giving up, of the divine, which is the critique Gunton directs at “modern kenotic theory.”230 Gunton reacts against kenotic christologies that interpret Christ to have become something less than what he was. Thus, kenosis in the act of creation is not a giving up of divinity, as becoming something less than divine, but an expression of that divinity. As such, while not incorrect, it is a little misleading when Schaeffer sums up Gunton’s ethics as an “ethics of sacrifice,”231 since sacrifice has a particular meaning for Gunton. For kenosis is a sacrifice only in light of the fall for Gunton,232 which Schaeffer does acknowledge.233 It is more correct, as I see it, to term Gunton’s ethics an “ethics of self-giving.” It is not sacrifice that is the fundamental function in

227 228 229 230 231 232 233

Gunton, Promise, 175 Gunton, Triune, 210f. Gunton, Triune, 141. Gunton, Christian, 94. Schaeffer, Createdness, 91. Gunton, Triune, 235f. Schaeffer, Createdness, 91.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 155 our createdness; for when there is no more sin, or so one must assume, our self-giving in our createdness will also be “free and overflowing.” Kenosis understood as self-giving in a world of sin might entail a sacrifice, and even self-annihilation, as with the cross. But kenosis in a world without sin still means self-giving, but not a loss of self or self-annihilation. For, if the latter were the case, then God would have become “less” God after the act of creation for Gunton, which would be an unacceptable conclusion. When Gunton writes about God’s “just and sacrificial ordering of all things,” sacrifice is understood as self-giving and does not necessarily include any suffering.234 But with that in mind, Schaeffer notes correctly that Gunton’s ethics of sacrifice gains almost transcendental status in that ‘sacrifice’, as characterization of human life and action, is an ‘echo’ of Trinitarian life, consisting in a mutual giving and receiving of the Trinity. The fact that this ‘sacrifice’ carries with it elements of giving up or suffering is due only to the consequences of the fall.235

To sum up, Christ, through the Holy Spirit, redeems and exemplifies what human relations to God, between humans and to the rest of creation should be like. Of central importance is the openness to the other for persons to be established ─ “spirit,” in Gunton’s terminology ─and it is when this openness to the other is characterized by self-giving that persons can live in the free relations they are intended to. This can only be worked out if God is seen as triune and fundamentally relational in God’s being, for only then can “the two hands” of God relate to creation as what it particularly is according to Gunton. Here, time, body and, of course, the person are key concepts for a theological, and indeed, as we will see, any anthropology. But these are not the terms of choice for either Judith Butler or Steven Pinker. Particularly troublesome for interacting with these views is Gunton’s wholesale rejection of individualism when Pinker lauds the same. But Butler’s critique of “nature” as well as of ontologies also appears problematic when these form a basis for Pinker and

234 235

Gunton, Actuality, 150. Schaeffer, Createdness, 90f.



156 PERSONS BECOMING IN RELATIONS Gunton respectively. Does that render this project hopeless and meaningless? I want to argue the very opposite. Instead, by overcoming this seeming obstacle, we can better understand what is going on in school with the division between nature and nurture.





Chapter 4: Going beyond: relationality, evolutionary theory and time “I have already begun, but not yet begun,” writes Judith Butler after an exploratory first page in one of her articles.1 Beginning something is difficult. On the one hand, I have begun by presenting Butler, Pinker and Gunton on their own terms. On the other hand, I have not yet begun, in that the interaction is yet to come. For that to begin some things are more important than others. Much will center upon performativity, interpellation and vulnerability from Butler, but also her critique of naturalist ontologies. With regard to Pinker, the idea that the human constitution is formed in its evolutionary context and the emphasis that we necessarily are our bodies are main concerns. Additionally, the significance of time enters the discussion with Pinker as it does with Gunton. Furthermore, Gunton stresses a relational ontology and the primacy of the person. For both of these concepts, mediation is important. All of the above provides constructive input for the discussion on the polarizations of social constructivism and biologist essentialism. After “weakening” the claims for ontology I argue that evolutionary theory is radically anti-essentialist as a theory. From that some anthropological conclusions are drawn. One of them is that of the significance of time in relation to materiality. Human relations work themselves out in time and space. The same goes for the human body and that has many implications, or maybe ramifications.

Establishing a weak ontology of relationality For Gunton, relationality leads him to a perichoretic or hypostatic ontology. “Person“ is here one of the “open transcendentals” and is as such ontologically fundamental. Butler, like Gunton, pays much attention to the different relations that the human being finds heror himself in. Her emphasis is on precariousness, vulnerability and grievability. Butler can admit that these terms carry ontological

1

Butler, “These Hands,” 18.

157

158 GOING BEYOND claims. For Pinker relations or relationality are not an ontological or anthropological starting point; nor are they so for the early Butler. There are certainly challenges here with regard to relationality and ontology and they need to be tackled. If the interactive reading of Butler, Pinker and Gunton is to have any validity, Butler’s critique of ontology must be taken seriously, as should Gunton’s constructive attempt at an ontology too. As Gunton and Pinker collide on personalism versus individualism, Gunton and Butler collide here on the question of ontology. Here, political theorist Stephen White provides a fruitful way forward. White argues, correctly as I see it, that there is an ontology implicit even in Butler’s early thinking.2 This he calls a weak ontology. Interestingly, what White saw as implicit in Butler has become explicit in Butler’s later writings. The vulnerability that comes with embodiment is an ontological claim for Butler.3 But even so, Sina Kramer is correct to point out that Butler needs to be more precise as to how admitting a (provisional or weak) ontology is consistent with Butler’s overall thinking methodologically. There is, for example, a tendency toward the transcendent, something beyond discourse, in Butler’s notion of desire.4 Is that consistent with White’s analysis of a weak ontology in Butler? That all depends on what is meant by a weak ontology, of course. Weak ontology here means to be acutely aware of, or embrace, the finitude of our being.5 As Rosine Kelz phrases it, “[a] felicitous weak ontology would differ from strong ontologies by asserting that all fundamental conceptualizations are contestable.”6 But the claims are not arbitrary for they, as White states it, “must figure us in light of certain existential realities.”7 These realities, for White,

2 3 4 5 6 7

White, Sustaining, 95-8, 103f. Butler, “Rethinking (2016),” 16; Butler, Notes, 40, 148. Kramer, “Judith Butler’s,” 36f. See also “Desire and personhood” in ch. 2. White, Sustaining, 7ff, 95-98. Kelz, Non-Sovereign, 8. Stephen K. White, “Affirmation and Weak Ontology in Political Theory: Some Rules and Doubts,” Theory and Event 4, no. 2 (2000).



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 159 are language, mortality or finitude, natality, and an expression of “sources of the self.”8 What I want to argue emerges as central from Butler, Pinker and Gunton is first and foremost our embodiment. The fundamental concepts that derive from this are vulnerability and personhood as a gift. To reach those concepts, an emphasis on relations is needed and I think Gunton was correct to construct a relationallyfounded ontology. Yet it needs to be weakened, and the tentative opening for this that Gunton admits, but does not develop, should be explored. For White a theological weak ontology is possible,9 but most important in this late modern age is that “no one can play strong ontological trump cards.”10 Referring to God without recognizing any options of alternative starting points would be an example of this. It does not render God, or ontology, meaningless, but only asserts that any claim is contestable and should be acutely aware of its history and particular discourse. Interestingly, theologian Bernhard Körner indicates this when he points to a certain inevitability, yet discursiveness, of ontology in Klaus Hemmerle’s trinitarian ontology. Körner writes, [w]henever we communicate something in human language, the language used is always a particular and distinct human language, bringing with it a specific history and cultural heritage. It will also bring along ontological implications, i.e. convictions about reality and its basic structure, convictions about the essential structure of what there is. Whoever uses a certain language moves within the framework of a certain kind of ontology, whether one wants to do so or not.11

8 9

10 11

White, Sustaining; Kelz, Non-Sovereign, 8. White, Sustaining, 62-69. However, for a critique of White’s labelling of Taylor, see Michiel Meijer, “Is Charles Taylor (Still) a Weak Ontologist?,” Dialogue 56, no. 1 (2017): 1-23. White, Sustaining, 63. Bernhard Körner, “Theology Constituted by Communication in Multiple Causality: Klaus Hemmerle's Trinitarian Ontology and Relational Theology,” in Jacques Haers & Peter De Mey (eds.), Theology and Conversation: Towards a Relational Theology (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2003), 256.



160 GOING BEYOND What is interesting here is not only how ontology is linked with language but that ontology is both particular and unavoidable at the same time.12 Furthermore, the definition provided by Körner of ontology as “convictions about reality and its basic structure, convictions about the essential structure of what there is” is useful in that it places the ontological claims in the subject as convictions about reality. Thus, ontological claims also originate from the level of the human lived reality, a point that should bring Heidegger to mind.13 For Hemmerle, as Körner writes, this means that an ontology is legitimated “in its ability to make reality understandable.”14 By including the subject, ontological convictions need to be rethought. In relational ontologies, as William Desmond points out, reality is not an immediate reality, but rather “a between.” For, as Desmond describes it, for self-aware humans our “experience of being” is “given back” to us through the “beholding from” that comes from self-reflection.15 This has strong links with Hemmerle. Hemmerle argues that adopting an ontology that draws on trinitarian theology, as Körner explains it, “is seeing reality as something which is because it is giving-itself.”16 This brings out, for Desmond, as for Hemmerle, the fundamental relatedness of human reality so that reality is something which occurs in relations, in “the between” as a given.17 This “givenness” or generosity of reality is

12

13

14 15 16 17

The question of whether a recourse to a foundation is unavoidable is also raised in relation to feminism by Sina Kramer. She points out the precariousness of such a project (Kramer, “Judith Butler’s,” 35f). Martin Heidegger’s critique of ontology is the starting point for the development of weak ontologies for White as for Kelz. Rosine Kelz provides a good account of Heidegger’s argumentation and how it relates to the notion of weak ontology (Kelz, Non-Sovereign, 4-12). Körner, “Theology,” 258. Desmond, Being, 4-10. Körner, “Theology,” 258. Klaus Hemmerle, “Thesen zu einer trinitarischen Ontologie,” in Klaus Hemmerle (ed.) Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 2 (Freiburg: Herder, 1996), 147. Interesting is physicist Lee Smolin’s definition of existence here: “to exist is to be in relation to other things that exist and the universe is simply the set of all those relations” (Lee Smolin, Time Reborn: From the Crisis of Physics to the Future of the Universe (London: Allen Lane, 2013), 246).



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 161 an important aspect in a weak ontology also for White, but one not necessarily based in theology.18 This echoes Gunton’s perichoretic ontology, yet with a difference, namely, a weak relational ontology provides a greater opening toward christology and kenosis. What many, if not all (including Gunton!), fail to comment on or develop is the tentativeness that Gunton argues comes with his open transcendentals. But if Butler’s critique of ontology is, as White argues it is, directed against strong ontologies, then a critique of Gunton from Butler’s perspective is predominantly against the ambivalent relation between divine hypostasis and human personhood that is found in Gunton. The problem is, as Schaeffer rightly points out, the double claim of Gunton’s ontology. A point that Gunton should make, but doesn’t, is that all ontological reflections share finitude with everything else created.19 “Should” because it would be consistent with this overall theology of creation and mediation. Thus, what is of interest for a weak relational ontology is not so much the trinitarian perichoresis but rather how God, as triune, relates to our finitude through mediation. Relations are still central for this weak ontology, but it takes the contingency of our ontological claims seriously (as well as the fact that the doctrine of the Trinity was itself developed to make sense of the incarnation).20 This kind of thinking shows affinities with Karen Kilby’s critique of social trinitarianism. Kilby makes the point that [a]ny temptation we might have to think that the way to relate to God is by rising directly above the sufferings and injustices and particularities of this world – any such temptation is thwarted by the pattern of Jesus’ life,

18

19 20

White refers to Heidegger's concept of Gestell which is “a disposition within which being is taken as stuff to be grasped, mastered, and used by a disengaged subject. The shift Heidegger wants to encourage is one in which there is a relaxation of this posture of grasping” (White, Sustaining, 94). White encourages the relaxation of the posture of grasping too, and this thought will become even more important further on in the discussion of our personhood as a gift between the self-giving of persons that is not to be grasped. Sandahl, Person, 247f. Tanner, Jesus; Williams, Christ.



162 GOING BEYOND incarnate and entangled as it is in a particular political moment, responsive to the concrete injustices and sufferings of a distinct time and place.21

Gunton would certainly agree with this, but the connection between the ontology of personhood, christology and ethics is underdeveloped in Gunton, even if it does exist, as Whitney showed.22 If Butler’s call is duly heeded to recognize those as humans that are not recognized as such then maybe we can avoid what Kilby calls the “utterly generalized sorts of vision that one might hope to deduce from just the right concept of the Trinity.”23 Following from this, a certain ontological reorientation is needed for the co-reading of my three thinkers. In this ontology, finitude, relations and the contingency of creation are of fundamental importance to make sense of the human lived reality. It is not necessarily the case that Butler, Pinker or Gunton would agree with this co-reading or reorientation. Certain main assumptions are challenged in each of the thinkers, such as the individualism in Pinker’s account, or the problem of time for the theory of performativity in Butler, as well as, paradoxically perhaps, the rejection of individualism in Gunton. The place to start to clarify these challenges is the theory of evolution.

Re-reading the theory of evolution The human being is what she or he is due to the workings of evolution. It comes as no surprise that this is in line with Steven Pinker’s view. But how are we to account for the materialism found in Butler as well as Gunton? For Butler everything that exists can be apprehended solely in discourse. That is true for all values, norms and the materialization of norms for Butler. In this way, Butler represents an immanentist view with no expressed opening to a knowable reality outside of discourse.

21

22 23

Karen Kilby, “Trinity, Tradition, and Politics” in Christophe Chalamet & Marc Vial (eds.), Recent Developments in Trinitarian Theology: An International Symposium (Augsburg: Fortress Press, 2014), 84. Whitney, Problem, 174ff, 98. Kilby, “Trinity,” 83.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 163 Gunton is materialist in the sense that humans are “nothing but” their bodies, but his overall worldview includes a notion of a transcendent, triune God. Important, though, is the distinction Gunton makes between God and humans: that humans are created, while God is uncreated. This leads Gunton to a materialist anthropology. But while Butler does not refer to the theory of evolution, Gunton does so in at least one instance. Gunton argues that Darwin did a great service to theology in that it was impossible to hold to an essentialist idea of “the fixity of species” post-Darwin.24 But, considering the essentialism in evolutionary psychology, that impossibility is one of modification. Gunton should have worked harder to prove his point, but Gunton never develops the argument of an anti-essentialist view of evolution further. As I see it, the tools are there in the concept of relationality. The concept of relationality helps to join Butler and Pinker together in what is, in a sense, a Guntonian reading of evolutionary theory. But it is also a reading given by the theory of evolution itself. Evolution in the grand scheme of things is both complex and relational; certainly, non-essentialist.25 To work within a weak relational ontology is a start in going beyond Butler’s critique of nature and Pinker’s critique of culture. “Situatedness,” environment and the concept of culture As previously explained, Pinker argues for an innate and universal human nature with significant stress on the individual. Agency is

24

25

Gunton, “Flesh,” 39. This insight is of course not solely Gunton’s, but is in this context worked out through his thinking and is mentioned by Pinker too. Rigid notions of a particular “essence” for each species are undermined by an evolutionary understanding of “speciation,” and “species” should be understood pragmatically as a taxonomic tool for biologists to understand biological variation at a particular moment in time. Marc Ereshefsky, “Species.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Summer 2016 ed. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2016/entries/species/ and Tuukka Kaidesoja, Naturalizing Critical Realist Social Ontology (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), 109-113. Pinker can also point out the non-essentialism of evolution (Pinker, Mind, 310, 25), something which would be interesting if Pinker developed it further.



164 GOING BEYOND located within this individual for Pinker and emphatically not in culture.26 Change is due to individuals’ choices and actions so that culture is a composite of a multitude of individuals’ wills,27 or, in his words, “a pool of technological and social innovations that people accumulate to help them live their lives, not a collection of arbitrary roles and symbols that happen to befall them.”28 Culture is a kind of library of wisdom and as such it has essential importance for human life.29 But to understand culture one can look at human nature, for Pinker, with that particular human psychology that was constituted in a specific time and place by evolution.30 Yet, while culture for Pinker is dependent upon the psychology of individuals, the understanding of culture, and individuals in it, needs to be expanded to be consistent with evolutionary theory. Gunton expresses this theologically by placing the human being firmly in, and as an intrinsic part of, creation. That thought can be more thoroughly applied in Pinker’s view of culture. For, if the human will is a biological process, and culture is a composite of all these individual wills, it is inconsistent to limit the scope of culture to human individual actions exclusively. Rather, culture must contain all biological events that might affect the human individual, including the wills of individuals (since they are also biological processes like everything else). This is simply an expansion of Pinker’s “webbed” reality. In a type of feedback loop, human actions will eventually make up the human living condition in a way that culture directs human action, what Joseph Heinrich calls a culturegene coevolution.31

26 27 28 29 30 31

Pinker, Blank, 286-296. Pinker, Stuff, 316. Pinker, Blank, 65. Pinker, Blank, 60. Pinker, Blank, 309. Henrich, Secret, 113-6. Question is if this culture-gene coevolution is a ‘chaos two’ system which, as Yuval Noah Harari puts it, ‘reacts to predictions about it, and therefore can never be predicted accurately’ (Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (New York: HarperCollins, 2015), 240).



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 165 Philip Hefner expresses this type of loop as “biology intervening in itself,”32 and nature as a “continuously self-transcending realm.”33 This is, I want to argue, more correct in terms of how culture relates to human nature, but it demands some further explication. Notably, this is not inconsistent with Pinker. What needs to be developed is simply the particular situatedness of the human being from an evolutionary perspective.34 In evolution, the human being as a species is constituted in relation to the context or the “milieu” in which he or she finds himor herself. Pinker can say as much in terms of the hunter-gatherers. It is their overall context in which the human psychology has been formed.35 But, importantly, the effects of the surroundings should be understood not on the individual, but on the human species over evolutionary time. Still, the individual is primary for Pinker. Gunton would see this as a question of the problem of the one and the many. And Pinker is aware of this problem when he discusses the concept of “species.” Species are populations, which means that one species can evolve into another species, even though one individual does not turn into another species over one generation.36 This means that “species,” which is a group of individuals that all share the same reproductive history, has an identity as a group which will affect future individuals of that group. For example, if a species evolves into another species it can be due to a change of environment because one group of individuals has become geographically isolated from another group. Or, to be more precise, a

32

33 34

35 36

Philip Hefner, “The Human Journey,” in Philip Hefner, Ann Milliken Pederson, & Susan Barreto (eds.), Our Bodies Are Selves (Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press, 2015), 131. Hefner, “Nature,” 144. See Buller, Adapting, 461f and Roslyn M. Frank, “Introduction: Sociocultural Situatedness,” in Enrique Bernárdez, et al. (eds.), Body, Language and Mind, Volume 2: Sociocultural Situatedness (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2008), 1. My use of situatedness might have more of a biological ring to it than Frank’s since it explicitly refers to the evolutionary setting in which a particular species evolved. Pinker, Blank, 53. Pinker, Mind, 325.



166 GOING BEYOND change is due to genetic changes in an individual in the species that are selected dependent upon their effects for the possibility of survival in the interaction with a particular environment. If a species develops into a different species in the same environment it is dependent on these changes being even more conducive for survival in that particular environment. As such, the environment is central even if the changes themselves occur on the genetic level. Consequently, a great sense of the situatedness of the individual and its effects on “the other” is essential in order to account for evolutionary change. This Pinker acknowledges, and what was said above is simply basic evolutionary theory, but it would be odd if “environment” shared no conceptual bonds with “culture” here. If it does, then the logical conclusion of how genes affect behavior must be that human beings are constituted in mutual interaction with an environment that is both affected by the human being and which, in return, affects the human being over time so that human nature will change and turn into the particular human nature that we find today.37 In other words, the biological adaptations that turn into heritable and universal traits in human nature do so through interaction with surroundings where culture is included. The dividing line for an evolutionary psychologist should not be between the concept of “culture” versus “environment,” then,38 but rather between materialist versus non-materialist understandings of environment and culture. The theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman points out that exactly what an organ’s most essential traits are can only be worked out by understanding its function, which can only be understood once the organ is located in relation to all other organs in the body, together with the overall function for the organism in a wider perspective.39 While Kauffman, like Pinker, looks at evolutionary

37

38 39

Stenmark, “Three Theories,” 908; Gilbert Gottlieb, “Environmental and Behavioral Influences on Gene Activity,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 9, no. 3 (2000): 93-97. As in Tooby & Cosmides, “Psychological,” 83. Stuart A. Kauffman, Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason and Religion (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 42f.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 167 history in order to understand, in this case, the function of the human heart, his reasoning is different. Kauffman writes: [n]ow, notice again that the function of the heart is to pump blood, not to make thumping sounds. So we reach an important insight: the function of a part of an organism is typically a subset of its causal features. This means that we cannot analyse or understand an organ’s function except in the context of its entire life cycle in its selective environment, and in the context of the selective history underlying its evolution. We need to know some of the evolutionary history of the biosphere to say anything about evolved functions.40

Kauffman stresses that one needs to have an awareness of the context and function of an organism in relation to an organism’s relation to the overall environment before one knows the biological effects of genetic evolution on behavior. Thus, it is not possible to distinguish between proximate and ultimate causes by simply looking at the innate traits of an organism. That the environment determines what traits are selected for is self-evident within evolutionary biology, but the denial of “agency” in culture gives the impression that Pinker understands culture as in no way like environment. This comes from not stressing the ontological implications of relations even if Pinker does at times acknowledge the ingrained sociality of the human being.41 Pinker comes close to what I want to say when he writes that “[c]ulture can be seen […] as a part of the human phenotype: the distinctive design that allows us to survive, prosper, and perpetuate our lineages.”42 And Pinker can acknowledge the influence of culture on human identity. He even describes how the social identity of the human individual affects behavior.43 Yet Pinker still does not attribute “agency” or “downward causation” from culture to human behavior or, in the long run, culture’s influence on human nature.44

40 41 42 43 44

Kauffman, Reinventing, 34 [emphasis in original]. Pinker, Blank, 67. Pinker, Blank, 60. Pinker, Better, 612, 41f. Interestingly, even Pinker acknowledges that an influence of culture need not indicate Lamarckian evolution, or group selection (Pinker, Better, 612). And the argument I put forward here implies nor is dependent on neither of these.



168 GOING BEYOND Pinker’s critique of “agency” in culture derives from the individualist and essentialist starting point that undergirds his critique against the SSSM. But a second problem is that Pinker understands culture as largely the ideas, values and ideals found in the human community. This view of culture is very different from both Butler’s and Gunton’s, since culture for Butler includes not only the norms themselves, but the materialized expressions of norms or values so that the material context cannot be separated from norms and values in the society. If culture, then, is understood as material, and “ideas” have existence as “materialized,” this is still consistent, and I would argue even more consistent, with evolutionary theory since it includes “culture” as a complex and relational feedback loop. But more on Butler later. Pinker argues that “nothing in culture makes sense except in the light of psychology.”45 What he means is that it is the psychology of the human nature in the individual that will explain culture. However, he pointed out only a little earlier that “the products of evolution don’t have to look like evolution,”46 meaning that simply because evolution is the origin of culture, culture does not have to follow the rules of natural selection. This is precisely my point about the relationship between the individual and culture, namely that individualism cannot fully explain culture. It is strange how Pinker can argue along these lines with regard to evolution and culture, yet not with regard to psychology and culture. Some type of concept of “culture,” or “context,” that exercises “power” on the constitution of human nature is instead necessary. Or, to phrase it a little more concretely, and as a Darwinian truism, hunter-gatherer psychology developed in its particular way because it was situated in a particular context, and the hunter-gatherers themselves were part of this context. In order to account for evolutionary change one needs to see this environment as a system that affects the species of the human being that then affects the human being on an individual level. This admits a so-called downward causation where causality and agency occur “in between,” and that cannot always be reduced to a

45 46

Pinker, Mind, 210. Pinker, Mind, 210.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 169 causal power “in” the entity itself. It is a radicalization of Pinker’s webbed reality away from an innatist understanding of causality. The social scientist Tuukka Kaidesoja expresses well the problem with reductionist and innatist arguments of, in this case, cellular biology when he writes that, [i]f the causal powers of the eukaryote cell and its component organelles, and the component molecules of these component organelles and so forth, are all mere aggregates of the causal powers of their components, then this regression may go on ad infinitum or it may stop at such ultimate entities that are plain powers lacking intrinsic natures […]. In either case, complex things, such as eukaryote cells, are not able to perform any real causal work because, according to this interpretation, their alleged causal powers are always ontologically reducible to the causal powers of entities that are ontologically more fundamental. It thus follows that real causal work is always done at the lowest level of being whilst the allegedly higher-level causes are considered as merely epiphenomenal.47

It is striking how similar Kaidesoja’s argument is to Gunton’s against Plotinus. But this is in sharp contrast to Richard Dawkins’ theory of genes as the “carriers” of evolution to which Pinker adheres and which presents an unnecessarily essentialist understanding of genes. For Dawkins genes are the “atoms” of evolution; the indivisible entities through which natural selection is worked out.48 Against this, “[h]ow is it that a mere molecule can have both the power of self-reproduction and self-action, being the cause of itself and the cause of all other things?,” Gunton asks, rightly to my mind.49 With that question in mind, science and technology studies scholar Maurizio Meloni point is instructive. He argues that there has been a shift from understanding the body as fixed to an idea of “corporeal plasticity.” As he writes, “these notions [of plasticity] are rewriting the human body as permeable to its genomic core.”50 As Meloni sees it, matter should be viewed as “biosocial” rather

47 48 49 50

Kaidesoja, Naturalizing, 109f. Dawkins, Selfish, ch. 2. Gunton, The One, 35, n. 49. Meloni, Impressionable, 131.



170 GOING BEYOND than atomistic or essentialist.51 Sociologist Vicky Kirby phrases it succinctly in saying that nature/nurture is on “one interface” so that “[f]lesh, blood, and bone – literate matter – never ceases to reread and rewrite itself through endless incarnations.”52 If this neverceasing rereading and rewriting of literate matter is applied to genes, then genes cannot be replicators for which we as humans are “survival machines,” as Dawkins and Pinker see it. Rather, as theologian Conor Cunningham points out, “a gene is context-dependent: it has meaning only within the system as a whole and cannot be extracted from it without introducing a high degree of artificiality”53 – and rightly so from the view of contemporary molecular biology, at least as Meloni describes it,54 but also molecular biologist Joram Piatigorsky. Piatigorsky, on whom Cunningham is dependent for his conclusion, argues that “[i]t became clear that it would not be possible to make sense of the genome, development, or heredity by dealing with genes one at a time; this realization forced investigators to consider how genes interacted even before they had settled on exactly

51

52 53 54

Maurizio Meloni, Simon J. Williams & P. A. Martin, “The Biosocial: Sociological Themes and Issues,” in Maurizio Meloni, Simon J. Williams & P. A. Martin (eds.), Biosocial Matters: Rethinking Sociology-Biology Relations in the Twenty-First Century (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2016). The human body’s relation to and dependence on technology must not be forgotten here (Butler, “Rethinking (2016),” 14f). As Donna Haraway famously argues, the cyborg body has no essence and thereby overrides notions of “culture and “nature” (Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” in Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991)). However, see Vicky Kirby’s poignant critique of Haraway and her contention that Haraway’s argument rests on a mind/body division (Kirby, Telling, 147f). Kirby, Telling, 148 [emphasis in original]. Cunningham, Darwin's, 52. Maurizio Meloni, Political Biology: Science and Social Values in Human Heredity from Eugenics to Epigenetics (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016), 188-209.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 171 what a single ‘gene’ is.”55 In contrast, Pinker explains “a gene for X” by saying that [s]ome behavior must be affected by some genes, or we could never explain why lions act differently from lambs, why hens sit on the eggs rather than eat them […]. The point of evolutionary biology is to explain how these animals ended up with those genes, as opposed to genes with different effects. Now, a given gene may not have the same effect in all environments, nor the same effect in all genomes, but it has to have an average effect. That average is what natural selection selects (all things being equal), and that is all that the “for” means in “a gene for X.”56

Pinker agrees that genes do not have the same effect in all environments and argues that genes have an average effect, that is, what selection selects “all things being equal.” Yet, “average” in statistics does not need to have an actual realization of a median. There does not need to be any particular realization for there to be an average, only different realizations, or one, but that, Pinker admits, is not the case with “a gene for X.” The move from the many to the one that Pinker attempts here, from “the average” to an actual occasion where a gene is “for” a particular behavior is not valid. Thus, if genes do not have the same effect in the same environment, then Piatigorsky’s conclusion is even more valid, namely, that genes must be understood by how they interact before anything can be said about them. The question is whether what has been pointed out here about the gene and organs is not also true about the individual – that it takes a great degree of artificiality to distinguish the individual from the social. This point Pinker obviously makes, but he does not work out the consequences of it enough. The problem is the innatist essentialist assumption underlying Pinker’s thinking, that entities have their causal power interior to them as an unchangeable nature rather than in traits as something

55

56

Joram Piatigorsky, Gene Sharing and Evolution: The Diversity of Protein Functions (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 36, as quoted by Cunningham, Darwin's, 51. Similarly, Smolin writes that, “[w]e don’t know what a rock really is, or an atom, or an electron. We can only observe how they interact with other things and thereby describe their relational properties” (Smolin, Time Reborn, 270). Pinker, Blank, 114 [emphasis in original].



172 GOING BEYOND realized in the relation between entities. What is of importance here, and it is worth stressing it again, is that the gene must first be understood by how it interacts before one can say what a gene is. Thus, extended to anthropology, any clear-cut divisions between “the individual” on the one hand and “the social” on the other cannot be maintained. But Pinker does maintain such a distinction and much is due to his adherence to the theories of Tooby and Cosmides as well as of Dawkins. For example, when Tooby and Cosmides compare culture to an ecosystem, they stress the foundational role of individuals as the “component parts” of the “social system.” There is no room for any mutually constitutive processes.57 Pinker also thinks of systems as the effect of the innate causal properties of its component parts. The effect of this thinking, in terms of culture and the human being, is that the innate traits of the individual are the final explanation of society. Yet, other than simply stating it, Pinker does not argue for why it is logical to stop at the individual when the individual itself is, after all, a complex system of component parts. Furthermore, this strong individualism runs up against the division Pinker draws between the laws governing natural selection on the one hand and the laws governing the “products” of natural selection on the other (“if my genes don’t like it, they can go jump in the lake”). What is not explained is how there can be laws for an organism separate from the more ultimate laws of natural selection, but not “laws” that work on the level of culture that are not the same as those of the human psychological architecture.58 Put simply, from the perspective of the human body, genes are “carriers” of the ultimate causes. From the perspective of society, the individual is that smallest component part. But the individual is an organism that has

57 58

Tooby & Cosmides, “Psychological,” 47. While far too great a question to enter into here, this comes down to the discussion of downward causation and supervenience: see e.g. David J. Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), ch. 2; Bielfeldt, “Peril”; and Niels Henrik Gregersen, “God's Public Traffic: Holistic versus Physicalist Supervenience,” in Niels Henrik Gregersen, Willem B. Drees, & Ulf Görman (eds.), The Human Person in Science and Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000).



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 173 distinct “laws” (proximate) from its component parts (the genes). If that is true for the individual as an organism, why cannot culture have “laws” that are not reducible to its component parts? Whatever the answer to that question, culture as a social system that affects and even constitutes human nature should not be problematic for Pinker. Pinker reacts strongly when the social sciences emphasize cultural influence on the individual without recourse to the individual as agent. But if culture is understood in connection with the individual as its “environment” this should also be less problematic. In the end, it would help Pinker to define culture in much the same way as environment is understood in evolutionary biology. Or, as philosopher David Buller phrases it, “from a broad evolutionary standpoint, human culture as a whole is not opposed to human biology, but is part of it,”59 so “culture is a biological phenomenon, in the very broadest sense of the word biology, despite not being a genetically-determined or genetically-transmitted phenomenon.”60 “Culture,” as it is used here, is then the context of lived reality for the human being, and will affect the human being in more ways than being, as Pinker says, “the know-how to make tools, control fire, outsmart prey, and detoxify plants.”61 But even more interesting, perhaps, if culture is the “environment” for human lived reality, then Butler’s claim that there is no “body” prior to the “he social” starts to sound compatible with evolutionary theory.62 Butler would probably object,63 but it is a move worth pursuing nonetheless. To sum up, with Pinker’s view of species as populations there is an acknowledgment of the anti-essentialism of evolutionary theory, yet his view of the individual as the sole causal component in culture is inconsistent with the relational assumptions and the

59 60 61 62 63

Buller, Adapting, 422. Buller, Adapting, 423 [emphasis in original]; Henrich, Secret, 97-116. Pinker, Blank, 63. For an explanation of how this might work out in evolution, see Henrich, Secret, 83-96. Butler, Excitable, 5. Although, having said so, there is a very slight opening for the effects of the history of ‘biological situations’ in Butler, Notes, 60.



174 GOING BEYOND downward causation that is found in evolutionary theory. It also goes against Pinker’s argument about a particular “slot” for group identity in human psychology. What is needed is an understanding of evolutionary theory where the relation between the social and the individual is more coherent. However, surely there needs to be something left called “nature” in the human being if it is to be compatible with the theory of evolution? Would that not contradict Judith Butler? Only maybe, for, paradoxically, it is a central notion in Butler’s theory of performativity that is key for moving beyond this problem of the social and the individual.

Evolution as performativity Pivotal in Butler’s theory of performativity is the idea of a reiteration of acts that assumes no agent prior to the act. The subject is constituted through a reiteration of norms, but this process of subjectivation masks itself as “natural” and as an “origin.” This is the naturalization or, materialization of norms described previously. At first glance that idea runs counter to Pinker’s priority of the individual as agent in culture. But it is worth remembering that Butler is just as critical as Pinker of theories that replace the willing subject with “culture” or “power” as an agent that constructs the subject. Their reasons are very different, but also surprisingly compatible. The idea of the discursiveness of the body is a point that is strangely ignored by Pinker, as well as by Tooby and Cosmides when they critique the social sciences. It is not that they should have read Butler, but the concept of discourse is well established, as is Foucault, and should have merited some attention by them. For what they miss is that when Pinker writes forcefully against notions of the body as a tabula rasa in social science Butler agrees; the body is never a blank slate. It is always already “written upon.” The difference lies in what the pen is that “writes” the body. And here the biologist essentialism and social constructivism in Pinker versus Butler are revealed since what “writes” the body for Pinker are the genes, while norms “write” the body for Butler. For Butler, our conceptualizations and norms “write” the body. For Pinker it is the evolutionary history. But in Butler this is not “culture” as an “agent,” as Pinker might have understood it.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 175 For, as she points out, “’[i]n such a view, the grammatical and metaphysical place of the subject is retained even as the candidate that occupies that place appears to rotate.”64 Thus the critique that Pinker directs against constructivist thinking is not particularly applicable to Butler’s understanding of construction. Or, to reverse it, Butler is also critical of simply exchanging the individualist agency in the human agent to a type of individualist “agentist” view of culture. Instead agency arrives late in the process of performativity as a materialization of norms. The latter is opposed to Pinker’s view of the individual, but, from a different perspective, Butler’s argument about acts without an actor aligns itself with Pinker’s view of evolution as a process without any actor, purpose or intent. For just as Butler argues that acts are reiterated and materialized without a subject, except for an individual in a grammatical sense, evolution, according to Pinker, occurs without any doer behind its deeds, but still materialization of new organisms occurs. Butler’s constructivism is here strangely consistent with a relational understanding of evolution. Evolution works by small changes made stable in interaction with the environment. Furthermore, genetic copying, reiterations in Butler’s terminology, also “carry their own undoing” but have over time formed the human body. In that perspective, all the human body is, is a materialization of norms or “power relations in a discourse” that largely have been outside the control of the human being.65 In a strange way Butler’s concepts of reiteration and materialization of norms describe the process of evolution well. It is evolution as performativity. Pinker abhors this philosophical tradition, yet the anti-essentialism of the theory of evolution leads to an understanding of reality where temporality in terms of a “nature” prior to a “culture” needs to be re-thought. When this is done, and once the essentialism in Pinker’s interpretation of evolution where genes are “atoms” of evolution is rejected, statements by Butler about performativity clarify the theory of evolution rather than being in opposition to it.

64 65

Butler, Bodies, xviii. The medical, technical and philosophical questions of gene manipulation and cyborgs are too vast to be entered into here.



176 GOING BEYOND For example, Butler writes that, “[t]o claim that discourse is formative is not to claim that it originates, causes, or exhaustively composes that which it concedes; rather, it is to claim that there is no reference to a pure body which is not at the same time a further formation of that body.”66 On the level of genes and over a long period of time in a species this rings remarkably true for how evolution works. In evolution, there is no reference to a body that is not at the same time a further formation of that body. This is due to the fact that evolution, as well as construction by reiteration, always occurs in time. Something which will be explored below. However, this way of phrasing the theory of evolution is likely to have effects on the view of matter, and thereby on Butler’s thinking also. Here Elizabeth Grosz, critiquing the view of nature and culture in Butler, correctly asks that “[i]nstead of regarding culture as that which performatively produces nature as its ‘origin,’ as Derrida and Judith Butler imply in their understanding of performativity as iteration, can we regard culture as the most elaborate invention of a nature that is continually evolving?”67 Or, as Vicky Kirby asks, along similar lines to David Buller above, “what if culture was really nature?”68 What this means needs to be worked out in more detail, but the first step is to adopt a different perspective of time in Butler’s theory of performativity by accepting more ontological claims for relations.

Time matters The reiteration of acts in Butler’s theory of performativity is the backbone to her view of norms’ and discourse’s effect on “nature.” Yet no repetition without time, which means no performativity without time.69 Butler has acknowledged this,70 but to no great

66 67 68

69 70

Butler, Bodies, xix. Grosz, Time, 50. Vicky Kirby, “Natural Convers(at)ions: Or, What if Culture Was Really Nature,” in Stacy Alaimo & Susan J. Hekman (eds.), Material Feminisms (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008) and Kirby (ed.), What if. Kelz, Non-Sovereign, 56, 64. Butler, “Sex and Gender,” 39; Butler, Notes, 178-180.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 177 effect for her overall anthropology. Similarly to performativity, the theory of evolution is about changes working themselves out over an extended period of time. But Pinker is explicit about the importance of time. He points out that central to evolution is that evolution is the repetition over long periods of time of the persistence (reliable replication) and the instability (mutations) of material life. Yet particular to evolutionary psychology is also a division of time between, on the one hand, evolutionary time, the time span in which evolutionary adaptations work, and, on the other hand, cultural time, the time span in which changes in culture, or the social, occur. Even so, time matters for what we are as human beings for Pinker. On Butler’s part, the clearest link between performativity and time is when Butler writes that [c]onstruction not only takes place in time, but is itself a temporal process which operates through the reiteration of norms; sex is both produced and destabilized in the course of this reiteration. As a sediment effect of a reiterative or ritual practice, sex acquires its naturalized effect, and, yet, it is also by virtue of this reiteration that gaps and fissures are opened up as the constitutive instabilities in such constructions, as that which escapes or exceeds the norm, as that which cannot be wholly defined or fixed by the repetitive labor of that norm.71

As mentioned above, this type of reasoning is coherent with evolutionary theory, but only if time is taken seriously. “As a sediment effect of a reiterative or ritual practice, sex acquires its naturalized effect” fits remarkably well with evolutionary theory and the evolution of sexual difference, depending upon the view of time. But what is curious in Butler’s “naturalization of sexual norms“ is how it has little or no effect on the body over generations. The above quote has little effect in Butler’s thinking. This is likely due to Butler’s understanding of the formation of the body as political. As Chambers points out, Butler understands body “as situation,”72 which is why “body” as extended history is rejected by her.

71 72

Butler, Bodies, xix [emphasis in original]. See also Butler, “Performative,” 519. Chambers, “'Sex',” 64.



178 GOING BEYOND Even if Butler is convincing in arguing for “natural” as a political concept there is still a problem with its implications for the materialization of the body. For if the body as situation is stressed to the exclusion of the body’s materialized history, then to argue for “natural” as solely political is to undermine the temporality of the body in favor of present political constructions of bodies.73 There is an ambiguity here about time. Claire Colebrook phrases this well in that time, for Butler, in a politics of iteration and recognition, is both a time out of joint – for the repetition of any identity is also a minor and possibly destabilizing difference of that identity – and a time that gives matter. Only with performing itself through time, acting itself out, can something be said to be or have time.74

Butler is adamant that performativity of gender is not the same as a simple option, “that one woke in the morning, perused the closet or some more open space for the gender of choice, donned that gender for the day, and then restored the garment to its place at night.”75 As such, there is an acknowledgment that time congeals matter. Yet when Butler comments on Pierre Bourdieu she is critical of almost precisely the point I want to make here. Bourdieu argues that the body is, as Butler understands him, “the repository or the site of an incorporated history,”76 and that the body “is this sedimented ritual activity; its action, in this sense, is a kind of incorporated memory.”77 Butler turns against this.

73

74 75 76

77

Noteworthy, from Kathryn Tanner’s point of view, this is indicative of a neoliberal relation to time (Kathryn Tanner, Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), ch. 4). A further side of Butler’s theory conducive to neoliberalism is the idea of being able to “choose” one’s gender. Both of these readings Butler would find troublesome, and contest. Colebrook, “Not Being,” 72f. Butler, Bodies, ix; Nelson, Argonauts, 15. Butler, Excitable, 152. For how this is a correct statement also within evolutionary theory, see Gunter P. Wagner, “The Biological Homology Concept,” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 20(1989): 51-69; and Buller, Adapting, 454-57. Butler, Excitable, 154 [emphasis in original].



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 179 Interestingly, the same critique emerges against Monique Wittig’s view of the body. Butler does not admit that the repetition of norms on the body means that the body “become[s] a cultural sign” since this means that the body needs, according to Butler, “to materialize itself in obedience to a historically delimited possibility, and to do this, not once or twice, but as a sustained and repeated corporeal project.”78 Butler moves away from the consistency of the body that she finds in Wittig. Her reason for this is that “[t]he historical possibilities materialized through various corporeal styles are nothing other than those punitively regulated cultural fictions alternately embodied and deflected under duress.”79 Instead, Butler wants to stress that there is always a renegotiation of the alleged stability of the body. Butler’s point is that the body is neither sustained, nor a project, but only and always repeated. This is, as I have stated, correct, but, against Butler, it also links performativity and evolutionary theory. For, Butler goes too far in her critique of Bourdieu and Wittig when she denies the materialized stability generated by time in the process of the reiteration of norms. When Butler argues that there is only an “apparent materiality of the body,”80 she does not draw out the implications of Bourdieu’s and Wittig’s views in connection with the theory of performativity enough. Instead, Butler emphasizes the present social and political formation of the body and thereby opens up the “perusing” interpretation of gender she wants to avoid. This is at the expense of any temporal consistency of performative action on the human body over generations. Butler writes, after all, that “the source of personal and political agency comes not from within the individual, but in and through the complex cultural exchanges among bodies in which identity itself is ever-shifting, indeed, where identity itself is constructed, disintegrated, and recirculated only within the context of a dynamic field of cultural relations”81 – over generations in time, I would like to add, since Butler admits that reiteration is in time.

78 79 80 81

Butler, Gender Trouble, 190. Butler, Gender Trouble, 190. Butler, Excitable, 154 [my emphasis]. Butler, Gender Trouble, 173.



180 GOING BEYOND Thus, the “is” really should be emphasized in the statement that the body “is this sedimented ritual activity,” and the materiality that is established by this is not “apparent.” This is due to the significance of time in the process of our constitution. But time, as interlinked with materiality over an extended period, is absent in Butler. This undermines time as essential for the constitution of the human being. Time does not in the end matter for Butler, but what would happen if it did? From the perspective of evolution, the coherent identity of the body might be more stable in its materialized form than what Butler prefers, but it is a “stability” that can and will be “troubled” as time progresses.82 Butler argues for the importance of a non-passive, or at least discursive, body and one where a “coherent identity” is “troubled.”83 This is what the theory of evolution provides in terms of the phylogenetic perspective of the human body.84 For example, Pinker points out how the molecular locks in an organism are by no means passive in the latter’s interaction with its environment.85 As such, in one sense the “identity” of the genome is consistently troubled. The consistent troubling of identity contradicts both an essentialist account of the human being as well as any denial of time as of constitutive importance for the body. David Buller phrases this forcefully in relation to evolutionary theory and states that “[w]e are a work in progress,” and that “if we are to take a truly evolutionary view of our species we need to recognize the insignificance

82

83 84 85

From the perspective of Christian theology, the theologian Sarah Coakley points out the potential for a “troubled” sexual identity in the eschaton (Sarah Coakley, “The Eschatological Body: Gender, Transformation and God,” in Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy and Gender (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002)). Furthermore, the theologian Graham Ward argues for the displaced body of Christ (Graham Ward, Cities of God (London: Routledge, 2000), ch. 4). And whether one agrees with Coakley’s or Ward’s particular interpretations or not, the notion of a bodily transformation has a fairly solid scriptural foundation in Paul’s writing in 1 Cor 15:35-56. Butler, Bodies, 140. That is, the particular species’ genome’s evolution and development over time. Pinker, Blank, 142.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 181 of the present […]. Taking a truly evolutionary view of ourselves will involve relinquishing the temporal provincialism that evolutionary psychology’s theory of human nature offers us.”86 Buller does not deny that the human species has a history, though, only that what is significant for our species in the present should not be counted as significant for the species as a whole. Buller’s is a way of stressing the ontological aspect of the relational, as Gunton asks for. It also points to the fact that if something is relationally constituted, or “constructed” in Butler’s terms, it does not mean that it is malleable according to one’s wishes. The constitutive and consistent effects of time simply make it possible to account for change in a reality that is material and as such stable; stable, at least from the perspective of human lived experience. From Gunton’s perspective, Butler is correct to situate time as an aspect of the process of performativity, though, rather than imaging time as something external to reality.87 The problem, however, as Gunton argues with regard to Hegel is that this, in the end, renders time as obsolete. Hegel is correct, according to Gunton, to emphasize history as “saving history […], the realm where saving divine reality takes shape.”88 What is problematic is how the divine salvific actions in Hegel, as Gunton sees it, have been replaced by human cultural actions so that it becomes an “implicit divinization of the finite.”89 And Gunton concludes that, “[b]y ascribing supratemporal significance to a merely immanent phenomenon, whether christologically defined or not, Hegel has finally deprived time of its significance as time. It is thus abolished.”90 Whether Gunton is correct about Hegel or not, his point is still relevant with regard to Butler. For while Butler acknowledges reiteration as in some sense taking place in time, there are not enough consequences for this admission of time in her thinking. Butler’s “a/temporality” means that reiterations do not have lasting consequences over time and none at all over generations.

86 87 88 89 90

Buller, Adapting, 480. Gunton, The One, 86. Gunton, The One, 87. Gunton, The One, 87. Gunton, The One, 88.



182 GOING BEYOND Butler argues that the reiterations of norms constantly need to be repeated, but that they also have a materializing effect. If this materializing effect should be counted as an effect it should have some implication for the future, or Butler will struggle with a problem similar to one Hegel faced, according to Gunton, namely that time is abolished and thereby history as well as the horizon of the future would be lost.91 Time is deprived of its significance as time and Butler’s theory of materialization of norms is in danger of being an “implicit divinization of the present.” What Pinker’s theory of evolution maintains is that the human narrative unfolds over a vast stretch of time. It is only through time that the human being is what she is. A similar thought, but with a different idea about “development,” is present in Gunton’s view of recapitulation. What Gunton stresses from Irenaeus is the place for maturity in a process of person-development. But this is set within an extensive time frame, namely from creation until eschaton. There is a meaning and a telos, goal, for the human being as Gunton sees it. This flies in the face of Butler and Pinker, but it does imply a consistency over time, an idea of time as important for what it means to be a human being that is worth exploring.92 What is, as I see it, a strength in Gunton’s emphasis on the consistency of creation, salvation and eschaton is the holistic and constructive view of time that this assumes. Pinker too acknowledges the importance of time for the constitution of the human species even if too much is made out of the distinction between “cultural time” and “evolutionary time.” A less segregated view of

91

92

Wolfhart Pannenberg argues similarly with regard to Hegel in Wolfhart Pannenberg, “What is Truth?,” in Wolfhart Pannenberg, Basic Questions in Theology, vol. 2 (London: SCM Press, 1971), 22. For the problem of taking time out of history, or reality, see Smolin, Time Reborn, 74f, 241. Pinker does ponder the fact that there appears to be a type of arrow in human activities that can point to the decline of violence if certain aspects align. He states that he can understand why some thinkers are tempted to allude to some divine force for this, but he can, as he says, “easily resist the temptation” (Pinker, Better, 694). But it does lead him to think that there might be some real morals to be detected (Pinker, Better, 695).



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 183 culture and biology is called for even if it is true, as Philip Hefner puts it, that “[t]he cultural reality can easily put the biological to death, just as the latter can apparently withhold its cooperation with the former.’93 Pinker claims that evolutionary psychology provides a bridge between nature and culture, and in many ways, I agree, but the division of time made in evolutionary psychology does not fully bear this out. What is proposed by Gunton’s view of time is a continuity of time from creation to salvation/recapitulation to eschaton. Time from the Irenaean perspective that Gunton presents is a continuum in which materialization and realization of the truly human occur. If time is seen as presented above, then what happened previously affects the present, as the present affects the future. On account of Butler’s theory of performativity the inscription of norms that constitute the body works over generations so that, from the perspective of the individual human, one’s body, and with that one’s psyche, is “prediscursive,” while, on the other hand, in the perspective of evolutionary time, or salvation history for that matter, the human body cannot be said to be prediscursive. For in the long perspective the human body is constantly being inscribed by the evolutionary, theological or political “writing.” With this constant inscription and “rescription” of norms on the body Butler could agree. However, bodily stability and a prediscursive body in the perspective of lived reality is less agreeable to Butler. Thus, the materiality of the body is now troublesome because if time matters, for real, then the materiality of the body wants to make itself known, and this includes its history. This has implications for the question of the body and the “inner” life of a human being.

The reality of body An important aspect about the human body is that of consciousness. Consciousness enables the human being to reflect upon himor herself and the human condition. Both Butler and Pinker write much about this capacity of self-reflectivity. Butler writes positively

93

Hefner, Human, 29. See also Harari, Sapiens, 34-39.



184 GOING BEYOND that it is by self-reflectivity that a self can be other to itself. Pinker is instead skeptical about its reliability. At the same time, Butler denies the “inner” reality of self-reflection as being in any way prior to discourse.94 Self-reflection only occurs once the individual has been called to give an account of oneself in the process of interpellation.95 What Butler critiques are views that present the self as an origin unaffected by its relation to discourse. Instead, for Butler, the “outer” inscribes the “inner” and the allegedly ontologically stable “inner life” of the subject is exposed as a fabrication. However, there are at least two things this argument fails to take into account. Firstly, Butler does not at this time consider relations to have ontological significance. This is noteworthy since Butler admits, already here, that the result of the “fabrication” is a “reality” that comes into being by the process of performative bodily inscriptions. The question that comes to mind is, if relations can constitute a reality, does that not imply some type of ontology? That is White’s argument at least, and something Butler expresses in her later writings. Secondly, Butler’s talk of the body as “surface” is odd if she wants to reject the inner/outer division. Butler argues that nothing can be “behind” the surface, but to use Butler’s own terminology, if the inscription of the body by the performative actions of the norms in discourse is all the body is, does that not undermine the thought of the body as a mere “surface”? Beginning with this latter point and only then moving on to the question of ontology, two responses can be made to the question above. Firstly, Butler does not emphasize enough that the body, as the product of the materialization of norms, is that type of body in which an inner life emerges. Pinker, as well as Gunton, instead stress the body to be the type of body where the “inner” life is part of what the body is. Despite her assertions, Butler maintains an idea of an “inner” or “psychic” life distinct from the body. Commentators on Butler are not all convinced about the success of

94 95

Butler, Gender Trouble, 181-186. “Individual” here should be understood in Butler’s sense as a grammatical position and not as an autonomous human subject.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 185 Butler’s combination of Foucauldian ideas of discourse with psychoanalysis. Trying to combine the body as “surface” (Foucault) with a strong concept of “the psychic” (Freud) is a challenge for Butler.96 In my view, the language of the body as surface is misleading,97 and the development of a social ontology of the body is to be lauded. For example, the complicated use of desire in Butler’s writing leads one to think of desire as at times working from “inside” the body and sometimes “against” the body in a way that desire becomes a part of an “inner psyche” that is set against the “surface” of the body.98 Butler would likely react against such a dualist interpretation, but the lack of clarity and consistency with regard to desire invites it. For Pinker, Butler remains within a metaphor of the human being as a container to a too great extent.99 But more importantly, Butler does not argue consistently enough that we are our bodies, that all the human is, is the body. Gunton calls this our “necessary embodiment,” which is very much in line with Pinker. In this Gunton and Pinker need not make a strong distinction between “inner” and “outer.” For Gunton, any such distinction will easily lead to valuing the inner as more important. As he sees it, “what we need is a concept of the person, of one who is made as a whole, ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ alike, in the image of God.”100 In Pinker’s view, a

96 97

98 99 100

See Rothenberg, “Embodied”; Campbell, “Plague” (2001); Dudrick, “Foucault.” Butler is aware of the metaphorical or linguistic grounding of “inner” versus “outer” and points out that, “[r]egardless of the compelling metaphors of the spatial distinctions of inner and outer, they remain linguistic terms that facilitate and articulate a set of fantasies, feared and desired. ‘Inner’ and ‘outer’ make sense only regarding a mediating boundary that strives for stability’ (Butler, Gender Trouble, 182). I would like to argue that the terminology of “surface” in a Foucauldian context also has this function as a “mediating boundary,” while an acknowledgment of the relational aspects of evolutionary theory need not lead to a stable identity or bodily boundaries. See “Desire and personhood” in ch. 2. Pinker, Stuff, 246. Gunton, “Flesh,” 39.



186 GOING BEYOND division makes us forget that we are the type of bodies that make choices and act in response to morality and social context. For Gunton then a real inner life must not lead to a devaluing of bodily human being. It is a question of working out a non-dualist theological anthropology. Butler’s view is a radicalization of Foucault where she argues that the body’s stable boundaries are always understood in terms of norms and taboos, and thus are never prediscursive.101 However, if desire can work outside of the discourse on the body for Butler, then this indicates a certain passivity of the body, something of which she is critical.102 Butler locates the problem of the body as passive in Descartes’ body and soul dualism. But when Butler sees the problem in this way, she misses that, as Gunton would see it, a greater problem arises. In theological terms, it is a disconnection of the doctrine of salvation from the doctrine of creation. Butler is not concerned with Christ, or creation of course, but it is possible to see Butler’s problem of discourse and desire in a similar light. I will try to clarify how. Gunton, with Irenaeus, strongly emphasizes a continuity between creation and incarnation so that, in relation to God, creation and our bodies always have meaning and value. For Butler, we will always find ourselves in a discourse of norms that provides meaning to the body’s actions. However, with desire, if her theory of discourse is translated into Gunton’s incarnational terms, the problem is that Butler has insufficiently connected “the doctrine of creation” and “doctrine of salvation.” In Butler’s terms this translates as an inconsistency between the theory of discourse and the potentiality of desire to evoke change of the norms in a discourse. For if it is correct that no great distinction can be made between genes and culture as carriers of evolutionary information, then our bodily actions will always take place inside a culture, and thus always be interlinked with norms, as Butler points out. However, desire is insufficiently incorporated, or “incarnated,” in this system in Butler for at times desire is located in discourse, while at other times it is located in the subject, directing the subject to work against the norms.

101 102

Butler, Gender Trouble, 181. Butler, Gender Trouble, 176.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 187 Sina Kramer similarly critiques Butler and states that [a] more self-consciously dialectical method, one that preserves the tension between the concrete and the abstract, between the immanent and the transcendent, or between politics and its conditions, would be helpful in understanding the problem of the relation between politics and ethics or ontology in Butler’s recent work.103

Gunton points to a similar failure if one fails to acknowledge the full humanity of the incarnate Son,104 although of course not with reference to Butler. Just as the body loses its value and becomes a passive tool of the divine if Jesus’ humanity is undercut, the body is in danger of being a “passive” tool for desire in Butler’s thinking. If the body is to escape its passivity then desire’s capacity to challenge norms needs to be linked with a fully worked out “doctrine of the incarnation” in Butler. For how can desire “enter” and transcend her otherwise immanentist theory of discourse? Butler’s emphasis on surface where desire can work “from the inside,” yet also outside, drives a wedge between the materiality of the body (“creation”) and desire as the agent of change against the current situation (“salvation”). Instead what cannot be separated from “the surface” of the body is the “inner life” of the human being. If the human body is that type of a body in which the second person of the Trinity can become incarnate, then it says something about that body and what the “necessary embodiment” might mean. The body in that view is not a passive recipient of meaning, but active in its potentiality of what can be realized in the human body. Gunton’s emphasis on the need for maturity makes this clear. A fully developed incarnational view will, according to Gunton, always locate the savior in full identity with the saved,105 as a “truly human action.”106 For Butler, this would mean a desire in identity with the body to be consistent with her theory of discourse.107

103 104 105 106

107

Kramer, “Judith Butler’s,” 37. Gunton, Father, Son, 9f. Gunton, Actuality, 198; Gunton, Yesterday, 198. Gunton writes further in the same paragraph: “[i]t is important to remember that the suffering is that undergone by the incarnate Son, the Son fully identified with the order of creation” (Gunton, Christ, 87). Once more, maybe Foucault and Freud simply are not compatible?



188 GOING BEYOND Our bodies are the type of bodies that in their particular materiality, or necessary embodiment, are such that consciousness and mental capacities cannot be extracted from what their embodiment entails. This is why Pinker takes consciousness to have real significance, even if he is not able to explain it. Consciousness belongs to the type of body which we are. This, for one thing, leaves out any traditional understandings of a “soul” as a separate entity. But when firmly located in our embodiment, the “inner” capacities should be allowed performative power “over” the body, since they, just as much as “the surface,” are part of the fixedness of the body that Butler attributes to the bodily orifices.108 This implies a type of fixedness of the human psychology, as a result of materialized norms in a discourse, which would please Pinker, but only to a degree. For this fixedness can only be established if one acknowledges the body as being constituted relationally in and by discourses (i.e. “environment”), and this questions individualism. A help here is to look at Gunton’s definition of “spirit” as “openness to the other,”109 and the ontological capacity of relationality. Again, the “inner” is inseparable from the body.110 The “inner” is essential for human self-reflection, and the willing faculty is essential for moral and rational deliberations, as Pinker points out, which will affect culture, that is, the reality in which the human being lives. But, rather than a return to modernity’s autonomous rational self, I see this as consistent with the theory of performativity, if one argues for a bodily inscription that is “deep” enough to permeate the whole body. What I hope is clear with this argument is that with our necessary embodiment comes inner life, so that the source of “inner realities,” such as thoughts and desires, really is the body. Thinking and consciousness cannot be separated from our embodiment. In

108 109

110

Butler, Gender Trouble, 180. The exact phrase is not Gunton’s but mine. It does, however, summarize Gunton’s view well and is very close to what he writes in Gunton, The One, 181. In terms of language, for Pinker, it is precisely the unity of thought and language that the bodiliness of language enables that is a main tenet in his psycholinguistic standpoint (Pinker, Stuff, 241). See also Wallace, Getting, 159.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 189 this way, the “inner life” is also what it is to be embodied, which is the strong point brought out by evolutionary psychology. To be embodied in such a way is what defines reality, what I have called the human lived reality.111 This implies a stability of the body in the materialization of norms. For, in order for materialization and performativity to occur at all, there need to be stability and consistency permeating the body throughout. Repetition happens over time, as Butler admits, and performativity takes place in this. Talk about surface that makes inner life appear less real than the surface or orifices is not radical enough in acknowledging how our language, thinking, feeling and desiring are body-activities. Our bodies are, indeed, a materialization of norms, yet with the important qualification that they have a long history of such accumulation. A significant point about performativity for Butler is how it always partly fails. But this must mean that performativity also partly “succeeds” in masking the acts it repeats as origins. That very thought implies a continuity over time in terms of the materialization of norms in Butler. In terms of humans, this continuity of materialization of norms is “stored” as our bodies. Confusingly, Butler can admit to a certain stability in the cultural “styles” which are our genders.112 Something is sustained when it comes to the human body also within Butler’s thinking, and I have argued that this has consequences over a long stretch of time and over generations. The materialization is not necessarily easily susceptible to change, or at least the historicity and stability of the body provide a certain resistance to “norm-critical performative reiterations,” which would come as no surprise to Butler.

111

112

The view that Gunton presents of an anti-dualistic “necessary embodiment” is in this closely related to Arendt’s concept of “world,” namely, that the human being as a person is part of what makes up the world and in this dispositions, as well as consciousness, will affect the world as an agent (Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 57). See also Pinker, Stuff, 321f. Hence, the dual critique that has been directed against her, that on the one hand, the impression is that Butler admits to too much possibility for change of gender and sex norms and, on the other hand, that there is no opening for change in her thinking, might be understandable.



190 GOING BEYOND My point here is not that Butler is wrong. Rather, the theory of performativity is correct with regard to the human body in an expanded notion of time. The human body is always situated in biological and cultural time. The body is plastic history where the pressure from different relations of “the other” have variously lasting effects depending on the mutual interaction between body and environment.113 Hence, we as bodies are constituted relationally, as Gunton maintains. Over time this means that what has evolved are very particular human bodies that relate as persons. As such, Gunton would have done well to look for support in evolutionary theory in order to be more specific as to what his particularity means when he states that persons are particular beings in relations, not to be equated those relations, but nonetheless mutually constituted in their relations. The paradox of vulnerability What the view of the body as relationally constituted over a long period of time does is to further emphasize our dependency as beings. This will be developed much further in the next chapter, but it means that Butler is correct to stress the vulnerability of our bodies, and that a question of being can also be a question of ethics. But stability, vulnerability and dependence do not sound conducive to feminism. Rather, they are notions feminists have striven long and hard to critique. As such, the next chapter must also say something about how these relate to feminist concerns. To conclude, after a weakening of his ontological claims, Gunton’s views have been left fairly untouched in this chapter. The reason for this was to show that the dichotomy between Butler and Pinker needs to be worked out by being placed in a slightly different arena. This arena is one where both the relational on the one hand and the ontological on the other are joined together. When a weak relational ontology is set in place, the problem lies not in the resources within social constructivism or biologist essentialism as such, i.e. evolutionary theory, or the theory of performativity. Rather, the problem lies in assumptions in the theories. The theories still maintain an implicit dichotomy between nature and the social in

113

Meloni, Impressionable, 123f.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 191 different ways, but one which becomes explicit when they are read in the light of a third party. Pinker’s assumption is an essentialism and individualism that are not necessary consequences of evolutionary theory. These make the relation between the individual and the social, or culture, problematic in Pinker. In Butler the “a/timely” subject has the consequence of making the body less stable than what her theory assumes and needs. As a result, there is more of a separation between norms and the body than is needed. When relationality and a coherent view of time are introduced there is less of an opposition between the theories and a way to move beyond constructivism and essentialism can be envisioned. They fruitfully complement each other, even if they are not without challenges to each other, such as the stable body of the human person and the effect of discourses on the human being. What is needed is to see reality as “a between,” as that which occurs dependent upon the type of relations between things. Gunton’s relational emphasis has been constructive as a way of reading Pinker’s biologist essentialism and Butler’s social constructivism that does not polarize their resources and thinking. In many ways, it can be said that what I have attempted here is to read both Pinker and Butler in the light of the assumption that relationality is central for what constitutes reality in a weak ontology of relationality. This has not rendered their thinking unrecognizable. It does, however, place it in a different context, a context where, to my mind, the polarization between biology and culture is diminished. Fundamentally, our bodies are constituted relationally over time, and relationally within a broad understanding of “environment.” Included in these relations are the sexual relations of previous generations throughout the evolutionary development of the human species. But what is interesting about Pinker’s point about genetic variation is that it is that which is vulnerable to the environment, in this case, the micro-level environment. But this is also true for the body as a whole, that it is vulnerable to the other. Vulnerability is that which constitutes the particularity and the stability of the human body. Paradoxically, then, as I have wanted to show, as with all reality there is a certain stability to the



192 GOING BEYOND human being and the stability of the human reality of the person can be found in her embodiment. The paradox lies in that the openness to the other, as Gunton would have it, or unbearable relationality, as Butler terms it, means that whatever stability there might be is founded upon a fundamental openness and vulnerability. This will be explored below. For now, if one fails to acknowledge this paradox of how bodily vulnerability functions at the same time to consolidate as well as to dispossess us, then one easily divides biology and culture into two separate domains in which they are not even two sides of the same coin, but more a dual effect of evolution on the same side of the same coin.





Chapter 5: Kenotic personalism Me: But, Ella, can’t you put on your snowsuit this time? Ella: No. Me [pleading voice]: But even Ingrid [best friend] wears her snowsuit in this weather. Ella [in a loud voice]: No! I and Ingrid are not the same persons!!!

Except for the extraordinary ordinariness of the conversation between a parent and a child (wintertime in Sweden), I was surprised by my daughter’s choice of word, “I and Ingrid are not the same persons.” In my then 7-year-old daughter’s vocabulary “person” was not often used. Similarly, for Judith Butler and Steven Pinker, the concept of “person” has a rather humble existence. The complete opposite is the case for Colin Gunton for whom “person” is central. It is the foundation of what it is to be human. As Gunton sees it, to be a person is to be embodied, and in that personhood is constituted by one’s relations to other persons, the world, oneself as another and, importantly, to the triune God in a relation mediated through Christ by the Holy Spirit. “The individual” for Gunton is the human being as independent. This view of the individual is also the initial use of the term in this chapter. Particular problems have presented themselves in and between each of the three thinkers. Even for theories that in themselves claim to go beyond the nature/nurture divide a tension is maintained between, on the one hand, biologist views of the human being and, on the other hand, constructivist views.1 This tension causes problems in terms of our view of the human being, particularly if we are concerned with any links to ethics. In relation to this, Gunton’s centrality of the person will work as a key to open up a mutual interaction, even if it is not the only key. In the previous chapter the stability of the body’s constitution was established by acknowledging the theory of evolution from the viewpoint of performativity. Body will thus play a central role in

1

As Michael Rutter acknowledges, for some geneticists, it is, in his words, “almost as if research by non-geneticists is irrelevant” (Michael Rutter, Genes and Behavior: Nature-Nurture Interplay Explained (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 12).

193

194 KENOTIC PERSONALISM this chapter, as will a key notion in Butler’s theory, namely interpellation. Pinker’s evolutionary body, understood in light of interpellation, is placed in relation to the concepts of “person” and “individual,” which in turn will rework Gunton’s polarization of these concepts. The concept “person,” especially when coupled to the concept “body,” will show itself to be helpful in order to further our understanding of what and who we are as humans beyond constructivism and essentialism.

Primacy of “person”? In a passage that all but undermines any constructive connection with personalism Butler writes, “there is no recourse to a ‘person,’ a ‘sex,’ or a ‘sexuality’ that escapes the matrix of power and discursive relations that effectively produce and regulate the intelligibility of those concepts for us.”2 However, read carefully, the recourse is to person as “an original”; as if one could hope for “naturalized ontologies.” The line of argument should be familiar by now, and in the previous chapter, I argued for a weak ontology from repetition (performativity) and relationality sensitive to the radical contingency of creation. But why speak about “person” at all? A simple answer is that Gunton’s understanding of person corresponds to an aspect in Butler, namely that of vulnerability. As I showed with White, Kelz and Mackenzie et al., vulnerability is a fundamental condition for what it is to be an embodied human being in Butler, and this takes on ontological claims.3 The body is fundamental, not least in Pinker’s view, but likewise in Butler and Gunton. Unsurprisingly, “body” turns out to be central in an account that attempts to make sense of the human being in the divide between social constructivism and biologist essentialism. Admittedly, the suggested emphasis on the body and human vulnerability does not necessarily lead to an acceptance of personalism as fundamental for a weak ontology of the human being. The

2 3

Butler, Gender Trouble, 44. See also the discussion on inherent vulnerability in Morberg Jämterud, Human, 105-108.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 195 ontological status of vulnerability and “person” needs to be further justified. Also, the relationship between ontology and ethics needs to be addressed, particularly considering Emmanuel Levinas’ critique of the primacy of ontology in Western philosophy. Theologian Travis Ables formulates Levinas’ critique of ontology well, and it is a critique with which Butler agrees:4 Ultimately, Levinas argues, to have my selfhood constituted in relation with the other is the grossest narcissism: it is only in responsibility to that other, grasped insofar as the call of the other interpellates me prior to my own selfrelation and dispossesses that relation, it is only therefore in the priority of the ethical that anything like relationality or communion is possible.5

If the constitution of the self and its integrity is the foremost purpose of relations, then that is not to heed the call of the other, according to Levinas and Butler. Or, to phrase it differently, if the relation with the other primarily ensures my existence then it is an immoral position. I will respond more fully to this important critique toward the end of the chapter, but first some clarifications about the ontological claims of “person.” On the basis of Levinas, Ables criticizes Gunton’s relational ontology in which “person” is an integral part of the very foundation of all being. Ables argues that the particularity of the person is threatened by this and that creation is given “no integrity of its own.”6 It is ironic that Gunton is accused of not emphasizing the particularity of the person or the integrity of the creation, considering how evident is his desire to emphasize precisely these aspects. And I think Ables is completely correct if “person” is held as a general ontological concept. Rather than being in favor of a strong ontology, there is an ambivalence in Gunton, as Schaeffer has shown. Gunton actually operates with two different and partially incompatible concepts of ontology. On the one hand, “person” implies a strong ontological connection between the divine and the human. On the other hand, Gunton is always careful to stress the

4 5

6

Butler, Giving, 68f, 91f. Travis E. Ables, “On the very Idea of an Ontology of Communion: Being, Relation and Freedom in Zizioulas and Levinas,” The Heythrop Journal 52, no. 4 (2011): 672-683, 677. Ables, “Idea,” 679.



196 KENOTIC PERSONALISM ontological difference between the divine and the created. A sense of the univocity between the divine and the human still remains because of his ontological claims for “hypostasis“ in all of reality, but this univocity is unsettled by his general emphasis on the ontological difference.7 Ables is correct that when “person” tends to become a concept that works on all levels of reality, Gunton’s strong ontological claims are problematic. Such claims will open to the critique directed against strong ontologies more generally.8 Alan Torrance comments on Zizioulas’ ontology in a way that is relevant to Gunton too: “One wonders if the words ‘a person’ in his [Zizioulas’] statement ‘God exists on account of a person’ betray an overly generic utilisation and elevation of the notion.”9 Once this is recognized Torrance is quick to add – correctly to my mind – that the very emphasis on person and relationality can fruitfully provide “profoundly liberating ways forward.”10 One of these ways may be to focus on the level of human lived reality, to see what happens if “person” is utilized as a primary concept at that level, without being exploited as a fundamental trait of the nature of all of reality. Against that background, I would like to claim that the most fundamental level of human reality is the person, established relationally by mediation. Human reality is not “direct” or “immediate,” but constituted through mediation: realized, for example, in the act of interpellation. This is why human reality is “a between.” There is thus a need for a concept that primarily understands the human being’s fundamental dependency and necessary openness

7 8

9 10

Holmes, “Analogia,”. But contemporary theologians continue to find the thought attractive, despite some significant critiques of perichoretic ontologies. See, for example, Anthony J. Godzieba, “Incarnation in the Age of the Buffered, Commodified Self,” in Lieven Boeve, Yves De Maeseneer, & Ellen Van Stichel (eds.), Questioning the Human: Toward a Theological Anthropology for the Twenty-First Century (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), 112f; or the attempt at “New Trinitarian Ontologies” in the Cambridge conference, autumn 2019, bearing the same name. Alan J. Torrance, Persons in Communion: An Essay on Trinitarian Description and Human Participation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), 290. Torrance, Persons, 290.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 197 to the other and in this maintains the centrality of human embodiment, which is how Gunton understands “person.” Thus, the emphasis is even more on the created nature of the human person, and so helps us to explore what it means that a human person is inseparable from the body. And here it is worth asking: is it really the doctrine of the Trinity that sheds light on what it means to be human and therefore bodied persons? It might be in an indirect way, especially if mediation is central to the constitution of the person. But it is of more interest to further develop this preliminary link between personal relations and human embodiment. Like “person,” “particularity” is an underdeveloped and vague concept in Gunton. But freeing the meaning of the human person from the divine perichoresis and placing human personhood more solidly in creation will make things turn out differently. Here both Butler and Pinker can inform Gunton. Pinker certainly roots the human being in the contingency of created nature, while Butler does so in the way norms, relations and repetitions act materializingly on the human being. There is a radical contingency of the human being in Pinker’s thinking, on a par with the rest of creation. As such, if there are ontological claims to be made for human personhood they too should be rooted in the contingent creation and preferably avoid ontological confusion with divine personhood. Butler acknowledges this by forcefully asserting that all ontological claims function within a particular discourse.11 If one takes the tentative nature of ontological claims seriously in Gunton, and links this tentativeness with both Pinker’s evolutionary development and Butler’s discursiveness, then the ontological claims for “person” become weak and sensitive to the discursive nature of all ontological claims. Fundamental concepts need to be worked out carefully, concepts such as our embodiment with its vulnerability and relationality. The human person and the body cannot be separated, and it is when bodiliness and vulnerability are linked to the fundament of the human being that Butler’s, Pinker’s and Gunton’s approaches start to converge. As is clear in all three, the body is that which makes us necessarily vulnerable and open to the world. Butler’s

11

Butler, Bodies, 171.



198 KENOTIC PERSONALISM strong emphasis on vulnerability and being dispossessed points to something essential for what it is to be human. From Pinker’s and Gunton’s emphasis on the importance of time in the creative process, vulnerability is not opposed to a stability in the formation of the whole of the body. But, pace Butler, the body has in that case dispositions and an identity through the construction of that body. These dispositions must be placed in a relational and weak ontology, though, and do not support a strong, or essentialist, ontology. For, while I stress at this point the materializing part of performativity, it is still relations, particular types of relations, that establish norms that materialize and that are perceived to be “natural,” as was discussed in the previous chapter. Butler was correct to quell her more enthusiastic readers about the possibility to “choose” one’s gender. Butler’s theory of performativity is far less susceptible to the consumerist neoliberal individual than that, even if Butler does point toward the possibility of “troubling” the naturalness of the heterosexual matrix in the present. It is, in my view, a sign of good judgment that Gunton, from his relational ontology, takes our necessary embodiment as central. Yet, “person” is still too undetermined as a concept in Gunton. As Pinker points out, our bodies are what they are due to how they have related to “the other” throughout evolutionary history. A relational understanding of evolution clarifies what “particular” means when Gunton argues that “person” is not to be equated with “relation” but that particular bodied persons are mutually constituted in relations. This thought of mutual constitution by relations relates to Butler, for it is not far off to think that she, at times, equates body constitution with relations.12 Instead, by relations and through time the human body becomes a particular body with a particular constitution with detectable ways of reacting when analyzed. But rather than this being too individualist or innatist, this is consistent with Butler’s point that even if we are our bodies our bodies are not fully our own. On the body then: when evolutionary history (phylogenesis) is taken seriously, Pinker is correct to assume that previous living

12

Butler, Bodies, 36.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 199 situations in which a particular gene was selected for, the so-called environment of evolutionary adaptedness, matters for what our bodies are today. But what the human mind evolved particular sensitivity toward is not simply the external world, the surroundings of the individual hunter-gatherer, but even more so the social world of other hunter-gatherers. That is not to say that Pinker, or evolutionary psychology in its specialized form, is without problems. For as David Buller convincingly argues, evolutionary psychology faces methodological challenges.13 What I claim is that “history,” or really pre-history, the evolution of the human being, is important for understanding the human being and that this is consistent with Butler’s theorizing about norms and the body. The theory of evolution is a help to understand how particularity can cohere with relationality, for evolution does not underpin essentialism. A further critique of the primacy of “person” for anthropology derives from Pinker. Pinker holds to the individual as the fundamental concept for understanding the human being. Admittedly, in Pinker, the human individual is emphatically not constituted in a social vacuum. The environment is what provides input for the innate psychological properties to react with and develop from. But, despite his intentions, Pinker drives a wedge between genes and social surroundings. The wedge occurs when he locates agency exclusively internally in the individual but argues that morals are governed by social changes. Social theorist Diana Coole aptly terms

13

Buller, Adapting, 60. To give some examples, it will always be impossible to have sufficient knowledge about the environment of the huntergatherers (see also Harari, Sapiens, 42-45). There are also more functions within evolution than adaptation that cause genetic variance within a population. In terms of the modular theory of the mind, the burden of proof lies on the evolutionary psychologist. And lastly (of Buller’s points), if the theory of the “bottleneck” of human population is true, then universality can be explained as cultural traditions that have lived on since then; for example, the prohibition against incest might have always been a prohibition embedded in culture. If I understand David Reich correctly, the bottleneck hypothesis itself is uncertain from a genomics point of view (Reich, Who). My own point about the problem of the division between proximate and ultimate in evolutionary psychology causes is another factor.



200 KENOTIC PERSONALISM this type of view an “unrealistic voluntarism,”14 which is an “adherence to a philosophy that associates agentic properties with an ontology of rational agents whose freedom and responsibility are related intimately to their interiority.”15 And the problem is, as Coole notes, that, “[s]uch agency is already implicitly opposed to the external world, where bodies and material structures are seen as limits or threats to freedom because they are governed by a causality that is antithetical to free, rational agency and ontologically devoid of its qualities.”16 To my mind, Coole is precisely right here and this insight is of much help for the main question of this book, as I hope to show. As Coole indicates, individualism is a problematic starting point if one wants to bridge the question of essentialism and constructivism. The individual need not die, but the independent (unrealistic) voluntarist individual cannot be the foundation for one’s anthropology. But how then do individualism and personalism relate to each other? Is it accurate to polarize them and make individualism the cause of all the ills of Modernity as Gunton does? Surely not. Simply, Pinker’s admonition against too indiscriminate critiques that do not also show awareness of what life was like before Modernity should give us pause to think.17 I do, however, agree with Gunton about distinguishing the two in that it is problematic if individualism as independence becomes the primary understanding of what it is to be human. But more on this later, after a closer look at the connection between vulnerability and personhood.

Kenosis, vulnerability and persons: the significance of self-giving relations Central for Gunton’s understanding of the human person is the notion of “spirit” as “openness to the other.” How one comes to being

14 15 16 17

Coole, “Rethinking,” 125. Coole, “Rethinking,” 126. Coole, “Rethinking,” 126. Pinker, Better, 692-694. Although, Pinker’s appreciation of the Enlightenment, in Pinker, Enlightenment, is a step in the other direction.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 201 as a human person is not directed inward. Rather, for Gunton, “[o]ur particularity in community is the fruit of our mutual constitutiveness: of a perichoretic being bound up with each other in the bundle of life.”18 Butler, along similar lines, sees this as a “desire for recognition” that “begins with the insight that one is lost in the Other, appropriated in and by an alterity that is and is not oneself, and recognition is motivated by the desire to find oneself reflected there, where reflection is not a final expropriation.”19 Gunton and Butler can be read in alignment on this point. The desire for recognition motivates openness to the other while at the same time openness to the other establishes the realm in which the desire for recognition can be channelled and realized. These concepts are mutually dependent upon each other and both have recourse to the other in how the self is constituted. Even if Pinker phrases it differently it is obvious that “the other” is essential for establishing the individual. Self-deception, for example, is based on treating oneself as another where the truth about oneself is not accessible to myself as myself, but only when I see myself as another.20 Not until you have to give an account of yourself, as a response to the interpellation of another, as Butler would argue, will your self be established. Thus there is an interesting coherence also between Pinker and Butler. Butler talks about norms and Pinker about self-deception, but they can both be viewed as examples of how the other constitute one’s self because of one’s openness, or vulnerability, to the other. Only when the self is other to myself will the self be revealed. Here, Gunton’s skepticism regarding the sufficiency of self-reflection for upholding oneself as person is worth keeping in mind, at least if that self is to be a “true” self. Self-reflection is not enough to maintain the self for that would imply a too disembodied notion of the self. Every

18 19

20

Gunton, The One, 170. Butler, Antigone's, 14. That reflection is not a final expropriation is important when Butler turns to Levinas, where the face of the other has to be heeded without the intention of self-formation, as described above. Pinker, Blank, 255-259, 63f; Pinker, Better, 218f, 491f.



202 KENOTIC PERSONALISM individual is dependent upon others simply for sustenance as Butler reminds us.21 Also, when it comes to Butler’s concept of desire for recognition self-reflection is not enough, for can the fulfillment of the desire for recognition, which establishes our personhood, be met by myself as other?22 At least in Butler’s later writings, where the recognition and expansion of what counts as a livable human life are expounded, recognition is more of an interpersonal affair. Gunton claims such recognition to be possible if God is triune, but there is not to be any ontological univocity between God and humans if we are to be sensitive to the critique of Gunton. Here it is important to stress what that means, namely that all created things that can be called “person” receive their personhood as a gift through mediation. The important point in Gunton is that God constitutes the human being as person by the way God relates to the human being and not by some ontological transference. What type of relation this is needs to be worked out, not from the doctrine of the Trinity, but from christology. When Gunton, Butler and Pinker come together in this way, what comes out is that personhood is radically constituted by the other so that personhood is a given, or even a gift, by the other. Again, it is worth stressing that this relation is an interpersonal affair and that the constitution of the human person is always embodied, which means that the particular constitution that the human body has taken is inextricably linked to how we can relate as persons.

Relation, mediation, interpellation If all personhood is a gift then it has to be mediated. For Christian theology this mediation of personhood is directed from a triune Godhead by “the two hands of God,” the Holy Spirit and the Son. If personhood is mediated as a gift rather than being univocal with divine personhood the created need not collapse into the divine.

21 22

Butler, Force, 49. Salih, Judith Butler, 115f; Thiem, Unbecoming, 28; Davis, “Subjected,” 892. See also White, Sustaining, 81.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 203 But theologian Stephen Holmes disagrees. As he sees it, mediation still suggests that “human and divine persons and relations are to be understood fairly univocally.”23 But why would mediation be needed if the human and the divine are fairly univocal? “Person” is instead the concept used to explain this ability to relate to the ontological other without losing particularity. If personhood is mediated as a gift from a personal God, then something in the created being has the capacity to receive such a gift. But this does not imply univocity in the concept of relation. For Christians, bodies are created to relate to the divine in a way that does not diminish their humanity.24 That is surely a main point to come out of the doctrine of incarnation. But my further point here is that a mediation between persons needs to be worked out also for a coherent concept of desire for recognition. This makes the theory of interpellation even more significant. To be a person is something that happens in between and is given as a gift. In that respect, and to use theologian Alistair McFadyen’s very apt title, one is called to personhood.25 This does not undermine the importance of the particular human constitution, for that makes it possible to be persons. That is, the human being has the traits sufficient to relate to the other with the required openness, which means, among other things, that we have a psychology that enables us in “normal” and mentally stable conditions to respond to that call. Yet that constitution is not what makes us persons. For, as Butler expressed it, the one who is made abject because of which norms are accepted lives “with a pervasive sense of their own unreality.”26 Our human nature is not enough to constitute us as persons and, as has been said, from the evolutionary perspective, “human” is simply a taxonomical term used in order to keep track of a .

23 24

25

26

Holmes, “Analogia,” 41. A main point in the first centuries of christological debates. See also Austin Farrer, Finite and Infinite: A Philosophical Essay (Westminster: Dacre Press, 1943). Alistair I. McFadyen, The Call to Personhood: A Christian Theory of the Individual in Social Relationships (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Butler, Undoing, 219.



204 KENOTIC PERSONALISM particular genealogy. No “essence” of humanity can be found here.27 Instead, it is the type of relations that is central for human personhood. This makes us dependent upon the other and Gunton’s critique of individualism might be correct that individualism has a “tendency to suppress the other.”28 Or, as Butler states, all norms create their abjects. The danger of abjection because of one’s anthropology is worth noting for relational anthropologies are no guarantee against this. Pinker shows the danger of essentializing one’s communal identity with a group against an other.29 Even more important, then, although the human constitution has the ability and potentiality of being a person, personhood is dependent upon the type of relation with the other.30 For even if the individual is the body, as for Pinker, the body is always dependent on and founded by relations and as such only numerically “one,” not ontologically so. The main point here is that human personhood is radically constituted as a gift, as a giving between persons. From the perspective of trinitarian theology, with God as the ultimate giver of personhood, the consequence is that one is most thoroughly a person in dependence on God’s self-giving, which will further enable the giving of personhood to the other. Most importantly for one’s human personhood is how one responds to God’s call. Here, an interesting aspect of Gunton’s interpretation of the Genesis story comes to the fore. Gunton argues that it is God’s calling, the response and recognition that establish the imago. He admits that it is a little speculative, and he wants to avoid rationalist undertones, and therefore does not develop it further. However, in

27

28

29 30

Buller, Adapting, 440. This is also an argument against defining humanity by innate traits, for species are defined by shared ancestry and not by traits (Buller, Adapting, 440-457). Gunton, The One, 31. See also Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “Human Being, Individual and Social,” in Colin E. Gunton (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 176; and Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 91f. Pinker, Better, 323-328. Butler, Precarious, 33.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 205 light of this discussion, a calling need not be simply a rational affair. For Butler, the call prompts one to give an account of oneself, not only intellectually, but as a person. Furthermore, speaking involves far more of the body than simply the mind, as both Pinker and Butler confirm. This theological interpellation is dependent upon being called by a person in time and it is worth exploring the contrast to Butler’s interpellation that primarily is a call not in time,31 but rather a move from the individual as a grammatical placeholder to a political subject. There will be reasons to come back to this. Nonetheless, to constitute persons, interpellation works as an interpersonal event. In terms of the individual, however, Butler’s theory of interpellation in relation to power and the call by power is convincing as far as “the Law,” which can here be understood as the institution, has an effect on the human being through the manner in which it is called. For in Butler the call of the Law singles out a particular person and drives a wedge between the person and its fundamental relationality. That disconnection from relationality creates what Butler terms “the site of the subject.” Here, in the interpellation by (the representative of) the Law, the independence of the subject is established. Read in this way the calling of the Law, or the institution, makes individuals out of persons and not subjects out of grammatically-placed individuals. Confusing in this interpretation is that Butler uses the terms “subject” and “individual” differently. But “person” should be included here on a more fundamental level and the individual be broken away from its primary, albeit grammatical, position. What happens in interpellation by the Law is that the call of the representative of the Law creates the individual. The reason for this is the autonomizing effect that the call by the Law has on a person if a priority of person to the call of the Law is accepted. The benefit of the priority of the person in interpellation is that the process of interpellation becomes less enigmatic, for it can be seen as a process

31

Here, as below, enters the question of speech’s and language’s relation to time and materiality. Is it possible to have grammar unrelated to time? Is grammar not inextricably linked to speech, and as such to time and matter?



206 KENOTIC PERSONALISM of an “individualization” of persons rather than a “subjectification” of individuals. This explains why interpellation, if it is made by the impersonal Law, fails to call persons. This does not mean that individualization, that is, the making of the independent individual, excludes the becoming of a subject, or that dependence is vanquished. The point is that the human body is never not a person at the point of being called by the Law, not because personhood is innate, but because the human is already constituted as person by self-giving relations. It is noteworthy that Butler writes, after all, that in subjection “one inhabits the figure of autonomy only by becoming subjected to power,” and, paradoxically, “a subjection which implies a radical dependency.”32 And in Butler’s later writings she argues that the human being is always dependent upon the giving of the other for sustenance.33 As she writes, “no body can sustain itself on its own.”34 For “[t]he body is not, and never was, a self-subsisting kind of being.”35 In other words, if one lives, one lives because self-giving has happened. Again, what happens in the interpellation of the Law is the individualization of a person. The interpellation by the Law makes autonomous individuals out of relational persons. Interestingly, this challenges Gunton’s dichotomy between persons and individuals since individualism is not set against personalism. Rather the individual is a consequence of a particular relation in which the person is placed by the interpellation of the Law. This individualization can be explored on its own terms and it is not necessarily the case that personhood cannot be maintained in the context of an institution.36 Through Butler the individual is freed from the wholly negative connotations Gunton gives it as it is from Pinker’s metaphysical individualism. Individualism is simply a consequence of institutionalization, and not by necessity the polar opposite to personalism.

32 33 34 35 36

Butler, Psychic, 83. Butler, “Rethinking (2014)”; Butler, Notes, 21. Butler, Force, 49. Butler, Force, 49. Butler, Force, 30, 32.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 207 This is, it should be said, not a completely original thought, but crops up in various forms, also in Butler’s latest work.37 Indeed, already the philosopher and politician Louis de Bonald discussed “individualization,” albeit with a slightly different meaning, as a social concept of the person in the late 18th century.38 Karl Marx is famous for arguing this.39 Also, Charles Taylor points to this in what he calls the “atomistic” self-understanding that affected, as well as being an effect of, market relations and a new type of state society.40 And more recently, Yuval Noah Harari, stresses individualization’s institutional dependency when he writes that, “[t]he state and the market are the mother and father of the individual, and the individual can survive only thanks to them.”41 This means that ─ as a proposal for empirical verification, perhaps rare in these types of studies ─ a highly individualistic society is so because it is also a highly state-institutionalized society. Institution is here understood as the state’s exertion of power over its citizens by means of formalized processes in factual material places. If it is the case that individualism is an effect of a discourse rather than an ontology, then, as I see it, Butler’s theory of interpellation constructively corrects Gunton’s too dichotomized polarization between personalism and individualism. Furthermore, this would also go some way to explain the correlation between individualism and a more just society which Pinker finds.42 An institutionalized society would, in this case, become more just because its

37 38

39 40 41

42

Butler, Force, 46. See Justine Lacroix & Jean-Yves Pranchère, Human Rights on Trial: A Genealogy of the Critique of Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). See Lacroix & Pranchère, Human, 157-159. Taylor, Sources, 206. See also Larry Siedentop, Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism (London: Allen Lane, 2014), 346. Harari, Sapiens, 359. See also Siedentop, Inventing, 333; Taylor, Secular, 155-157. Harari argues that individualism is the product of the modern nation-state and the market. Taylor traces the nascence of the modern individual to the turn of the eighteenth century, importantly, although not solely, ushered in by the pens of Descartes and Locke (Taylor, Sources, 185, 306f). The exact history of the emergence of the modern individual cannot be the concern here, however. Pinker, Better, 414.



208 KENOTIC PERSONALISM citizens are treated as independent individuals. Everyone is a one, which can work as a foundation for at least distributive justice – if the institution does its job, that is. More on this will be said in the next chapter. To rehash, the openness to the other, fundamental for the constitution of the body (remember Pinker’s cell locks),43 is also fundamental with regard to interpellation. For what interpellation stresses is how we are constituted in openness to and dependence on the other. Hence, as with embodiment so with interpellation, there is a necessary vulnerability which makes vulnerability central to what a person is.44 “Person” is he or she who is constituted and has freedom given by the giving of the other and, on account of that, lives, acts and has being in the reality of a necessary embodiment and fundamental vulnerability. Personhood is a gift; a vulnerable one at that. The precariousness of the gift is reason for it to be reciprocated and reiterated time and time again by mutual giving, which, I will argue, should be a giving of self-giving love. This means that personhood happens in time. For human persons, embodied as we are, this includes evolutionary time as well as our own lifetime.

Called in time Pinker, like Gunton, stresses the importance of time. Time is a creative, or creating, reality.45 There can be no such thing as a timeless body. Philip Hefner convincingly describes this from the process

43

44 45

There needs to be a genetic variability on the level of cells that on the one hand needs to have a certain consistency, and on the other hand needs to be varied to avoid being prey to unwanted bacteria (Pinker, Blank, 142). Mackenzie, Rogers, & Dodds, “Introduction,” 1. While not claiming that contemporary physics substantiates my claim, I simply note that Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin takes time as more fundamental than locality (Roberto Mangabeira Unger & Lee Smolin, The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time: A Proposal in Natural Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 162-258). This is certainly not an uncontested claim, but interesting for the argument put forward here.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 209 fthat made him mobility-disabled. The body, he states, “that is our self, is never static, always affected by its relation to time.”46 Given this, interpellation cannot be both a timeless grammatical or linguistic process and at the same time a body that is called, particularly when speech never ceases to be material and embodied.47 This might be a reason why Butler argues strongly that the body is always discursive. But constitutive relations are relations over and in time, including the time of generations as well as traditions. The emphasis on time also opens to the maturity of personhood, and Gunton’s reference to Irenaeus is helpful here. As should be expected from Gunton’s perspective, personhood carries an eschatological notion.48 Or, as theologian Ian McFarland states, “what it means to be a person is yet to be revealed.”49 This should also be seen in the lifespan of the human being; persons mature into personhood. For, as Patrick McArdle phrases it, “[t]he path to personhood is never finished.”50 And, he continues, [t]his is crucial when considering the situations of children, the infirm, the disabled and the unborn. If “personhood” is constructed as an ideal of some kind, say, a fully functioning rational adult, then all who fall short of the ideal must have diminished moral status. If, on the other hand, there is recognition that persons are beings in the process of becoming, then those who do not meet the usual ideal are not simply excluded or thought to have less moral status – they are at a different place on the same continuum.51

This should appeal to Butler and makes it difficult to explain why time is not worked into her thinking. It is even more noteworthy considering Foucault’s emphasis on discourse and genealogy. As the quotation above clearly implies, time is essential for the

46 47 48

49 50

51

Hefner, “Getting Around,” 16. See Lloyd, Judith Butler, 117; Kirby, Judith Butler, 88f. Terry J. Wright, “Colin Gunton on Providence: Critical Commentaries,” in Lincoln Harvey (ed.) The Theology of Colin Gunton (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 147; Anizor, Trinity, 174-184. McFarland, “Personhood,” 217. Patrick McArdle, “Disability and Relationality: disrupting complacency, entering into vulnerability,” Australian eJournal of Theology 17, no. 1 (2010), 63. McArdle, “Disability,” 63.



210 KENOTIC PERSONALISM constitution of the person, particularly so if essentialist notions of personhood are to be avoided in favor of an emphasis on the bodily and vulnerable person. With time personhood is at every point in life an unfinished process. “The other” in human nature and consciousness The emphasis on stability and the development of a particular human body quickly stirs up notions of human nature, and that need not be problematic. As part of what it is to be a human person a notion of nature can be admitted. If this nature is constituted relationally what is misleading is not nature, but talk about a primary interior essence. The traits, such as OCEAN in Pinker, are not innate essences but are better understood as a materialization of reiterated activity and thus a consequence of relations. The materialization of this activity certainly affects us, sometimes maybe in ways such as evolutionary psychology describes it, but through Pinker’s individualist assumptions these traits are essentialized. In that type of essentialism, the relation between body and social relations becomes misrepresented. Even when Pinker developed his ideas to acknowledge a greater significance of the social or what can be called “relationality,” his individualism is not challenged.52 As psychologist Brendan Wallace rightly acknowledges, there is a “gap” between the individual and society in evolutionary psychology. What evolutionary psychology misses is that, as Wallace states, “human beings are fundamentally and ineluctably social, and that to abstract a ‘single’ human being out of his/her society is in fact a profoundly unnatural way of looking at things.”53 Again, individualism entails a certain artificiality. Pinker can probably accept what is affirmed here, but not what is denied. That is, he is more open to accepting the human being as a social being, but not ready to abandon the metaphysical starting point of the individual. However, this is what the relational interpretation of evolutionary theory prompts him to do, and he

52 53

Yuval Noah Harari makes a similar point (Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (Milton Keynes: Vintage, 2017), 355). Wallace, Getting, 162.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 211 needs to find ways to explain the human being in terms of dependence and openness to the other rather than in terms of independence and innateness. No longer can nurture simply provide “input” to nature. Consciousness and personhood One of the more fundamental traits of human nature, perhaps the most fundamental of all, is consciousness; that is, the ability to be another to oneself,54 as well as to register experiences coming along with a certain sensation.55 But consciousness is not personhood, even if it is important for agency.56 The discussion in the previous chapter underscored that what we experience as an inner reality must not create a dualism that moves away from our human lived reality as a bodily reality. Consciousness is the obvious locus for self-reflectivity and is significant for Butler’s understanding of the self. I will not attempt to solve the question of consciousness and how it relates to matter, but simply state that it relates to matter in that it derives from the functions of the body.57 For Gunton, the doctrine of the Trinity and the notion of perichoresis lead him to think of consciousness as a joining or “suturing” aspect of persons. For the Trinity this unity of consciousness and self is in full community, but it can be evident in relations between human persons as well, namely that consciousness can be seen as a “reaching out” to and a “taking in” of the other to one’s self, as cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter phrases it.58

54

55 56

57

58

Ulf Zackariasson, Forces by Which We Live: Religion and Religious Experience from the Perspective of a Pragmatic Philosophical Anthropology (PhD, Department of Theology, Uppsala University, 2002), 93f; Douglas R. Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 323-331. Pinker, Mind, 135f. Diana Coole calls self-reflection one out of some ‘agentic qualities’ of the body which she terms pre- or transpersonal (Coole, “Rethinking,” 140). Admittedly, from David Chalmers’ and Douglas Hofstadter’s point of view, this is a provocatively simplistic way of seeing it (Chalmers, Conscious; Hofstadter, Strange Loop). Hofstadter, Strange Loop, 354f.



212 KENOTIC PERSONALISM When consciousness is firmly located as a bodily activity, consciousness in terms of self-awareness, or self-reflexivity, makes our materiality, our body and brain, other to ourselves. But it is with our bodies that we act in the world, and therefore also become vulnerable to the world to such an extent that the world and the other constitute us. In this sense, Gunton’s view of the divine hypostases as both working to unify and distinguish the divine can in some sense be likened to how consciousness both “others” as well as “unites” the self to the particular human embodied person that one is. My own self achieves a very obvious priority in our understanding of ourselves since it is that very body that filters and processes all perceptions from the external world. Importantly, self-reflection cannot not be about my particular body for it is that body (i.e. my body) which is self-reflective about itself by means of its own bodily activity. As such, consciousness both equates my self with my body in a way that distinguishes my bodyself from other bodyselves and at the same time makes myself “other” to myself. The constitution of me as a person in the most fundamental sense therefore arises from the relation to the other.59 “Being a self essentially involves the capacity to become an object to oneself, and thus to view one’s own actions and undertakings from the perspective of a community,” as Ulf Zackariasson writes.60 In conclusion, my consciousness, even when conscious about myself, is an openness to the other. Still, therefore, my personhood is a gift and, like all other bodily activity, vulnerable.

The Gift of Vulnerability Everything’s repeated interrelatedness to everything else is only possible if there is a fundamental openness to the other which also assumes vulnerability. As I have wanted to show, Pinker’s evolutionary perspective aligns with Butler and Gunton on this aspect. To bring these threads together then: we are our bodies, but we are also dispossessed due to our necessary vulnerability and

59 60

Desmond, Being, 378, 383f. Zackariasson, Forces, 93.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 213 openness to the other. And this dispossession derives from the very bodiliness that is at the same time the foundation for our being. Our bodies have a history over which we do not have full control. We are constituted in relation not simply to our contemporary others but also our historic and pre-historic others.61 This dispossession throws us toward the other, making us vulnerable to the other as a fundamental condition for what it is to be human. This is Butler’s social ontology of the body,62 but, pace Butler, it is also historical. We are constituted in deep dependence on the giving present as well as past others. It is not only that my self is given to me by the other, but also that my existence is dependent upon the giving of the self of the other for my self to be realized. There is an interdependence even in autonomy.63 But what is it that is being given here? Is it my self that is given as a gift by the other, or is it the other who is giving is or her own self? In other words, what do I receive? My own self or the other’s self? Or both? There is here a double sense in the term “self-giving,” for giving can concern the object’s self or the subject’s self.64 This dual aspect of the genitive is appropriate in this case, for it is a double self-giving. This double sense only confirms what theologian Sarah Coakley states, namely that with an emphasis on relationality, particularly with ontological aspirations, then “relation” has to be defined.65 Or as Butler might have phrased it, what type of continuous iteration is needed for the “substance” of human personhood to be

61 62 63

64 65

Pinker stresses this and for Gunton it is phrased as the importance of letting creation have real significance for our present and future state. Butler, Frames, 3; Butler, Notes. See also Coole, “Rethinking,” 129f. For this, see Joel Anderson, “Autonomy and Vulnerability Entwined,” in Catriona Mackenzie, Wendy Rogers, & Susan Dodds (eds.), Vulnerability: New Essays in Ethics and Feminist Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 136-139 and Janet Martin Soskice, “Trinity and 'the Feminine Other',” New Blackfriars 75, no. 878 (1994): 2-17. Many thanks to Ida Simonsson for pointing this out. Sarah Coakley, “Afterword: “Relational Ontology,” Trinity and Science,” in John C. Polkinghorne (ed.) The Trinity and an Entangled World: Relationality in Physical Science and Theology (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2010), 195ff. See also Cortez, Christological, 19f.



214 KENOTIC PERSONALISM performatively constructed?66 In the phrase “my self is a gift from the other” the relation is not made specific. “Relation” is in danger of being without content if it is not indicated how the other should relate to me for my personhood to be constituted or given. The important question is, then, if the self is given to me as a gift, what type of relation is mediating that gift? What type of giving relation constitutes personhood? A first look at this question comes from the theological perspective, christology to be precise. Christ and mediation: constituting persons kenotically To see what constitutes fully human persons in Christian dogma is to look at christology.67 And despite the critique of Gunton’s ontologizing of trinitarian hypostases, Paraskevé Tibbs is correct that christology is primary in Gunton’s anthropology.68 However, as Marc Cortez points out, this does not mean that theologians genuinely let christology challenge human ontology.69 This is partly true for Gunton since the ontology of the person is partly provided by the doctrine of the Trinity. But, to focus on Gunton’s christology, an important question is what is it within christology that realizes the human person fully? For Gunton, Christ exemplifies and re-establishes the correct relationship between humanity and God. And here kenosis, the self-giving of Christ, is key. Interestingly, Butler asked if there might be further and alternative ways of conceptualizing the fundamental vulnerability of being human. Kenosis is such an alternative, not as stating something about salvation exclusively, but also of what it is to be(come) a human person. As such, while one cannot disconnect Christian soteriology from the self-giving life and death of Jesus, the prime emphasis here is, nonetheless, how and if this theological language

66 67 68

69

Butler, Frames, 3; Butler, Bodies, xviii; White, Sustaining, 80. Cortez, Christological, 19. Tibbs, “Created,” 118. For a call to a christologically and ecclesiologically based relational ontology, see Lewis Ayres, “(Mis)Adventures in Trinitarian Ontology,” in John C. Polkinghorne (ed.) The Trinity and an Entangled World: Relationality in Physical Science and Theology (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2010), 145). Cortez, Theological, 95.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 215 of kenosis can be, as Butler asked for, “a way of thinking about how we are not only constituted by our relations but also dispossessed by them as well.”70 But isn’t it problematic and even provocative to think that someone’s giving of their self is needed for my self to be constituted? As Rosine Kelz points out concerning Butler, if life is precarious then the implication is that our self is a non-sovereign self, and [t]o open myself to others in this way is only possible if I am able to overcome the anxiety that often arises in situations where one is addressed by an other’s (ethical) demand. This anxiety is fed by the inability to foresee the other's reaction to my address. Therefore, communication always entails certain risks for the integrity of the self.71

But, if vulnerability is a fundamental condition, then our very being is dependent upon the giving of the other and our being is constituted by a double self-giving of the other. My self is the gift of the other dependent upon the other’s giving of him- or herself in the giving of this gift. For you to have your being the other needs to give recognition and/or give of their physical self to you. Whether this is physical or psychological giving (as if giving of your mind would not be physical) it will inevitably entail a giving up of the other for you.72 The life of Christ exemplifies this. It is not strange that this type of thinking brings up notions of sacrifice for Gunton, particularly when love works itself out in, as he sees it, a fallen world. But also for Butler grief sets off something where one’s self is for the other, and to call our inevitable relationality unbearable indicates some notion of sacrifice.73 But, again for Butler, even if the giving of self is necessary it is not necessarily a volitional giving.74 The christological example shows that personhood is only fully restored and constituted through willed kenotic love. This will need to be developed below, but for now, a

70 71

72 73 74

Butler, Precarious, 24. Rosine J. Kelz, “The Non-sovereign Self and Limitations to Self-ownership,” Intellectual History and Political Thought 1, no. 1 (2012): 175-196, 188. For an extended discussion see Kelz, Non-Sovereign. Butler, Precarious, 49. Butler, Force, 22. Butler, Force, 49f.



216 KENOTIC PERSONALISM christologically informed anthropology is quite obviously unlike any social contract view that supposes a fundamental independence rather than dependence as fundamental human condition. This affects how freedom is conceptualized, which is developed later. The emphasis on dependence and vulnerability leads to a stress on mediation for it is in actions toward the other that the other and my self will either be recognized or misrecognized (reified).75 Here Colin Gunton sees the self-giving love of the triune God as central. This love is mediated by the Son through the Spirit in the incarnation, and in that the cross is the prime, but not exclusive, example of Christ’s divine and human self-giving in the incarnation. Either way, the way Christ, as God incarnate, relates to fellow humans points to self-giving as the fundamental relation for constituting human persons.

The giving between persons Considering the critique of ontologies, not least by Butler, it would perhaps be safer to simply talk about ethics. However, if self-giving is basic for the constitution of the human person then human relations toward each other cannot be “merely” ethical.76 But, as was stressed by Pinker, a relation between ethics and being is problematic in terms of any connection between is and ought. And we should remember Levinas’ critique too. Despite that, in an ontology of relationality, weak or otherwise, it is difficult to see how being and ethics would not be related.77 If dependence is fundamental, and self-giving ontologically necessary for the constitution of the person, then somewhere there is an ethical demand. In Gunton’s words, “[f]irst is that the heart of human being and action is a relationality whose dynamic is that of gift and reception. Because human relationality is analogous to that

75 76

77

Butler, Precarious, 43. Stephen K. White, “As the World Turns: Ontology and Politics in Judith Butler,” Polity 32, no. 2 (1999): 155-177; White, Sustaining; Kelz, Non-Sovereign; and also Butler, “Rethinking (2016).” Hefner, Human, 243; Whitney, Problem, 118f.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 217 revealed in the self-giving of Christ, sacrificial imagery appears in Paul’s development of a non-reciprocal ethic of gift.”78 The connection between Christ’s self-giving and human relationality is in line with the overall concept of relationality and vulnerable embodiment presented here. But Christ’s self-giving is also unique and non-reciprocal from a Christian viewpoint, so that exclusively exemplarist interpretations of Christ that are not linked with Christ’s unique redemptive work on the cross should be avoided for Gunton. But if the redemptive action of the cross is admitted, at least in Gunton’s view, then Christ also presents a lens for how to live and act as a human person.79 Here the Philippian Christ hymn (Phil. 2:5-11) is doubly important, for the hymn not only points to the self-giving of Christ. It also states that Jesus “did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited [gr. harpagmos]” (Phil. 2:6, NRSV). For, as Bruce N. Fisk points out, following C. F. D. Moule, the self-giving of Christ is what could be expected by a God such as the biblical God if that God was to become incarnate.80 As Moule puts it, “precisely because he was in the form of God he reckoned equality with God as not a matter of getting but of giving.”81 Or, as Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen writes, “Jesus’ self-emptying, his making himself dependent on the will of love of his Father, is in keeping both with the true divinity of the Son as revealed to us and with the true

78 79 80

81

Gunton, The One, 225. Gunton, Actuality, 157-60; Anizor, Trinity, 140. Bruce N. Fisk, “The Odyssey of Christ: A Novel Context for Philippians 2:6-11,” in C. Stephen Evans (ed.) Exploring Kenotic Christology: The Self-Emptying of God (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2006), 63. C. F. D. Moule, “The Manhood of Jesus in the NT,” in S. W. Sykes & J. P. Clayton (eds.), Christ, Faith and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 97 [emphasis in original]. For a critique of the exegesis, yet acceptance of the theology, see Ralph P. Martin, A Hymn of Christ: Philippians 2:5-11 in Recent Interpretation and in the Setting of Early Christian Worship (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997), xxiif. For an interesting “critique of the critique” that comes very close to Moule, see Michael J. Gorman, “‘Although/Because He Was in the Form of God’: The Theological Significance of Paul's Master Story (Phil 2:611)”, Journal of Theological Interpretation 1 (2007): 147-169.



218 KENOTIC PERSONALISM humanity as created by God.”82 Harpagmos, as Moule interprets it, should be understood as “not consisting in snatching.”83 Different terms have been used here, but I take kenosis not to mean a self-emptying or annihilation of self; rather, self-giving is more appropriate.84 Since a human self is always embodied, selfannihilation would always equal death. And while Jesus did indeed die, his death was the consequence of sin, not his self-giving love. Christ’s self-giving is central to the human condition,85 in that, for embodied human beings the process of (double) self-giving is always one of vulnerability, and the exploitation of the human person (harpagmos) is to assault this fundamental vulnerability. But the centrality of kenosis, also as self-giving, has been problematic and rightly critiqued from a feminist perspective, which certainly needs to be responded to.

82 83 84

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Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Christ and Reconciliation (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2013), 166. Moule, “Further Reflections,” 266f. See Ruth Groenhout, “Kenosis and Feminist Theory,” in C. Stephen Evans (ed.) Exploring Kenotic Christology: The Self-Emptying of God (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2006), 301f. However, I do not agree with Groenhout that this interpretation needs to assume an inherent value of the self. Pinker’s warning against essentialist thinking in communal moralities should be noticed (Pinker, Better, 645). Here, Gunton’s particular view of Christ as performing God’s actions makes it difficult to get it to cohere with Sarah Coakley’s view of kenosis as one of human rather than divine kenosis (Coakley, Powers, 3035). For Gunton, such a separation would not be possible if Christ were to remain genuinely human and genuinely divine. For the two natures are expressed in Jesus’ activity. But the question of whether kenosis is divine or not is too voluminous for it to be possible to work out here. But if that were to be done, then Linn Tonstad’s critique against kenotic christologies would certainly have to be taken into account, particularly her point that “[f]ar too much of the history of Jesus has been read into the immanent trinity” (Linn Marie Tonstad, God and Difference: The Trinity, Sexuality, and the Transformation of Finitude (New York: Routledge, 2016), 9f). She states this while maintaining that God’s selfrevelation in the incarnation is a valid point of departure for theological knowledge “in a minimal form” (Tonstad, God, 9).



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 219 But for now, if we are constituted relationally it is not so strange why ontology and ethics converge, and even more so in an anthropology with an eye toward christology. Kenotic giving is an ontology with ethical consequences for the human lived reality because we have personhood as a gift. Kenosis becomes not only the way in which Christ expresses his divinity towards creation, but also the condition for the human lived reality. Our becoming as human person is therefore linked to ethics, but this does not simply demand a response to Pinker’s critique of the naturalist fallacy, but even more so a response to Levinas’ critique outlined above. So, from a kenotic viewpoint it is not that I search for my own being in the face of the other, but that if my other has his or her being in dependence of my response there is an ethical prerogative of self-giving for the other that derives from how we are constituted in our very being. If the image of God is a responsibility and a response to a call (ethics), as Gunton argues, it is to give life to others from our life (ontology). That is the ideal of course and it is the condition for human life, but still, not all relations are constructively constitutive. On sin Speaking theologically, the entrenchment of sin in the human being will, at least if history is anything to go by, mean that not all those who should have their personhood recognized will. Both Butler and Pinker acknowledge that humans regularly are dehumanized and depersonalized. Butler emphasizes the structural processes that make life unlivable. Pinker emphasizes, interestingly enough, the danger of essentializing differences between people groups, something that creates categories of belonging and not belonging. Gunton’s relational understanding of sin might also be relevant in that sin is something which has permeated human relations.86 The extent of the influence of sin can be discussed, but what a concept of sin does is to explain why there are problematic consequences even if relations have been marked by self-giving. As feminist thinkers have been not the least to point out, self-giving has

86

See also MacFadyen, Bound, 246-249.



220 KENOTIC PERSONALISM often been a trap for women. Also, groups or rather gangs can be formed that are marked by total internal loyalty or self-giving, but the actions of the group itself might very well be criminal and violent. In theological terms, this is the consequence of a fallen world, but it does not make self-giving less of a constitutional relation. Sin means that not all self-giving constitutes human life constructively. Self-giving relations are fundamental for the constitution of the person, but they are not always a good thing. If vulnerability is fundamental then persons need to give of their selves to the other for human persons to exist, but this self-giving will not necessarily mean any “self-getting.” One’s own self is not established, as if by a rule, by acting kenotically in the face of the other. Or, as Butler phrases it, there is an “unmanageability of dependency at the level of politics,” which is why she is “trying to underscore just how difficult it is to struggle for social and political forms that are committed to fostering a sustainable interdependency on egalitarian terms.”87 In other words, there is no rule of reciprocity in kenosis,88 which too many have experienced, and abusive relations are only one example. But even so, all are in need of some kenotic relation, past and present, for their very being. Even if my response to the other, or my self-reflection might serve a certain psychological constitution of my self, it is still my body that is my self, and my need for nutrition and psychological well-being must be met.89 But what this means from a kenotic and ethical standpoint is that the human person is placed in a position where he or she is for the other and that this act of giving toward the other, human as well as non-human, constitutes their very being. As Butler points out with Levinas, the ethical demand to recognize and maintain the life of the other cannot be based on reciprocity or self-preservation.90

87 88 89

90

Butler, Notes, 120. MacIntyre, Dependent, 100. See Butler, Notes, 40-43, where she, though not in terms of kenosis, stresses our dependence on others, human as well as non-human, for our life. Butler, Notes, 108.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 221 For the human being, due to our deep sociality, this means being constituted as a person.91 Here it might be, as anthropologist and neuroscientist Melvin Konner points out, that human beings have evolved for so long in kinship groups, in which kinship is concealed to our senses, that we can no longer behave in a different way even if a person is a stranger.92 Whether this is so or not, our human lived reality is social and dependent upon the other; as theologian Janet Martin Soskice rightly emphasizes, “[w]e are relational beings.”93 This only further emphasizes that the human person is situated in a relational world and as such is constituted by the other in different ways. It is to be thrown into dependence on the other so that even one’s selfishness is dependent upon the giving of the other. As Soskice, again, rightly point out, “I need other people even in order to shut myself off from them. We are constituted, not ‘autonomously’, not despite others, but because of and by others. The more we are ‘in relation’, the more we are likely to be our selves.”94 For the only way one can be selfish is to attempt to manipulate the environment in the hope that it serves my purposes. There are no guarantees that this will be so, for one’s selfishness is dependent upon the giving of the other to me.95 To respond to Levinas, and also to Butler, it is not possible to act in such a way that ontology is prior to ethics for my being is dependent, not upon my response to the face of the other, but the

91

92

93 94 95

This is not necessarily an exclusionary claim, but the question about the human’s relation to nonhuman animals is too large and complex even to begin with here. Konner, “Evolutionary,” 131. This thought certainly bears out if one accepts Joseph Henrich’s argument of the human species as a ‘cultural species’ (Henrich, Secret). Soskice, “Trinity,” 14. Soskice, “Trinity,” 14 [emphasis in original]. Sarah Coakley is correct to stress altruism and cooperation rather than “egoism” as fundamental (Sarah Coakley, “Providence and the Evolutionary Phenomenon of 'Cooperation': A Systematic Proposal,” in Francesca Aran Murphy & Philip G. Ziegler (eds.), The Providence of God: Deus Habet Consilium (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 186-189). Coakley’s understanding of sacrifice is more problematic, however; see Tonstad, God, 113-118, 35, 244.



222 KENOTIC PERSONALISM others’ response to my face. I will not have my self given as a gift to me unless someone gives of their self.96 An ethics of self-giving in that way thus always “precedes” ontology, but it is the ethical relation that at the same time constitutes me as human and as such is not “before” any constitution of my personhood. Furthermore, I cannot relate to the other in such a way that my own being is secured, for there are no guarantees of a mutual reciprocal self-giving in this world due to sin. This is a vulnerable kenotic personalism.

Kenosis and feminism As theologian Anna Mercedes points out there are serious problems in emphasizing kenosis for it can justify a condescending attitude towards the weak by the powerful and a “mind-set appropriate to godlike persons.”97 Furthermore, sacrificial giving and nurturing have traditionally been very problematical, forced onto women as a particularly female vocation.98 As Ruth Groenhout puts it, “[k]enosis holds up for us the example of a self-sacrificing saviour whom we are to emulate by giving up our claims to power and authority, and by sacrificing our selves for the sake of others.’99 Thus, she concludes, “the notion of a kenotic feminist theology seems to be, at least on the face of it, an oxymoron.”100 In addition, for Butler ontological claims in themselves tend to promote patriarchal power structures.101 But despite this, both Mercedes and Groenhout explore whether a kenotic feminism is not nonetheless

96

97 98 99 100

101

Michele M. Schumacher, “The Nature of Nature in Feminism, Old and New: From Dualism to Complementary Unity,” in Michele M. Schumacher (ed.) Women in Christ: Toward a New Feminism (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2003), 36. Anna Mercedes, Power For: Feminism and Christ's Self-Giving (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 23. Mercedes, Power, 3. Groenhout, “Kenosis,” 291. Groenhout, “Kenosis,” 291. See also Erinn C. Gilson, “Vulnerability and Victimization: Rethinking Key Concepts in Feminist Discourses on Sexual Violence,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 42, no. 1 (2016): 71-98, 87f. Butler, Gender Trouble, 16; White, Sustaining, 77; and Tonstad, God.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 223 possible.102 And Butler develops a social ontology of the body from precariousness. I hope both of these can be combined in a constructive response to the feminist critique of self-giving. Mercedes’ way, which, incidentally, is also philosopher Jonna Bornemark’s way,103 to approach the oxymoron of a feminist kenoticism is to ask what it would entail if kenosis were an expression of our being rather than the justification for a deontological ethics.104 From the perspective of embodiment as a fundamental vulnerability then, my body, which is me, is necessarily open to the other in order to be constituted as it is and therefore fundamentally vulnerable in its very being. If my self is dependent upon the selfgiving of the other, in the double sense of the genitive, then this gift is always a gift out of vulnerability, for our giving can only ever be embodied, vulnerable giving. And interestingly, from Butler’s perspective, it is “the idea of a political subject that establishes its agency by vanquishing its vulnerability” that is problematic.105 The most obvious consequence or outworking of the attempt to establish agency by vanquishing one’s vulnerability is violence.

102

103 104

105

See also Hannah R. Stewart, “Self-Emptying and Sacrifice: A Feminist Critique of Kenosis in Philippians 2,” Colloquium 44, no. 1 (2012): 102110. Sarah Coakley should also be mentioned here as giving a feminist interpretation of kenosis. See, for example, Sarah Coakley, Powers and Submission: Spirituality, Philosophy and Gender (Malden: Blackwell, 2002) and Sarah Coakley, “In Defense of Sacrifice: Gender, Selfhood, and the Binding of Isaac,” in Linda Martín Alcoff, & John D. Caputo (eds.), Feminism, Sexuality, and the Return of Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011). I do however agree with the criticism of Coakley, raised by Mercedes and Tonstad, that Coakley’s interpretation of kenosis as sacrifice is problematic in how it seems to enforce a stereotypical masculine divine power (Mercedes, Power, 34-38; Tonstad, God, 98-121). Jonna Bornemark, “Kenosis as Mirroring,” Svensk Teologisk Kvartalskrift, 85, no. 2 (2009), 76. Mercedes, Power, 18. This thought is not made within theology alone. See Catriona Mackenzie, “The Importance of Relational Autonomy and Capabilities for an Ethics of Vulnerability,” in Catriona Mackenzie, Wendy Rogers, & Susan Dodds (eds.), Vulnerability: New Essays in Ethics and Feminist Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 37. Butler, “Rethinking (2014)”.



224 KENOTIC PERSONALISM Violence is the outworking of harpagmos; to make mine by exploiting and grasping that which is not given. Pinker’s view of violence as a strategic response to circumstances where the benefits outweigh the costs is to the point.106 Pinker assumes a primary selfishness in this, though. But selfishness can only be seen as the fundamental principle in evolution if one assumes an original independence of the individual. However, if vulnerability is fundamental then this original selfishness cannot be the foundation for the evolution of life, for the exploitation of that fundamental vulnerability will in the end destroy the being of the other, and the very fabric of the world would be torn. Hannah Arendt’s argument against annihilation is interesting in this context. The value of the human being and the prohibition against annihilation comes not from any intrinsic essence or quality, but from the fact that the death of a human being is a destruction of the human world. Arendt writes: [i]f a people or nation, or even just some specific human group, which offers a unique view of the world arising from its particular position in the world – a position that, however it came about, cannot readily be duplicated – is annihilated, it is not merely that a people or a nation or a given number of individuals perishes, but rather that a portion of our common world is destroyed, an aspect of the world that has revealed itself to us until now but can never reveal itself again. Annihilation is therefore not just tantamount to the end of a world; it also takes its annihilator with it.107

Judith Butler writes similarly that, “[i]f I destroy the other, then I destroy the one on whom I depend in order to survive, and so I threaten my own survival with my destructive act.”108 That is not to say that one should give in order to secure one’s existence, which is Levinas again; this is a statement about how my being is inevitably connected with the being of the other.109 I cannot secure my own being, only the other can.

106 107 108

109

Pinker, Better, 33, 52. Hannah Arendt, The Promise of Politics (New York: Schocken Books, 2005), 175. See also Volf, Exclusion, 179. Butler, Frames, 45. In Pinker it is interesting to note the significance of the re-framing of murder from being an issue between individuals to a crime against the state or the people (Pinker, Better, 74f). See also Butler, Force, 98.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 225 This indicates that for personhood to be constituted through recognition, something needs to “go out” to that other, in a way similar to Butler’s point about grievability. Grievability is a realization of personhood in the sense of “making something real,”110 although people can grieve many things that are not persons. Consequently, grievability, though not the sole process, is one of the relations through which personhood is given and a strong reagent for recognizing personhood in the other.111 But grief, as with compassion, is impossible without giving out of myself to you. To argue that kenosis is not to be equated with annihilation of the self, or full self-sacrifice, is not the same as saying that no giving of the self is needed. Thus, kenosis as self-giving can be seen as the more fundamental concept here. The more fundamental function for the constitution of the person is that of kenotic love. Grief and sympathetic concern are types of kenotic expressions here in that you let something of you “go out” to the other.112 From Gunton’s perspective, our love is always tainted by sin, but from the perspective of kenotic personalism, it is when kenosis is coupled with the will to give out of myself to the other that kenosis also constitutes genuinely livable human lives. Now it is time to retrace the critical questions raised by feminism about kenosis and self-effacement. Self-giving is the proper response in a world of fundamental vulnerability for, as Mercedes points out, an ontological understanding of kenosis in terms of vulnerability has the potential to shift the relation between the powerful and the powerless. Or, as Bornemark phrases it, an ontological kenosis “implies a different kind of power – and thus that the play between power and dependency are two sides of the same coin.”113 As such, kenosis is not a call to the powerless and oppressed to give up their agency, or a “humble” approach of the powerful towards

110 111 112

113

Butler, Undoing, 19; Butler, Frames, 15. Lloyd, Judith Butler, 141. Grief occurs perhaps not solely in relations of love, but it might be possible to grieve even that which was not loved. Or maybe that is a reminder of love? Even if a perpetrator can grieve a victim this only emphasizes how we as humans are divided in our actions. Bornemark, “Kenosis,” 80.



226 KENOTIC PERSONALISM the powerless. Instead, in Mercedes’ words, “[t]he more ontological perspective suggests the power of identity ‘in Christ,’ in the form of the kenotic exalted one, rather than the prescription of the imitation of that Christ as an antidote to the overprivileged.”114 This is not to say that there are no degrees of vulnerability, or that some people are not in more need of care than others,115 but kenosis is not a command for the oppressed to remain in their place. The question is not if but how to resist oppression if we admit to an ontological vulnerability.

Kenosis and resistance Kenosis and vulnerability indicate an ethics opposed to harpagmos, but neither kenosis nor vulnerability need be opposed to resistance. For, as Butler states, “the very meaning of vulnerability changes when it becomes understood as part of the very practice of political resistance,”116 when one realizes that “political resistance relies fundamentally on the mobilization of vulnerability, which means that vulnerability can be a way of being exposed and agentic at the same time.”117 That is also why a mobilizing vulnerability is not exactly a call for a revival of care, or passivity for that matter. As Gunton phrases it, “we should be careful not to understand the cross as a suffering of a purely passive kind.”118 Mercedes

114 115 116 117 118

Mercedes, Power, 20. Mackenzie, “Importance,” 46. Butler, “Rethinking (2016),” 24. Butler, “Rethinking (2016),” 24. See also Mercedes, Power, 110-128. Gunton, Actuality, 77; Anizor, Trinity, 130. Linn Tonstad argues convincingly that kenotic christologies that “tie the self-gift of God ever more tightly to self-gift in intra-trinitarian relations of origin, often through the Son’s reception and sacrificial return of divinity in gratitude” are deeply problematic. This is particularly so when “[t]he cross becomes the site where immanent and economic trinity coincide” (Tonstad, God, 11). But from Gunton’s Irenaean standpoint, the incarnation itself, and therefore the life of Christ, and not simply the cross, are highly significant as the site where immanent and economic trinity coincide. Tonstad is therefore not completely correct in pointing toward Gunton’s substitutionary christology alone (Tonstad, God, 220f). While Gunton would not deny that the immanent and economic



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 227 expresses it a little differently, but in a similar vein to Gunton. For Mercedes, victims of abuse ‘are bearing their cross, not in their passionless subjection to abuse, but rather in their passionate resistance to the culture of abuse.”119 From a Pauline perspective, Paul labored to argue that Christ’s death on the cross was not a defeat, but resistance and in the end a victory over the powers of evil (1 Cor. 1:182:16). And even if Gunton admits that Christ submitted in one way – that is, he did not resist by means of violence against his offenders –he nonetheless resisted actively: “It is an exercise of authority which, because it does not succumb to the typical human temptation to violence, is a submission which consists in a refusal to submit.”120 Giving of self is thus not meant as a call to “give up” as in surrender. Instead, as Butler’s point above indicates, the question is how resistance against exploitation and destructive power structures can be established from a position of vulnerability. Vulnerability for Butler, as for Gunton, does not implicate non-resistance or compliance. And while critical of Gunton, Linn Tonstad makes a point with which Gunton certainly would agree, that “the in curvatus se of the human imaginary, means that even if the Son assumes humanity untouched by sin, the untwisted character of his humanity is not shared by those around him, and they act on him as much as they are acted on by him.”121 Thus the cross is the consequence of sin in a double sense, both because sin had entered into the world and because sin was in the world in which the incarnation took place. Or, as theologian Miroslav Volf puts it, the problem with “self-donation” is “not so much the idea of self-donation, but that in a world of violence self-donation would be held up as the Christian way.”122 Christ’s sacrifice is due to these double consequences of sin,



119 120 121 122

Trinity coincide in the cross, it is certainly not in the cross alone. In a recapitulation, or second-Adam, christology the incarnation was always intended, but the cross not necessarily so. Interestingly, this appears to be close to Tonstad’s own conclusion (Tonstad, God, 244). Mercedes, Power, 151. Gunton, Actuality, 77 [emphasis in original]. Tonstad, God, 134. Volf, Exclusion, 26 [emphasis in the original]. See also Hefner, Human, 244ff.



228 KENOTIC PERSONALISM but in neither case can Christ’s self-giving be ignored as a resistance against a world of sin. Resistance without vanquishing vulnerability is to restructure the world toward a world of self-giving and person-constituting relations. To put it in Pinker’s terms: “is” and “ought” are to be connected. Ethics and being mutually inform each other. What the consequences of this christology are for the view of God and whether or not my own proposal of a kenotic personalism is still tied to a “theologico-symbolic heterosexuality” will need to be worked out at a later date.123 But it is worth remembering that from a perspective of human personhood Butler argues that to act in ways that vanquish one’s vulnerability is also to fall prey to masculine logic.124 It is primarily the latter ─ how kenosis might be a helpful concept to work out an anthropology where vulnerability is not vanquished ─ that is my concern here. Back to questions of anthropology therefore, for this ontologizing of vulnerability is not admissible in Pinker’s anthropology or ethics. For, as challenging as it might be to work with vulnerability from a feminist perspective, it also critically addresses Pinker’s individualism. From his individualist perspective vulnerability means a weakening of agency and loss of freedom. But much of this depends on how one conceptualizes freedom.

The gift of freedom By linking ontology and ethics through kenosis freedom needs to be (re-)conceptualized. Pinker understands freedom primarily as independently executed choices and, ideally, as the possibility to act without the influence of the group. Group identity is a sacrifice of one’s individual freedom for the bargain of security. Contrarily, for Gunton, freedom is “a mediated relation to other people,”125 so that, as he writes elsewhere, “freedom … is a relational concept. My

123 124 125

Tonstad, God, 136. Butler, “Rethinking (2016),” 24. Gunton, “God, Grace,” 121.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 229 freedom, such as it is, derives from my relation to God and to others.”126 Freedom for Gunton is not independence that is only reluctantly given up for some other benefit. Rather, freedom is in the giving between people. Or, to phrase it in more Butlerian terms, I am dependent upon the other and society to act toward me in such a way that my freedom can be realized. Butler’s notion of freedom has a stronger emphasis on the person’s structural and technological dependence. One way to put this is to say that Butler is working out more concretely what it would mean that freedom is always worked out in space, something which Gunton never does despite his emphasis on space and time. Butler writes: We are already familiar with the idea that freedom can be exercised only if there is enough support for the exercise of freedom, a material condition that enters into the act that it makes possible. Indeed, when we think about the embodied subject who exercises speech or moves through public space, across borders, it is usually presumed to be one who is already free to speak and move without threat of imprisonment or deportation or loss of life. Either that subject is endowed with that freedom as in [sic?] inherent power, or that subject is presumed to live in a public space where open and supported movement is possible.127

Clearly, the answer is the latter for Butler.128 At this point, Gunton and Butler complement each other. However, here sin is relevant in that it enters as a failure to relate to and render the other as free. Sin here is to act in such a way as to bind and take away freedom from the other. To be redeemed from sin is thus to move toward greater dependency on the self-giving love of God and the human other. This is no paradox once one realizes that freedom is not worked out from a position of a primary independence. It might be contrary to Pinker, but freedom does not stand in opposition to vulnerability and dependence. Freedom, like our bodies, is dependent upon the other’s giving.

126 127 128

Gunton, Christian, 45. Butler, “Rethinking (2016),” 14f. Butler, “Rethinking (2016),” 15. See also Haraway, “Cyborg”; Hefner, “Getting Around”; and Smith, Moral, 154f.



230 KENOTIC PERSONALISM This view of freedom further supports an ethics as an ethics of kenosis. It is the ethical prerogative of the person to maintain the personhood of the other since one person constitutes the other’s personhood. This conclusion, which decenters the self from the self, may be disquieting. It may even be the unbearable part of what Butler calls our unbearable vulnerability. But that vulnerability is still fundamental to our being, which means that there is risk involved in this ethics that is worked out from vulnerability. There are no guarantees that my self-giving to the other will be reciprocated. To use Butler’s language, I even risk becoming undone by the other. Maybe here Pinker’s view of the social contract makes sense, but more importantly, Pinker gives us insights into the extent to which our morals are affected by the social and political context in which we live. Pinker is absolutely clear that my (well-)being is dependent upon the action and moral mentality of the other toward me.129

The most vulnerable? But if to be human is to be part of a relation of self-giving, what happens to the value and human personhood of those most vulnerable who might not be “able” to love? What about those who are not capable, at least not in an easily recognizable way, of expressing love, or recognizing that they are part of such a relation? This might be due to physical, mental or psychological hindrances or disabilities. Will they have lost their humanity due to their incapacity? Love is not always reciprocated, and never perfectly between humans, at least I doubt that it is. Or, in Butler’s terms, love in its constitutional capacity carries with it its own failure. This implies a risk of responding to the face of the other and making all human selves vulnerable in the light of the other. Still ─ what about the humanity of the most vulnerable? And what if people are unloved? The eventual loss of personhood that critics of relational anthropologies, such as Harriet Harris,130 fear does not come down to

129 130

Pinker, Better, 64. Harriet A. Harris, “Should We Say that Personhood Is Relational?,” Scottish Journal of Theology 51, no. 02 (1998): 214-234, 229ff.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 231 the inadequacy of the constitution of a particular human being, but to the inadequacy of the love given to that human being.131 It would be nice if that were not so, but it is a fact of reality that some humans are made abject. The status as human person is neither secure nor definitively defined, as Butler shows, and Pinker in a different way.132 There is the clear danger of dehumanization for one who is not recognized as part of the community of humanity, and not everyone is recognized as a human person.133 The failure of this is momentous for the person in question, for it is to be relegated outside of the realm of human life.134 It is also momentous for humanity, for misrecognition makes the human world poorer and possibly even famished. Indeed, at some point someone has given of themselves for this human to be born, but the imparting of human value at the point of conception is not likely to have enough particular lasting effect in the person. But the failure in abjection from this logic is not on the part of the misrecognized human. It is on the part of the human community and were it not for the incarnation and the cross in this fallen world, maybe the failure would also have been God’s. This makes the call to give out of my self to the being of the other ever more pressing. It is not the status of the other that should procure or merit my love. For there is a clear danger with communal models of morality if they define humanity according to an essence or particular traits, as Pinker shows.135 The ethical prerogative for acting with self-giving love toward the other is that I, as a human being, should love the other as an expression of my very humanity and not because “the other” has a status as already a



131 132 133 134 135

Interestingly, McArdle points out that a relational anthropology does not necessarily resolve ethical dilemmas or make choices easier, but what it can do is to give a more complete analysis of the moral situation (McArdle, “Disability,” 62). Jean Vanier, Becoming Human (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1999), 88-93. Pinker, Better, 634-637. Butler, Notes, 35-45. Pinker, Better, 134. Pinker, Better, 634, 45; Pinker, Stuff, 291f.



232 KENOTIC PERSONALISM human person in an essentialist way. So who am I, then, to love and recognize as a human person? This question echoes a question that was asked 2000 years ago: Who is my neighbor? (Lk 10:29). Theologian Ian McFarland answers well here: “Jesus does not allow us to contemplate him as the image of God in isolation. Instead, he forces us to consider that he is the imago precisely in so far as he asks us to see as persons those who are most emphatically not him.”136 Christ’s kenosis prompts me to see the human being who is not like Christ as my neighbor, and therefore also a person. Or, as Pinker argues, the effect of taking the other’s perspective means a notable decline in violence, but to be realized it needs to work in tandem with a sense of identification and commonality with the other person.137 Empathy simply is not enough. One can ask: would that life flourish if recognized as a human person? If the answer is yes, then I am called to give and love him or her as human. And in the end… The main concern in this chapter has been to formulate more precisely the type of relations that are fundamental for the constitution of the human lived reality. “Person” emerges as a primary concept here and personhood is a gift mediated by the self-giving of the other. The concept of kenosis, taken from christology, leads to the point where we can perceive that it is the type of relations that are characterized by self-giving and that enable the freedom of the other that are also constitutive for personhood. When “person” is understood in relational terms the notion captures much of the complex inter-relationality of human existence. Humans are necessarily bodied as persons. Our personhood is constituted in and by necessarily embodied relations of which the body is also the inevitable mediator and actor. But our necessary bodiliness only affirms that our personhood is constituted in its openness to the other (Gunton), where an unbearable relationality and vulnerability (Butler) ensues. The body is mediator of personconstituting relations and simultaneously the materialization of

136 137

McFarland, “Personhood,” 215 [emphasis in original]. Pinker, Better, 581, 85f.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 233 these relations. And if the dimension of time is recognized, as both Gunton and Pinker emphasize, we need to acknowledge a particular stability to our bodily constitution. But the body that is me is not merely me. Our bodies are history, affecting and effected by evolutionary as well as present time. The stability that becomes human nature is the result of our fundamental openness to the other, and even if my body is necessarily mine, we are also dispossessed of our body and personhood on a constitutive level. Therefore, human reality is always a between. The notion of the human person as a between, vulnerable and constituted in bodily relation to the other, comes, as I see it, closer to the dynamic quality of the theory of evolution than to keep to an overly individualistic, or innatist/atomistic, starting point for anthropology. It is by properly relating a fundamental personalism with an “artificial individualism“ that the problem of nature against nurture can be better understood, or so I will argue when I attempt to draw out the more practical and concrete relevance of this hitherto very theoretical project. But, to end, what both Pinker and Butler argue in rather similar ways, and which is made evident by a simple cursory glance at history, is that the understanding of who is human and who is not has not been constant. In this, there is a risk of dehumanization involved, which is by no means lessened if the human person is constituted relationally through self-giving love. Some might not be in a relation of self-giving love and are thus made abject. And the fact that one’s body is the result of self-giving by previous generations over a vast period of time and thus not exclusively a product of the present might not be enough of a liberation from a present misrecognition. But this points only to a further risk, namely that, even if I give of my self, my self-giving is not automatically reciprocated. The recipient of your love might not, or might not be able to, reciprocate the love you give. In such a case, I will have to deal with the loss of a part of my own personhood in the face of the other’s non-reciprocation of love for me. This will result in a loss of your self for the sake of the other. But the prerogative is to love kenotically nonetheless, for a greater risk than that of loving kenotically is to not love, for that would entail a double loss of self – yours and your other’s.



234 KENOTIC PERSONALISM Instead, there can only be a frail hope of reciprocity; a hope that the modern Bards were right when they wrote: “And in the end the love you take, is equal to the love you make.”138 For it is in that hope we live, move and have our being.



138

Although to be completely correct it should of course be “the love you give” (kenosis) and not “take” (harpagmos), but Lennon/McCartney didn’t perhaps read Paul (the apostle) carefully enough, or it was too hard even for them to rhyme “make” with “give”!





Conclusion: persons, individuals and institutions The Grand Mughal Akbar, […] too magnificent, too world-encompassing, and, in sum, too much, to be a single human personage – this all-engulfing flood of a ruler, this swallower of worlds, this many-headed monster who referred to himself in the first person plural – had begun to meditate, during his long, tedious journey home, on which he was accompanied by the heads of his defeated enemies bobbing in their sealed earthen pickle-jars, about the disturbing possibilities of the first person singular – the ‘I.’ […] Perhaps this idea of self-as-community was what it meant to be a being in the world, any being; such a being being, after all, inevitably a being among other beings, a part of the beingness of all things. Perhaps plurality was not exclusively a king’s prerogative, perhaps it was not, after all, his divine right. One might further argue that since the reflections of a monarch were, in less exalted and refined form, doubtless mirrored in the cogitations of his subjects, it was accordingly inevitable that the men and women over whom he ruled also conceive of themselves as ‘we’s. They saw themselves, perhaps, as plural entities made up of themselves plus their children, mothers, aunts, employers, co-worshippers, fellow workers, clans, and friends. They, too, saw their selves as multiples, […] in short, they were all bags of selves, bursting with plurality, just as he was. […] And now his original question reasserted itself in a new and startling form: if his many-selved subjects managed to think of themselves in the singular rather than plural, could he, too, be an ‘I’? Could there be an ‘I’ that was simply oneself? Were there such naked, solitary ‘I’s buried beneath the overcrowded ‘we’s of the earth? – Salman Rushdie1

AI: artificial individualism? Noticeably similar in thought to Salman Rushdie’s “‘we’s of the earth,” another creative mind, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, writes that “a million of insulated Individuals is only an abstraction of the mind.”2 Coleridge writes this to point out the problem with theories of the social contract, but it works, as Gunton takes it, as a comment on the individualist view in Modern society as well. Pinker takes

1 2

Salman Rushdie, The Enchantress of Florence (London: Jonathan Cape, 2008), 30-32. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Friend: A Series of Essays to aid in the Formation of Fixed Principles in Politics, Morals, and Religion. With Literary Amusements Interspersed (London: William Pickering, 1844), 224 as quoted by Gunton, The One, 221.

235

236 CONCLUSION individualism as the scientific outlook on human being and the foundation for liberal society, but what Rushdie’s philosophizing Mughal vividly illustrates is that individualism is also a scandal. For the question that dawns on the Mughal is: are all the subjects he sees as “I”s really “we”s full of relations? The “I” eludes the Mughal. This is not strange, for, as another novelist points out: “the curious thing about individuals is that their singularity always goes beyond any category or generalization in the book.”3 The individual is not able to maintain or contain its singularity or autonomy, for the individual is a person. The question is, for the Mughal, can there be an “I” that is simply oneself? Or, more simply put, in the light of a kenotic personalism, what is the individual? Not only in fiction, but from Gunton’s theology and Butler’s philosophy, individualism is troubled and needs reinterpretation. For the Mughal it is a scandal, but I would want to argue with Coleridge that it is a certain abstraction and artificiality covering the individual, or, to use the terminology in this book, something socially and politically constructed. Individualism is a particular condition constituted by a particular relation. The individual as used by Pinker is a construction. This runs squarely against a fundamental aspect of Pinker’s thought, yet to argue for an “artificial individualism,” or the individual as a political construct, is not to argue that the individual is unimportant, or unreal. It is to argue that the individual is a special condition in which the human being is related to as an autonomous entity rather than a relational person. What happens in school, and other institutions is an individualization and it has particular implications. What will be clear is that the division between genes and culture, nature and nurture, results when individualization becomes the primary condition for understanding the human being. As previous chapters have shown, the more one views the divide between biologist essentialism and social constructivism in relational terms the less of a divide there is between them. This indicates that when a clear distinction between biology and culture is upheld something other than the theories themselves is at play. So, what can be said about the individual with

3

Haruki Murakami, “A Slow Boat to China,” in Haruki Murakami, The Elephant Vanishes: Stories (London: Vintage, 2003), 225.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 237 this in mind, and, secondly, what does it say about the problem in school that set off this whole project? Gunton makes much of opposing the individual to the person. But this polarization between person and individual is not always helpful and is too dichotomized even if he is correct in making the distinction itself. For the problem with the concept of the individual is that the individual cannot be a fundamental concept for one’s anthropology. In Pinker’s biologist essentialism the individual dissolves the further down we go in the causal chain of innate traits. As such, if “individual” is to have significance as a concept it is as a special condition. The individual, contrary to Pinker, is not prior to the establishing of the subject. Yet, pace Butler, constructivism need not dismiss all claims for an ontology, at least not if time is an important entity. Butler argues that “the individual” in the act of interpellation is a linguistic or grammatical construction, but to say that is to make less of the body than Butler admits elsewhere. Thus, most basic for the human lived reality is the relationally-constituted vulnerable embodied person. That body ─ and herein lies the paradox ─ even if it is a “one” is not autonomous, for the moment that the individual is located as a body it can no longer be defined by independence. Independent then of its status as an individual or a subject or its knowability, the human being is body and the body has certain conditions from the very beginning of its existence. This body is the materialization of the long history of pre-human and human evolutionary adaptations and thus constituted materially in and by relations (and cannot be known in separation from those relations). The body of a particular person is in its materiality not without predispositions and particular characteristics from the time of birth. One of these is the development of an inner reality in which the consciousness of being a self with particular desires is fundamental for the experience of being an embodied human person. To make a distinction in this between an inner reality and a surface reality, where the importance of the inner reality for what it means to act as a human person is questioned, is untenable. The human body is both inner as well as outer. This is the “necessary embodiment“ of the whole human person in Gunton or human being in Pinker.



238 CONCLUSION But, to return to the distinction between the person and the individual, individualism should not be written off quite as summarily as it is by Gunton. Rather, what is needed is to explore whether the two terms can relate to each other in a less dichotomized way. Some indication of this has already been given in the previous chapter. From a biological point of view, the individual is an important concept; everything from an organ in the body, to one part of a species, to species themselves can be understood as individuals.4 As has been shown, Pinker makes much out of this in his view of culture. Yet even if human beings can be classified as individuals, the question remains as to how to best account for the relationality of the human being without dismissing this self-contained aspect of the human being. Individuality can be seen as the person’s understanding of him- or herself as “a one” in the act of self-reflection, not unlike the Mughal. As such, just as certain traits can be highlighted and explored in terms of the body, the human being in the act of self-reflection can see him- or herself as “a one.” Just as Butler points out, strangely without reference to Paul Ricoeur, this is the sense of “oneself as another.”5 But that means that the experience of individuality is mediated in the self’s relation to the self, which is why the human being even in the state of individuality is a relational being in between. In understanding myself as an individual I am a “between” constituted by relations to myself and to others – in other words, I am a person, as I have wanted to present the term here. Consequently, even the self’s experience of individuality is relationally constituted and in that way personhood as the ontologically relational fundament of human lived reality is established even further. Yet, that being said, there are occasions when the autonomy of the human being comes to the fore and when the individual is of essential and positive importance, albeit constructed. This thought is not as foreign to Pinker as one might think. Pinker

4 5

Michael T. Ghiselin, Metaphysics and the Origin of Species (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 37-50; Buller, Adapting, 450. Ricoeur, Oneself.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 239 does implicitly admit that individualism can be of a greater or lesser degree in a society.6 In individualized and institutionalized societies,7 in a juridical as well as economic and political sense, the human person is treated according to its individuality. Judicially, the legal responsibility is placed on the person as an individual. Politically, the person is, for example in elections, or economically in terms of taxation, acted upon as an independent entity. In this Butler is correct that the Law or State influences the very borders of what is acknowledged as human, and the state makes the individual into a subject, or abject, through its interpellation. The causal link is not direct, but if Butler is correct that this individualism affects also how one sees oneself as a human being then the human being who is not acknowledged as human by the Law is also abject to him- or herself. Pinker is not that far from this view for he points out that concern for the other can become something of a reflex if it is sufficiently established as a norm in the society by, for example, laws and peer pressure.8 Here Gunton’s distinction between individuals and persons can enter into Butler’s view of subjectification in that in an individualistic culture, given the way the Law works on its subjects, the human being is defined in autonomy from other people when interpellated by a representative of the (impersonal) Law. As Gunton sees it, this stress on people as individuals emphasizes the distinguishing side of the human being to the exclusion of the unifying side, characterized by Gunton as “freedom with” in personalism as opposed to the “freedom from” in individualism. This is also the reason why it is fruitful to place Butler’s view of interpellation alongside Gunton’s distinction between “persons” and

6 7

8

Pinker, Better, 414. As for example Sweden. See Fredrik Wenell, Omvändelsen skillnad: En diasporateologisk granskning av frikyrklig ungdomskultur i folkkyrkan och folkhem, Uppsala Studies in Systematic Theology and Worldviews (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2015), 79f; Lars Trägårdh, “Statist Individualism: The Swedish Theory of Love and Its Lutheran Imprint,” in Joel Halldorf & Fredrik Wenell (eds.), Between the State and the Eucharist (Eugene: Pickwick, 2014). Pinker, Better, 591f.



240 CONCLUSION “individuals” in order to see what it might bring to the overall question of the nature/nurture distinction in the school setting. The point here is that an emphasis on human beings as individuals ontologizes autonomy in such a way that the relationality of the human being is neglected. This is problematic, but Gunton’s wholesale rejection of individualism is also problematic, which is why it is interesting to note how Butler’s theory of interpellation opens up a rereading of Gunton’s rejection of the individual. For where Gunton dichotomizes “the individual” against “the person,” Butler helps to see the relationship between “person” and “individual” less polemically. As a way to qualify Gunton’s rejection of individualism, what is constituted in Butler’s account of the interpellation of the Law is not “the subject,” but, in Gunton’s understanding of the term, “‘the individual.” Here, Gunton’s “individual” and Butler’s “subject” are closely related since they are both defined to the exclusion of interpersonal relations. Importantly though, “the subject” (Butler) is a construction by and within a discourse of power, a perspective Gunton fails to acknowledge.9 With that line of reasoning the “individual” (Gunton) is released from its polemical position against “person.”Understood as a construction, the individual no longer needs to compete as a primary ontological concept with which to understand the human being and becomes, instead, a useful and even necessary concept to understand the human person’s relation to the Law, or the state and institutions. For the individual is now that which is constituted by the call of the Law and therefore a construction of a particular relationship in a particular discourse. In Butler’s terms, “the individual” masks itself as origin in the construction of its own becoming. The individual is a construction created by state relations in a discourse where a human person is interpellated as an autonomous entity by the representative of an institution. This might not be the only relation through which individualization can occur, but it is certainly the most significant one from the perspective of the teacher/pupil relation.

9

As did Pinker in his critique of the SSSM, interestingly enough.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 241 Here it is obvious why “the individual” is problematic and incoherent in Pinker’s thinking, for when the individual is the most fundamental concept it cannot hold together the aspects he wants it to. This is most obvious in the discrepancy between the importance of individual choices for society on the one hand, and Pinker’s reductionist theory of the mind where neither “choice” nor “self” is sustained, on the other hand. But if “the individual” is a construction on the level of power relations in society its significance can be restored. The concept of the individual needs to be taken out of its reductionist and metaphysical trap. For we are not individuals in terms of autonomous choosing subjects; rather, we are persons who can become individualized in particular power discourses. With that in mind, in what way is this view of the individual helpful?

Disclosing the nature/nurture problem What the construction of the individual enables is for the Law, or state in the form of institutions, to deal with human persons justly and fairly. As Pinker makes clear, the treatment of human persons as independent entities is a way to safeguard justice in society, particularly distributive justice, in that each and every person amounts to the same, namely one.10 The concept of the individual is thus both real, as constructed things are real, and important; and because of this Gunton presses his critique of individualism too far. Yet, since we are fundamentally relational beings, there is a repeated failure in the construction of the independence of the individual. This failure of individualizing reiteration should not surprise any reader of Butler. One example of such a “failure” is the pupil welfare conference with which this whole book began. For in that setting a pupil’s relationality is highlighted in a context where

10

This aspect of fairness linked to individualism and law comes out in more theological terms in Romans 14:10-12, even if the terminology is not “grading” but “judgment,” and not “individual” but “each of us” and the judge is not the “state” but God (see further N. T. Wright, Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision (London: SPCK, 2009), 159ff). But it is more famously argued by John Rawls, of course; see John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed., (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 6.



242 CONCLUSION otherwise the independence of the pupil is assumed. This needs to be expanded; however, in short, learning is a relational activity, but grading is the activity of a state institution. In the welfare conference, the relational aspect of learning comes to the fore with pupils’ particular situations being highlighted, but this is directly linked with the school’s responsibility that the pupils meet the learning criteria. It is thus the division between independence and relationality, and not one between biology and social constructivism, that is central in the nature/nurture dichotomy found in school. An interesting parallel is how the same logic plays out in Pinker’s metaphysical individualism where the nature/nurture problem is not quite resolved because of its innatism. The problem lies in assuming an essentialism that then overrides the implications of a fundamentally relational body. Pinker assumes this is paradoxical, for he is fully aware that essentialism is a way humans think about reality where humans project certain innate traits onto objects. As such, a critique, or at least a potential troubling of an individualist and essentialist starting point for anthropology can be found within Pinker’s thinking itself. What leads him astray is the entrenched individualism of evolutionary psychology. Without any adherents of evolutionary psychology acknowledging this, this type of individualism is an ideological standpoint that helps to sustain the very division between nature and nurture they claim to have abolished. Luckily that individualism is not a necessary starting point for an evolution-centered anthropology. The reason why a division between nature and nurture is maintained, despite Pinker arguing the opposite, is that he fails to acknowledge the importance of relations. What is of importance is explained as the innate essence of a thing, while a relational ontology argues that what is of importance lies in the type of relations by which a thing is constituted. Pinker’s inclusion of a doer in terms of the nature/nurture problem is not what is problematic, nor is his emphasis on a human nature. What is problematic is the way Pinker separates genes and environment, where genes build the organism and the environment provides the input. If genes and culture are information, and thereby simply two different ways by



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 243 which evolution “stores” information,11 then it begs the question whether it is not also the environment that “builds” the organism. Why are processes executed by information in genes more of a “builder” than processes that are executed by information stored in culture? This reveals something of how Pinker views genes as carriers of evolution, and as a consequence, evolution as essentialism. For Pinker, there is no constitutive power, or reality, that is created in between. If one denies an ontology of relations then the nature/nurture problem will never be solved. For if the most fundamental aspect of the human being is to be an individual, understood as the independent subject, then the dividing line marking out what constitutes me most fundamentally is drawn between that which is my body on the one hand, and that which is not my body on the other hand. With individualism as the starting point what is most truly me is defined innately by, for example, my genes. The other bodies around me, also called “the social,” are consequently defined distinctly as a “non-me.” Hence the division between nature and nurture cannot be overcome within an individualist and biologist essentialist context. For, if I take my own self as an individual and other selves and their bodies as individuals with agency residing only within each and every one of these individuals, then it is a short step to think of the relations I have with others as something distinct from my body. These relations are thought of as “outside” of my biological entity; they are therefore not “biology” and must belong to a wholly separate domain called “culture” or “society.” Both are, as Pinker readily admits, part of the human lived reality, but they can never be reconciled within essentialist and individualist ideologies. Biologist essentialist understandings of the human being, like Pinker’s, will never fully be able to undo the dichotomy between nature and nurture. Expressed differently, the nature/nurture divide is an inherent trait (pun intended) of biologist essentialist and innatist anthropologies. Yet, if Pinker’s insight about reality as a webbed reality is applied, then the primary aspect of a human being is his or her entanglement in a web of relations where “biological” and “social”

11

Hefner, Human, 28, 102; Henrich, Secret, 4.



244 CONCLUSION relations are less distinctly defined, for they are simply different ways of referring to relations that materialize as the embodied person. Importantly, this relational constitution should be understood “biologically” in that the human self is always body, which is not to say that biology as a topic is the only way to understand the human being. Instead, to understand “person” biologically means to remember the radical anti-essentialist and relational implications that the theory of evolution has in terms of our materiality. My point here is that of Butler and Gunton: this necessarily embodied self is relationally constituted such that an embodied self-consciousness is a ground to be constituted as a person in relations with other persons. But it is not until the embodied self is in relation with “the other” that the self “discovers” its own boundaries and that it has already been constituted by that other.12 As William Desmond states, “[i]n ‘beholding from,’ the otherness of being opens itself from itself in its otherness; it offers itself to us for our mindfulness.”13 Thus, we have an experience of being in our relations with the other where personhood has been given as a gift to us in the relation with the other. For only in the recognition by the other do I, as Butler argues forcefully, become valued as a human being. Only after being given myself as a gift through kenosis am I constituted and mindful of me as a person. One could argue that there is a more basic ontology than the person for what it is to be human, namely that of human nature. But that misses the point of the relationality of evolutionary theory. “Human nature,” if by that one means humanity as a species, is what the human being is in relation to other animals. Human nature in evolutionary theory is a taxonomical and genealogical category rather than an ontological one. Furthermore, there is no human nature without human beings and human beings exist most fundamentally as embodied persons, or better expressed, as bodypersons. This means to be in relations characterized by touch, speech, invocations, intentionality, desires, sexuality, rationality, emotionality, self-reflectivity, morals, beliefs and, significantly, love and self-giving. But the human being cannot be defined by

12 13

Butler, “Merleau-Ponty.” Desmond, Being, 10.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 245 essential characteristics if it is to be consistent with evolutionary theory.14 Most fundamental from a Christian theological perspective is the role of imago Dei which is fulfilled in its most complete form when the self-giving love of Christ is the lens for interpersonal human relations. But Butler also affirms that the recognition of the other as a grievable person will be costly, but nonetheless required, if that human being is to exist as a human person. Therefore, if the emphasis of the person is on the relational over autonomy, then the relation that most fundamentally establishes human personhood is that of kenotic, self-giving love. This is not to deny the experience of my self as a distinct being. Yet to take that experience and therefore make the individual central to one’s anthropology is to misunderstand the relationality from which that experience derives and upon which it is dependent. The experience of being a singular self is constructed as fundamental in the discourse of individualism. In that sense it is an artificial individualism, but real nonetheless. But the human being itself is a between, and the relationality that is entailed in the concept “person” is the better primary concept for construing human lived reality. As I have argued, the autonomy created by state interpellation, even if it is constructed, can be the foundation on which all human beings can be treated on equal terms. In this the conditional nature of that “can” must be stressed, for the failure of justice and equality in all things human, and that certainly includes institutions, is all too apparent. To summarize, then, before these thoughts are applied to the example of school: the concepts of “the person” and “the individual” do not work on the same conceptual level. Or, phrased positively, it is when “person” on the one hand and “individual” on the other are on different conceptual planes that the problem of the dichotomization of nature versus nurture can be worked out. While “person” is the most basic ontological concept for the human lived reality, the individual is in no way an insignificant, or a wholly negative, concept when removed from its polemical opposition to the

14

See Buller, Adapting, ch. 8.



246 CONCLUSION person and placed in the context of social construction. “The individual” is a result of particular relationships. In the case of the school it is a state-person relationship. “The state” in that sense relates to a person as an individual in order to, for example, enable just treatment for all. The nature/nurture dichotomy has now been placed within the discussion of individualism and personalism, where it belongs. To divide nature and nurture is the inevitable conclusion of an individualist discourse and cannot be overcome unless a more relational understanding of the human being is embraced. For if the human being is defined as an autonomous individual and the “true self” is found within, the most fundamental distinction becomes that between that which is me, that is my body, and that which is not me, that is society. I want to end with what these conclusions might contribute, if anything, to the problem I pondered as a teacher during pupil welfare conferences.

Back to school My discussion has so far been on the theoretical side, rather than bringing clear and practical advice to the teacher as to how to deal with it. And while in the main the theoretical predominance continues, I do hope that this section is not completely devoid of practical insight. Firstly, I am not alone, nor even the first theologians to comment on the individualizing or depersonalizing effect of academic institutions. John Webster comments and critiques what he calls an “anthropology of enquiry” where this is tightly bound to the modern view of the human being as an autonomous individual.15 He writes that, when theologians routinely admonish first-year students to ‘forget everything you have learned so far’, they are doing much more than cleaning out the lumber of inherited prejudice; they are as likely as not initiating students into one of the most tenacious conventions of modern intellectual life. Within that convention lies hidden the notion that what is most basic to responsible selfhood is to be identified, not with the specificities of

15

Webster, “Theological,” 13-16.



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 247 background, custom or training, nor with the habits of mind and spirit which are acquired from participation in a particular tradition, but with inwardness.16

I here hope to expand on Webster’s insight, but also argue that learning, despite the “anthropology of enquiry,” is less depersonalized than Webster contends. This argument will in the main find support from Pinker, interestingly enough, and from a concept within teaching called differentiation. If I am correct, the nature/nurture dichotomy harbors, or masks, a deeper distinction, namely that between the individual and the person. The problem of the nature/nurture dichotomy lies in the assumption of an autonomous individual as the primary concept that defines the human being. If autonomy is primary, human vulnerability will not be central, and certainly not fundamental for what it means to be human. For what an individualist hegemony does is to treat vulnerability as a failure since vulnerability indicates a lack of autonomy even if the relation and openness to the other is the very key to what makes us human. If individualization were to be completely successful there would be no room for vulnerability, for in that situation all are treated individually as independent. If vulnerability is fundamental, so that relation with the other precedes and is even necessary for any independence to be established, then indeed that success of individualization would be the destruction of the human. But human vulnerability is in reality evident in every institution, for in institutions persons exist. If “person” is fundamental for human beings, this means that we are not individuals who should try to treat each other as persons,17 but we are persons who sometimes become individualized. Yet, in Western society, this individualization is often the

16 17

Webster, “Theological,” 14 [emphasis in original]. Not all who laud “person” as an essential concept, in ethics or theology, for example, are necessarily “personalist” in the relational sense I argue here. From Boethius, through Thomas Aquinas, to Immanuel Kant, Emmanuel Mounier, or John Rawls and Peter Singer, for that matter, the concept of “person” is much more closely linked to internal traits such as reason, self-determination, or even natural law, rather than vulnerability, dependence and relationality. But to explore that further and substantiate it would be the topic for a book in itself.



248 CONCLUSION predominant condition in which we live as human beings, which means that the value of the human as person, and with that vulnerability, needs to be guarded and actively upheld. This is important for “person” comes endowed with a greater ethical imperative than individualism does. For in a kenotic personalism the other constitutes reality while in individualism the individual is part of reality. What that means is that not only “I” but also the other is fundamental for what makes up the human reality and world. The type of relation I establish with the other is of essence in sustaining the human world. That is why a distinction between ontology and ethics is not easily maintained. From an explicitly Christian viewpoint what signifies God’s relation to the world is self-giving love. The implications of this are drawn from the example of self-giving in Christ and can be said to be that one’s personhood is not something that should or can be snatched (harpagmos). Rather, the ethical imperative is to be selfgiving and, in that way, to constitute the other as person. To be a human person is to be given freedom for one’s actions, choices and place in the world, and be valued as human by an other through self-giving love which is the type of relation needed to constitute one’s full personhood. What is meant by “place in the world” is the necessary embodiment that is the very foundation for human person-constitutive relations to be possible. The human being has the type of bodily constitution that enables relation as persons and, as such, I am my body, but only fully so once I have been related to as such by another’s self-giving love. But I also mean “place in the world” in an extended sense, for the human body reaches beyond its surface boundaries in terms of needs and desires. Due to this interconnectivity in the very definition of person the human world comes into being by relations. In a very real sense, then, we gain the world only when we have given ourselves to the other. And this we do with our bodies and bodily actions, brain activity included.

Individualism and personalism in school This might all sound very lofty and calls for some grounding in reality. For how does this relate to the initial context of the



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 249 nature/nurture dichotomy in the school? I take the school as an example – and it is the institution with which I am personally familiar, but my claim is that a similar dual role between the individualization of the human being, on the one hand, and the “intrusion” of the relationality of the human person on the institution, on the other, can be found in all institutions that strive for equality of treatment.18 If one takes seriously Judith Butler’s theory of the materialization of norms ─ its political implications as well as its abjecting capacity in misrecognition ─ together with Gunton’s view of person as the ontologically primary concept, then it becomes obvious that the school acts in a dual way upon its pupils. The school acts, on the one hand, in ways that individualize the pupils, and here the individualism is apparent in, for example, the division between biology and the social in pupil welfare conferences. On the other hand, the school’s purpose of education and learning places the pupil in a relational context which emphasizes the pupil as an embodied and relationally-constituted person. Pinker helps to bring out the significance of our embodiment for who we are as learners. The school is an institution of the state, and in its assignment to grade pupils’ achievements, is an instance in which the human person is defined in its individuality. In grading, the teacher is obligated to grade the pupil as an independent individual. That individualism, as I have argued above, is not an inherently negative feature, as Gunton portrays individualism to be. Individualism might very well be unproblematic if it were not for human vulnerability. If the pupil is completely individualized then any human vulnerability, dependence on and openness to the other is somehow, at best, a secondary aspect of what it means to be human, or worse, an aberration. But vulnerable and dependent is what the human

18

To my mind, Sofia Morberg Jämterud’s study of dignity and vulnerability in medical ethics shows very similar results, above all where the vulnerability of the human being can be problematic in medical decisions if the idea of human dignity is too strongly linked with being independent, and does not acknowledge dependency as an aspect of being human (Morberg Jämterud, Human, 108ff).



250 CONCLUSION being is most fundamentally because the human being is constituted relationally. The pupils are persons and so the staff in school is pressed to acknowledge the pupil with regard to the vulnerability ─ which means the pupil’s deeply rooted relations to other persons as well as to history, culture and biology ─ that a fundamental embodied relationality entails. Human vulnerability should move from being in the periphery or “a problem” to being central and affirmed. This, I argue, is needed if we want the school to acknowledge the pupils’ humanity. It is in human vulnerability that the duality of the school’s relation to its pupils comes to the fore. For when problems arise from the institutional perspective, problems with grades and/or school performance, as was the case with the pupils mentioned in the welfare conferences, human vulnerability needs to be accounted for, and the fundamentally relational constitution of the pupil as person becomes apparent. Thus, what a pupil’s learning difficulties do is to call attention to the pupil’s vulnerability, and the relational humanity is revealed. The welfare conferences are at the intersection between the pupil as an individual on the one hand and the pupil as a person on the other hand. From the perspective of the institution the problem will be dealt with in a setting of individualism, and thus the division between nature and nurture, or biology and the social, will emerge. However, when I, as a teacher, meet the pupil as a learner, this division clashes with the relational assumption that comes necessarily with learning. For, as Pinker stresses, learning is not an add-on to what it is to be human. It permeates our whole existence from the very moment of birth and throughout life.19 Learning is also deeply ingrained in a cultural context so that the pupil, even in an institution, is immediately placed in relation to history, language, norms and in personal relations to the teacher and peers.20 As such, the school as an institution of learning will always be at this intersection between individualism and personalism.21 And the teacher will

19 20 21

Pinker, Mind, 32-33. See Henrich, Secret, ch. 4. This might mean that the school is a particularly apt (and fortuitous) example with which to begin this enquiry, but the problem highlighted



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 251 always have an ambivalent role in that he or she will work both as a representative of the state and treat, or interpellate, the pupil as an individual, while, at the same time, being the conduit for learning which by necessity is personal, in the relational sense highlighted above. The latter emphasizes a further point, namely the fact that pupils mature during their time in school. They are young people; children and not yet adults. Colin Gunton places the question of maturity within the context of personalism: human beings need to be in self-giving, freedom-acknowledging relations to become mature persons. At the same time, as I argue, individualism need not be set in opposition to this personalism, but the way the individualization, on the one hand, and the person-constituting relations, on the other hand, are dealt with must be of extra concern in a context where the very reason why pupils are there is their immaturity. That might further highlight the importance of acknowledging pupils’ vulnerability and therefore dependence. At the same time, being in an institution is also what will develop the pupil as an individual. If the latter is overemphasized then we are likely to end up in the situation that Webster critiqued. But, from the logic explained above, for the teacher to fulfill his or her role both of these aspects need to be managed.22 On the side of the institution, grades should be given to the pupil as an individual in order to safeguard a just and fair grading. On the side of the relational, the pupil’s vulnerability as a fundamental aspect of what it is to be a person must be recognized. This will demand, if the above-expounded christological insight is taken on board, self-giving on the part of the teacher – and pupil, but the emphasis here will in the main lie with the teacher. How is



22

about individualization in institutions is not likely to be exclusive to the school as an institution. In Sweden, this is also seen very clearly in the division between the school’s foundational values on the one hand and primary mission on the other (Skolverket, “Lgr11 – Läroplan för grundskolan, förskoleklassen och fritidshemmet 2011, 1 Skolans värdegrund och uppdrag,” ed. Skolverket (2011)). Thanks to Erik Juntikka for pointing this out.



252 CONCLUSION the teacher to act kenotically in the classroom? I want to argue that the concept of differentiation provides an example of this. Importantly, with an ethical prerogative of self-giving, there is a risk for an undifferentiated self-emptying by the teacher. I am not suggesting a call for undifferentiated care by teachers’ involvement in pupil welfare problems, for there are clearly dangers in that.23 For one, it puts much pressure on an already strained group of professionals. My discussion on relationality and self-giving concerns the teacher in the classroom as an educator. This is challenge enough. Teachers in Sweden, as in England and probably elsewhere, are obliged to differentiate their teaching. Differentiation means that the different levels of knowledge and abilities in and amongst the pupils should be accounted for in the way the teacher plans the course and lessons so that each and every pupil can meet their goals, and, at the minimum, the learning requirement of the course. The obligation is state-legislated, interestingly enough.24 The teacher can do this in different ways, but what I want to explore briefly is how differentiation can be seen as a way of taking vulnerability into account, and thus the personhood of the pupil. The result of differentiation should be a development and flourishing of learning where pupil vulnerability should not mean denigration, but rather be a basis for, and not a hindrance to, learning. In this, the teacher needs to apply all of his/her professionalism so that the differentiation in the lesson accentuates the need of all pupils to reach maturity through learning rather than some students’ more obvious dependence on assistance for learning. One further important factor is the teacher’s own awareness of his or her vulnerability, and how he or she deals with that in relation to the pupils. For successful personal differentiation to be possible, trust is needed. If trust has been established it will be possible for the

23

24

Silvia Edling & Anneli Frelin, “Var går gränsen för lärares ansvar?,” Pedagogiska magasinet, (cited, 20.11.2012) http://www.lararnasnyheter.se/pedagogiska-magasinet/2012/11/20/gar-gransen-lararesansvar. Skolverket, “Lgr11 - Läroplan för grundskolan, förskoleklassen och fritidshemmet 2011, 2.2 Kunskaper,” ed. Skolverket (2011).



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 253 teacher to work effectively with his or her own vulnerabilities (and possibly even failures) in the classroom. For teachers fail. At times things do not work out the way we planned. At other times the idea was simply bad. By making the failure explicit and, for example, telling the group the point of the exercise and the reason for planning it in a certain way, the class can then discuss a better way to learn what the teacher wanted the group to learn. That is simply one way of letting teachers’ vulnerability and openness to the other become a point of learning. Similarly, the teacher can recognize the difficulties for a particular pupil and attempt to act in such a way that his or her vulnerabilities and strengths in relation to other pupils’ strengths and vulnerabilities are turned into ways of learning. This can come down to letting pupils work with each other with particular roles and sometimes different tasks, but where they are dependent upon each other’s different abilities to solve the task, and where the actual learning would not have been possible were it not for the different abilities of the pupils.25 If differentiation is to be successful from a kenotic personalist perspective the pupil’s relationality and vulnerability need to be affirmed. If human personhood is to be recognized through vulnerability, then differentiation in a classroom can certainly be a personaffirming act by the teacher in which the grading aspect, which is a primary means of school individualization, is also subsumed. Differentiation in the context of school is needed in order for each pupil to meet the required learning goals. It is, however, a clear recognition of the pupil as a person, for it is the pupil’s “history” from generations back as well as more recently that is acknowledged in differentiation. In that way, the individualization

25

In reality differentiation, from my experience, can frustrate the pupils that find it easy to learn independently. However, this frustration might depend on a multitude of factors. It can, for example, be frustration because a pupil’s comfort zone is troubled. There can also be frustration due to the fact that pupils become dependent upon each other. The point is not that there should always be “group work,” however, or that pupils should not learn by reading or from teacher-led lectures. The point is to show that person-affirming activities are also possible in the context of institutionalized learning.



254 CONCLUSION of the pupil in school is done “through” the pupil as person. It is, furthermore, perhaps one of the most taxing and challenging pedagogical tasks for the teacher certainly has to rework, change, rethink and sometimes abandon her ideas. Hence, differentiation is kenotic. It will of course also run the danger of hurt and manipulation, which is not strange since it connects to the core of what it is to be human. There is also always an element of risk involved. But, importantly, there is never the choice between risk and no risk in teaching, differentiation or not. Giving exact examples would have to be the purpose of a different book, for it is the creative pedagogical thinking of the teacher, and at times the class, that should be applied in relation to a particular class and pupil for there to be successful differentiation. But when differentiation is successful, as in the examples that I have seen, it stands as evidence of how pupils can be vulnerable persons within an individualizing and institutionalized setting, even when demanded by the state. The point is that differentiation can be relational and also acknowledge the vulnerability of the teacher as well as the pupils in a way that constitutes and recognizes the person rather than the individual. To come to the question of nature and nurture, by acknowledging the relationality of the pupil the division between nature and nurture no longer makes sense; “nature,” on the one hand, and “nurture,” on the other, are simply different materializations of norms over different periods of time that all constitute the human lived reality called the person. Thus, from the perspective of personalism, the nature/nurture problem is not due to an irreconcilable difference between social constructivism and biologist essentialism themselves. For, even if differences remain, once the two views are interpreted in the light of a relational and personalist theory it is possible to see how the two theories can be brought together. Nature versus nurture is not a self-enclosed problem, and resources exist that allow us to think about it in a less dichotomized way. However, what an analysis of social constructivism versus biologist essentialism in the light of Christian doctrine has shown is that, in order to find a way beyond the dichotomy between the social and the biological, it is not possible to work from an individualist anthropology. For in the nature/nurture divide a deeper



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 255 question emerged. The deeper distinction that my “school problem” between biology and the social pointed towards was the distinction between a constructed individualism and a fundamental personalism. Based on my suggestion of a kenotic personalism, “person” is the term which, I argue, captures how our humanity is constituted by and through relations. Personhood is a gift, and in many ways ethics and ontology interlink, for if others are to be human persons we have to give of our selves. It is a self-giving in a double sense, both that the self is given by the other, as well as the need for giving of my self for the sake of the other. If I withdraw from the other he or she will suffer a loss of humanity, as will I if I am not recognized by the other. That is why, as Butler points out, our relationality and vulnerability are so unbearable. This is also why self-giving ─ kenosis ─ becomes central for my personalist suggestion. But taking the cue from feminism, as was the case with the cross for Christ, self-giving is not non-resistance, but resistance from the position of acknowledged vulnerability which comes from being our bodies. Central is our bodiliness. In its material stability, the body is constituted by its history through vulnerability and openness to the other. That other is human as well as non-human. Kenosis is the way to acknowledge our bodily constitution of openness and vulnerability to the other. Because we are dependent upon each other for our existence, we are to act in such a way that our dependence enables the other’s freedom to be. And that is particularly true as a representative of an institution that works in individualizing ways on the person. Here individualism becomes problematic if it takes on metaphysical claims, and only then is Gunton’s critique of individualism valid. For individualism is a vital construction in some instances and can be fundamental for the realization of justice and decrease of violence in a society. Individualism, however, does not acknowledge the fundamental vulnerability of the human person, for the individual is defined in and by independence and, as such, not relationally by openness toward the other, which our bodily existence necessitates. We are bodypersons, not simply embodied persons.



256 CONCLUSION The problem of biology versus culture or nature versus nurture is, in this light, not a problem as such, particularly in a relational reading of evolutionary theory. However, in the context of individualism the nature and nurture division is a problem. Individualism and the nature/nurture dichotomy are inextricably linked with each other. For when a person is individualized in, for example, the institution that is the school, a central distinction becomes the one between me, that is, my body/biology, and that which is not my body, which is culture or the social. It is possible to stress either biology or the social in this, but underlying the division is the problem of having made the independent individual, rather than the dependent person, the ontological foundation for what a human is. Individualism is not a problem, but an ontology of individualism is, and the nature/nurture division is one expression of making independence fundamental in place of dependence. Individualism in school is a good thing for it can work for justice in the pupil’s education and grading, but it is also a challenge, for learning is a deeply human reality and therefore dependent upon the other. The challenge is to act in school in such a way that vulnerability and dependence are not vanquished, for that would be to destroy the human person. The way to act is to give in a self-giving, kenotic way. This is what we can learn from an interaction between Judith Butler, Steven Pinker and Colin Gunton, and this is what can be learned by letting a thoroughly trinitarian and christological anthropology inform questions about the human being in today’s society.

A love supreme? If recognition is an interpersonal affair then it forces one to ask, recognized by whom? Can the state, or the representative of the state, recognize one as a person? If my argumentation here about institutions and individualization is correct then the answer is no. The state recognizes individuals, not persons. Persons recognize persons, but that must mean that the process of interpellation originates not with an impersonal “Law” or “State,” but with someone, someone who is a person in his or her very being. In Christian



HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 257 theology, this someone is the same that mediates true human personhood through self-giving love in the life of and on the cross as God incarnate. The personal interpellation is fully expressed by the voice of the person that once called out, “Come, follow me” at the Sea of Galilee. Through the calling by Christ, human beings can fully be persons. Called by the triune God mediated by the Son through the Holy Spirit full human personhood will be constituted, for self-giving and person-constituting love was perfectly mediated by the Son. That conclusion is of course from a Christian theologian’s perspective, such as Gunton’s – and mine. If the challenge in the introduction, to not fall back into theology’s confessional fold in these interdisciplinary attempts, is to be taken seriously, the context of self-giving love might need to be strictly one between human beings with no reference to Jesus’ atoning work for all humanity on the cross. Butler and Pinker provide different visions of how this should happen, Pinker by the widening of the ethical circle, and Butler by the radical equality of grievability to recognize human life in those whose lives are not now livable. For a Protestant theologian with an evangelical bent, the complete success of these efforts is impossible to imagine. The observation that human beings simply do not have the capacity for their own “salvation” is too evident to be ignored. The ethical prerogative is to give of your self in love to the human being who would not otherwise be recognized and so not be constituted as a human person. I have wanted to show here that to relate with kenotic love to the other is key, and that this self-giving love, given as gifts between persons, is most fundamentally what constitutes humanity and personhood. That is a conclusion from Christian doctrine to “general” anthropology. This is not to say that self-giving love and relations are not possible in the ordinary life of all people, and with this, it is possible to affirm Butler’s and Pinker’s visions, even if not in full. I am doubtful that humanity has the capacity to act with the self-giving love needed for all human beings to have their personhood fully constituted, as Butler, Gunton and Pinker rightly strive for. However, the Christian theologian also needs to wait for that day when humans are fully the persons they are to be. For life as



258 CONCLUSION whole and complete human persons belong to the eschaton. To be a person fully is a question of maturing and therefore to be a person is not something realized in the present but is always a hope toward personhood, a thought that aligns Butler, Pinker and certainly Gunton. For all three, self-giving will not ever be completely successful in recognizing all human beings as humans in our present existence. In theological terms, humans will always be sinners in this world. In Butler’s terms, norms create an abject, that which is not recognized to be within the existing norms and whose life is therefore not livable. For Pinker, the human being has strategic reasons and propensities to use violence, and it is therefore utopian to think that violence will be made completely obsolete. These are all statements that derive from a particular view of what the human being is and in my analysis of these often polarized positions I have labored to show that it is possible to suggest a perspective on the human being that engages with their explanations on their own terms and lets them constructively inform each other. This suggestion is that of a kenotic personalism that takes the relationality of the human body and the vulnerability that this entails as fundamental for human existence. To understand what this human lived reality most fundamentally is we have to look to the person; gift of self-giving relations. But because the human person is fundamentally dependent on the other, not all humans are recognized as such, and consequently never become the persons that they should be with the livable life they should have. For that, complete self-giving love for all humankind and every particular person is needed. Humans have proven themselves incapable of giving this to one another. That is the crux.







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Index The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, 22

Ables, Travis, 195–96 Allen, Amy, 59, 60 Althusser, Louis, 48

between, 160, 169, 191, 196, 203, 233, 243, 245 biologist determinism, 102 biologist essentialism, 16, 28, 32, 243

interpellation, 45, 47–48

altruism, 98, 108 anthropology, 14, 15, 18, 30, 32, 113, 155, 157, 199, 200, 204, 228, 233, 237, 242, 245, 254, 257

and nature/nurture, 243, 254– 55 and relationality, 107, 191, 236 and social constructivism, 29, 22–33, 73, 157, 191, 194 associated with Pinker, 18 in Pinker, 77, 79, 100, 109, 191, 237

and relationality, 30, 231 in Butler, 177 in Gunton, 113, 115, 127, 141, 148, 150, 153, 163, 214 in Pinker, 77, 109–10, 172, 242 of enquiry, 246–47 theological, 17, 29, 30, 31, 112, 118, 129, 127–40, 186, 216, 219, 228, 256

vs. constructivism in Butler, 174–75

Arendt, Hannah, 130, 224 autonomy, 238

bodiliness, 66, 70, 197, 213, 233, 255

and community, 59, 61 and modernity, 188, 246–47 and person, 205, 206, 236, 239, 241, 245 and power, 44, 206 and relationality, 50–51, 130, 141, 213, 237, 240, 245, 246 and SSSM, 27 autonomous level of the mind, 100 of the subject, 45, 50

in Gunton, 149–50

body, the, 33, 157, 183, 184–92, 193, 194, 204, 205, 208, 212, 220, 237, 243, 248 and “corporeal plasticity”, 170 and evolution, 198–99 and person, 197–98, 202, 206 and relationality, 210, 233, 258 and time, 233, 255 as materiality, 212 as materialization of norms and evolution, 175–76

Ayres, Lewis, 114, 125 Balthasar, Hans Urs, 139 Barth, Karl, 112, 128

discursiveness of, 174–75 in Butler, 55–57, 58, 70–71, 72, 95, 177–80, 206, 209, 223 in Gunton, 145, 149, 155 in Pinker, 95, 102, 109

interpretation of hypostasis, 127

Beauvoir, Simone de, 43, 46, 57 Berger, Peter and Thomas Luckmann

bodyperson, 33, 244, 255 bodyself, 212

287

288 INDEX Bonald, Louis, 207 Bornemark, Jonna, 223, 226 Bourdieu, Pierre, 178, 179 Buller, David, 173, 176, 181, 199 Butler, Judith, 13, 18, 37–38, 35– 73, 93, 95, 100, 101, 105, 109, 116, 121, 133, 145, 155, 189, 209, 211, 215, 216, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 227, 228, 230, 231, 233, 236, 241, 244, 245, 249, 255 actions, 57–58 and Levinas, 195 as “interacted”, 21, 22, 33, 157– 63, 190–92, 193–94, 194, 197– 200, 200–202, 203–6, 207–8, 212–13, 228–30, 232–33, 237– 41, 256, 257–58 as seeming antithesis to Steven Pinker, 82 as seemingly antithetical to Steven Pinker, 75–77 Bodies That Matter, 55, 67, 68 body, 184–88, 209 culture, 168 Frames of War, 56 gender, 38–40 Gender Trouble, 67 nature and nurture, 28–29 nature/culture dichotomy, 18 on person, 194 performativity, 174–76, 183, 189, 190 relationality, 50–52 social constructivism, 22, 24–25 symbiosis of Freud and Foucault, 54 the body, 52–57 difficulties of definition, 52– 53 the what of the body, 53–57 The Force of Nonviolence, 61 the person, 58–73 materialization of norms, 59



personhood and desire, 64– 67 recognition, 67–73 the subject, 43–50 theory of performativity, 24–25, 40–43, 57 time, temporality, 177–82 Undoing Gender, 64 vulnerability, 190

Cappadocians, 125, 126, 131 Christian theology, 17, 19, 202, 245, 256 christology, 31, 32, 112, 115, 116, 135, 140, 141, 144, 154, 161, 162, 202, 214–16, 219, 228, 232, 256 Church, the in Gunton, 138, 151, 153

Coakley, Sarah, 125, 213 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 235– 36 consciousness, 100, 102, 184, 188, 189, 210, 211–12, 237, 244 Coole, Diana, 199–200 Cortez, Marc, 30, 214 Cunningham, Conor, 28, 170 d’Aquili, Eugene, 20 Darwin, Charles, 163 Dawkins, Richard, 169, 170, 172 Dennett, Daniel C., 102 Descartes, René, 186 Desmond, William, 20, 160–61, 244 determinism, 90, 102, 107 Digman, John, 88 discourse, 37, 42, 58, 159, 162, 174, 177, 186, 197, 240 and desire, 158, 186–87 and Foucault, 209 and norms, 52, 66

HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 289 freedom, 29, 116, 122, 129–31, 143, 146, 147–49, 151–54, 200, 208, 216, 228–30, 232, 239, 248, 251, 255 Freud, Sigmund, 54, 185

and ontology, 184–85 and power, 48, 52, 62, 240, 241 and the body, 187–88 and the subject, 43, 44 as formative, 176 in Foucault, 52 individualism as effect of, 207 of individualism, 245, 246

melancholia, 41

gene, the, 28, 80, 85, 87, 92, 100, 170–73, 175, 186, 199, 236, 242–43

discourses, 191 Durkheim, Emile, 78 embodiment, 32, 53, 71, 72, 102, 109, 135, 149–50, 158, 159, 185, 187–89, 192, 197–98, 208, 217, 223, 237, 248, 249 eschaton, 118, 137, 139, 182, 183, 257 ethics, 18, 33, 35, 57, 104, 107, 109, 116, 150, 162, 190, 193, 195, 216, 219, 222, 223, 226, 228, 230, 248, 255

and behavior, 87–90, 107, 109, 166, 167 and culture, 165 and environment, 242 and ethics, 95–98 and genetic “depth”, 103–7 as “atom” of evolution, 32, 109, 169, 176 innatist view of, 26

Genesis, Book of, 30, 133, 141, 204 Gregory of Nyssa, 125 grievability, 60, 67, 71–72, 157, 225, 245, 257 Grosz, Elizabeth, 14, 176

and genes, 95–98 in Gunton, 151–56

evolution, theory of, 32–33, 81, 88, 95–98, 109–10, 162–74, 175–76, 177, 179, 181, 190, 191, 193, 198–99, 211, 233, 244–45, 255 evolutionary psychology, 27–28, 28, 32, 75–77, 101, 107–10, 163, 177, 183, 189, 199, 210, 242 feminism, 16, 19, 36, 43, 47, 190, 219, 220, 255

essentialism, 26

Gunton, Colin, 13, 18, 93, 111– 56, 165, 168, 169, 194, 209, 211, 212, 214–15, 215–16, 217, 219, 226–27, 236, 241, 244, 249, 251, 255 “spirit”, 188 “spirit” and ethics, 151–56 and social trinitarianism, 114– 15 as “interacted”, 21, 22, 33, 157– 63, 190–92, 193–94, 194, 197– 200, 200–202, 203–6, 207–8, 212–13, 228–30, 232–33, 237– 41, 256, 257–58 body, 185–88 Christ as the imago Dei, 140–44 embodied human persons, 144–50 nature and nurture, 31–32 ontology of the person, 114–18

and kenosis, 222–28

Fermer, Richard, 121, 124, 134– 35, 135 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 30 Five-Factor Model (FFM), the, 88 Foucault, Michel, 44, 47, 52, 54, 174, 185, 186, 209



290 INDEX relationality, 127, 190 the divine and the human, 131– 36 The Triune Creator, 154 theological anthropology, 22, 32, 118 time, temporality, 182–83, 181– 83, 208 triune Creator and anthropological significance of Christ, 136–40

Harari, Yuval Noah, 207 harpagmos, 217, 218, 219, 224, 226, 248 Harris, Judith Rich, 86 Hefner, Philip, 19, 165, 183, 208 Hegel, G. W. F. Gunton's criticism of, 181–82 Phenomenology of Spirit, 65 recognition, 67

Heidegger, Martin, 160 Heinrich, Joseph, 165 Hemmerle, Klaus, 159–61 Hofstadter, Douglas, 212 Holmes, Stephen, 118, 131, 134, 203 hypostasis, 117, 121, 122, 124, 125, 124–27, 128, 127–28, 131–32, 134, 161, 196, 212 imago Dei, 140, 141, 140–44, 147, 149, 152, 245 individualism, 33, 57, 130, 149, 162, 168, 188, 204, 206–8, 235–40, 242, 243 and personalism, 146, 158, 200, 233, 246, 248–56 artificial, 245 as opposite to relationality, 146 Gunton's critique, 241 in Pinker, 93, 97, 99, 104, 109, 146, 155, 162, 172, 191, 210, 228, 242



interpellation, 32, 43, 49, 50, 45– 51, 68–70, 133, 157, 184, 194, 196, 201, 203, 205–8, 209, 237, 239, 240, 239–40, 245, 251, 256 Irenaeus, 113, 138, 182, 183, 186, 209 recapitulation, 137 the two hands of God, 136–37

Jenkins, Richard on identity and difference in Butler, 60

Kaidesoja, Tuukka, 169 Kant, Immanuel, 116 Kärkkäinen, Veli Matti, 218 Kauffman, Stuart, 166–67 Kelz, Rosine, 60–61, 158, 194, 215 kenosis, 33, 143, 153–56, 161, 215, 193–234, 244, 248, 255 Kilby, Karen, 131, 161, 162 Kirby, Vicky, 170, 176 Konner, Melvin, 221 Körner, Bernhard, 159–60 Kramer, Sina, 158, 187 language, 40, 49, 81, 114, 159, 189, 250 and constructivism, 24 and ontology, 160 and subjectivization, 48, 49 as intersection of biology and culture, 77 as link between biology and culture, 32 in Butler, 45–46, 53–54 in Pinker, 77–80

learning, 16, 40–41, 75, 80, 82, 84, 88, 105, 242, 247, 249, 250–51, 252–53, 256 Lennon-McCartney, 234 Levinas, Emmanuel, 195, 216, 219, 221, 222, 225

HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 291 Lloyd, Moya, 64, 65

materialization of, 49, 59, 174, 175, 182, 185, 189, 249, 254 social, 61–64

on desire in Butler, 66

Mackenzie, Catriona, 194 Marx, Karl, 207 materiality, 33, 38, 53, 54, 56, 64, 133, 145, 149–50, 157, 179– 80, 183, 187, 188, 212, 237, 244 McArdle, Patrick, 209 McFadyen, Alistair, 203 McFarland, Ian, 143, 209, 232 mediation, 113, 118, 119, 129, 132, 133, 134, 135–37, 157, 161, 196, 197, 202, 203, 214, 216 Meloni, Maurizio, 169, 170 Mercedes, Anna, 222–23, 225, 226 Miller, J. T. M., 21 modernity, 31–32, 129, 188, 200 Moule, C. F. D., 217 nature/nurture, 13, 14–16, 28, 31, 33, 80–85, 93, 94, 96, 156, 170, 193, 211, 233, 236, 240, 242, 241–46, 247, 249, 250, 254–56 Nausner, Bernhard, 124 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 44, 82 norms, 38, 42, 46, 48, 52, 64, 71, 95, 162, 168, 174, 175, 177, 178, 179, 182, 183, 184, 186, 187, 191, 197, 198, 199, 201, 203, 250, 258

ontology, 15, 23, 28, 132, 134, 151, 184, 195, 196, 200, 207, 214, 219, 222, 237 “strong” ontology, 33, 195, 198 “weak” ontology, 33, 73, 157, 158, 157–62, 163, 191, 194, 198 and ethics, 18, 33, 195, 219, 222, 228, 248, 255 and relationality, 32, 33, 113, 116, 128, 130, 134, 150, 157, 195, 198, 216, 242, 243 of individualism, 256 of the person, 114–27, 145, 244 social, 46, 56–57, 185, 213, 223

ousia, 121, 124, 125, 128, 133, 134 Oyama, Susan essentialism, 26

Pannenberg, Wolfhart theology and anthropology, 30

Paul, St., 217, 227 performativity, 32, 37, 38, 39, 40–43, 43, 44, 49, 50, 53, 57, 157, 162, 188, 191, 193, 194, 198 and “politics of the body”, 57 and evolution, 174–76 and gender, 178 and norms, 183 and theory of evolution, 179 and time, 177–78, 181, 189, 190

perichoresis, 122, 124, 131, 141, 142, 152, 157, 161, 197, 201, 211 person, 33, 38, 126, 141, 153, 157, 159, 161, 162, 186, 190, 192, 236

and desire, 66, 187 and discourse, 186 and gender, 38–40 and human psychology, 188 and performativity, 40 and reiteration, 80–85 and the body, 52–55, 179 and the subject, 35

and failed independence, 241 and individuality, 238–41, 247– 56 and kenosis, 193–222, 225, 228, 230, 232–34, 256–58



292 INDEX and relationality, 236, 243–44 and the individual, 237, 246 and vulnerability, 230–31 as embodied, 237 as primary concept, 245 in Butler, 50, 58–70, 72–73, 228, 229 in Gunton, 32, 111–18, 127–40, 142–52, 157, 182 personalism opposed to individualism, 158

Piatigorsky, Joram, 170, 171 Pinker, Steven, 13, 18, 75–110, 145, 146, 155, 164–65, 166, 169, 170, 174–76, 180, 188, 197–200, 208, 210, 216, 219, 224, 228, 231, 232, 233, 236, 241–44, 247, 250 as “interacted”, 21, 22, 33, 157– 63, 190–92, 193–94, 194, 200– 202, 203–6, 207–8, 212–13, 228–30, 232–33, 237–41, 256, 257–58 as seeming antithesis to Judith Butler, 82 as seemingly antithetical to Judith Butler, 75–77 biologist essentialism, 22 body, 185 computational theory of the mind, 91–93, 100 criticism of the Standard Social Science Method (SSSM), 82– 83 culture, 167–68, 168–69, 171–74 difference from John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, 81–82 evolutionary psychology, 75– 110, 75 individual and human nature, 98–100 individualistic view, 93 is and ought, 95, 96, 98, 228 language, 77–79, 80 nature and nurture, 28–29, 81– 85, 96 nature/culture dichotomy, 18



OCEAN (binary pairs of psychological traits), 88, 210 proximate and ultimate causes, 95–96, 97 self-reflectivity, 184 The Better Angels of Our Nature, 97, 99 The Blank Slate, 97 the self, 100–103 time, temporality, 177, 183, 208 unique environment, 85–87 webbed causality, 93–95, 109

Plotinus, 122, 123, 169 Proust, Marcel, 13 proximate causes, 93, 95–96, 97, 98, 107 psychoanalysis, 41, 49, 64, 185 relationality, 30–33, 45, 49, 59, 61, 63, 72, 73, 93, 95, 107, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 118, 134, 135, 142, 144, 146, 147– 48, 150, 152, 155, 157–63, 168, 174, 175, 181, 188, 190– 92, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 204, 205, 206, 210, 213, 216– 17, 219, 220, 221, 229, 231, 232–33, 236, 237, 238–40, 241–43, 244–45, 249–55, 258 and Pinker, 107–9 in Butler, 37–38, 50–52 in Gunton, 118–31

Ricoeur, Paul, 238 Roberts, Michael Voss, 29 Rushdie, Salman, 235–36 Salih, Sara, 37 Schaeffer, Hans, 119, 135, 154, 161, 195 school, 33, 62, 156, 236, 237, 240, 245, 246–47, 248–56 as institution of grading, 99, 146 as institution of learning, 16, 45, 242

HUMAN BEING AND VULNERABILITY 293 Tooby, John and Leda Cosmides, 172, 174

as state-person relationship, 246 experience of, 14, 15–16

difference from Steven Pinker, 81–82 evolutionary psychology, 27 Standard Social Science Method (SSSM), 27

Schwöbel, Christoph, 113 Smith, Christian strong vs. weak social constructivism, 23–24

Torrance, Alan, 196 Trinity, 29, 30, 31, 32, 111–13, 113–15, 116, 119–21, 123, 124, 125, 128, 131, 132, 133, 135, 136–40, 141, 142, 144, 155, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 187, 193, 197, 202, 204, 211, 214, 216, 256, 257 ultimate causes, 93, 95–96, 97, 98, 107 univocity, 118, 119, 122, 129, 137, 196, 202, 203 Volf, Miroslav, 228 vulnerability, 32, 33, 38, 51–52, 55–57, 58, 61, 65–67, 70–73, 157–59, 190–92, 194–95, 197–98, 201, 208, 215–16, 219, 220, 223–24, 225–27, 228, 230, 233, 247–48, 249– 56, 258 Wallace, Brendan, 210 Ware, Kallistos, 126 Webster, John, 29, 246–47, 251 White, Stephen, 158, 159, 161, 184, 194 Whitney, William, 111, 135, 148, 151, 153 Wittig, Monique, 179 Zackariasson, Ulf, 212 Zizioulas, John, 112, 118, 124, 125, 126, 128, 134, 196

social constructivism, 16 and biological essentialism, 157 and biologist essentialism, 29, 191, 194 and nature/nurture, 254–55 and relationality, 191, 236 associated with Butler, 18 in Butler, 73, 175, 237 vs. essentialism in Pinker, 174– 75

social trinitarianism, 30, 112, 114, 119, 161 Soskice, Janet Martin, 221 soteriology, 133, 215 space, 122, 129–31, 136, 142, 229 Standard Social Science Method (SSSM), the, 82, 99, 101, 168 subject, 14, 24, 32, 39, 40, 43–52, 54–56, 58, 65, 67–70, 72, 100, 160, 174–75, 184, 187, 191, 205–6, 213, 224, 237, 239–40, 241, 243 Taylor, Charles, 20, 207 Thiem, Annika, 35, 48 time, 33, 88, 107, 122, 136, 189– 90, 191, 198, 205, 208–10, 229, 233, 237, 254 and evolution, 157–76 in Butler, 162, 177–83 in Gunton, 138–40, 155, 181–83 in Pinker, 183

Tonstad, Linn, 227



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