Reason and Revelation in Tillich: Reason as Mode of Revelation

Another revised essay from my masters program. Only minor edits and it may warrant more when I look at it again.

Paul Tillich remains one of the most important contemporary Christian theologians and reading his work has influenced my thought a  great deal. I worked on a reading guide to the Systematic Theology, which you can find  here, and this essay is a small exploration of his understanding of reason as it relates to revelation and the nature of being.

For Paul Tillich reason is an integral part of existence and being, but it points beyond itself to still more fundamental being (though not a being) which Tillich calls God. Reason, for Tillich, is not complete in and of itself. It requires revelation. Tillich’s Systematic Theology, based upon God as the ground of all being, deals with being as split into two categories: essence and existence. Reason resides in both categories, in a perfect/essential form, or in an existential form which is broken and divided against itself. Both forms, however, despite their differences, point beyond reason through revelation to God, because all being points to God. Due to the complex nature of Tillich’s system a comprehensive examination of the Systematic Theology is beyond the scope of this post, but an examination of the function of reason lends itself to a wider understanding of the system as a whole. The many sections of the Systematic Theology illuminate Tillich’s understanding of the divide between essence and existence, but the nature of reason is especially instructive in understanding the system as a whole.

To begin we need to understand the general structure of Tillich’s universe. Ultimately, his entire system rests upon his assertion that “the being of God is being-itself” (Vol. I 235). This is a necessary truth, according to Tillich, because if God were not being-itself he would be “subordinate to it, just as Zeus is subordinate to fate in Greek religion” (Vol. I 236). In Christianity “God is his own fate” (Vol. I 236) and supposedly powerful and great beyond all that we know and “when applied to God, [even] superlatives become diminutives” (Vol. I 235). According to Tillich, God as the ground of all being is the power that makes beings, measures, and experiences possible. He is not of them, but creates them. In this way, the two categories of being that Tillich describes, essence and existence (both of which are finite because only God is infinite being), depend upon God for their existence. All being that is not God is either essential being or existential being. Only in Tillich’s formulation of the “new being” are the two united in perfect balance and creation, and this occurs, initially, only in the person Tillich calls “the Christ.” The examination of reason vividly illustrates the divide between essence and existence, which is likely why Tillich himself begins his Systematic Theology with a look at reason.

By Tillich’s own account explicating the relationship between essence and existence is a lengthy and difficult one. Indeed, “a complete discussion of the relation of essence to existence is identical with the entire theological system” (Vol. I 204). Still, a “preliminary and definitory” (Vol. I 204) discussion is possible, which is then followed by a more specific discussion of the nature of reason. The difficulty of defining the terms “essence” and “existence” comes from the ambiguous way in which they have been used historically in philosophy, religion, myth, and art. Generally, however, Tillich identifies them as a Christian would: essence is creation in its perfection before the fall, and existence is the distortion of creation after the fall (Vol. I 204). Unlike many Christians, however, Tillich considers these metaphorical ways of talking about the nature of essential and existential being. The fall and is not a characterization to be taken literally. Tillich understands the fall symbolically as representing the transition between essence and existence, though the transition does not take place spatially or temporally (Volume II 29-31). Ultimately, because “the distinction between essence and existence . . . is the back-bone of the whole body of theological thought [in the Systematic Theology,] it must be elaborated in every part of the theological system” (Vol. I 204). It is useful, then, to turn now directly to an examination of the nature of reason, because in this examination the divide between essence and existence becomes clear as well.

Tillich contends that reason has been separated into two different forms: technical reason and ontological reason. Ontological reason is “classical reason,” or reason as “the structure of the mind which enables the mind to grasp and to transform reality” (Vol. I 72). This contains the “cognitive, aesthetic, practical and technical functions of the human mind” (Vol. I 72), and is what allows us to navigate the world, shaping and controlling it in various ways. Technical reason, as mentioned above, is only one aspect of ontological reason. Whereas ontological reason extends into emotional life, art and the practical aspects of worldly life, technical reason is “reason . . . reduced to the capacity for ‘reasoning’” (Vol. I 73). Ontological reason encompasses all of human intellectual life while technical reason “determines the means while accepting the ends from ’somewhere else’” (Vol. I 73). Technical reason is the tool ontological reason utilizes.

Tillich attributes this divorce within reason, the distinction between ontological and technical reason, to its being within existence. For Tillich, all existential being is imperfect and divided against itself. In existence we bring reason down to the level of “reasoning” as a matter of course, so it is important to differentiate “ontological reason in its essential perfection from its predicament in the different stages of its actualization in existence, life, and history” (Vol. I 75). There is a more perfect form of reason than existential ontological reason, and when Tillich states that essential reason is perfect, he means that “the essence of ontological reason, the universal logos of being, is identical with the content of revelation” (Vol. I 74). This definition in turn begs the definition of revelation, and it is here, in the intersection of reason and revelation, that the cohesion of Tillich’s system can be seen. Revelation is defined as “a special and extraordinary manifestation which removes the veil from something which is hidden in a special and extraordinary way” (Vol. I 108). That is, revelation is an event that points beyond itself to something that is normally hidden. Revelation, then, has no special, specific content, because it does not portray finite information or knowledge as we understand it, but knowledge of, or unity with, the divine. Revelation has content, and that content may vary, but that content is transparent. Revelation’s true content is recognition and knowledge of the divine: being-itself.

However, when Tillich states that “the essence of ontological reason, the universal logos of being, is identical with the content of revelation,” he is not claiming reason is identical with being-itself. He is explaining that essential ontological reason, by its very nature, points to being-itself. This is what Tillich calls the “depth of reason” (Vol. I 79), that to which reason points, that which gives it being. Tillich is not stating that reason is identical with being-itself, which is infinite, because only God as the ground of being-itself is infinite (Vol. I 81). So as stated above, reason is completed by revelation (all of essence and existence is completed by revelation), because revelation is the knowledge of the power and primacy of being-itself. But just as reason functions differently in essence and existence, revelation through reason functions differently in essence and existence.

In essential being reason transparently points beyond itself to being-itself sot he “depth of reason” is self-evident. In existence, since reason is broken and divided into technical reason and ontological reason, the transparency of revelation becomes opaque. Revelation becomes symbolic and “because of [the] conditions [of existence,] reason in existence expresses itself in myth and cult, as well as in its proper functions” (Vol. I 80). “[B]oth of [myth and cult] are utterly ambiguous from the point of view of existential reason” (80), because broken reason cannot reflexively understand the products of its own brokenness.

This exploration of the brokenness of reason in existence is an example of the brokenness of all things in existence. The relationship of reason to revelation, and reason in essence and existence, is typical of the nature of all being and all revelation. According to Tillich, every being can be a means of revelation because “[n]othing is excluded from revelation in principle because nothing is included in it on the basis of special qualities” (Vol. I 118). In other words nothing in existence is especially likely to be a means of revelation, because all things in existence participate in being equally. Though essential being transparently points to being-itself all aspects of being, in essence and existence, point to being-itself, even if only opaquely.
Through the example of reason, in both its essential and existential forms, we can clearly see the nature of all being in essence and existence. Essence is pure, perfect and transparent, while existence is clouded, broken, and imperfect. Clearly, the traditional question concerning the relation of reason to revelation is recast in this system. While reason is completed by revelation, the two are not at odds, the former is not destroyed or made less by the latter. On the contrary, for Tillich, reason, like all being, speaks of God. In its essential form it does so with clarity, in existence it does so in a muddled way, but still all being points to God, and reason does not point to God more (or less) profoundly than any other aspect of essential being.

Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology Volume I: Reason and Revelation Being and God. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951.
—–. Systematic Theology Volume II: Existence and the Christ. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957.

Judith Butler and Gender Trouble

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. By Judith Butler. Routledge, 1999. xxxvi + 236 pages. $21.95.

As Judith Butler herself discusses in her most recent preface (1999), Gender Trouble functions as both a major critique of feminism and a foundation for queer theory. Rather than give an exhaustive interpretation and critique of Gender Trouble, which would be impossible in this space or medium, I will give a brief sketch of Butler’s major statements and some of their more radical consequences. Once these concepts and positions are clear, it is easy to see why Gender Trouble transformed feminism and virtually birthed queer studies. The text’s foundational status rests on two statements: 1) sex is always-already gendered, and 2) gender is created by the dynamic movements of language and bodily performance, not accepted or chosen by a self that exists beyond or before acts and thoughts. The book explores how these ideas transform feminism and require a new understanding of subjectivity, agency and the function of feminism as a political movement.

Butler breaks Gender Trouble down into four major sections: “The Subject of Sex/Gender/Desire,” “Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix,” “Subversive Bodily Acts,” and a “Conclusion.” The middle two sections, “Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix” and “Subversive Bodily Acts,” explore the thoughts of French thinkers or feminists like Lacan, Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Simone de Beauvior and Monique Wittig. Butler seeks to show how each thinker, despite attempts to indicate a self or subject that precedes language and thought, actually creates and maintains the idea of a prediscursive self. For feminism and feminists, this unintentional production serves to inadvertently reinforce and perpetuate a masculine, patriarchal hegemony, rather than free the female subject as intended. These middle two sections are well researched and important for Butler’s argument, but the bulk of her theoretical formulations occur in the first and last sections. Therefore, for the purposes of this introductory review, I will concentrate on the first section and the Conclusion.

In “The Subject of Sex/Gender/Desire,” Butler criticizes the role of “women” as the subject of feminism. She claims feminism and feminists assume that “there is some existing identity, understood through the category of women, who not only initiates feminist interests and goals within discourse, but constitutes the subject for whom political representation is pursued” (2). Essentially, Butler claims that people engage in feminism, a political tool created to empower and free women, because “women” as subjects came before “feminism” and they require political representation. This is a fairly straight forward assertion until Butler explains her understanding of the function of the “juridical power” which operates in feminism:

juridical notions of power appear to regulate political life in purely negative terms–that is, through the limitation, prohibition, regulation, control, and even “protection” of individuals related to that political structure through the contingent and retractable operation of choice. But the subjects regulated by such structures are, by virtue of being subjected to them, formed, defined and reproduced in accordance with the requirements of those structures. (3)

A complicated passage, but Butler sums it up this way: “Juridical power inevitably ‘produces’ what it claims merely to represent” (3), meaning feminism creates and perpetuates a specific idea of “women” when it claims merely to represent as a unified group all people who are traditionally indicated by that term. Butler claims that grouping all these people together, despite their differences, effectively levels their differences and defeats the professed political function of feminism—to free women. Instead, feminism actually confines women to a specific and limited identity. By adhering to an uncomplicated understanding of “women,” feminism ironically serves to keep women trapped in hidden patriarchal systems.

The construction of sex is hidden, in part, by the conviction that gender is socially constructed while sex functions as the natural base onto which a constructed gender is grafted. To reveal the constructed nature of sex, or show that sex is always already gendered, Butler breaks down the the differentiation between sex and gender. To do this she takes the social construction of gender to its logical conclusion: “If gender is the cultural meanings that the sexed body assumes, then a gender cannot be said to follow from a sex in any one way. Taken to it’s logical limit, the sex/gender distinction suggests a radical discontinuity between sexed bodies and culturally constructed genders” (9). In other words, if gender is socially constructed and not dependent on sex, biological males never need to grow up to be men, nor females to be women. That men are so reliably male and women so reliably female suggests sex is itself always already gendered. Following this train of thought, Butler asks: “Can we refer to a ‘given’ sex or a ‘given’ gender without first inquiring into how sex and/or gender is given, through what means?” (9). This line of questioning means eventually that “the immutable character of sex” is contested: “indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all” (10).

In revealing that sex is always already gendered Butler also reveals the power structures that stand to gain from hiding the social construction of sex. According to Butler, gender is not merely a social construction, but “the discursive/cultural means by which ’sexed nature’ or ‘a natural sex’ is produced and established as ‘prediscursive,’ prior to culture, a politically neutral surface on which culture acts” (10). This move, when a discourse invents a “prediscursive” subject, is what Butler calls a “foundationalist fiction” (4). A foundationalist fiction occurs when, as in feminism, a discourse claims merely to represent and depend upon a subject it actually produced. Since the discourse is “founded” upon that subject, a discourse can perpetuate itself indefinitely if it safeguards its foundation by claiming that its subject is “prediscursive,” fundamentally beyond language and discussion. Butler’s critique is meant to reveal that the subject is indeed accessible through language and discussion, meaning that it can be contested, altered and recreated.

Buying Butler’s argument about the social construction of both sex and gender does not simply “fix” or improve feminism. Her argument fundamentally changes the function of feminism. Since Butler’s argument claims even subjects and sexed bodies are discursive products, the subject/self appears to be completely constructed and therefore malleable on every level. On what ground, then, does feminism stand? What sort of political action can feminism take if there are no women to represent, because “women” were patriarchal, foundationalist fictions shown ultimately to be ever changing products of culture? Furthermore, the very ability to contest the self becomes unclear. Who does the contesting? On what grounds? If the self is constructed and agency does not derive from the self’s introduction into discourse from a mysterious outside, where does agency come from?

Butler offers solutions to both the problems of agency and political action. So far as political feminism is concerned, none of this theoretical work denies the claim and individuals, like “women,” require political representation and emancipation. Furthermore, although identities are socially constructed, stable political identities are necessary for unified political action. However, rather than claim that feminism represents and seeks political change for “women,” she recommends that individuals form coalitions when they seek cultural change. Political action requires a subject, requires a unity, but instead of the false unification of “woman,” Butler proposes coalitions, groups of individuals that may not necessarily identify with one another, but temporarily work together toward common political goals. Butler is sure to explain that even temporary unities do not ignore individual differences: “a coalition needs to acknowledge its contradictions and take action with those contradictions intact” (20). Keeping those contradictions intact means provisional political unities may be formed and dissolved as social need and political expedience dictate. New political identities may be needed for each political purpose, but they run less risk of become mistaken for permanent, “true,” subjects that simultaneously include, exclude and limit various identities.

Political agency, of course, depends on personal agency (if they are not, in fact, the same thing). On the the most fundamental level of subjectivity, Butler explores how personal agency is possible through the concepts of performance, repetition and intelligibility. “Intelligibility” is the term Butler uses to refer to the process by which subjects assume identifiable or provisional unities: “the ‘coherence’ and ‘continuity’ of ‘the person’ are not logical or analytical features of personhood, but, rather, socially instituted and maintained norms of intelligibility” (23). In the case of gender, these norms refer to given convergences of “sex, gender, sexual practice, and desire” (23), meaning that a gender is intelligible or recognizable when these four components align in a way that social discourse considers normal or correct.

Intelligibility, however, depends upon performance and repetition. Bodies figure centrally in Butler’s ideas of performance and agency. With the radical assertion that sex is always already gendered, the understanding that gender is constructed means not that certain free-floating norms are attached to a body, but that genders as norms are fabricated through repeated bodily performance. As Butler writes: “Gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being” (45). In other words, gender is comprised of a set of specific acts and performances that give the illusion of an underlying ontology, a “naturalness,” a foundation beyond discourse, which amounts to what Butler describes as a “foundationalist fiction.”

The possibility of agency in Butler’s theory emerges in her discussion of repetition and performance. Individuals who believe that they are subjects with prediscursive sexed bodies are unaware that the way to create “gender trouble,” as Butler calls it, is not to leap outside gender, but to enact new, different performances. Butler explains in her conclusion: “Just as bodily surfaces are enacted as the natural, so these surfaces can become the site of a dissonant and denaturalized performance that reveals the performative status of the natural itself” (200). If sex, which is socially constructed, becomes “naturalized” through repeated performance, the only way to change and challenge the construction of sex is to alter those performances. This is possible through camp, parody and slightly adjusted mimicry. Such dissonant performance implies that agency is still possible, even after the subject outside of discourse disappears, when everything, all the “real,” is socially constructed. Agency is not a matter of exploding a discourse, escaping patriarchy and finding a Utopian feminism beyond it, but of changing patriarchal performances in order to accomplished different ends and create new spaces in discourse for new constructions.

Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble is a dense book, infamous for its jargon, but more famous for its influence on feminism and queer studies. While the ideas in Gender Trouble have not been universally accepted by feminism, they are alive and well in queer theory and queer studies. “Queering” something, or being “queer” is very much like Butler’s idea of dissonant performance. It is the creation or recognition of a space in discourse or culture that did not exist before, but was created by bending or reinventing old languages or behaviors. In any case, Gender Trouble plays an important role in feminism and queer studies and is a must read for those interested in feminism, queer theory, the social construction of identity and postmodernism.

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. By Judith Butler. Routledge, 1999. xxxvi + 236 pages. $21.95.

As Judith Butler herself discusses in her most recent preface (1999), Gender Trouble functions as both a major critique of feminism and a foundation for queer theory. Rather than give an exhaustive interpretation and critique of Gender Trouble, which would be impossible in this space or medium, I will give a brief sketch of Butler’s major statements and some of their more radical consequences. Once these concepts and positions are clear, it is easy to see why Gender Trouble transformed feminism and virtually birthed queer studies. The text’s foundational status rests on two statements: 1) sex is always-already gendered, and 2) gender is created by the dynamic movements of language and bodily performance, not accepted or chosen by a self that exists beyond or before acts and thoughts. The book explores how these ideas transform feminism and require a new understanding of subjectivity, agency and the function of feminism as a political movement.

Butler breaks Gender Trouble down into four major sections: “The Subject of Sex/Gender/Desire,” “Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix,” “Subversive Bodily Acts,” and a “Conclusion.” The middle two sections, “Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix” and “Subversive Bodily Acts,” explore the thoughts of French thinkers or feminists like Lacan, Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Simone de Beauvior and Monique Wittig. Butler seeks to show how each thinker, despite attempts to indicate a self or subject that precedes language and thought, actually creates and maintains the idea of a prediscursive self. For feminism and feminists, this unintentional production serves to inadvertently reinforce and perpetuate a masculine, patriarchal hegemony, rather than free the female subject as intended. These middle two sections are well researched and important for Butler’s argument, but the bulk of her theoretical formulations occur in the first and last sections. Therefore, for the purposes of this introductory review, I will concentrate on the first section and the Conclusion.

In “The Subject of Sex/Gender/Desire,” Butler criticizes the role of “women” as the subject of feminism. She claims feminism and feminists assume that “there is some existing identity, understood through the category of women, who not only initiates feminist interests and goals within discourse, but constitutes the subject for whom political representation is pursued” (2). Essentially, Butler claims that people engage in feminism, a political tool created to empower and free women, because “women” as subjects came before “feminism” and they require political representation. This is a fairly straight forward assertion until Butler explains her understanding of the function of the “juridical power” which operates in feminism:

juridical notions of power appear to regulate political life in purely negative terms–that is, through the limitation, prohibition, regulation, control, and even “protection” of individuals related to that political structure through the contingent and retractable operation of choice. But the subjects regulated by such structures are, by virtue of being subjected to them, formed, defined and reproduced in accordance with the requirements of those structures. (3)

A complicated passage, but Butler sums it up this way: “Juridical power inevitably ‘produces’ what it claims merely to represent” (3), meaning feminism creates and perpetuates a specific idea of “women” when it claims merely to represent as a unified group all people who are traditionally indicated by that term. Butler claims that grouping all these people together, despite their differences, effectively levels their differences and defeats the professed political function of feminism—to free women. Instead, feminism actually confines women to a specific and limited identity. By adhering to an uncomplicated understanding of “women,” feminism ironically serves to keep women trapped in hidden patriarchal systems.

The construction of sex is hidden, in part, by the conviction that gender is socially constructed while sex functions as the natural base onto which a constructed gender is grafted. To reveal the constructed nature of sex, or show that sex is always already gendered, Butler breaks down the the differentiation between sex and gender. To do this she takes the social construction of gender to its logical conclusion: “If gender is the cultural meanings that the sexed body assumes, then a gender cannot be said to follow from a sex in any one way. Taken to it’s logical limit, the sex/gender distinction suggests a radical discontinuity between sexed bodies and culturally constructed genders” (9). In other words, if gender is socially constructed and not dependent on sex, biological males never need to grow up to be men, nor females to be women. That men are so reliably male and women so reliably female suggests sex is itself always already gendered. Following this train of thought, Butler asks: “Can we refer to a ‘given’ sex or a ‘given’ gender without first inquiring into how sex and/or gender is given, through what means?” (9). This line of questioning means eventually that “the immutable character of sex” is contested: “indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all” (10).

In revealing that sex is always already gendered Butler also reveals the power structures that stand to gain from hiding the social construction of sex. According to Butler, gender is not merely a social construction, but “the discursive/cultural means by which ’sexed nature’ or ‘a natural sex’ is produced and established as ‘prediscursive,’ prior to culture, a politically neutral surface on which culture acts” (10). This move, when a discourse invents a “prediscursive” subject, is what Butler calls a “foundationalist fiction” (4). A foundationalist fiction occurs when, as in feminism, a discourse claims merely to represent and depend upon a subject it actually produced. Since the discourse is “founded” upon that subject, a discourse can perpetuate itself indefinitely if it safeguards its foundation by claiming that its subject is “prediscursive,” fundamentally beyond language and discussion. Butler’s critique is meant to reveal that the subject is indeed accessible through language and discussion, meaning that it can be contested, altered and recreated.

Buying Butler’s argument about the social construction of both sex and gender does not simply “fix” or improve feminism. Her argument fundamentally changes the function of feminism. Since Butler’s argument claims even subjects and sexed bodies are discursive products, the subject/self appears to be completely constructed and therefore malleable on every level. On what ground, then, does feminism stand? What sort of political action can feminism take if there are no women to represent, because “women” were patriarchal, foundationalist fictions shown ultimately to be ever changing products of culture? Furthermore, the very ability to contest the self becomes unclear. Who does the contesting? On what grounds? If the self is constructed and agency does not derive from the self’s introduction into discourse from a mysterious outside, where does agency come from?

Butler offers solutions to both the problems of agency and political action. So far as political feminism is concerned, none of this theoretical work denies the claim and individuals, like “women,” require political representation and emancipation. Furthermore, although identities are socially constructed, stable political identities are necessary for unified political action. However, rather than claim that feminism represents and seeks political change for “women,” she recommends that individuals form coalitions when they seek cultural change. Political action requires a subject, requires a unity, but instead of the false unification of “woman,” Butler proposes coalitions, groups of individuals that may not necessarily identify with one another, but temporarily work together toward common political goals. Butler is sure to explain that even temporary unities do not ignore individual differences: “a coalition needs to acknowledge its contradictions and take action with those contradictions intact” (20). Keeping those contradictions intact means provisional political unities may be formed and dissolved as social need and political expedience dictate. New political identities may be needed for each political purpose, but they run less risk of become mistaken for permanent, “true,” subjects that simultaneously include, exclude and limit various identities.

Political agency, of course, depends on personal agency (if they are not, in fact, the same thing). On the the most fundamental level of subjectivity, Butler explores how personal agency is possible through the concepts of performance, repetition and intelligibility. “Intelligibility” is the term Butler uses to refer to the process by which subjects assume identifiable or provisional unities: “the ‘coherence’ and ‘continuity’ of ‘the person’ are not logical or analytical features of personhood, but, rather, socially instituted and maintained norms of intelligibility” (23). In the case of gender, these norms refer to given convergences of “sex, gender, sexual practice, and desire” (23), meaning that a gender is intelligible or recognizable when these four components align in a way that social discourse considers normal or correct.

Intelligibility, however, depends upon performance and repetition. Bodies figure centrally in Butler’s ideas of performance and agency. With the radical assertion that sex is always already gendered, the understanding that gender is constructed means not that certain free-floating norms are attached to a body, but that genders as norms are fabricated through repeated bodily performance. As Butler writes: “Gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being” (45). In other words, gender is comprised of a set of specific acts and performances that give the illusion of an underlying ontology, a “naturalness,” a foundation beyond discourse, which amounts to what Butler describes as a “foundationalist fiction.”

The possibility of agency in Butler’s theory emerges in her discussion of repetition and performance. Individuals who believe that they are subjects with prediscursive sexed bodies are unaware that the way to create “gender trouble,” as Butler calls it, is not to leap outside gender, but to enact new, different performances. Butler explains in her conclusion: “Just as bodily surfaces are enacted as the natural, so these surfaces can become the site of a dissonant and denaturalized performance that reveals the performative status of the natural itself” (200). If sex, which is socially constructed, becomes “naturalized” through repeated performance, the only way to change and challenge the construction of sex is to alter those performances. This is possible through camp, parody and slightly adjusted mimicry. Such dissonant performance implies that agency is still possible, even after the subject outside of discourse disappears, when everything, all the “real,” is socially constructed. Agency is not a matter of exploding a discourse, escaping patriarchy and finding a Utopian feminism beyond it, but of changing patriarchal performances in order to accomplished different ends and create new spaces in discourse for new constructions.

Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble is a dense book, infamous for its jargon, but more famous for its influence on feminism and queer studies. While the ideas in Gender Trouble have not been universally accepted by feminism, they are alive and well in queer theory and queer studies. “Queering” something, or being “queer” is very much like Butler’s idea of dissonant performance. It is the creation or recognition of a space in discourse or culture that did not exist before, but was created by bending or reinventing old languages or behaviors. In any case, Gender Trouble plays an important role in feminism and queer studies and is a must read for those interested in feminism, queer theory, the social construction of identity and postmodernism.

Kierkegaard and The Sickness Unto Death

Soren Kierkegaard, one of the earliest forerunners of Existentialism, is also a major influence on my work in postmodern philosophy. His use of paradox in The Sickness Unto Death drove me to grapple with “faith” (yes, there is such a thing as secular faith) and how faith operates in deconstruction. I first started reading deconstruction when I was making breakthroughs with Kierkegaard, so before posting anything on deconstruction or postmodern theory I thought I would revisit Kierkegaard and The Sickness Unto Death.  To that end, I’ve revised an old book review I wrote when studying for my masters.

I recommend The Sickness Unto Death to anyone interested in theology, philosophy, religion, Existentialism or, surprisingly, the inner workings of postmodernism.

The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening. By Soren Kierkegaard. Princeton University Press, 1980. xxiii+201 pages. $19.95.

“Despair” in the 21st  century is likely understood in the context of psychiatry, psychology and pharmaceutical remedies for depression and unmanageable states of mind. Soren Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening also deals with psychological despair, but explores what he perceives to be the existential and spiritual roots of despair. The book is broken down into many sections but two major parts. The first, Part 1, is called “The Sickness Unto Death is Despair,” and the second, Part 2, is called “Despair is Sin.” Part 1 explores how the polar aspects of existence (infinity and the finite, temporality and eternity, etc.) comprise the human self. Kierkegaard states on the first page of Part 1 that “a human being is . . . in short, a synthesis” (13) of the infinite and finite. Despair derives from the improper synthesis of the infinite and the finite. The rest of the text is given over to a metaphysical explanation of the nature of this synthesis and the ramifications of an improper synthesis. Part 1 is an explication of how, where, and why a self can fall into despair. Part 2 deals more explicitly with the Christian understanding of the self, including a definition of sin and the self in despair. Additionally, exhortations to Christian faith run throughout the book based on what Kierkegaard considers a purely Christian paradox: that despair is certain for humanity, but in God all things are possible.

After the Preface, the first two pages of The Sickness Unto Death (pages 13 and 14) are the hardest of the entire text. If you can master the first two pages, the rest of the book moves along rather pleasantly. If you skip the first two pages, out of frustration, you’re pressed for time, or you think  maybe you can piece it together as you go, the rest of the book will likely prove to be frustrating as well. Really, the book merits multiple readings, but the first time around still demands a good deal of care and patience.  Kierkegaard’s repetitive definition of the human self as synthesis can seem maddening and  nonsensical at first, but a little perserverance is rewarded.

Beginning on page 13 Kierkegaard explains that the human self is a relation not simply of the infinite and the finite to each other, but is the result of the self-relation of the unity of the finite and the infinite. Stated more explicitly, the relation between infinity and finitude becomes a thing itself—a third entity. That entity, which Kierkegaard calls a “negative unity” (13), is not yet a self. The self is the relation of the negative unity to itself, which he calls a “positive unity” (13). This positive unity or self is then related to God the creator, because according to Kierkegaard’s Christian doctrine, a self, which must either have caused itself or been caused by another, is caused by God. So a self is a series of relations between the infinite and the finite that are ultimately related to God.

Despair, or the sickness unto death, occurs when a self does not rest faithfully in a balanced synthesis of the infinite with the finite, which is in turn related to God. In fact, according to Kierkegaard all despair is derived from the action of the self, in despair, willing to be itself without God. That is, rather than resting in the power of God, the self mistakenly believes that it can control its own existence through force of will. All the many forms of despair detailed in The Sickness Unto Death are illustrated in order to make precisely this point. Kierkegaard’s name for despair, “the sickness unto death,” is itself a symbol for the impotent struggling of self before God. It derives from his assertion that, because a self does not will itself into existence, it also cannot will itself out of existence. The “torment of despair is precisely this inability to die” (18); one forever attempts to control oneself even if only to will oneself out of existence, but forever fails to do so. Thus the self is sick unto death, but cannot actually achieve death: “To despair over oneself, in despair to will to be rid of oneself—this is the formula for all despair” (20).

In addition to describing the many types and consequences of despair, the rest of Part 1 reiterates Kierkegaard’s description of a state without despair: “in relating itself to itself and in willing to be itself, the self rests transparently in the power that established it” (14). Such is the  condition of a faithful self. Achieving faith, however, is not simply a matter of willing oneself to be faithful, go to church, or declare one’s faith. Rather, faith rests on a paradox that takes human impotence for granted. Kierkegaard frames the Christian paradox this way: “salvation is, humanly speaking, utterly impossible; but for God everything is possible! This the battle of faith, battling, madly, if you will, for possibility” (38). But as Kierkegaard himself states, “salvation is, humanly speaking, utterly impossible,” so human beings cannot “battle” for salvation. They must recognize their own simultaneous need and impotence and in that recognition “rests transparently” in God.

For Kierkegaard, a faith that allows one to rest transparently in God is antithetical to knowledge. In Part 2, “Despair is Sin,” Kierkegaard states that Christianity “must be believed and not comprehended . . . either it must be believed or one must be scandalized and offended by it” (98). The paradox of Christianity is supposed to be beyond human comprehension, and “if all attempts to comprehend can just be shown to be self-contradictory, then the matter will fall into proper perspective, then it will be clear that whether one will believe or not must be left to faith” (98). Indeed, if comprehension is a willful activity and under Kierkegaard’s definition of sin despair is to will without God’s infinite possibility (20, 95),seeking to comprehend God and faith may in fact be sinful.

Ultimately, The Sickness Unto Death is a call to Christian faith. His metaphysical explanation of the composition of the human self and his definition of despair both call for an unquestioning faith that is as paradoxical as Kierkegaard’s human condition. He defines faith as the condition wherein “the self in being itself and in willing to be itself rests transparently in god” (82). But if “despair is sin” and sin is willfulness, Kierkegaard’s definition of faith, which calls for a self to will to be itself, is a paradox. How can the self achieve faith by willing to be itself if willing to be itself is sin? Kierkegaard recognized that a human self cannot do anything but be willful. Faith is not a matter of comprehension, but of living and willing and acting, knowing there is no human possibility for salvation, but even amidst human impossibility, believing there is infinite divine possibility. So for Kierkegaard the definition of faith must include an element of willfulness just as despair does. Faith is a matter of being human, but still hoping and believing beyond the human.

Soren Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death is a complex but compelling read not only within the context of Christian theology or Existentialism, but also as a key to contemporary thoughts on postmodernism and its own unique forms of faith (a study of faith is indispensable when studying postmodernism and deconstruction–Derrida’s conception of justice or the gift have a similar form).  Even divorced from historically motivated reading, The Sickness Unto Death offers rich insight into the human mind and will, affording even the casual reader, both religious and secular, an opportunity for deep introspection. If one can master, or just manage to wade through, the first few dense pages, the rest of the work is an enjoyable elaboration of Kierkegaards conception of despair and what it means to be faithful.