Oxford's Christ Church College, where the Kierkegaard Upbuilding Discourses Conference was held.

Two and a half weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending and presenting at the ‘Kierkegaard’s Upbuilding Discourses’ Conference in Oxford at Christ Church College. I’m a bit behind on posting this, but today is Søren Kierkegaard’s 197th birthday so I thought I should at least owe that to him. Sadly, the volcanic ash cloud prevented a quarter of the European/Danish Kierkegaard scholars from attending and presenting. At the last minute, conference organizers George Pattison and Matthew Kirkpatrick had to revamp the entire conference schedule to account for the disruption of the absence of a significant portion of the conference delegates.

Notwithstanding, the event itself was incredibly fun and very lively. I had the honour of meeting and interacting with some of my favourite Kierkegaard scholars, including Joel Rasmussen, John Lippitt, Clare Carlisle, and George Pattison — as well as meeting a crew of up-and-coming very passionate Kierkegaardian scholars in their own right.

George Pattison

George Pattison is one of the only scholars in the English-speaking world to write extensively on the whole of the Upbuilding Discourses (aside from say Amy Laura Hall, C. Stephen Evans, and M. Jamie Ferreira who have written specifically on the Works of  Love which Pattison places within the ‘Discourse’ Literature), and acted as the guiding voice of the conference, helpfully providing insight into just about any specific point of Kierkegaard’s writings, especially issues of translation. Pattison is in the process of translating a selection of the discourses himself, continuing in the recent tradition of M. G. Piety and Alistair Hannay (e.g., SUD, FT, and CUP) of providing new translations which correct and build upon the Hong translations with which we are already so familiar. Of all the helpful points that Pattison offered, one of the suggestions that struck me was that Kierkegaard is nearly always over-looked in 20th-century discussions of ‘the gift’. All of these writers know the pseudonymous Kierkegaard, but by overlooking his discourse literature, they have missed three discourses on gift, which are all named around James 1:17: ‘Every Good and Every Perfect Gift Comes From Above’.

Christ Church College Dining Hall, which provided the inspiration for the Hogwart's Dining Hall in the Harry Potter films

My paper was entitled ” ‘Practising Life in Death’: Equality, Stillness, and Earnestness in Kierkegaard’s Upbuilding Discourses.” The theme for the conference was the Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses and the Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, so my paper focussed primarily on those two texts, but brought in the work of Eastern Orthodox theologian John Behr at the end. (e-mail me or post a comment if you’d like a copy of my paper.) I had a couple of good questions, one from Steven Shakespeare who simply asked if my inclusion of John Behr was something inherent in the ‘At a Graveside’ text in the Three Discourses. The short answer is that the Christological element was my own ‘leap’, my own creative addition onto the text where I think Kierkegaard very well could have gone, especially considering that the discourses are within the ‘direct communication’ of Kierkegaard’s authorship (not to mention the fact that the previous paper delivered by Paul Martens on a couple occasions raised the very point that Kierkegaard seems vague as to where he’s actually going in this discourse). All this suggests I should have just made that blatant in my introduction.

On the final night of the conference, Dr Hugh Pyper made a presentation about a certain old text he had rebound. He shared an e-mail from the bookbinder (is he an ‘hilarious’ one?) about what all went into the rebinding of this text. The text Hugh had rebound was a first edition of Søren Kierkegaard’s Atten Opbyggelige Taler, or Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses. It was a pretty incredible text to behold. Pictures are below.

Hugh Pyper, owner of the 1st edition of Kierkegaard's Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses

Four Kierkegaard scholars examining the text, from left to right: John Lippitt, Claire Carlisle, Jolita Pons, and George Pattison

Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses title page with owner's signature. But who is it?

On the title page is written what looks like “P. Kierk.” Hugh thought for a while that this may have been one “P. Kierkegaard”, that is, Peter Christian Kierkegaard, Søren’s brother, which would explain why the text was in fairly good condition (Peter Christian was known to not read the books on his shelves). After consulting with Arne Grøn, however, Grøn suggested that the signature is actually written in a gothic script. If that is the case, then the signature is actually “P. Keck.”, which means we have no idea who that is.

Next year will be the second of three conference on Kierekgaard’s Upbuilding Discourses, this time focused on Works of Love and Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits. It is scheduled for 29th April – 1st of May and will be held at the University of Sheffield. I’m looking forward to another lively conference, although hopefully with some of the Danish Kierkegaard scholars we missed this time around.

Lastly, George Pattison will be posting the conference papers on the Oxford University Research Archive (see, e.g., these papers from a Heidegger and Religion conference) for the benefit of those Danish and other European scholars who could not make it. Obviously that means that anybody with an internet connection can benefit as well. As soon as George Pattison sends out that link, I’ll be posting it here.

]]> http://www.ericaustinlee.com/2010/05/kierkegaards-upbuilding-discourses/feed/ 2 http://www.ericaustinlee.com/2010/03/schedule-updated/ http://www.ericaustinlee.com/2010/03/schedule-updated/#comments Sun, 21 Mar 2010 17:39:52 +0000 Eric Lee http://www.ericaustinlee.com/?p=2113 It’s been a few weeks now, but the full schedule for the Nurturing the Prophetic Imagination conference is now online.

The publications page probably took me the longest to make, as I’ve integrated a lot of fun MooTools stuff.  Basically there are now almost 200 publications in the system–previously it was woefully out of date–and there are different ways to browse (full details with link to Google Books preview if available, or covers only), and it’s just kind of snazzy.  I think so, anyway!

My brother’s brother-in-law, Cory Williams, directed this video. Cory is probably best known for his “Mean Kitty” video.

Nurturing the Prophetic Imagination

March 24-27, 2010

Point Loma Nazarene University

Co-sponsored by the PLNU Wesleyan Center, Center for Justice and Reconciliation, Writer’s Symposium by the Sea, Center for Pastoral Leadership, and Center for Women’s Studies.

Call For Papers (Deadline Nov. Dec 15)

Plenary speakers:

Bill McKibben: Christian environmental activist, scholar in residence at Middlebury College, and author of Deep Economy, The End of Nature, Hope: Human & Wild, and The Age of Missing Information

Kathleen Norris: Poet and essayist, and author of Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, Cloister Walk, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith

Michael Eric Dyson: Professor Georgetown University, author of Can You Hear Me Now?, Come Hell or Highwater: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster, Holler if You Hear Me

Emmanuel Katongole: Theologian and priest, associate professor of theology and world Christianity and co-director of the Center of Reconciliation at Duke Divinity School, and author of A Future for Africa, Beyond Universal Reason

Special Guests:

Guest Emcee: We are excited to have Dr. Ron Benefiel join us as our emcee!  Dr. Benefiel is the president for Nazarene Theological Seminary (Kansas City, MO). Trained as a sociologist, he is also an ordained minister who has pastored churches in a variety of urban settings. He is author of A Theology of Place: Ministry in Transitional Communities (1996).

Special Event: Dr. William T. Cavanaugh is a professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas (St. Paul, MN). He is author of Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ (1998), Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire (2008), and The Myth of Religious Violence (2009). A special conference session will be dedicated to reviewing his most recent book. [Note: This is just a discussion of the book itself. As far as I know, I do not think Cavanaugh will be there. Cavanaugh will in fact be there. See Edie Chapman's comment below. ]

Download the Conference Schedule (PDF)

When many Christians consider the prophetic imagination, they think of attempts to decipher how the world will end or religiously based movements for social and political change. The biblical understanding of prophecy, particularly as embodied in Jesus and such prophets as Hosea, Amos, and Isaiah, while including both a hope for the future and a critique of the present social and economic situation, also seeks to free believers in Christ to witness to the future of God creatively in the present. The prophetic imagination is, in the light of the gift of God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ, a challenge for Christians to question the assumptions, beliefs, and practices that the church often takes for granted. It calls believers in Christ to reflect deeply on the ways that the church has accommodated itself to and allowed itself to be defined by the dominant culture and thereby has been a party to economic and social systems of sin, oppression, and injustice. The prophetic imagination provides a challenge to the church to renew its criticism of the dominant culture and envision a new and vibrant way of being in but not of the world.

This conference will explore various dimensions of the prophetic imagination, especially around the three key movements or stages of encounter with the prophetic imagination: 1) dissatisfaction with and critique of dominant culture; 2) taking responsibility for and learning to lament the extent to which we have been complicit with the sinful and destructive forces of the dominant culture; 3) creatively and hopefully envisaging new modes of being the church in the world and new ways of embodying God’s will for the world.

Call For Papers (Deadline Nov. Dec. 15th)

More info here.

CALL FOR PAPERS
KIERKEGAARD’S UPBUILDING DISCOURSES

Oxford Centre for Theology and Modern European Thought
International Conference
16–18 April, 2010

The Oxford Centre for Theology and Modern European Thought, in connection with the Søren Kierkegaard Society of the UK, is pleased to announce an international conference focusing on Kierkegaard’s Upbuilding Discourses. While often overlooked, the Upbuilding Discourses provide a rich ground for understanding Kierkegaard’s wider work, as well as his own identity. Furthermore, the Discourses offer a valuable contribution to a more general discussion of such issues as sin, love,  suffering, salvation, and personal identity.

This will be the first of three conferences on Kierkegaard’s Discourses, and will focus on the Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses of 1843-4, and the Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions. Further conferences will consider the discourses of 1847 (Århus, 2010), and Kierkegaard’s final discourses (Copenhagen, 2011).

Alongside the main speakers, there is the opportunity for the presentation of shorter papers of between 20-30 minutes. Abstracts of 300-500 words are invited on a wide range of themes related to the conference topic.

To submit an abstract or for further information, please contact Dr Matthew Kirkpatrick at – kierkegaard.conference@gmail.com. The deadline for submissions is 1st March, 2010.

For further details about the conference, including accommodation, fees, and registration, please visit www.kierkegaard.org.uk.

Speakers include:

Christopher Barnett
Iben Damgaard
Arne Grøn
Helle Møller Jensen
George Pattison
Jolita Pons
David Possen
Hugh Pyper
Joel Rasmussen
Steven Shakespeare
Claudia Welz

Helpfully, the Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions was also one of the volumes recently published in paperback.

Lastly, here’s the CFP poster if you’d like to download it: Kierkegaard Conference – Call for Papers.

From the record label’s description:

Last year Les Étoiles returned to his home town of Bridgnorth, Shropshire. To Leave A Mark is a beautiful evocation of this place, its joy and tragedies, the town as a container of people, times, love and loss. It is about how a place, or better, the memories of a place, intertwine with one’s self, even when, on returning, those memories are not quite true. It is a testament to a ‘homesickness’ for ‘the memory of a home never seen’, to when the sediment of memory matches reality, but also to the more common moments when it does not.Simply recorded in the front room of his parent’s home on guitar, keyboards and the drum machine on his grandfather’s organ and then carefully produced and mixed by Tim Wright, these are songs of rare warmth and real fragility, rich with emotion and detail. It is a collection to be cherished: one of sadness, joy and uncommon intensity.

Records on Ribs distributes all of its albums for free under a Creative Commons license.  Donations to the label or especially for the albums are, of course, welcome (and I think worth it).

Lastly, tonight if you happen to be in Nottingham, Tammy reminds us that this new Les Étoiles album  “will be launched in style at a party at Jam Cafe in Nottingham tonight. Come down from 8pm to watch Les Étoiles and El Heath perform, and listen to the ROR DJs spin some tunes whilst enjoying a delicious beer or two. If you can’t make it (and why not?), you’ll have to make do with downloading the album – it’s certainly one of my favourite records of the year so far.”

In other news, SCM Press has a pretty decent sale on some books of interest, ending on 30 Sept. 2009:

• The Theology of Money (paperback), by Philip Goodchild (special sale price £13.50)
• Transcendence and Phenomenology (paperback), eds. Peter M. Candler, Jr. and Conor Cunningham (special sale price: £28.00)
• Belief and Metaphysics (paperback), eds. Peter M. Candler, Jr. and Conor Cunningham (special sale price: £28.00)
• Tayloring Reformed Epistemology: Charles Taylor, Alvin Plantinga and the de jure Challenge to Christian Belief (paperback), by Deane-Peter Baker (special sale price: £9.50)
• Theology, Psychoanalysis and Trauma (paperback), by Marcus Pound (special sale price: £10.00)

What, then, does it mean “to deceive”? It means that one does not begin directly with what one wishes to communicate but begins by taking the other’s delusion at face value. Thus one does not begin (to hold to what essentially is the theme of this book) in this way: I am Christian, you are not a Christian–but this way: You are a Christian, I am not Christian. Or one does not begin in this way: It is Christianity that I am proclaiming, and you are living in purely esthetic categories. No, one begins this way: Let us talk about the esthetic. The deception consists in one’s speaking this way precisely in order to arrive at the religious. But according to the assumption the other person is in fact under the delusion that the esthetic is the essentially Christian, since he thinks he is a Christian and yet he is living in esthetic categories.

Even if ever so many pastors will find it indefensible, even if equally as many will be incapable of getting it into their heads—although all of them otherwise, according to their own statements, are accustomed to using the Socratic method—in this respect I calmly stick to Socrates. True, he was not Christian, that I know, although I also definitely remain convinced that he has become one. But he was a dialectician and understood everything in reflection. And the quesiton here is purely dialectical—it is the question of the use of reflection in Christendom. Qualitatively two altogether different magnitudes are involved here, but formally I can very well call Socrates my teacher—whereas I have believed and believe in only one, the Lord Jesus Christ (Søren Kierkegaard, The Point of View, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998], pp. 54-5).

Kierkegaard here is relating this maeutic form of instruction to the way his own writing has unfolded.  It’s also entirely similar to the way that Hamann’s own authorship came into being, although Kierkegaard is leaps and bounds easier to understand.

I think it’s interesting that here Kierkegaard lines up somewhat with the tradition of putting Socrates “within” the Judeo-Christian tradition in a sense.  Justin Martyr says directly that Socrates was a Christian, and Hamann counts Socrates among the “prophets” in his Socratic Memorabilia, yet here Kierkegaard takes a slightly different route and says that Socrates has become a Christian.

Bruce Ellis Benson‘s engagement with Dan Siedell’s God in the Gallery is also now up at the Church and Postmodern Culture blog.

OMGEES, this “No Pets Clause” post on Emails From Crazy People had me laughing very loudly this morning while I was eating my breakfast.  Thanks Jenn, for sending that along.

Second, I have begun a series of posts on Kierkegaard and Socrates over on Cynthia Nielsen’s Per Caritatem blog. The first post highlights Socrates’ importance for Kierkegaard at the end of his life, and the second post delves a bit into Kierkegaard’s “Sophistical” situation vis-à-vis the Danish Hegelian Christians of Copenhagen. I should have a third post up soon.

LOST season 5 completed a couple months ago now, but in the meantime, we have been watching Freaks and Geeks (only on episode 8) as well as In Treatment (only on episode 10 of season 1).  We both really enjoy these thus far.  We attempted to get into Mad Men, but after roughly 8 episodes, we’re not really feeling it.  After finishing the entirety of The Wire towards the end of last year, our standards have gotten a bit higher, I suppose.

Meanwhile, one of Tiana’s friends and ex- coworkers was in town this past week visiting. It seems like they had a good time. She left yesterday, and they rented a car which Tiana turned in today, but as we were about to get into the car this morning to drive it back to the rental agency, we discovered that one of the small windows in the back had been busted out and there was glass everywhere.  And we didn’t take out the extra 10 quid a day for insurance, so we have to pay a large portion of the deductable.  Pretty infuriating, but what can you do?

If we can get our stuff together (and quickly!), we are hoping to visit our friends Rusty and Lauren in Scotland later this month before they leave to go back to the States.

I’ve been reading a lot of fun stuff lately, but all for my studies, which I will save for another post at some point in the future.

Glancing around his bookshelf, I noticed that he had several copies of the new edition of his The Story of God: A Narrative Theology book.  The first one came out in 1994 (with the different subtitle “Wesleyan Theology & Biblical Narrative”) and has been assigned in many undergraduate Nazarene theology departments.  However, being a computer science undergrad, I was never assigned the book, nor did I ever get around to reading it in between my forray into theology since then.  What immediately struck me was how incredibly, vastly improved the new cover of the book was.  Here it is below:

And here is a link to a picture of the old one.  As you can see, ridiculously improved.  Not only that, but it’s about one of the coolest book covers I’ve ever seen.

There is a brief but interesting write-up of the process of this cover’s creation over on the Face Out Books website.

[If I ever got into Jules Verne, this would definitely be the set to get (with covers designed by the same place), don't you think?]

illustrator © Archipictor Ossi Hiekkala

Emmanuel Levinas claims that the Kierkegaardian subject, as radically inward, is egocentric: “Kierkegaard very powerfully rehabilitated the topics of subjectivity, uniqueness, and individuality.  He objected to the absorption of subjectivity into Hegelian universality, but he replaced it with subjectivity that was shamelessly exhibitionistic.” In order to demonstrate this self-important selfhood, Levinas refers to the Abraham of Fear and Trembling, the most offensive instance of “a subjectivity raising itself above the ethical to the level of the religious.”¹⁰³ Yet Levinas makes such subjectivity far too easy.  The self thus constituted by repetition does not precede repetition itself, but emerges through it, and is thoroughly infused with the God-relationship. This subjectivity, then, is relational rather than identical and, insofar as the religious subject is constantly in a state of becoming, thanks to what Gillian Rose calls “the eminence of futurity at the intersection of eternity and time,”¹⁰⁴ dynamic rather than static.  Repetition, as Deleuze reminds us, is always a gift and, as such, a scandal; the subject cannot merely summon repetition and constitute himself qua subject.  Kierkegaardian subjectivity, I would argue contra Levinas, does not raise itself above the ethical; rather, it is raised above the ethical. Between the two there is an absolute difference. And the subject that emerges through the madness of repetition is not a self-identical individual, alone in inwardness; it is rather a subject related at every turn to the eternal.  The highest form of this selfhood is only selfhood insofar as it exists in the God-relationship—inwardness, in other words, gives rise to something infinitely higher than inwardness (Mary-Jane Rubenstein, “Kierkegaard’s Socrates: A Venture in Evolutionary Theory,” Modern Theology 17, no. 4 (2001), p. 467).

Emphasizing the paradoxical nature of such an inwardness, Rubenstein says, “The very locus of the subject’s self is beyond him. In other words, this subjectivity, which cannot be considered by itself but only repeated, is profoundly ecstatic” (ibid).

103. Emmanuel Levinas, “Existence and Ethics” in Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader, Jonathan Rée and Jane Chamberlain, eds (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), pp. 26-38; p. 34.
104. Gillian Rose, The Broken Middle: Out of Our Ancient Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p. 99.

You who are reading this, imagine the following incident.  You are visited by someone who, quiet and earnest, yet deeply shaken (without in any way conveying to you any idea of being demented), says to you: “Pray for me, oh, pray for me”—is it not true that this would make an almost terrifying impression on you? Why? Because you yourself personally received the impression of a human personality who in all likelihood must be engaged in the severest struggle with a personal God, since it could occur to him to say to another person: Pray for me, pray for me.

When, however, you read, for example, in a “pastoral letter”: Brothers, include us in your intercessory prayers, just as we unceasingly pray for you night and day and include you in our intercessory prayers—why does this very likely make no impression at all on you? I wonder if it is not because you involuntarily have the suspicion that this is forumula, rigmarole, something official, from a handbook or from a music box. Alas! One cannot say of something official that it has a bad taste. No, what is repugnant about something official is that one thereby or as a consequence of it becomes so exceedingly indifferent because it has no taste, because it, to use an old saying, tastes like sticking one’s tongue out the window and getting spanked for it.

And now when the man whom the state has recently engaged as a shepherd to walk in velvet in order to proclaim that Jesus Christ lived in poverty and taught “Follow me,” when Bishop Martensen presumably has decided to fight with all his might—for what is official—against sects and heresies etc., and, moreover, when there are hundreds in the service of what is official—then it may certainly be made necessary that there be at least one person who concerns himself with what is official. In this regard I dare not expect any appointment from the side of the state, perhaps instead—just between us—from the side of our Lord. Believe me, there is nothing so repugnant to God, no heresy, no sin, nothing so repugnant to him as what is official.  You can easily understand that.  Since God is a personal being, you can surely comprehend how repugnant it is to him that one wants to wipe his mouth with forumulas, wants to wait upon him with official solemnity, official platitutes, etc.  Indeed, just because God in the most eminent sense is personality, sheer personality, for that very reason what is official is infinitely more repugnant to him than it is for a woman to discover that a proposal is made to her according to—a book of formulas (Søren Kierkegaard, The Moment and Late Writings, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998], pp. 172-3).

• Easel Runic Tie
• Lease Rice Unit
• Easier Cunt Lie
• Realise Cue Tin
• Sac Uterine Lie
• Lunatic See Ire
• Italic See Rune
• Sauce Liner Tie
• Care Isle Unite
• Saucier Eel Tin
• Cease Urine Lit  – yes, down with the Urine Literature!
• Latencies I Rue  – any internet gamers know how much latencies indeed rue
• A Slice Reunite  – reminds me of a scene in this version of Alice in Wonderland – children of the 80′s will know that this was the best Alice in Wonderland adaptation
• Reliance Suite
• Cauterise Line

Okay, clearly the best part of this was, from some weird memory association I just had, discovering that that particular Alice in Wonderland mini-series adapation had finally come to DVD!  –although, apparently it’s been out for two years.  We had taped that ourselves on our VHS recorder and I would watch it in the late 80′s.  I used to have dreams about it, especially the jaberwocky scenes as well as the freaky White Queen–Carol Channing!–who turned into a sheep.  Sammy Davis Jr. as the caterpillar?  Telly Savalas as the Cheshire Cat?  Ringo Star as the Mock Turtle???  (I didn’t even know who that was when I was five years old.) Ernest Borgnine as the Lion,  Pat Morita as the Horse, John Stamos as The Messenger, Jonathan Winters as Humpty-Dumpty, and… Scott Baio as Pat the Guinea Pig?  I could go on.  But I won’t.

I registered it as a joke about six years ago and it became my website for a few years, but it’s finally time to let that one go. At the very least it will reduce a considerable amount of spam that still goes to that old account.