Exploring Vulnerability (eBook)

Heike Springhart, Günter Thomas (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: PDF

2017 | 1. Auflage
264 Seiten
Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht (Verlag)
978-3-647-54063-4 (ISBN)

Infos

Vulnerability is an essential but also an intriguing ambiguous part of the human condition. This book con-ceptualizes vulnerability to be a fundamental threat and deficit and at the same time to be a powerful resource for transformation. The exploration is undertaken in multidisciplinary perspectives and approaches the human condition in fruitful conversations with medical, psychological, legal, theological, political and philosophical investiga-tions of vulnerability. The multidisciplinary approach opens the space for a broad variety of deeply interrelated topics. Thus, vulnerability is analyzed with respect to diverse aspects of human and social life, such as violence and power, the body and social institutions. Theologically questions of sin and redemption and eventually the nature of the Divine are taken up. Throughout the book phenomenological descriptions are combined with necessary conceptual clarifications. The contributions seek to illuminate the relation between vulnerability as a fundamental unavoidable condition and contingent actualizations related to specific dangers and risks. The core thesis of the book can be seen within its multi-perspectivity: A sound concept of vulnerability is key to a realistic, that is to say neither negative nor illusionary anthropology, to an honest post-theistic understanding of God and eventually to a deeply humanistic understanding of social life.

Dr. Heike Springhart ist außerplanmäßige Professorin für Systematische Theologie an der Theologischen Fakultät der Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg und Landesbischöfin der Evangelischen Kirche in Baden.

Inhalt

Title Page 4
Copyright 5
Body 8
Heike Springhart / Günter Thomas: Introduction 8
I. Theology and Religion 12
Heike Springhart: Exploring Life's Vulnerability: Vulnerability in Vitality 14
Vulnerability and anthropological realism 14
Anthropological realism and vulnerability 17
Acknowledgement of vulnerability versus striving for invulnerability 21
Vulnerability and Resilience 23
Valuing vulnerability as Enhancing of Life 24
Dimensions of Vulnerability – a Matrix 26
Love's vulnerability – Vision and vulnerability 32
Günter Thomas: Divine Vulnerability, Passion and Power 36
Introduction 36
Historical orientations: Three views on divine vulnerability 37
Christian faith and the ?root-disaster' of the cross 37
The in/vulnerable God and the search for understanding the cross 38
The suffering God in 20th century theology: A solution with a problem 40
Conceptual orientations: Variations on vulnerability 42
The cross of Jesus Christ: Divine vulnerability, risk and passion 45
The cross in light of the incarnation as an act of passion 45
The cross as dark possibility of a vulnerable life 46
The resurrection of Jesus Christ: Creative response and limitation of the risks of vulnerability 48
The resurrection as confirmation: vulnerable life and divine intentions 48
The resurrection as rejection: the limitation of human vulnerability and the fight against the triumph of violence 49
The resurrection as transformation: The power to maintain divine intentions over against resistance 51
Divine vulnerability – Necessary differentiations 54
Apparent divine vulnerability 55
Self-constrained divine vulnerability 55
Strong divine vulnerability 56
Responsive divine vulnerability 56
Kristine A. Culp: Vulnerability and the Susceptibility to Transformation 60
A hurricane and the plague: Narrating and managing risk 60
A society permeated by risk 61
The plague in Wittenberg, 1527 62
A theological account of vulnerability 64
Theology in the thick of life 64
Features of a theological account of vulnerability 66
(a) Vulnerability addressed theologically in relation to an account of life before God 66
(b) Vulnerability as an enduring feature of creaturely life 67
(c) Vulnerability as susceptibility to change, for ill and for good 68
(d) Vulnerability in contrast to strategies of invulnerability 69
Resilience, Invulnerability, and Transformation 70
Andrea Bieler: Enhancing Vulnerable Life: Phenomenological and Practical Theological Explorations 72
Fundamental and Situated Vulnerability 72
Oscillation of Having a Body and Being a Body 74
Permeable Affectivity 77
Duration and Perspectivity 78
Becoming in the Realm of Creative Passivity 81
Divine Vulnerability 81
Andreas Schüle: “All Flesh”: Imperfection and Incompleteness in Old Testament Anthropology 84
Woundedness in Greek and Hebraic Storytelling 84
Human Beauty and Anthropological Realism 86
The Incompleteness of “All Flesh” 88
Imperfection as the Reality of “All Flesh” 90
Conclusions 93
Dean Phillip Bell: Vulnerability in Judaism: Anthropological and Divine Dimensions 94
Introduction 94
Divine Dimensions of Vulnerability 95
Anthropological Dimensions of Vulnerability 98
Earthquakes 99
Plagues 100
Floods 102
Conclusions: Understanding Vulnerability 105
II. Ethics 108
William Schweiker: Vulnerability and the Moral Life: Theological and Ethical Reflections 110
Introduction 110
A Typology of Beliefs 112
Theological Insights 117
What Direction for Ethics? 120
Michael S. Hogue: Ecological Emergency and Elemental Democracy: Vulnerability, Resilience and Solidarity 124
Introduction 124
Panarchy, Vulnerability and Resilience 125
Towards Elemental Democracy 134
Stephen Lakkis: Enforcing Vulnerability in Contexts of Social Injustice: A View from Taiwan 136
Introduction: Vulnerability as an issue of scale, rather than kind 136
Outdoing the Other in Pursuit of Greater Invulnerability? 138
Ontological Invulnerability and De-human-ization 140
To Be-little the Mighty: Justice and the Enforcement of Vulnerability 142
An unconscionable solution? A Taiwanese Postscript on the Sunflower Movement 145
Pamela Sue Anderson: Arguing for “Ethical” Vulnerability: Towards a Politics of Care? 148
Introduction 148
Preliminary questions: care, justice and ethical vulnerability 149
A brief Coda 163
III. Law and Politics 164
Charles Mathewes: Vulnerability and Political Theology 166
Introduction 166
Preliminaries: Context and Definition 167
Vulnerability in Christian Theology 169
Protological insights: Vulnerability as Creatureliness 170
Christological and Eschatological Insights 171
Vulnerability in Christian Political Theology 173
Thinking Institutionally 174
The Habitus it Commands: Humility and Gratitude 176
Practices of Reformation 179
Conclusion: The Churches and Public Philosophy 182
Martha Albertson Fineman / Silas W. Allard: Vulnerability, the Responsive State, and the Role of Religion 186
Introduction 186
The “Still Face” of a Compassionately-Challenged Society 187
Understandings of the Human and the Collective in Contemporary Society 189
Vulnerability Theory 192
Vulnerability, Religion, and the Responsive State 195
The Religious Narrative and the Responsive Nomos 196
The Role of Religious Institutions in the Responsive State 198
Religious Exercise in the Responsive State 201
Conclusion 204
IV. Medicine and Philosophy 206
Antje Miksch: Vulnerability and Health 208
Anna F. Bialek: Vulnerability and Time 216
Cavarero: Inclining the Sovereign Subject 218
Coakley: Anticipation in Prayer 222
Proposals 227
Marina Berzins McCoy: Wounded Gods and Wounded Men in Homer's Iliad 230
Mikkel Gabriel Christoffersen: Vulnerability and Risk 244
Introduction 244
Disaster Vulnerability 246
Insurance and Vulnerability 250
Personal Risk and Vulnerability 254
Conclusion 257
Authors 258
Index 260

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 2.10.2017
• Co-Autor: Heike Springhart, Günter Thomas, Kristine A. Culp, Andrea Bieler, Andreas Schüle, Dean Bell, William Schweiker, Mike Hogue, Stephen Lakkis, Pamela Sue Anderson, Charles Mathewes, Martha Fineman, Silas Allard, Antje Miksch, Anna Bialek, Marina McCoy, Mikkel Gabriel Christoffersen
• Verlagsort: Göttingen
• Sprache: deutsch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie
• Schlagworte: Interdisziplinäre Forschung • Interdisziplinarität • Systematische Theologie • Verletzlichkeit
• ISBN-10: 3-647-54063-3 / 3647540633
• ISBN-13: 978-3-647-54063-4 / 9783647540634