Sartre and Camus answered
Sartre: (No Exit) "Hell is other people"
"When I say I'm cruel, I mean I can't get on without making people suffer. Like a live coal. A live coal in others' hearts. When I'm alone I flicker out."
"Are you sure [I] look all right? ... But how can I rely upon your taste? Is it the same as my taste? Oh, how sickening it all is"
Bonhoeffer: "We are separated from one another by an unbridgeable gulf of otherness and strangeness which resists all our attempts to overcome it by means of natural association or emotional or spiritual union. There is no way from one person to another. However loving and sympathetic we try to be, however sound our psychology, however frank and open our behavior, we cannot penetrate the incognito of the other man, for there are no direct relationships, not even between soul and soul. Christ stands between us, and we can only get in touch with our neighbors through him. That is why intercession is the most promising way to reach our neighbors, and corporate prayer, offered in the name of Christ, the purest form of fellowship." (The Cost of Discipleship).
"When I say I'm cruel, I mean I can't get on without making people suffer. Like a live coal. A live coal in others' hearts. When I'm alone I flicker out."
"Are you sure [I] look all right? ... But how can I rely upon your taste? Is it the same as my taste? Oh, how sickening it all is"
Bonhoeffer: "We are separated from one another by an unbridgeable gulf of otherness and strangeness which resists all our attempts to overcome it by means of natural association or emotional or spiritual union. There is no way from one person to another. However loving and sympathetic we try to be, however sound our psychology, however frank and open our behavior, we cannot penetrate the incognito of the other man, for there are no direct relationships, not even between soul and soul. Christ stands between us, and we can only get in touch with our neighbors through him. That is why intercession is the most promising way to reach our neighbors, and corporate prayer, offered in the name of Christ, the purest form of fellowship." (The Cost of Discipleship).
posted by Annie @ 8:35 PM
2 Comments:
At 3:13 PM,
Anonymous said…
I'm not sure I like the image of Christ 'standing between' people; it sounds as though they'd like to be together, and would but for his interference be having a marvelous time of it. The reverse is very obviously true, but of course it's only a metaphor and perhaps I'm being peevish.
But what would Bonhoeffer say to happily married Pagan couples? It seems like there have been at least a few non-Christians who have to all appearances 'bridged the gulf', so to speak. Achilles and Patroclus weren't Christians, nor were Odysseus and Penelope. What about them?
At 7:51 PM,
Annie said…
First of all Joel - your examples are all fictional. They all had quite a bit of disfunction as well.
However, you have a point. Bonhoeffer's theme throughout the greater passage is (and I'm paraphrasing probably poorly)that Christ is the great Mediator. The Fall separated people, rendering them unable to be united. They are Other and there is a gap (just as there is a gap between us and God). Only through Christ can we relate to God and to each other.
Basically I was going for the contrast with Sartre. Sartre really went for the Otherness and the impossibility of knowing the Other. That's also the theme of the post-moderns and the deconstructionists. (Yeah, I'm on a philosophy kick with my French classes)
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