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The Call and the Response
In the aptly titled The Call and the Response, renowned philosopher and theologian Jean-Louis Chrtien revisits a favorite theme: how human life is shaped by the experience of call and response, explored using art as a context. For Chrtien, art is about acts in response to what the artist sees or hears and how these acts provoke responses from viewers. Deeply spiritual and intellectual without being academic, his arguments are unique, in both style and content.
- GenresPhilosophyReligion
144 pages, Paperback
First published February 13, 2004
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June 28, 2024What I got, I loved
February 8, 2021
This book was much harder than expected. I knew almost nothing coming into it, which was a mistake. It is divided into 3 parts, each beyond somewhat independent, but it does have an overall pattern Chrétien is trying to create.
The first part covers the Platonic tradition in relation to beauty. This was hands down the best and my favourite part. The author's thesis is human life is shaped by the act of calling and responding, and in early Greece, beauty was experienced a call, a manifestation. If anything, beauty *is* the call. And that's what makes it beautiful. The passages here about beauty are one of the best I have ever read. It describes the artistic experience and enjoyment in a poetic yet down-to-earth manner which is done wonderfully. But the "call" also requires a "response", and its this dynamic that he is trying to explore.
Later in the book, the topic of conscience and auditory hallucinations are explored in-depth, and this was also incredibly well written and researched. It focuses in particular on Socrates' daemon, and how this phenomenon has been interpreted throughout history, and what we can learn from it in terms of the call and response dynamic and how this relates to the legitimacy of a higher "authority" and whether the call is internal or external.
Other topics are covered as well, for example, the phenomenology of touch or the interplay between vision and hearing. All of them had their insights, but at times quite hard to read, I found it not worth the effort.
The book has a weird feeling to it, in which it jumps from theology to phenomenology constantly, and it's not so easy to see the bridge between them. The theology in one sense is given and assumed, but at the same time, it doesn't seem a requirement.
While I found the explorations of beauty incredible, nevertheless the book as a whole wasn't for me. Sometimes it was too dense or too theological which made it hard to understand, and other times some of the insights didn't seem to have that much important. Nevertheless, I still appreciate the framework of call and response, and I believe it's a useful way to approach the experience of the sacred in a way that's intelligible to the modern world.
The first part covers the Platonic tradition in relation to beauty. This was hands down the best and my favourite part. The author's thesis is human life is shaped by the act of calling and responding, and in early Greece, beauty was experienced a call, a manifestation. If anything, beauty *is* the call. And that's what makes it beautiful. The passages here about beauty are one of the best I have ever read. It describes the artistic experience and enjoyment in a poetic yet down-to-earth manner which is done wonderfully. But the "call" also requires a "response", and its this dynamic that he is trying to explore.
Later in the book, the topic of conscience and auditory hallucinations are explored in-depth, and this was also incredibly well written and researched. It focuses in particular on Socrates' daemon, and how this phenomenon has been interpreted throughout history, and what we can learn from it in terms of the call and response dynamic and how this relates to the legitimacy of a higher "authority" and whether the call is internal or external.
Other topics are covered as well, for example, the phenomenology of touch or the interplay between vision and hearing. All of them had their insights, but at times quite hard to read, I found it not worth the effort.
The book has a weird feeling to it, in which it jumps from theology to phenomenology constantly, and it's not so easy to see the bridge between them. The theology in one sense is given and assumed, but at the same time, it doesn't seem a requirement.
While I found the explorations of beauty incredible, nevertheless the book as a whole wasn't for me. Sometimes it was too dense or too theological which made it hard to understand, and other times some of the insights didn't seem to have that much important. Nevertheless, I still appreciate the framework of call and response, and I believe it's a useful way to approach the experience of the sacred in a way that's intelligible to the modern world.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews