Re-turning To Ones Self With The Other
:how I rewrote the themes in my head

A friend informed me that Superman Returns was now showing at a cinema near me here in Amsterdam... of course, I went to see it immediately. There are other things one could say about the movie, but I want to tell you what it was about and what it should have been about.

What it was about:
The justification of our no-fault therapeutic culture of mid-life crisis, illegitimate parentage, and absentee fatherhood (with a subtext of modernist (erroneous) faith in progeny and the basic goodness of humanity & an underdeveloped postmodern ambiguity about the potential destructive/salvific power of technology). In other words, typical Hollywood garbage.

What it coulda-shoulda been about:
Needing the other, and the deconstruction of the autonomous selfhood (as resolution of the freedom-determinism dialectic within personal identity).
Let me break it down for you.
Lex is the banally evil actual Nietzschean Übermensch who defines his own power-morality, resenting "the other" as limiting his own would-be absolute autonomy.

Clark is in the process of "becoming oneself," in a continuous existential coming to terms with his own identity. But now he realizes this can no longer be facilitated by an appeal to irresponsible destiny, nor to autonomous self-definition, but rather only in a recognition of ones finitude and situatedness with the other.

Having re-turned from his last attempt at being an autonomous (Kryptonian) self, finding "nothing there but a wasteland," he turns back to the other (the earth-world, personified in Lois). In conflict with Lex (a sort of alter-ego) he recognizes his need of the other, as much as the other (as a self) recognizes her need of him in order to really discover their-own-selves in them-self in a mutual relation (love).

Of course, to fill out this theme in a film would require genuine dialog.

Note : be sure to see comments below. Leopoldtulip ably challenges my interpretation and prefered alternative. But I now see a more substantial connection regarding the "was about" and the "wasn't but shoulda been" about. In brief, the absent father is actually Autonomy, and Hollywood is in denial about it. Lois is the Real Uberfrau!
Recommended Reading.

Office Hours

I don't have web access in my new apartment (yet?), and working at home has become too isolating. Although I can get to the university easy enough when I need to, I decided to find a cafe nearby with wifi. For today deBalie is my office, but I suppose I'll have to find multiple alternatives to avoid annoying the staff at any one place.

In other news, there is a nice piece about Gordon in the Sun.
Also, I made a second response on DeRegnoChristi blog here.

thesis happenings: pressing on... at the moment concentrating on analysis of Lonergan material.

The Belz Toll

Poetry is alive in the American Heartland. Unfortunately, it's also broke.

St. Louis writer and poet, Aaron Belz, is the proverbial starving artist. He's a fellow Calvinist and personal friend of mine. His work is really good, and if you believe in supporting good art, then consider the matching funds program for Observable. How often is one dollar worth two?

At the very least, you should visit Aaron's website and check out his writing, and you too will become a fan. Because, let me tell you, I've been feeling like that guy in the photo; alone in a crowd, tired, and undone. But sometimes a good poem can give you hope. You know what I mean?

Going Westside

Today I am moving from the southside to the westside. Some generous fellows are letting me stay with them for the next month and a half or so while I attempt to finish my thesis. I'm uncertain about the internet connection situation... so I may not be as readily accessible.

The new apartment is in a neighborhood called "Bos En Lommer." It's considered a not-so-good part of town because it has a higher percentage of immigrants. But even some of the nicer neighborhoods in Baltimore don't compare to the Lommer, let alone the Charm City neighborhoods I lived in.

I look forward to the change of scenery.

Got Liberty?

On this Independence Day I am pleased to be an American, both politically and culturally, more than ever. Being in this socialist dystopia of Europe has reinforced my conviction that we can't give up the fight. We must continually beat back tyrannous aggression. Because, folks, they'll even try to take your milk.

Do you really want a future of lifeless servitude to the State while drinking synthetic beverages? Let me encourage you, then, to get some real milk and to join the Constitution Party.

Also, you should support Gun Owners of America.

God And Politics Revisited

The RPCNA denominational magazine, RPWitness, is publishing a series of articles over the next several months about the political view often called National Confessionalism.

I was invited, as a representative of neocalvinism, to be on the panel of respondents for the "corollary blog" to that series, entitled De Regno Christi. Some of the other contributors are heroes of mine, such as D.G.Hart and David VanDrunen. I'm the youngest and most inexperienced contributor, and perhaps way out of my league (shhh, our little secret), but I'm totally thrilled.

This is my first post, and at the very least I think I can squeeze in one post a month on a Lordsday (as a devotional exercise) when I'm not thesis writing.

Scroll down to the bottom of this page to learn about this painting -->

Of Apples And Oranges
an excursus on varieties of self-knowledge and my thesis progress

After giving myself a "jump-in-the-deep-end" crash course on Lonergan, I began to outline points of comparison between his view of self-knowledge and Dooyeweerd's. It soon became apparent to me that each thinker addresses self-knowledge primarily in the context of their respective transcendental approaches to knowledge overall. So, that was about two-and-a-half months ago. I've done more reading and thinking since then, of course.

I developed my outline further, and came up with my main (prospective) conclusion, namely, that the difference in BL's and HD's views of self-knowledge may be accounted for in terms of difference in religious position with regard to each transcendental method. (If that doesn't make any sense to you, don't worry about it. I haven't arrived at the punch-line yet.) So, I was feeling pretty good about everything up to that point. However, in the back of my mind there was this nagging dark spot, like I was missing something important.

Then I read Lonergan's 1974 lecture Self-transcendence: Intellectual, Moral, and Religious. He begins by distinguishing self as substance from self as subject. I got distracted for quite a while on the issue of Death of the Subject, and how HD answers the problem, and trying to think through BL's approach to it. This was a mistake, because it turns out not to relate directly to my actual thesis. I wrestled myself free from that rabbit trail when BL's statements about religious self-transcendence began to pose a difficulty for how I had been conceiving of his view of self-knowledge so far. That's not so important in itself at the moment (although it may turn out to be decisive for my conclusion, but we'll set it aside for now).

The upshot of this was that it caused me to focus on what BL might be saying about self as substance. He didn't elaborate much on that in the aforementioned lecture, but I began to compare what I knew of his substance idea with what HD says about substance and selfhood. Eventually, I realized that in all my notes and outlines, I hadn't actually provided for discussing what view these guys have of the actual "Self." I had only been paying attention to what they say about knowing the self, and had left their view of self per se out of the outlines! Oops. "But, easy enough to correct," I thought. And I wondered how in the world I could have overlooked something so seemingly basic.

Well, turns out it's not so easy to correct. You see, around the same time, I came across a philosophical encyclopedia article on self-knowledge. The thing that jumped out at me was the primary division between views that address self-knowledge in terms of knowledge of ones own "characteristics," particularly ones mental states (cognition, etc), and views that address knowledge of the self per se. And it occurred to me that this is the sort of difference we have between BL and HD. Then I realized this was probably exactly the point my thesis supervisor, Dr. Geertsema, was getting at a month ago when he tried to direct me in explicitly considering the question of what effect the respective contexts of each transcendental method has on each view of self-knowledge, and whether or to what degree that context is in some way determinative for either view. I could cry. This insight was so obvious, staring me in the face the whole time, and I couldn't see it. Lonerganians around the world can have a good chuckle (sorta an inside joke).

So, now I'm looking for apples to compare with apples, and oranges to compare with oranges, because presently I've got an apple and an orange, and the number of interesting things one can say in a Masters thesis about how these are not comparable is fairly limited. No doubt, contrasts are important (my prospective conclusion is basically a contrast), but I need to draw the lines of "same fruit" contrasts, if you know what I mean. In any case, I thank the Lord for bringing me this far. Continue to pray with me, as I work to avoid irrelevant kiwis and try not to slip on anymore bananas; as I work to find the contrasting fruit (and root) ideas of relating varieties.

Katie Ward Knutson

I count it a privilege to have skilled friends in the arts. Recently, I've been enjoying Knutson's work.

Perhaps you're an artist, somewhere out there, reading this... and you feel isolated and unsupported and misunderstood. Well, if it means anything, I hope you keep at it, keep creating. This world needs more artists. I believe that.

American Goes To Parliament

On Wednesday I visited the Hague, got a nice tour of parliamentary buildings, and spoke with a Representative in the "Tweede Kamer" (second chamber) from the CDA. I would have preferred to also meet with CU folk, but they have a comparatively small staff and simply couldn't spare the time. In the afternoon, I was in Utrecht and met with reps from the Christian Trade Union Federation (CNV-NL). I like those guys a lot, and hope to keep in touch. They have a historical connection with the CLA-USA, I think.

The weather was terribly stormy and chilly --a bit of hail and the hardest rain I've seen in the Netherlands-- but I managed to avoid getting soaked.

In other news, one of my heroes, Michael Farris of Patrick Henry College, has been in the media a bit lately. Listen to his FreshAir interview here. In my youth I was enamored with Terry Gross (perhaps I was under the false impression that she was critical and bohemian, rather than a plain ole establishment lefty), now I just listen to hear her sound incredulous when speaking to or about bible-believers.

Don't Ask... Just Yet

This morning after church, a friend showed me this t-shirt someone gave him. It says "Don't ask me about my thesis." I had to laugh, as that's pretty much my sentiment, but I will report on my progress soon enough.
I was reminded of a few other t-shirts I've seen and admired: 1, 2.

I'm happy to report that I will have a version of my paper on Sphere Sovereingty published in the June issue of Griffin's View, the Vrije Universiteit LLM journal of international and comparative law. This will be my first genuine academic publication. I'm quite excited about it. The journal has received some serious professional recognition, at least in the Netherlands, so I'm curious whether my views will get any attention. I would be surprised. The bulk of the paper is the same (ie, explicating Dooyeweerd's conception), but I wrote a new conclusion, applying Sphere Sovereingty to state legislation and "social responsibility" in general.

Speaking of things political, David Koyzis alerts us to Chris Erickson's Christian Democratic Union site. As I comment on Koyzis' post, I think if one knows something about William Jennings Bryan (other than his racism, prohibitionism, anti-evolutionism, and relation to the Wizard of OZ), then imagining such a view in the U.S. context --a view that may otherwise seem to be a European or Latin American political phenomenon-- will be easier. Despite the willingness of some Kuyperian-influenced political thinkers (eg, CPJ) to align themselves with the outlines of the so-called Christian-Democratic approach, I find the inherent Statism (socialism) in such views utterly untenable and opposite the principles of genuine neocalvinism.

update : Check out Philosophia Reformata, the journal of the Association for Reformational Philosophy. Once again, thanks to Steve Bishop! The Nederlanders don't know it yet, but we're plotting to take over the entire organization. The good news of Reformational scholarship has been keep hidden by the "Dutch Mafia" for far, far too long.