Theology and the Decentered self

Questioning the "self-present" ego did not begin with postmodern skeptics. Pascal already raised the question, what is the ego? and answered,

"Suppose a man puts himself at a window to see those who pass by. If I pass by, can I say that he placed himself there to see me? No; for he does not think of me in particular. But does he who loves someone on account of beauty really love that person? No; for the small-pox, which will kill beauty without killing the person, will cause him to love her no more.

"And if one loves me for my judgement, memory, he does not love me, for I can lose these qualities without losing myself. Where, then, is this Ego, if it be neither in the body nor in the soul? And how love the body or the soul, except for these qualities which do not constitute me, since they are perishable? For it is impossible and would be unjust to love the soul of a person in the abstract and whatever qualities might be therein. We never, then, love a person, but only qualities.

"Let us, then, jeer no more at those who are honoured on account of rank and office; for we love a person only on account of borrowed qualities."

As explained by Francis Jacques, Pascal concludes that "the self is a figment of the imagination, and that the love of God alone is not illusory. As a figment of the imagination the self is hateful not in one or another of its modes or ways of being, but in its being pure and simple." Jacques calls this an "eschatological solution," and suggests that Pascal's dilemma - love qualities and not person or love nothing at all - arises from the substantialist assumptions that Pascal brings to the dilemma. Be that as it may, this questioning of the ego comes up in a deeply religious and theological writer.

The same goes for Kierkegaard, who also proposes an eschatological solution to the aporia of the self: He wrote in sickness unto death that man is "a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short it is a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two factors. So regarded, man is not yet a self."

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, January 11, 2006 at 04:48 PM

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