Mercy without Recognition

At the end of The Highest Poverty, Giorgio Agamben ends in aporia. The Franciscan form of life “ended up being characterized only negatively with respect to the law” (144, my emphasis). This problem of being able to renounce what we have become so as to create a more just, fair, and merciful future can emerge is at the heart of Agamben’s long-term project. He ends where he will pick up in later works: with “the inappropriable”:

But what is a life outside of the law, if it is defined as that form of life that makes use of things without ever appropriating them? And what is use, if one ceases to define it solely negatively with respect to ownership?

It is the problem of the essential connection between use and form of life that is becoming undeferrable at this point. How can use — that is, a relation to the world insofar as it is inappropriable — be translated into an ethos and a form of life? (144)

Here we have his definition of altissima paupertas (the highest poverty) in a nutshell: “a relation to the world insofar as it is inappropriable.” What does it mean to live a relation to the inappropriable? How can any of us even envision such a life when we start from modes of thinking about ourselves that are so thoroughly enmeshed in legality that we can hardly see any other way of being? These are the questions that now interest me in this project, Time as Practice. Much of the work of this project has led to these questions, especially through my engagement with Agamben, but also in my recent reading of Hegel and grappling with Nietzsche’s notion of the tragic as an alternative to the twin sins of ressentiment and indifference.

But what is an alternative? What is being altered by the alternative? What are the practices and methods of alteration? Do we need different modes of speaking and writing to formulate alternatives? I do believe that much of the New Testament grapples with exactly these issues. How can we envision a different way of living that starts with an all-consuming relationship to the law but is unwilling to accept the all-consuming nature of this relationship? From where can that unwillingness even arise if the law has become totalizing? Are we inextricably trapped?

In the Christian monks of the middle ages, Agamben found first and foremost an alternative that took a counterintuitive approach to this problem. The monks’ rule of life (regula vitae) sought a way of living that is not reducible to living by codes of conduct and juridical obligations. This rule of life sought a “new consistency in human experience” by actually intensifying the relationship of life to rules that was not merely a renunciation of law. The monk’s life is not a call for anarchy. The aim was to squeeze a new form of life out of an intensity of living by rules (regula) such that the rules themselves would produce a way of living that was simultaneously within and beyond the rules governing the practice. Paul called it “the spirit of the law” that is simultaneously the law’s fulfillment and its undoing (see especially Romans 6-8). This intensity is a form of negation that more deeply embraces the law so as to squeeze out a form of life that is neither a hard negation nor an indifference — both of which lead to anarchic nihilism. As his ending to The Highest Poverty makes clear, this is very difficult because it always must remain closely aligned with negation as its fundamental attitude. As negation, it becomes very difficult to make a definitive break from what one is trying to negate because your identity is still trapped within what you are negating.

This notion of being able to squeeze a new way of living out of that which already envelopes us is fundamental to Agamben’s reading of the Franciscans. Yet we can find this goal throughout his work. His use of thresholds is part of that intensification. A threshold is not a passage from one state to another. It is a dialectic — an intensification that forces something else out of the intensity. It is fundamentally a temporal concept for Agamben, not a spatial one as the name might imply. Let’s look at this in terms of how he formulates the regula vitae that was so central to Christian monasticism and was raised to the status of a technical term in Franciscan monasticism:

… in the syntagma regula vitae it is not so much the form of life that is to be derived from the rule as the rule from the form of life. Or perhaps it should rather be said that the movement goes in both directions and that, in the incessant tension toward the realization of a threshold of an indifference, the rule is made life to the same extent that the life is made rule. (69)

Christian monasticism therefore should not be quickly seen as offering a hard opposition to juridical modes of existence. The dialectic that Agamben describes here creates a threshold not by opposing one state to another — this is a schema that Agamben rigorously seeks to avoid — but is a threshold created by intensification of a “movement [that] goes in both directions.” In The Time that Remains, he called this the temporality of kairos, which was central to Paul’s mission. Kairos is not so much a suspension of chronological time as its contraction from both sides at once. It is an intensification of chronos that does not stop chronos so much as it contracts the experience of it as it deactivates its steady march forward. Tension creates “the realization of a threshold” that can only be understood as a squeezing of the threshold that creates another way of living that is only accessible through the intensity. This is the temporality that we must meditate on if we want to fully extend and activate the form of life that Agamben is seeking.

……….

In this meditation, I want to start to look at moments in the New Testament where we can see something like this threshold that envisions a form of life that takes up “a relation to the world as inappropriable.” I am not a biblical scholar, but it seems to me that it could be plausibly argued that much of what we find in the Gospels and the letters of Paul grapples with this very issue. We do ourselves a disservice if we read these texts as veiled expressions of a code or a doctrine hidden within an allegorical text. My readings will seek to take seriously the genres that are activated in the writings as important features of the message. In doing so, I believe that I’ll begin to see how these texts seek to intensify the relationship to the law — not side step it — but in doing so, they do not rely on pitting juridical languages against each other. Rather, what we find, in part, is a use of parables as a way to intensify the meaning of the law so as to squeeze something else out of it that is not wholly contained or explained by it.

Threshold: Luke’s Good Samaritan is an example of what I’ll call mercy without recognition. This could easily be called “unconditional mercy” but the word unconditional carries some baggage that I’d like to avoid. Specifically, when we talk about “unconditional love” we often are talking about the opposite of what I mean by mercy without recognition. Unconditional love typically means that we love someone whom we already recognize no matter what he or she has done. We are still within the sequence of recognition first and obligation second. I hold myself to an obligation to that particular person to whom I show my love regardless of their behavior. To be sure, this is a crucial practice of time for parenting, and I’m not denigrating this mode of caring for another person with whom we have a lasting relationship. We need more of this, myself included. I simply want to mark the difference in sequence in the phrase mercy without recognition. The latter does not require a prior recognition that activates (or denies) an unconditional care.

The Good Samaritan

The Good Samaritan has been over-read for centuries. In the early centuries of Christianity, it was treated as an allegory of the saving grace of Jesus. This was substantially Augustine’s reading influenced deeply by Ambrose. But Augustine actually referred to this parable many times in his extant writings. In On Christian Doctrine, he undertakes a reading of this parable that is not at all allegorical, but more ethical. (See Book One, 66 and following).

Augustine reminds us that the parable is framed as a response to a need for a clear definition of how to recognize “my neighbor” within the practice of the law. We cannot underemphasize this. The parable is an answer to a question about a legal definition as a practice of self-justification. Let’s look at the entire setup:

Behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested him, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?"

He said to him, "What is written in the law? How do you read it?"

He answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."

He said to him, "You have answered correctly. Do this, and you will live."

But he, desiring to justify himself, asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?" (10:25-29)

The lawyer (“expert in religious law” in the NEB translation) wants a clear definition not just of “neighbor” but of “my neighbor” so that he knows whom he should love and what are the specific obligations of that love. “My” signifies not a form ownership, but a sameness and homogeneity between the one who is supposed to love and the object of that love. From a temporal perspective, everything flows from the law to an act of recognition that leads to an obligation to love. Love does not precede the law; it follows it and can only be activated after the neighbor is recognized and deemed worthy of love.

This sequence requires a symmetry brought about by the law while simultaneously activating limits and divisions — the boundaries of a homogeneous community of neighbors defined by their acceptance of a common law. The answer to be expected is the ability to recognize who is my neighbor (and who is not) before an obligation of love is activated. The temporal sequence is crucial. When we place the problem of recognition before any definition of an obligation, we are inside a juridical language game of codifiable norms. The problem of justification will be circumscribed within the problem of recognition. We will not be able to see or hear the Other until this recognition is resolved. Is this person I am faced with my neighbor or not? Once this question is resolved, then I will know whether I owe an obligation of love to this person or not. The expert in religious law wants a definitive answer so as to strengthen his obligations to the law as a mode of “justifying himself.” He wants self-justification by being able to conditionally recognize those to whom he is obligated to respond when called upon. Again, everything flows outward from the law.

We see here how starting a discussion of obligation from the law outward will lead to a problem of recognition. Hobbes will lead to Hegel who will lead to Marx who will lead us to Habermas and Honneth as Critical Theory continues to seek the normative grounds of social organization. Violence, ressentiment, and indifference can be our only outcomes because we will forever be caught in trying to make our acts of recognition answer to the law and its obligations. We may define those obligations as the explicit acceptance of a social contract (Hobbes) or we may find those obligations in implied norms such as “communicative ethics” (Habermas) and “the desire for recognition” (Honneth). This is precisely the understanding of the law that Luke’s Jesus sets out to complicate.

Luke’s Jesus does not offer a definition of how to recognize my neighbor. Instead, he offers a parable that cannot be translated into a juridical answer. On the contrary, the parable deeply complicates what it means to legally recognize another as the starting point of a juridical sequence that envelopes all responsibility under the ideal of turning everyone into my neighbor. The parable pushes the understanding of my neighbor beyond any possibility of being codified. Rather, the definition pushes toward verbs, not nouns: showing compassion and mercy no matter who you recognize the other to be. We don’t get a re-definition of my neighbor (and therefore a re-definition of love) but a demonstration through storytelling of compassion and mercy in action. It ends with Jesus turning the original question back on the expert in the law:

Now which of these three do you think seemed to be a neighbor to him who fell among the robbers?"

He said, "He who showed mercy on him."

Then Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise." (10:30-37)

We might expect that the text would double down on juridical definitions so as to offer a clear definition of “mercy,” but it doesn’t. Instead, Luke’s Jesus sends the expert in the law out into the world with a new commandment: “Go and do likewise.” But what does “likewise” mean? It means to imitate what the Samaritan has done – “he showed mercy on him.” The question of justification — whom do I recognize as my neighbor so that I can have eternal life by properly exercising my obligations? — has become a different question: how do I activate mercy and compassion when I come across human suffering? The answer does not come in the genre of law, but the genre of a parable that would be extremely difficult to reduce to a legal definition.

We have to be clear about the sequence of suffering and recognition that is offered in this parable. Recognition does not start the Samaritan’s actions. In fact, recognition never comes into his reaction. He just acts. Nor does appropriation come into it. We might expect the parable to end with a new obligation created between the victim and the Samaritan. It doesn’t. The Samaritan expects and requires nothing from the one whom he has helped.

Threshold: To understand the power of this parable, we need to spend a bit of time understanding the problem of negation of the law that is at play here. We will see how this negation does not proceed as a hard opposition to the question asked by the expert in the law. The negation occurs through the parable itself as a story that demonstrates a mode of being toward another that Luke refuses to reduce to a new code. This mode of being gets squeezed out of the question “Who is my neighbor?” The answer is not a new code, but a story that can only be absorbed as a demonstration that one should imitate without code. We must recognize the intentional choice of Luke’s Jesus responding not with law but with a parable. This will provide us with an alternative practice of negation that is at the heart of the New Testament, but is a very difficult message to extract because of the legal and doctrinal baggage embedded in our language. We shall return to this latter point when I take up Augustine’s reading of the Good Samaritan in On Christian Doctrine, but first we must turn our attention to the specific practice of negation demonstrated in the parable.

Negation as Deactivation

We may be tempted to read the Samaritan as negating the law, and in a way he does. But as a Samaritan, he is already in a problematic relationship to the law. Leaving that issue aside for the moment, there are many ways to conceptualize, practice, and experience negation. Negation can take the form of Nietzschean ressentiment where the negator takes a hard opposition against that which he wishes to negate in order to affirm the value of his own identity. Luke will take up this form of negation in the story of Mary and Martha, which immediately follows the parable of the Samaritan. Negation also can take the form of Stoic indifference, which is exactly how the priest and the Levite in the parable respond. They ignore the one suffering because presumably they are concerned with their own virtue, which they are sure of because of their adherence to juridical obligations. Both the priest and the Levite are wrapped in their own self-justified virtue and thus licensed to be indifferent to the suffering of the one they see on the side of the road: “When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. In the same way a Levite also, when he came to the place, and saw him, passed by on the other side.”

The form of negation that is at play in the parable is neither ressentiment nor indifference. The term neighbor stands as the other to whom I am obligated to relieve of suffering, but the neighbor is not defined juridically. It is not a category of law once the Samaritan arrives on the scene. Nor is mercy defined juridically. We must be clear on what is happening here in terms of negation. Neither the words neighbor nor love are negated by either ressentiment or indifference. The negation at play here must be understood as a momentary release of given meaning that leaves the words in place but deactivates their juridical meaning. This deactivation is Christian renunciation as a practice of time that pauses the knee-jerk movement of time through a habituated concept so as to grasp other possibilities. As such, this renunciation is neither ressentiment nor indifference but a third way that squeezes something unexpected out of the questions “Who is my neighbor?”

Rather than being negated, neighbor and love will be clarified by compassion and mercy as alternative practices to legal recognition that precedes the obligation: “and when he saw him, he felt compassion for him” (10:33). “Compassion,” however, is not codified in the parable. It is demonstrated through the specifically named acts of kindness undertaken by the Samaritan, all of which are activated though a practice of compassion that has no relationship to juridical obligations that circumscribe and define the recognition of my neighbor:

He went up to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring olive oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two sliver coins and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, “Take care of him, and whatever else you spend, I will repay you when I come back this way.” (10:34-35)

The only obligation created in this parable is that of the voluntary obligation of the Samaritan to pay the innkeeper for taking care of the injured one. No further obligation is created.

The parable ends when Jesus turns the original question “Who is my neighbor?” back on the legal expert:

“Which of these three do you think became a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” The expert in religious law said, “The one who showed mercy to him.” So Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same.” (10:36-37)

Again, like compassion, mercy is not codified. It is demonstrated. The only commandment issued is “Go and do the same.” But what is “the same”? We’ve moved into a practice of compassion and mercy that untethers us from the law and its obligations. The problem of how we recognize the neighbor is shifted from a prior relationship to the law “Who is my neighbor?” to “Which of these three do you think became a neighbor?” We have a temporal shift from a retrospective understanding of who is already my neighbor to how do I become a neighbor? Identifying a neighbor is a creative act that can only happen when we are sent ahead of Jesus into the world with a disposition for compassion and mercy: “Go and do the same.”

Threshold: We must be careful with what we mean by becoming a neighbor. No reciprocal relationship is created in this parable. No obligation is created that flows back from the injured to the Samaritan. To become a neighbor is not to establish a new law with a new set of obligations. This has been misunderstood for centuries, and it is Augustine’s reading that exemplifies this reciprocal return. Understanding this reading will help us understand how we get from law as obligations to a recognized neighbor to mercy without recognition.

Augustine’s Reciprocal Compassion

Augustine’s reading of this parable in On Christian Doctrine emphasizes the relationship between compassion and recognizing the neighbor that I am focusing on in this meditation. Augustine’s reading reverses the sequence of recognition-before-obligation that is embedded in the juridical interpretation of neighbor:

… so it is clear that we should understand by our neighbor the person to whom an act of compassion is due if he needs it or would be due if he needed it.

But he immediately reverses this sequence to focus on what the sufferer can expect from the Samaritan:

It follows from this that a person from whom an act of compassion is due to us in our turn is our neighbor. For the word ‘neighbor’ implies a relationship: one can only be a neighbor to a neighbor.

We have to understand how the initial sequence reverses to become a reciprocal obligation that circumscribes compassion and mercy within juridical obligations. Augustine’s reading hinges upon the notion of obligation — the word due appears in the transition thee times. Augustine’s reading is in two parts. First, we have the flow of an obligation from the Samaritan to the injured. This is the first movement in the sequence of recognizing a neighbor. All that is actually recognized is suffering, and from that recognition the other becomes my neighbor. All that can be understood by neighbor at this point is the directional channeling of compassion to the one in need. Later, Augustine will make it clear that this compassion should not double back on the Samaritan as pride: we should not head out into the world looking for suffering so that we can find our own happiness built on top of alleviating the suffering of others: “This is something that arrogant people and arrogant angels pride themselves on; they rejoice when the hopes of others are placed on them” (77, my emphasis).

The second part of Augustine’s recognition is where the danger comes into play. The flow reverses such that I can demand compassion from another as an obligation that is due to me by virtue of my suffering. A juridical obligation is universally created by this reversal: “Who can fail to see that there is no exception to this, nobody to whom compassion is not due?” In this second move of making compassion into something that the sufferer can demand from the other, Augustine has made compassion into a reciprocal obligation in a way that I don’t believe is warranted or helpful in understanding Luke’s parable as an example of mercy without recognition. Luke’s Jesus makes no mention of the reciprocity due from the act of mercy. The parable ends merely with the Samaritan’s promise to repay the inkeeper’s expenses incurred caring for the afflicted. This is the only obligation created in the story, and it is an obligation that the Samaritan creates for himself. Augustine’s problem is contained in the phrase “one can only be a neighbor to a neighbor.” This makes compassion into something that I can demand from another. We are back on the ground of juridical obligations.

Threshold: This reciprocity re-embeds moral obligation as the normative foundation of the social. Instead of a story of helping others in need simply because they are Other and are suffering, Augustine’s reading becomes the occasion for organizing the social field around clear definitions of reciprocal neighborliness, which is not actually in the parable. “Who can fail to see that there is no exception to this, nobody to whom compassion is not due?” This is a recipe for renewed cycles of ressentiment as we shall see.

Recognition and Ressentiment

When Augustine doubles back on compassion by turning it into a reciprocal demand placed on the sufferer, he is on the road to ressentiment. It works like this. When Augustine finally says, “one can only be a neighbor to a neighbor,” he has turned a parable about mercy without recognition into a parable about mutual recognition of neighbors with moral and legal obligations to each other. Compassion is no longer an ability to recognize only suffering without judging whether it is just or not. It has become a two-way channel and therefore a possession that passes through the channel as mutual obligations.

It is thus a particular practice of time that we need to understand and undo. It is a practice of time that seeks to contain compassion and mercy within and between two stable poles where each recognizes the other as neighbor only to the extent that compassion and mercy can be quantified and possessed. These poles are the conduits of a reciprocal relationship based on mutual and equal obligations. Compassion is turned into a possession that one subject can claim from another as something due. If the claim isn’t paid, ressentiment ensues. The point of Augustine’s reading in On Christian Doctrine is to make sure everyone recognizes everyone else as a neighbor.

Threshold: At the end of her reading of this parable (which she does not name), Simone Weil wrote, “Christ thanks those who do not know to whom they are giving food.” Much of what she has to say about compassion, mercy, suffering, and charity is contained in this simple sentence. We should turn to her reading of the Good Samaritan in “The Love of our Neighbor” (Waiting for God, 90-106, Routledge Edition) to gain a better and more actionable understanding of what it means to practice mercy without recognition.

Weil’s Creative Attention to Suffering

Simone Weil has a far more subtle reading than Augustine. She resolutely refuses to introduce reciprocal obligations into this parable. To be sure, she doesn’t directly reference Luke’s Good Samaritan in “The Love of our Neighbor” (Waiting for God, 90-106, Routledge Edition), but it is clear that this is the key parable that is driving this section of Waiting for God. This section is a long meditation on the problem of how to activate mercy without creating a reciprocal relationship that turns into servitude. To understand how she does this, we have to radically disassociate some key terms from spatialized concepts and see all of what she has to say as practices of time. While she will channel much of her reading through the concepts of exchange and renunciation she is not describing an exchange of mutual compassion through stable and equal poles. Nor is she describing a one-and-done renunciation of being “born again.” The trick on her part is for the Samaritan to momentarily renounce any power that he might have over the sufferer so that a debt is not created in the creative act. Renunciation is not a spatial concept for Weil — it is not a one and done renunciation of our humanity. It is a temporal concept that can only be activated in the moment when it is called for. We shall have to unpack this to grasp the multiple levels of paradoxical practices of time that Weil has woven together.

For Weil, the exchange must not be between equivalent possessions. The exchange is acknowledged immediately as unequal. Compassion is not met with a reciprocal compassion but with gratitude: “Christ taught us that the supernatural love of our neighbor is the exchange of compassion and gratitude which happens in a flash between two beings, one possessing and the other deprived of human personality” (97). It is clear in the following sentences, that she is referencing Luke’s parable, which she does not name:

One of the two is only a little piece of flesh, naked, inert, and bleeding beside a ditch; he is nameless, no one knows anything about him. Those who pass by this thing scarcely notices it, and a few minutes afterwards does not even know they saw it. Only one stops and turns his attention towards it. The actions that follow are just the automatic effect of this moment of attention. The attention is creative. (97)

Weil’s emphasis, like Luke’s, is on the creative flow of compassion toward the other in need, not on any reciprocal obligation that doubles back to the subject in the act of kindness. In fact, she argues that if a reciprocal obligation is created, it turns the act of compassion into “Almsgiving” as “a sort of purchase. It buys the sufferer” (98). To ensure that the act of compassion does not become a purchase — the obligation of a debt to be repaid, or a permanent state of obligatory neighborliness — the would-be Samaritan must renounce this contractual relationship. At the same time, the only proper response on the part of the sufferer is gratitude. This is the non-reciprocal exchange that Weil sees in the parable.

This is not an equal exchange and therefore cannot be quantified. It is a qualitative exchange that breaks us free of a social field organized around equal (and countable) obligations under the law. Gratitude, for Weil, is the acceptance of the act of generosity as just that — generosity — and nothing else. In Weil’s reading, we are watching the flow of forces move through the social field without those forces necessarily emerging from or resulting in polarized stabilities with reciprocal obligations. Let’s see how this works when she concentrates her attention on the would-be Samaritan.

Rather than “almsgiving” as “a sort of purchase,” the would-be Samaritan seeks to turn the other’s suffering into the other’s agency, which requires renouncing not only a purchasing relationship but of the acceptance of his own suffering by the Samaritan. This suffering, however, is not the same suffering as the other. It is not, in other words, a reciprocal suffering in the sense of being quantifiably equal as the same. Yet it does create a “miraculous harmony and equality” between the two, but this equality cannot be summed up or counted as Augustine’s reciprocal neighbors. We must remain committed to the temporal flow of this exchange that never lands at a quantifiable and stable outcome. Qualitative duration is maintained because the focus is on acceptance of suffering itself as only something to be accepted on the part of the sufferer and alleviated in the other on the part of the Samaritan. To address the other’s suffering as suffering “is to consent to affliction oneself…”

It is to deny oneself. In denying oneself, one becomes capable under God of establishing someone else by a creative affirmation. One gives oneself in ransom for the other. It is a redemptive act. (98)

The affliction/suffering accepted on the part of the would-be Samaritan is not the same suffering/affliction that she is helping to alleviate. It is a renunciation of power that is simultaneously the creative act. This is one of the paradoxes of Weil’s notion of renunciation — it is creative affirmation that is simultaneously an act of self-denial. The sequence is important: renunciation and self-denial deactivate subjectivity so that creative affirmation can be activated. This sequence cannot reverse itself so that the affirmation becomes pride in one’s act of self-denial. This is ressentiment. We must keep the temporality flowing outward and away from our subjectivity and into the suffering of the other on its own terms: “sympathy.”

We must be clear on this point because it is very easy for this act of selflessness to become ressentiment. Are we not, like the expert in the law, one who seeks to understand “Who is my neighbor?” so that he can “justify himself” by being right with God’s law? That is absolutely not what Weil advocates: “A man has all he can do, even if he concentrates all the attention of which he is capable, to look at this small inert thing of flesh, lying stripped of clothing by the road-side. It is not his time to turn his thoughts toward God” (101). The Samaritan doesn’t act because God wants him to act. This would be to put all the attention on oneself and to affirm oneself — “Look at me, aren’t I great!” The Samaritan only sees suffering and in the seeing, “concentrates all the attention of which he is capable” on the fact of suffering.

To start this process of recognizing and responding to suffering by looking at God is to embed moral and juridical obligations into the social field. It creates a Gnostic God who has promised our rewards outside of this world so long as we recognize his moral law and behave according to its natural obligations. For Weil, this is precisely the wrong way to activate “The Implicit Love of God.” It is a love of one who “does not know to whom he is giving food.”

Threshold: There is so much more to unpack with Weil’s reading of our parable, but we must draw this meditation to a close. It is enough to mark the importance of Weil’s idea that what the Samaritan responds to is not an essential humanity in need of restoration. Rather, she sees a bare life (homo sacre, to use Agamben’s phrase) in need of redemption that does not turn into a purchase, an equal exchange, or a reciprocal obligation. With this reading established, we can now return to Agamben’s notion of living in relation to the inappropriable with some clarity that perhaps was not afforded to us mere mortals by the lives of Franciscan monks.

Living in Relation to the Inappropriable

Let us now summarize and condense the foregoing with a question: What is the content of this mercy and compassion? It is not defined ahead of the Samaritan’s encounter with the other. Rather, mercy and compassion are dispositions that we carry with us as we travel (this is a traveling story on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho). We need not carry with us prior answers to the question of “who is my neighbor?” We only need to carry the disposition that recognizes suffering disconnected from the act of obligatory recognition. Compassion and mercy do not start from the need to first recognize who is worthy of my assistance. Does this person who is suffering fit the definition of my neighbor that I answered ahead of time and carry with me as a legal certainty?

The Samaritan does the opposite of this. He sees suffering in another without formally recognizing the other. He goes into action doing what needs to be done in the situation as it is presented. The work is thoroughly and completely unconditional. No questions are asked about how this happened or why. No question of whether the other is deserving of his suffering. No lasting obligation is created other than the Samaritan’s promise to repay whatever expenses the innkeeper incurs in caring for the injured traveler. The Samaritan’s action is unconditioned by anything other than mercy and compassion that can only know what they are when they are called upon to act. There is a profound creativity in this compassion and mercy that can arise only from being present and attentive to the situation, which means seeing only suffering of another and figuring out the specific actions to relieve it. This can be understood only through storytelling, demonstrations, examples.

To return to the beginning of this meditation, we can see how the Good Samaritan gives us a solid example of what it means to try to live in relation to an inappropriable good. The challenge with defining inappropriable as a quality of Christian monks is that it suggests a permanent and stable relationship to the inappropriable that is impossible to live outside of a monestary. To be sure, it is likely impossible within the confines of an abbey, but to focus on monks is to perhaps put too much emphasis on achieving this relationship as a permanent state of being.

The Good Samaritan, and Weil’s reading of it, do not emphasize permanence. We must emphasize duration and temporality. When we do so — and when we maintain this — renunciation becomes, as it always was for Weil, a momentary practice of deactivating a knee-jerk, culturally conditioned response. When we deactivate in this way, we can feel our judgmental subjectivity melt away which simultaneously deactivates recognition. When you do this, you simply cannot see the other within a prior definition. You’ve lost the position from which this recognition simultaneously occurs. In the process, another experience is rendered possible that does not automatically arise from this deactivation, which is experienced first as a release of the unwanted response. In the moment of release, subjectivity and objectivity (as recognition) float away. Thus, the release comes from within the response and not outside the response as it would with a cultivated Stoic indifference or knee-jerk ressentiment.

To be sure, we have to be in a trained position to recognize the response that we want to deactivate. We have to recognize when we are putting ourselves into a juridical mode of subjectivity. We have to recognize when we are marshaling ressentiment, or recognize when we are cultivating our indifference to other people’s suffering. None of these modes of recognition require recognizing the other in order to act. These alternative modes of recognition focus on forces and how those forces bind us to identities and obligations that seek to determine how we act.

I’ve argued elsewhere that this is exactly what the apostle Paul wrote about as sin in Romans 6-8. Sin is not inherent evil but the trained ability to become aware of our behaviors and to deactivate those behaviors before they become habits. This need not be Nietzsche’s triumph of reactive forces as ressentiment. Nor need this lead automatically to Stoic indifference and apatheia. Both of these responses attempt to remove oneself from the situation and stand above it in judgment as if asking yourself the question, “Is this person my neighbor?” In the moment of asking that question, we can feel our subjectivity being activated and walled off from the situation so as to recognize the other in order to determine our obligations. But when we momentarily recognize and deactivate this response as it is happening, we feel our subjectivity melt away, if only momentarily, so that another experience becomes possible. This is what it means to live in relation to the inappropriable. It is not a permanent state but a trained ability to recognize sin and let it go so that creative attention can emerge without doubling back on ourselves to create a justified self.

We will need more practices to understand how this experience can be creatively transformed from out of the deactivation. Within the story of the Good Samaritan, we see but one example that we should emulate when the opportunity presents itself: “Go and do the same.” The Samaritan only sees suffering as homo sacre (bare life) and moves to help without asking questions about who he is helping. Again, as Weil wrote, “Christ thanks those who do not know to whom they are giving food.”