Evan tagged me because he is an inclusivist.
1. One book that changed your life: Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
2. One book that you’ve read more than once: Jurassic Park
3. One book you’d want on a desert island: Home Economics by Wendell Berry
4. One book that made you laugh: Everybody Poops
5. One book that made you cry: The Holy Bible
6. One book your glad has been written: Any Wendell Berry book
7. One book you wish had never been written: Wild at Heart or The Prayer of Jabez
8. One book you’re currently reading: The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt
9. One book you’ve been meaning to read: Kant's Critique of Judgment
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"I meet someone whom I have not seen for years; I see him clearly, but fail to know him. Suddenly I know him, I see the old face in the altered one. I believe that I should do a different portrait of him now if I could paint." - Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
4 comments:
So you are a wendell berry reader huh? I must say he is the best thing that has happened to me in terms of reading in the last two years. His writting on marriage in the Unsettling of America and in Sex, Economy, Freedom, And community are simply profound and better than almost anything that I have read by the evangelical marriage book industry. Im with you on Prayer of Jabez and Wild at heart for the most part. Anyway keep reading Wendell, I hope he writes a novel about Danny Green, Burley Coulter's son, before he dies. His in only seventy so I hope some more will flow from his pen. I just got word his newest collection of essays in on hold for me at the library so I am looking for it. I also bought two of his books of poetry, one novel and one collection of essays that night so I will be inundated with mr. berry for awhile. bummer.
grace and peace,
eric
I think Wendell Berry has an eye for connections and the importance of these connections for the health of our homes, communities, and world. I think that "prophet" is about the best descriptor I have heard.
Those two passages on marriage are glorious prescriptions (and in some cases descriptions) of what a marriage should and could be like. I really enjoy the talk of the community of marriage, the risk of wildness to domestic order that must be faced and respected, and also the distinction between the "feeling" of love and the "practice of love". Those two essays, "The Body and the Earth" and "Sex, Economy, People, and Community" are probably the most necessary and insightful essays I have read.
I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Berry's discussion of place, community, and home and how that has implications within patriotism. He hints at these implications a few times throughout his writings, but I thought it was something that deserved to be further addressed and wrestled with, especially in the undergraduate community of which I was a part.
For my master's thesis, I am thinking about using Berry's emphasis on community to act as a corrective to Hannah Arendt's distinction between the public and private realms. Berry begins to trace a few of these implications in S,E,F,&C, but I am going to apply them directly to Arendt's formation of these 2 realms and hope to show that without the realm of community, the public/political realm, plurality, action, and freedom (as collective political action among equals) are not possible (and perhaps draw attention to a few of Arendt's confusion of categories). But anyway, this is getting long winded.
I haven't read any Arendt but a little about her in the last books and culture. My masters work (alas unfinished at the moment) was in NT studies at Regent College so I didn't read as much in other areas as I could have. My interests lie more in economics and politics (writ large, not so much US politics), ecclesiolgy, agrarianism and suprisingly theological movements like Radical Orthodoxy. Certainly how I read biblical theology and NT theology in particular is formative of how I read the economics and politics so my biblical studies programs were very valuable. I want to see how the biblical vision of new creation relates to Berry's writings but that is a work in progress.
I originally read Berry for his agricultural essays, but soon found that his though was what I would call an all encompassing vision of wholeness and interrelatedness. In this respect his work pushes me to seek God's future shalom in the present. He is a major influence on me to become a farmer in fact, a person who is the cultivate a part of God's creation in obedience to Genesis 1-2.
I'm curious why you need to correct Arndt's bifurcation of public and private sphers. Why her's in particular, as this split is rather endemic to Western society since the enlightenment. Is there something in Arndt's formulation that is worth keeping or is Berry the foil you need to simply demolish her formulation? Lots or questions from a guy who does'nt know anything about you or Arndt, but I know the feeling of trying to formulate a suitable thesis topic and it is tough to clearly define where to go with it all. I truly wish you the best of luck. Perhaps we can keep in touch.
Grace and Peace,
eric judge
I have a friend that is going to Regent this year and another who is taking a year off and going next year. I am about to start my second year in the MA program at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto.
Arendt would be a good thinker to read if you are interested in politics writ large.
The bifurcation of public and private endemic in the West since the enlightenment and finds its roots in at least as far back as the Greek polis, seems to divide two spheres that are much more interconnected throughout Western thought and action.
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