girltheology

I've been thinking alot lately about school and areas of study and the like. Tonight I've been re-reading my journal for my MDiv Honours thesis, and there are two quotes I've recorded that are kind of jumping out at me.

From Linda Holler's Erotic Morality: The Role of Touch in Moral Angency:

My working hypothesis is that deontological ethics, that is, the ethics of
obedience to law and duty, is the only kind of ethic possible in an ontology
which severs mind from body and culture from nature. A direct consequence
of moral theory's flight from the body may be the formalization of moral
discourse and absolute rules, rights, and duties. These are the
legalistic, mathematical adn abstract values that emerge in the life of the
disembodied subject who looks at the world from a distance to weigh and pass
judgment. The values of intimacy, relatedness, responsibility, caring and
compassion are erotic values arising from sensory feeling and emotional
connectedness. While one may want to argue that moral agency demands both
types of values, erotic values have been dismissed in traditional moral theory
at least partially because they muddy up the water: they create ambiguous and
fluid boundaries by acknowledging the reality of change and
interconnectedness. The flesh-and-blood presence of eros in the world
cannot be reduced to the formalized abstractions of law or mathematics. p.62-63.

That quote being somewhat connected by subject to Grace Jantzen's Becoming Divine: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of Religion:

Again if the self is much less unified and autonomous than had been assumed,
much more rooted in unconscious desire and racked with insecurity, what is the
effect of this on questions of 'freedom of the will'? p.37

This is a great question for a feminist discourse in theological ethics. If we are trying to engage psychoanalysis in our pastoral relationships, but denying it in the philosophy of religion, then how can theology be relevant in a contemporary context?


Just random thoughts from my crowded brain.

C.