Here is a case study in the midst of considering whether a 65 year old man, diagnosed with a
70% blockage of the left ventral heart artery, should go as scheduled for a
cardiac cath and stent, and perhaps a bypass if so judged when he is opened up, when he will
have no say in those decisions, and indeed is rushed into it by
situations that may seem commercial in intent rather than medical--0r
should he wait, deliberate, discuss, get second opinions, consider the
hard work of ten years of dietary intention?
This is all piled upon him
in the moment, the miracle cure vs. the rehab. Certainly no one who
loves him can know for sure which is best, so their dilemma is the same
as his, what to do. The secret witnessing comes about when those who
only want him to live and live well consider how on one hand the nurse
who works the cardiac unit and knows the outcomes and docs and specialists
thinks it should be done, but the FP doc who has seen too many rushes to
judgment wants to delay and consider and reconsider before the
invasion. A third outcome was overheard in a public hot tub at an athletic club, by a non medical person who has no point of view from
experience, --but secretly witnesses this conversation in the hot tub the day the operation is to occur --which makes it seem orchestrated just for his benefit, as if a script had been sovereignly written and put into the mouths of strangers to be spoken
in his hearing for his benefit, as if the lines had been written before, and while they
were put into their mouths by intention, the speakers themselves knew
nothing of that intent or his interest, as if they were puppets.
This is What the Puppets Said
And what did the puppets say that evening loud in the hot tub because of the echoes before the decision was made?
:::That Ginger had been given a stent which she later found out she did not need. Only then had she gotten a second opinion, and that the stent had been sold to her on the basis that something worse could happen, that is, by fear.
The person witnessing this puppet
show then has to ask whether it was all made for him, which seems
astonishing, the upshot being that that kind of love and concern could exist and that it
would trouble itself to so inform him. It only remains for us to know
that the two days in these concerns and discussions prior he had been
seeking direction in secret prayer, which brings us to Derrida.
We are the sacrifice: "that same "society"
[that] puts to death or allows to die of hunger and disease tens of
millions of children without any moral or legal tribunal ever being
considered competent to judge such a sacrifice, the sacrifice of others
to avoid being sacrificed oneself" (Gift of Death, 86). This is
based on the Abraham/Isaac account and Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling for those who follow a path invisible to others,
"once I have within me... a witness that others cannot see and who is
therefore at the same time other than me and more intimate with me than
myself, once there is secrecy and secret witnessing within me, then what
I call God exists, (there is) what I call God in me" (109). This SECRET
WITNESSING K bases on Matthew, "thy Father
which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly," as "the possibility I have of keeping a
secret that is visible from the interior but not from the exterior".
This the terrain where the giving of the gift of death
permeates the New Testament sacrifice referred to in the statement, I die
daily. The paradox of these statements is acknowledged but not
resolved. Derrida says, "the great decisions that must be taken and must
be affirmed are taken and affirmed in this relation to the undecidable
itself; at the very moment at which they are no longer possible, they
become possible. These are the only decisions possible — impossible
ones. Thinking of Kierkegaard's Abraham, the only decision possible is the
impossible decision. It is when it is not possible to know what must be
done, when knowledge is not and cannot be determining, that a decision is
possible as such" (Derrida, Points:Interviews, 1995 cited by
Bennington, A Moment of Madness, Derrida's Kierkegaard).We are always brought up against dilemmas where we cannot know for certain the
outcome.
It might be
possible to humanize this paradox if we acknowledge Kierkegaard's meditation on the impossible
choice Abraham was confronted with, to kill his son, all motivated by inward seeing. Indeed Kierkegaard says Abraham said nothing
to Sarah. It is all background narrative (Auerbach http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odysseus...
). Kierkegaard says that Abraham feigned madness in order to save Isaac's faith.
Better to think his father mad than have his son doubt the Provision of
El Shaddhi.
"God, as wholly other, is to be found
everywhere there is something of the wholly other. And since each of us,
everyone else, each other is infinitely other in its absolute
singularity, inaccessible, solitary, transcendent, nonmanifest... then
what can be said about Abraham's relation to God can be said about my
reaction to every other (one) as every (bit) other [tout autre comme
tout autre], in particular my relation to my neighbor or my loved ones
who are as inaccessible to me, as secret and transcendent as Jahweh".
(Derrida, 78)
Abraham's fear and trembling
confronts an ultimate duty which transcends conventional
morality. General and absolute responsibility must, according to
Derrida's analysis, stand in opposition. The critique of general
convention is furthered by the recognition that society itself chooses to help one and neglect another, to align with one
and war with another, all the time itself unable to justify its choices
to any other but itself. Had the ram failed to appear before Abraham, he
may well have killed Isaac, an act which society would deem reprehensible and condemn accordingly. And yet, Derrida points out,
"the smooth functioning of such a society, the monotonous
complacency of its discourses on morality, politics, and the law, and
the exercise of its rights, are in no way impaired by the fact that,
because of the structure of the laws of the market that society has
instituted and controls, because of the mechanisms of external debt and
other similar inequities, that same "society" puts to death or allows to
die of hunger and disease tens of millions of children without any
moral or legal tribunal ever being considered competent to judge such a
sacrifice, the sacrifice of others to avoid being sacrificed oneself".
(86)
Such social order, Derrida asserts, is
founded upon a bottomless chaos which will inevitably reveal itself as
such to those who now depend so heavily upon it. As an alternative to
such economies of markets and debt, Derrida points to a truth he finds
embedded in the Abraham narrative. In the moment Abraham embraced
the paradox and submitted to absolute duty (and thereby transcended and
transgressed general duty) God returned his son Isaac and thus revealed
that the paradox itself yields a reward.
To uncover what such an
economy might mean, and find the key in the thrice repeated promise Derrida takes up Matthew,
"thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee". After delineating
the invisible, spiritual nature of the reward in opposition to
its being earthly, Derrida turns to the meaning of
"seeing in secret...the clarity of divine
lucidity [that] penetrates everything yet keeps within itself the most
secret of secrets" (108). He proposes an
understanding of God as "the name of the possibility I have of keeping a
secret that is visible from the interior but not from the exterior."
But Derrida is not in the hot tub in faith, he is spinning in a darkness upon the face of the waters. "Once I have within me... a witness that
others cannot see and who is therefore at the same time other than me
and more intimate with me than myself, once there is secrecy and secret
witnessing within me, then what I call God exists, (there is) what I
call God in me, (it happens that) I call myself God. God is in me, he is
the absolute "me" or "self"... And he is made manifest... when there
appears the desire and power to render absolutely invisible and to
constitute within oneself a witness of that invisibility". (109) You can call yourself a god or a man. A therefore A.
http://www.quodlibet.net/gift.shtml
God replaced with the
incorporeal individual transfers the origin of responsibility from an
dreadful encounter with the transcendent mysterium to an indiscernible (secret) encounter with the invisible within oneself. But the Father is not a mysterium to those who know Him, whose minds are stayed on Him, who trust in Him. But I don't have to understand his providing
the border of the undecidable would not be a decision. The gravest decision (how philosophers and critics overwrite) — the Wager, the Sacrifice of Isaac — the great decisions that must be taken and must be affirmed are taken and affirmed in this relation to the undecidable itself. Shall I fight in the Resistance or take care of my mother? Sartre. These are the only decisions possible — impossible ones. It is when it is not possible to know what must be done, when knowledge is not and cannot be determining that a decision is possible as such."
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