Under your skin
November 24, 2005
V. K. Wilson
Associate Professor of philosophy, Dr. Bob Doede, has a passion. He seeks to awaken the Christian sleepwalker into a deeper self-awareness of the heroic and tragic possibilities of being in the world. God, alienation, death, and authentic and inauthentic modes of living - existentialism calls into question the meaning, nature and predicament of our contingent existence. Discrimination, oppression, silencing of a whole sector of humanity - feminism illuminates the sexual inequality prevalent in our culture. In this interview, Dr. Doede illustrates the value of philosophical inquiry.
V. K.: Next Semester, you’re teaching Phil 390: Existentialism, which seems to be the new hot academic product this year as many students showed interest with a good turnout at Ikuru hosted by Peg Peters. What exactly is existentialism?
Dr. Doede: The term is so stretchy, its almost like if you don’t arbitrarily limit the definition you end up saying virtually nothing because you have to encompass all the different literatures under that rubric. For me, part of existentialism is the idea that humans have the capacity to be not merely morally good but authentic, which, first off, is an unpopular notion, especially in a postmodern scene. The notions of being genuine, authentic, or sincere are kind of passé and naïve with the postmodern idea that the self is something that emerges on occasions in all different ways and guises, that there’s no self to which one must be true, there are all types of selves that have their places in different situations and contexts. But the existentialists, I think, have touched on something that for Christians is deeply important and that is: being moral isn’t good enough, being just isn’t good enough, being good isn’t good enough, in the sense that human beings are more than their acts. Humans are a relationship with themselves, the world, and others whether they be finite or infinite others. And, that relationship is one that can be authentic or inauthentic. So to me existentialism in a lot of its forms are meanings or resources for pulling insight towards a fuller type of humanity, to bring humanity to its fullest, and I think that’s what Christ is all about. Being wholly human is being wholly spiritual.
V. K.: How has existentialism affected your personal walk in faith?
Dr. Doede: My first encounter with existentialism was in high school, I went into a tailspin. Deep anxiety, depression – it made my life more difficult, but more satisfying. I found in those brew of ideas the richness of outlook and appreciation of life that in many ways my “easy Christianity” had numbed me to.
V. K.: You’re currently teaching a new course, Feminist Philosophy. How have the students, in particular, the students of feminist philosophy taken to the material?
Dr. Doede: The first few weeks the students pretty much had their faces tied up in question marks. As we talked more and explored those questioning faces, I discovered that the material has really disoriented them and has really called into question the commitments and assumptions they carried into the class. I think the consensus is that most of the students are finding it very interesting but challenging to many of their beliefs. It has caused them to be more self-aware and critical of the culture around them and the greater culture outside the bubble.
V. K.: How have existentialism and feminism affected Christianity?
Dr. Doede: Feminism has raised awareness of how authority and power within Christendom has been used to silence women’s voices. It has brought to our awareness how unintentionally we can oppress a whole sector of humanity. So Christianity, being a movement of liberation from oppression, has benefited, even as it did in terms of the abolitionist movement, to recognize that the trajectory of liberation moves beyond some of the commonly excepted pragmatic liberations of power and the Church. As for existentialism, I don’t think it has influenced Christianity positively or negatively.
V. K.: In closing, what can a student expect in taking existentialism and feminism?
Dr. Doede: I say in the existentialism syllabus, expect to be jerked around, disoriented somewhat like a rollercoaster ride. Expect to read amazingly insightful and penetrating literature. You can expect to be haunted by some of the questions that arise and disquieted. But it will be a kind of disquiet that has the possibility of opening up to whole ranges of richness that you never even imagined before. It also has the possibility of moving into profound disorientation and depression. So in some ways, courses like existentialism and feminism are risky, in that, it gets under your skin, into your bones and blood in ways that certain other classes where your just sort of manipulating ideas and putting them into relation to each other, kind of watching them rather than eating and digesting them, don’t alter you. I don’t think, after you walk out of the class, having read all the material and been there for the whole class, that you will be the same person… One of the spin-offs of both classes is that there might be an elevation of intelligence, uncertainty, and insecurity.
Now you go...
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