Human Being and Vulnerability. Joseph Sverker

      

      ibidem-Press, Stuttgart

Acknowledgments

      Learning is fascinating. Take school for example. When a lesson starts, one teacher and maybe 25-30 pupils are present. If all goes well everyone will know something they didn’t know at the beginning, and if things go really well the pupils also know why they should know what they have learnt and the teacher knows what the pupils have learnt.

      Steven Pinker stumbled into a rabbit hole when he studied language. It was one of those Alice in Wonderland rabbit holes where a world opens up behind it. For Pinker the verb system is an opening to the whole human mind. For Colin Gunton, in many ways it is the doctrine of the Trinity and for Judith Butler it is that some human lives are not recognized as human lives that open up vast vistas of thought and insights. For me learning in school came to be that rabbit hole that brought me to think about the whole human being.

      Learning happens all the time and everywhere and it is not restricted to the classroom. Learning is to understand more, to think anew, to be able to think differently or to acquire and perfect a skill. Learning can make someone change their mind or make new decisions for life. And most of the times learning is by small steps. I will be very happy if this book can be such a small step for some reader.

      As a teacher I rarely get to know if my courses have any impact on the students and I suspect that the same goes for books. Neither will my pupils and students know how much they have taught me throughout the years. I would have learnt much, much less were it not for you. So, thank you!

      What I do know, however, is the people that have had an impact on me, both as teachers and – since I’m writing a preface to a book after all – for the completion of this book. I am first of all very happy for the stimulating and constructive context in which this book was conceived, the research seminar of Systematic Theology at Uppsala University. I would like to thank Mattias Martinson, Katarina Westerlund, Thomas Ekstrand, Maria Essunger, Ida Simonsson, Ulf Bergsviker and Fredrik Wenell in particular. I also want to thank Petra Carlsson especially, warmly valued colleague and friend at the Stockholm School of Theology, for many insightful conversations. An especially warm thank you to my dad, Per-Axel Sverker, for reading and commenting on my texts throughout the years. The same goes for Jonas Kurlberg, who has also been the editor of this book. It has been a pleasure to mix friendship and work over this whole process.

      Many people have been willing to read separate chapters, or all of them, and given much valued comments. For that I am very grateful. Many thanks in particular to Lovisa Nyman, Mikael Lindfelt, Karin Johannesson, Kjetil Haftstad, Arne Rasmusson, Stephen Holmes and John Webster. I was deeply saddened by Professor John Webster’s passing; he encouraged me immensely the few times we had the opportunity to meet. The book is much improved by all your comments, and if it is not without faults, that only means that I can still learn more.

      Considering that this book starts off with a reflection on the relation between teachers and pupils in the context of school, I want to take the opportunity to thank some of the teachers that have been especially important to me. They might never read this and some will never get to know how much they have inspired and encouraged me, but I still want to mention Staffan Södergren at Almby högstadium, Dixie Ericsson at Karolinska läroverket and Staffan Nordin at Kulturskolan Örebro. I am also particularly grateful to Lish Eves and Peter Hicks who taught at the London School of Theology. They showed that lecturers can be not only brilliant theologians, but also wonderful people with deeply caring hearts. But my primary model as a teacher is in all reality my mum, Kristina Sverker. My gratefulness to her extends way beyond that of course, but she is my greatest inspiration as a pedagogue, not only for the self-giving love she had for her pupils but also because of her passion for pedagogy and determined belief in everyone’s capacity to learn. If she would have been alive when I started to think about the questions in this book, maybe it wouldn’t have taken so long to figure these things out. This book is in memory of her.

      Table of Contents

       Acknowledgments

       Introduction

       Interactive interdisciplinarity and human lived reality

       Social constructivism and biologist essentialism?

       Chapter 1: From interpellated subjecthood to recognized vulnerability

       On the human being, or becoming

       Gendered to be human

       Performativity and human identity

       Relationality and the constitution of humanity

       The problematic body

       Actions

       Judith Butler and the person

       Desire and personhood

       Recognition, personhood and grievability

       Chapter 2: Being human nature

       Language: window to human nature

       Nature/nurture

       Unique environment

       Genes, personality and behavior

       Computationalism and the individual

       Webbed causality

       The individual and human nature

       Death of the self again?

       Openness and relationality in evolutionary psychology?

       Chapter 3: Persons becoming in relations

       Ontology of the person

       Relationality, space and freedom

       Personalist and relational theological anthropology