[Hardy-l] Tess' freedom

[Rosemarie Morgan]

Yes -- Kevin, I agree and find your citation from Rahner especially apt. 
Thank you for this.

  Long ago I read one of the spiritual  tracts of the Sufi mystics, Al 
Ghazali and found his concepts and ideas  (or rather those of the Sufi ) of 
life, love, death quite a marvellous revelation.

Quite Other. And convincing.

For one thing. in Sufi-Islam there appears to be no fixed order of ethics 
such as we have in the Judeo-Christian world.  Not only are there 20 
different/ separate  words for love of another human being where we only 
have one (which is "love") but also many different concepts of taking life .

However we (in Western Culture  -- if I can make so sweeping a statement) 
do, in fact , also have a host of words denoting different kinds of 
killing  -- from felony murder, capital murder, manslaughter, voluntary 
manslaughter, intoxicating manslaughter, culpable homicide, negligent 
homicide right down to all the other "'cides" : -  infanticide, fratricide, 
parricide, sororicide,  matricide, regicide, genocide  -- you name it!

Isn't it interesting that we have over a dozen words, in our culture, for 
killing but only one for loving?

Even so -- even so -- we don't appear to have a word or phrase ---  no 
"cide" word/   nothing akin to kamikaze or a tradition of practising 
self-killing in place of defeat. This is the idea of loyalty and honor unto 
death which Tess, it seems to me, performs with Alec (for loyalty 
and  honor of her husband, Angel ). She knows, as Jesus Christ knows when 
he allows himself to be crucified and also allows Judas to become a victim 
into the bargain --that they will die for it. They will, most certainly die 
for it. Is the word for this  simply "self sacrifice " ? I doubt it.  The 
law has its own terminology and self-sacrifice (ideology) surely has some 
place in it.

  So  what I am saying is that there is a cultural gap here , somewhere.!

Isn't it significant  that Tess is already "floating on a current"  -- a 
kind of mystical; non-self-ness (I can't quote verbatim). -- is there no 
term for this kind of spiritual drift into otherness ?  Where are our 
theologians and philosophers?

   This is what I mean when I describe this act of Tess's as heroic. I 
suspect our Western concepts/ideas of killing don't fully embrace Eastern 
ideas of sacrificial homicide-- which is a shame since I also suspect that 
Hardy may well have had her heroism much in mind and to the fore.

I am positing no double standard here : we memorialise Queen Boadicea, the 
killer queen.  We venerate Jean D'Arc  who gave her life in war. We 
celebrate Cleopatra who died by her own hand, the warrior queen who 
purportedly gave up her life to the Roman Empire-- and so on.  Tess is 
nowhere in this large picture but she is most certainly in its concept.

Best
Rosemarie

>I came across this nice soundbite that made me think of the recent 
>discussion of Tess and her rage.
>
>Karl Rahner, a 20th century Catholic theologian, in a larger section on 
>death and how it gives r of Alec she finally throws off that passivity and 
>becomes truly active, if in a terrifying way.
>
>Kevin
>
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