by Jeremy Kidwell
Presented at PG Research Conference in Theology and Ethics, May 2010, New College, University of Edinburgh
In seeking to provide a theological ethics of work, a common strategy has been to deploy a Christian theological... more
In seeking to provide a theological ethics of work, a common strategy has been to deploy a Christian theological concept as an analogy for work. Theologians and ethicists have focused variously in the tradition on work as prayer, penitence, or as sanctification. While early twentieth-century accounts located work within the doctrine of creation and offered accounts of co-creation, contemporary approaches have (in reaction to a perceived over-emphasis) located work within eschatology, including a prominent account by Miroslav Volf. Within philosophical ethics, Hannah Arendt’s work, The Human Condition, represents one of the major sustained attempts in 20th-century to provide a positive philosophical account of work with due nuance to the material details of labor in the twentieth-century. It may surprise some readers, that there is strong thematic resonance between the models she uses for work (most notably transfiguration and reification) and those of recent theological attempts. In this paper, I will bring Arendt’s work into conversation with recent Christian theologies of work. In seeking to enact this sort of conversation, in this paper, I will describe the basic contours of Arendt’s philosophy of work. This will enable subsequent comparative analysis of her “reification” language with recent attempts in theological ethics, especially Miroslav Volf and reveals some surprises in terms of the resonances between their work.
Update (22 Dec): Since writing this paper, I've been working out this broader critique in other research and looking to provide a concrete alternative (my bit on Sayers was mostly just a stand-in in lieu of working this out more substantially). For those who may be interested, you can see this critique with regards to Oliver O'Donovan's work on my blog at: http://domesticatedtheology.wordpress.com/2010/12/21/conclusion-how-should-we-love-common-objects/ (scroll to the end). I'm also working on a more substantial stand-alone critique of Volf's work.
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