Document Type
Article
Date
2011
Keywords
Philosophy, Postmodernism, Analysis, Religion, Hands, Photographs, Reading
Language
English
Disciplines
Philosophy | Photography | Reading and Language | Religion
Description/Abstract
That the lives of saints constitute an unmediated appeal suggests both a call to imitate what cannot be imitated (thus can result in no mimesis of sameness) and a call to respond to the extremity of the saint's vulnerability; and I would suggest that the two calls turn out to be the same. Because the saint is radically open to the need of others, she is endlessly vulnerable to need herself (she will give everything, again and again); and because she is endlessly vulnerable to need herself, she is radically open to the need of others.
Recommended Citation
Burrus, Virginia, "Wyschogrod’s Hand: Saints, Animality, and the Labor of Love" (2011). Religion - All Scholarship. 100.
https://surface.syr.edu/rel/100
Additional Information
This is the final publisher's version of "Wyschogrod’s Hand: Saints, Animality, and the Labor of Love," by Virginia Burrus. It first appeared in the Winter 2011 volume of Philosophy Today, 55(4).