The Call and the Response

Book excerpt: In this book, the philosopher, theologian, and poet Jean-Louis Chretien revisits one of his enduring themes: how human life is shaped by the experience of call and response. Using art as a context, Chretien argues that imaginative works are acts of response to what the creator sees or hears, and to the ways in which viewers, readers, and other participants themselves respond to the experience of art: by voice, sight, hearing, touch, silence. Ranging broadly across philosophy, literature, and theology, from the Platonic idea of beauty to a phenomenology of touch and sense, Chretien identifies and explores the spiritual and philosophical dimensions of the aesthetic experience, rooting it in the irreducibly human attempt to make sense of ourselves and all the others in our world.