[Themaintainers] theologies of maintenance

[David Zvi Kalman]

Thanks, everyone for your comments. I sent my email just before getting on
a 15 hour flight and I was so glad to open my inbox and hear that the topic
is of interest to others! Needless to say, I will follow up on your leads.

I'll share a little more of some of the directions that I'm thinking about:

- In Jewish and Islamic theology (I work in both), there are notions of
God's role as constant maintainer of the universe. I think it may actually
be stronger in Islam, because Islamic theology takes more seriously the
idea that humans lack free will, that everything—including the movement of
the celestial spheres—is directly coordinated by God.
- There's certainly a feminist theology angle here—maintenance work is
often associated with women, often undervalued, etc. I think this is a very
important angle.
- For Judaism, I suspect there's a link to the Sabbath, i.e. a day of
non-creation, as the pinnacle of the week. Theologians like Abraham Joshua
Heschel have already attempted to turn this into a kind of bucking of
American notions of progress, but I don't think the notion of "maintenance"
shows up as much.
- I wonder—both for Judaism and Christianity—perhaps not Islam, in which
Gabriel plays a more critical role?—if maintenance is associated with the
notion of angels, i.e. divine beings who do lesser work or more "invisible"
work.
- Of course, many religions place a special emphasis on reflecting on
goodness in the present moment. In Judaism, the blessing said after
relieving oneself has a line, "If one [orifice] is opened, or one is closed
[when it shouldn't be], it would be impossible to exist and stand before
You, even for a single moment." Food blessings—basically anything that
involves thanksgiving—reflect on the path by which the food has come to the
table.

For those interested, I'll be giving a talk at the Shalom Hartman Institute
in Manhattan on May 1 that will cover some of these issues—I don't have the
details yet, but I'm happy to share them when I do.



On Sun, 17 Mar 2019 at 17:44, Bastien <bzg at bzg.fr> wrote:

> Hi David,
>
> David Zvi Kalman <depst at sas.upenn.edu> writes:
>
> > I'm a PhD student working at the intersection of Jewish history and
> > the history of technology. I'm currently doing research on
> > "theologies of maintenance" — that is, understandings of God as a
> > being without whom the universe would cease to exist/fall apart/etc.
>
> Not directly related to your inquiry, but I've always wondered if
> the thought experiment of the "ship of theseus" (which dates back to
> Heraclitus) was born out of everyday concerns, or if it was somehow
> related to biblical or mythical narratives.
>
> > Does anyone know if this frame has been associated with technological
> > maintenance in the past? There is so much rich material to work with
> > and I would be surprised if I'm the first to look into this.
>
> Whitehead's theory of God in _Process and Reality_ pictures a God who
> is both actively "building" the universe and "patient" with it.  It's
> a mix between Leibniz's God as an architect and Spinoza's God as being
> the nature itself in the becoming. As far as I can remember, Whitehead
> does not refer to technical maintenance or to "repairing", but his all
> vision resonates with technical maintainance issues a lot (or perhaps
> that's just me).
>
> 2 cents,
>
> --
>  Bastien
>


-- 
David Zvi Kalman
PhD Candidate
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
University of Pennsylvania
-- 
Sent from phone
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