POWER / VULNERABILITY

Power stands over vulnerability, weapon ready for use. Power and vulnerability are reciprocal possibilities, the two faces of action: the one who does, and the one done to. Power is the wherewithal to wield the knife; vulnerability is the capacity to bleed. Vulnerability is the soft-underbelly of power.

The root meaning of the adjective vulnerable is the ability to be wounded. It implies the possibility of being opened literally, and also more metaphorically to be open to assault or attack. There is no love without vulnerability, so the sages all say; but in all out war one seeks out and attempts to exploit every vulnerability to the extent possible (or strategic). And how else does love conquer all, but by overwhelming every last vulnerability?

“The essence of Government is power,” as US founding father James Madison said, pointing to the perpetual possibility of abuse. War too, being ‘politics by other means’ (Prussian military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz), shares the same essence with government; that essence is power. So the military aspect of power is only a different face of the power invested in the state. Democracy is the wounding of the people for the people, instead of for the sake of elites. At best it moderates the monopoly on violence inherent in the political system. Cultural schlock then salves the wound, taming the injured Leviathan.

But might is not the only power. Love is also a power that transforms, works through frailties, destroys defences, overcomes by exploiting weaknesses, and rules lives. Love can govern. When we wound our internal enemies (such as the emotional vices of anger, jealousy, greed and ill-will) the heart is opened to the hurt as well as the joy of love. The path of vulnerability is also a path of growth, of renewal, not only of destruction. Love sacks the heart, rendering it powerless but to obey love’s dictates. So does love share the essence of war and governance? Perhaps love is war by peaceful means. But there is nothing peaceful about anger, jealousy and ill-will.

Power and vulnerability vary together through thick and thin, and present the essence at once of love and war, state and revolt, the knife and the cut. But, strange to say, these remarkable twins are also the essence of God. Or rather, they are among the essences of God – for who can count or specify absolute infinity? I am speaking here semantically, in reference to the names and ideas of God, and without existential import. Let my words be free of all metaphysical postulation. To say that power or vulnerability is the essence of God is to say that it is part of the idea of God (a semantic analysis, not a theological proclamation). You have no sympathetic understanding at all of God if you cannot conceive of the power of God, that is, of the inconceivably great power. True, God has other conceptual attributes, necessary qualities, such as infinite wisdom or infinite benevolence. Moreover, these attributes have even been said to contradict or limit the infinite power of God (the so-called problem of evil). Some defend God against the evil in the world; others refute God on evidence of that same evil; others still demote the ontological status of evil to mere appearance or illusion. Hear it said here: all three sides of this debate concedes that God is essentially power, to wit, omnipotence. Power is of the essence of God, or you have some weak and ineffective deity with good intentions at best, tragic foreknowledge at worst, but essentially helpless in the face of capricious fate (moirae).

The Chinese word te or (de) in the famous title by Lao-tzu, Tao Te Ching, represents virtue or power. The book (ching) of the way (tao) and its power (te). This is the power in virtue of which the nameless Tao gets everything done. The term virtue has a clear connotation of a specific capacity or power, an excellence of achievement, thought, or action. So in the Tao infinite power and infinite virtue are harmoniously united, and the problem of evil does not arise. This is because the Tao essentially transcends the category of good and evil. Properly speaking, so does love, which, when unconditional, loves irrespective of moral worth, each according to its kind. The Tao is also the nurturing mother, who does not neglect even her most monstrous children. Any yet the Tao is as soft as baby’s breath, as weak as water, as frail and vulnerable as one crossing a winter’s stream. The Tao is the divine vulnerability, also expressed as the infinite suffering and powerlessness of God, and in the absolute vulnerability of Jesus dying at the hands of the ignorant, and of the violence inherent in the system.

The state, war, love, god, virtue: power and vulnerability cut through them all like a double-edge knife. Words too can cut you down or expose your weaknesses. Here I only break apart the words and scatter their pieces like so many dice. Don’t put them back together. Words are bad dice in that too many faces come up at once. They can’t have it both ways, but they do. Reason knows its limits by its vulnerability to antinomy. But reason is bid dance on the edge. Contradictions cannot be thought, but they can be sung.

But come to philosophy, feel the vulnerability of expressing your thoughts, and the power of ears to hear you out.