On the Way to the Other: Dread, Wonder, Awe
Abstract
ABSTRACT Imagine a young child who shrinks from—but can’t take her eyes off—a Stranger who’s been invited into her home. This child’s dread-charged awe before the Stranger brings into focus the tension fundamental to our lives—our being torn between openness to the unprecedented future and the desire to protect ourselves from it. Dialoguing with Loewald, Freud, and Heidegger, I consider the radical anxiety the child experiences when exposed to the dreadful not—the absence of the needed. Dialoguing with Aristotle, I discuss how wonder draws the child into harmonious play with alterities that are intelligible to her. However, from the beginning the child is surrounded by alterities whose transcendence overwhelms her. We recoil from such transcendence because it fills us with dread, are drawn to it because it fills us with awe. Dread-charged awe in the face of the other, especially the human Other, is, I argue, the quintessential human experience. Additional information Notes on contributors Jerome Miller Jerome Miller, Ph.D., is the author of The Way of Suffering and In the Throe of Wonder; he also co-edited and contributed to Sobering Wisdom, an anthology of philosophical essays on Twelve Step spirituality. He is a professor emeritus of philosophy at Salisbury University, where he taught for 37 years.
Faculty Members
- Jerome Miller - Salisbury University
Themes
- Human experience
- Child development and perception
- Fear and curiosity
- Dread-charged awe
- Emotional dynamics
- Transcendence
- Philosophical exploration of alterity