‘According to Heidegger, each age has one issue to think through, and one only. Sexual difference is probably the issue in our time which could be our ‘salvation’ if we thought it through.’[1]
Recent readings of the Cappadocian Fathers have brought to the fore some of the ways in which approaches to gender were integral to their doctrinal, anthropological and soteriological hypotheses. Such studies have tended to reveal that the Cappadocians’ understanding of gender was frequently more subtle and complex than might be anticipated, and these findings will be supported, in this communication, by a comparison between the two Gregorys’ accounts of the lives of their sisters, and between the Nazianzen’s funeral oration for his sister, and that which was given for his brother. It will be posited that the outcomes point towards an unexpected perforation of gender roles, in which a ‘deconstruction’ of masculinity is drawn forth, and is balanced by, a ‘reconstruction’ of femininity, as well as a profound questioning of the place of gender itself within the spiritual arche and telos of humankind. These findings suggest that, despite the apparent improbability of a ‘conversation’ between the Cappadocians and Luce Irigaray, there is nevertheless considerable material for a mutually illuminating and fruitful dialogue between them on this topic – and that the outcomes could support Irigaray’s contention that a deeper consideration of sexual difference might be our ‘salvation’ if we thought it through.
1 Irigaray, L: An Ethics of Sexual Difference, The Athlone Press, London, 1993, p5
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