To Whom It Is Given

Givenness as the Antidote to Abstraction

A scene from Season 2, Episode 6 (‘Fishes’) in the FX show ‘The Bear”

“Fortunately the world around us is real,” wrote Václav Benda, dissident in the former Czechoslavakia, friend of Václav Havel, and signer of Charter 77. “The family really does exist, it is together or divided, has its joy and woes, its friends and interests. We should continue to surround their totalitarianism with our reality. For to assert itself…