Page - 42 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/01

42 | Claudia Setzer www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/1, 35–47 that separation is partly the result of the limitations of being human, subject to death, distance, and difference. All human knowing is partial. Third, he thinks that the bodily experiences via the senses are sources of true knowledge. Last, sensory recognition is dynamic, operating in time and relationship. John’s world is not our world, but John invites us to think about the place of the body, and especially the senses, in expanding human possibility. John exhibits a quali- fied dualism that maintains flesh and spirit as distinct categories (3:6; 6:3) yet brings them together via perception. Although the pain of separation can only be answered by recognising another, non-corporeal reality, he shows perception and understand- ing are couched in the sense organs. Bodies of believers are vehicles of perception. Contemporary philosophers approach these issues with tools of post-Enlighten- ment philosophy. A well-known essay by Gilles Deleuze, “What Can a Body Do?”, re- states a question posed by Spinoza that understands the body in terms of its capaci- ties to be affected and to act, not in terms of essences.13 John might put it as “what can a body hear or see?” Like John, both philosophers (Spinoza and Deleuze) reject a total mind-body split – what happens in one happens in the other. A body is the sum of its capacities, a combination of affects (perhaps similar to my word “longings”) and relations. Objects themselves can create affects and begin the process of relat- ing to the object. In John’s gospel, one has to ask, why does not everyone see who Jesus really is, why cannot everyone hear his voice? Nicodemus hears his words but goes away confused. Some of the Jews had technically believed in him but could not stomach his words. So they possess different capacities to be affected. This implies a certain determinism that some simply cannot apprehend the truth because of their limitations. Intention or will cannot solve anything. If our wills dominated, we would all be perfectly thin, fit, and accomplished. Although Deleuze hardly sees the world as a Johannine dual cosmos, he describes the larger reality as a mix and flow of forces that act on people. People participate in the wash of events, both acted upon and acting, according to their different capaci- ties to receive and respond. Consider the dynamic dance in John’s image “that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us … I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one” (17:20–23). Deleuze was influenced by Henri Bergson, who probes the relation of body and spirit. His insight suggests that the act of perception is the meeting place of body and spirit (or mind). In Matter and Memory, he says, “this book affirms the reality of spirit and the reality of matter, and tries to determine the relation of the one to the other by the study of a definite example, that of memory”.14 For Bergson, percep- tion is the place where body and soul,15 matter and consciousness, meet. The body 13 Deleuze 1992, 217–234. 14 Bergson 1988, 9. 15 Bergson uses the terms “spirit”, “soul”, and “mind” somewhat interchangeably. His “l’esprit” is trans- lated as “mind”. In the ancient world pneuma, psyche, and nous had more specific meanings.