Seite - 147 - in Limina - Grazer theologische Perspektiven, Band 2:2

148 | www.limina-graz.eu Laurens ten Kate | Strange Freedom 5 Conclusion Imaginaries shape our complex world, stamped by the condition of sensus liberalis. We have analyzed this condition as one in which activity and pas- sivity are entangled: the structure of creation. Creator and creature enter an unexpected ‘commune’: the site where the self can no longer buffer itself but has to open itself toward relation: it is nothing but relation. We have attempted to conceptualize this structure as freedom, however strange this freedom may be, because it does not comply with the logic of negative and positive liberty. A brief commentary on the opening hymn of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zar- athustra then showed that Camus’ fierce attack on modern subjectivity, which formed the preamble to our analyses, is still not subtle enough. Zarathustra evokes a vision of humanity, of being human, that constantly shifts in metamorphoses in which self-submission and self-assertion are two modalities of modern subjectivity. The third is that of playful, creative loss. How one can be not of the order of the self but of the order of loss: how one can ‘be’ loss, that is what has been presented and thought as the kernel of freedom – of its radical strangeness. The little theory of play in this article paves the ground for presents and thinks play as a mode of human existence, and hence, as a very serious fea- ture of humanity.15 The loss of self that is involved in play is productive to- ward its freedom, as has been demonstrated in this study, but that loss is also play’s danger; it opens the door to violence. The world as invoked by Nietzsche as a scene of play (Weltenspiel, World-Play; see Nietzsche 2001, 249) to which the child in us exposes itself is a difficult place to live in. Play is hardly the opposite of the seriousness of existence. Maybe one should raise the question whether this loss is a form of self- transcendence. This would involve an investigation of the many ways in which religion and spirituality transform themselves in the ‘secular age’, introducing an idea of transcendence in the world of the here and now – a post-theistic transcendence. That exceeds the scope of this article.16 How one can be not of the order of the self but of the order of loss: how one can ‘be’ loss? 15 Huizinga 1949, 44 and further, already pinpointed the seriousness (the translation from the Dutch uses the word ‘earnest’) of play. 16 I have made a start with such research in recent years, e.  g. in my work on and with Jean-Luc Nancy. See Kate 2011; Kate 2016; and Kate 2019. It is nothing but relation.