Yesterday I wrote a bit about Wendell Berry’s “rescue” of imagination as preparation for understanding the importance of affection (which I will take as at least a form of what others might call love).  Both terms are used by Berry in “It All Turns on Affection,” a lecture given in 2012 through the National Endowment for the Humanities concerning the role of farming in America.  After refining the meaning of imagination, Berry moves on to affection.

Obviously there is some risk in making affection the pivot of an argument about economy. The charge will be made that affection is an emotion, merely “subjective,” and therefore that all affections are more or less equal: people may have affection for their children and their automobiles, their neighbors and their weapons. But the risk, I think, is only that affection is personal. If it is not personal, it is noth
ing; we don’t, at least, have to worry about governmental or corporate affection. And one of the endeavors of human cultures, from the beginning, has been to qualify and direct the influence of emotion. The word “affection” and the terms of value that cluster around it—love, care, sympathy, mercy, forbearance, respect, reverence—have histories and meanings that raise the issue of worth. We should, as our culture has warned us over and over again, give our affection to things that are true, just, and beautiful. When we give affection to things that are destructive, we are wrong. A large machine in a large, toxic, eroded cornfield is not, properly speaking, an object or a sign of affection.

I almost want to encourage anyone reading this to read that excerpt again and substitute the word love in each time you see affection (like it was 1 Corinthians 13 or something).  Berry is right, though: it is a dangerous thing to make an argument a
bout seemingly immensely practical things with an “emotional” thing like affection.  In faith circles, that would be taking the personal/emotional route and totally dismissing the apologetics route.  And maybe that’s a good thing.  (Or maybe the analogy is weak.  Hmm.)

I like the word “cluster” Berry connects with affection: love (see!), care, sympathy, mercy, forbearance, respect, and reverence.  Then it’s less than a hop, skip, and jump to things that are true, just, and beautiful.  These are things that move us, that move in us.  And Berry seems to think that culture throughout history has been tasked with “qualifying and directing” those affections that shape our “life together.”  This, of course, lines up well with the assertions of James K. A Smith (and Augustine before him) about how we are shaped by what we love (and then shape other things accordingly).  In Berry’s mind (and heart), affection is key in refraining the big economic/community issues of our time.

And so imagination followed by affection.  Tomorrow we’ll look at the role knowledge plays in Berry’s argument.  Feel free to read the rest of his essay here.

(image from commons.wikimedia.org)