Åbo Akademi University, Department of Caring Science s1

Åbo Akademi University, Department of Caring Science

HELIN KAIJA: The mystery of sacrifice. A hermeneutical study Master’s thesis, 89 pages, 17 appendixes Supervisor: Professor Unni Å. Lindström PhD Kerstin Sivonen April 2001

Keywords: sacrifice, victim, suffering, transformation, caring

The aim of this study is to deepen the understanding of the concepts victim, sacrifice and to sacrifice and its relation to the paradigmatic core of caring science. The question of the meaning of sacrifice implicates a seeking for the mystery dimension of sacrifice, a dimension that has disappeared in the search for mechanistic and rational problem solving. The paradigm of caring science is articulated in the basic assumptions about caritative caring (Eriksson & Lindström, 2000). Most previous caring science studies concerning sacrifice have been carried out in a psychological or sociological perspective and endeavour to generalize within the frame if induction. The concept is hardly reflected upon in an existential perspective. The methodological attempt is the in-depth “aletic” hermeneutic interpretation, inspired from Gadamer (1997) and Heidegger (1992, 2000) among others. The Middle Ages Christian mysticism is another interpretation horizon. The Middle Ages Christian mysticism harmonizes with the original idea of a caritative care. The perception and the poetic/metaphoric meaning of language formation of the experience of reality are highlighted. The methodological attempt offers a horizon of understanding in which the existential meanings and ‘mysterious’ essence of the concept of sacrifice can be search for. The method used is concept analyses by Eriksson (1997) and Koort (1975), which include etymological and semantic analysis and determination of the essence. The interpretations done in the light of hermeneutics and the Middle Ages Christian mysticism show that sacrifice has many faces. The concept ‘sacrifice’ can have meanings og gift, tribute, reconciliation and selfsacrificing. The concept of ‘victim’ can have meanings of martyr or prey. ‘To sacrifice’ can be seen as devote, sanctify, consecrate, forgo, squander or abandon. These dimensions of meanings form nuances in the Janus- face of sacrifice, which can transform the meaningless to the meaningful and darkness to light. Through abductive leaps, the essence in the concepts victim, sacrifice and to sacrifice becomes visible as a stream of musical elements. This can be described as the choreography of sacrifice, a sacral dance that form three meaning-laden scenes: (1) carrying forth is the initial spontaneous movement in all sacrifice. The carrying forth opens up to (2) a giving to a devotion lyric in the major of the released or a giving in the heavy minor of giving up, in order that, in the moment of timelessness, be absorbed into a whirl of (3) the transformation’s ‘furioso’ and emerge as a “transformed other which destroyed its earlier being”. The carrying forth and giving make sacrificing an embodied prayer, which aim through deep transforming, to cross the separateness which cutting off from the origin means. The sacrifice portrays a unique drama of mystery, which ought to be approached with sincere earnestness and dignity. The result shows that sacrifice is an ethical constituent and an unique category for the ontology of caring science and that sacrifice is an important in-depth structure in the being of suffering and in the care relationship. A contextual analysis of the metaphoric meanings of sacrifice could broaden the understanding.