"HERE I AM: A Reflection on Jean-Louis Chrétien's Call and Response"
To say "Here I am" is, at its core, a response to the unspoken question, "Where are you?" This utterance carries with it a deep sense of faithfulness—not merely in terms of physical presence but in how the self-responds to the interpretative demand embedded in the call. My reflection is less concerned with the literal positioning of the "I" or “Self” and more with the manner in which the self acknowledges and responds to the call itself. Recently, I have become increasingly absorbed in the inherent dynamic within this acknowledgment of presence—one that transcends the simple matter of location and delves into the profound significance of being summoned. In this reflection, we shall explore Jean-Louis Chrétien’s idea of "call and response," examining how his ideas converge within the hermeneutics of presence and the act of proclaiming, "Here I am."
In his work The Call
and Response, Chrétien thoughtfully observes:
In order for us to answer the injunction that is sent to us to speak, we must hear it, and hearing it requires that we be joined and co-joined in advance by speech.[1]
Chrétien's insight reveals that
speech is not merely an act but a relational phenomenon that precedes and
situates the self. Before the self can respond, it must already find itself
immersed in a shared linguistic space. This suggests that the call itself
enacts a kind of summoning that compels the self into relationality—a space
that does not exist in isolation but is created through dialogue.
For example, imagine John Daruan
calls my phone and asks, “Hemen, where are you?” It is not simply my physical
location that prompts my answer, “Here I am,” but the call itself. By asking
where I am, John invokes a response from me that positions my "I" in
a particular space. This response is not just a factual statement of my
physical location; it is an existential act that places me within a specific
context and relational space. The call compels me to configure myself as
“here,” not in the sense of a pre-existing condition, but as an acknowledgment
of my summoned presence. In other words, the act of answering—“Here I am”—is what
installs me in that space.
Chrétien observes that:
Each time a voice initiates speech
for the sake of saying what is, there is at its core, like a force of momentum
carrying it forth or like a promise keeping it, the whole sonorous profusion of
all that it answers. We speak only for having been called, called by what there
is to say, and yet we learn and hear what there is to say only in speech itself.[2]
The
dynamic here is twofold: the call is not a static summons, nor is the response
a mechanical act. Rather, both are constitutive acts that create meaning and
establish presence through their interplay. This interplay forms the basis of
what I term the hermeneutics of presence—the interpretative act by
which the self acknowledges its being in relation to the call.
Chrétien’s philosophy compels us to
rethink the nature of presence. Presence, as he shows, is not merely a
pre-existing state but a relational event brought into being through response.
In this sense, the utterance “Here I am” functions as a hermeneutic act—it
interprets and situates the self in response to the other’s call. Without the
call, there is no context within which the self can assert its presence. This
is especially evident in the context of ritual or vocation. Consider a novice
preparing to take their religious vows. Before responding to the vow, the
individual is not automatically positioned within the communal or existential
space of commitment. It is through the act of responding—through the vow
itself—that they are formally and existentially “installed” in that space.
Their presence is not merely physical but actively constituted by their
response to the call to commit. The self, in this moment, does not pre-exist in
a static state; it is reconfigured by the act of responding, aligning with
Chrétien’s claim that “we speak only for having been called.” In this way,
language does more than mediate presence; it constitutes it. By calling the
self into being, the call shapes the self’s interpretative relation to the
world, the other, and even to itself. The call-and-response dynamic
demonstrates that the self is always-already situated within a shared
linguistic and relational space, even before it becomes consciously aware of
it.
The
understanding here is that Chrétien notes that beauty possesses a voice through
which things communicate with us. He
puts it thus “if beauty is the very voice of things, the face-to-face encounter
through which beauty grips us is not in its essence a speechless contemplation
but a dialogue”.[3]
But a question lingers: What happens when this dialogic structure fractures?
When the self refuses to answer the call of the other, what becomes of the
call? If it dissolves into silence, who is left to bear witness to its echoing
absence? Chrétien notes that we are entangled in speech as soon as we exist,
before we have ever uttered a word, and in this sense we have always already
listened and obeyed.[4]
Chrétien’s
reflections invite us to consider what it means to both hear and respond—and,
crucially, what it means to withhold a response. This unfulfilled summons—a
call that remains unanswered—becomes a mark of estrangement, both from the
other who calls and from the self, which refuses the transformative act of
response. Yet even in its refusal, the self cannot fully escape the call, for
the very act of silence or hesitation gestures toward the unspoken demand. His
notion of speech as a precondition of being reveals that we are bound to the
act of listening and response even before our conscious participation. To exist
is, in a sense, to already have been summoned into relation. When we refuse to
respond, we are not free from the call; rather, we remain haunted by its
unaddressed presence.
Hemen A. Emmanuel O.S.A
Colegio Mayor Mendel. C. del Rector Royo-Villanova, 6, Moncloa - Aravaca, 28040 Madrid
Madrid, España.
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