Christina's World
Philosophical Reflection
Christina’s World
This painting, entitled Christina’s World by the American painter Andrew Wyeth, is deeply moving. It depicts a woman whom Wyeth knew, a woman suffering from a degenerative illness that gradually weakened her until she could no longer walk. By the age of fifty, Christina moved across the ground on her hands and knees. Perhaps out of pride, she never used a wheelchair.
The painting portrays the rural landscape of Maine. The field is dry and brown. The plants appear withered. Perhaps there had been a drought. A gray house stands in the distance, and Christina’s gaze is directed toward it. Her body appears twisted, and the image creates an ambiguity regarding her intentions. Is she moving toward the house, or is she merely looking at it in fear? Perhaps someone inside the house, someone with malicious intentions, is searching for Christina. Because of her illness, she is especially vulnerable.
Another possible interpretation is that Christina needs to return to the house because nightfall is approaching. She is not safe in the vast field after dark. She needs food, and perhaps the night will become very cold. In this interpretation, the house is a place of safety and refuge.
The ambiguity of the house—is it a safe place or a dangerous one?—is particularly fascinating. Many people have an ambivalent relationship with their homes. The home is a refuge that we need in order to survive. Yet it can also be a place of violation and suffering. When we live with a family, we witness defects and weaknesses that people never display in public.
I believe this painting possesses a profound philosophical and theological resonance. Theologically, it makes me think of the idea of exile. In Christianity, there is the notion that humanity was expelled from paradise. We inhabit a fallen world. We live in a vale of tears. The purpose of life is to return to our true homeland. We are pilgrims in this world. We will not remain here forever. Like Christina, we move toward a distant goal. We cannot become fully rooted in this life, for time flows onward and we soon grow old. We long for a secure home, yet this world is not that home. Like Christina, we direct our gaze toward what lies beyond, toward a place of final rest.
Philosophically, I think of the idea of anxiety in Martin Heidegger. In Heidegger, anxiety has a technical meaning. It is a state of disclosure. Human beings possess an understanding of their being, and being constitutes the deepest dimension of our existence.
Color, size, texture, and height are all determinations of beings and not of Being itself (Being and Time, 182). Being transcends every definition. A being has being, but Being is more fundamental than any being. Being makes possible the manifestation of beings and their determinations.
Anxiety reveals the deepest truth about ourselves: that we exist. Our existence is more fundamental than any characteristic or attribute we may possess. Anxiety discloses the primordial nature of the human being. It distances us from our identity, our occupation, and our name, and confronts us with the brute fact of our existence.
We can lose ourselves in everyday concerns. We occupy a role in society. We have a place within a family. We possess values and some sense of purpose. Yet in daily life we forget the primordial fact of our being. Our work is not our being. Our history is not our being either.
Anxiety thus marks a kind of disorientation. We leave behind our social identity and direct our attention toward Being. Anxiety opens up new possibilities. It reveals that social identity is, in a certain sense, a contingent construction and that we can reinvent ourselves. Through anxiety, we become individuals. The attributes we inherit from our time and place do not capture our most fundamental being.
Within society, there exists a public interpretation that shapes our conception of ourselves (Being and Time, 190). In the experience of anxiety, we let go of this public identity and confront our being without mediation. In this confrontation with our deepest being, we discover new possibilities. We are not required to accept our social identity as definitive. It is an external definition that does not exhaust what we are.
From my perspective, the painting represents precisely this experience of anxiety. Christina finds herself outside her home. Within the home, we usually perform roles defined by those around us. The home can conceal our most authentic being. In my interpretation, Christina appears separated from that familiar sphere. She has the appearance of someone who is lost. This impression of lostness evokes the experience of anxiety. Social roles are contingent. In the final analysis, what remains is Being. Christina is no longer immersed in the contingent things and attributes of her social identity. She distances herself from them and discovers that she possesses the possibility of transcending that identity. This realization is both liberating and unsettling at the same time.
Christina’s World, Andrew Wyeth