Hospitality

--Do not neglect hospitality, for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels. Heb 13:2.

We were recently hosting candidates for two new positions, one in philosophy, the other in politics. During our conversations, it came to me that an essential element of transdisciplinarity comes down to hospitality, a fundamental and reciprocal openness to others is crucial. The acceptance of the stranger into one’s home, the deferral of one’s own agenda, the potential conflict of values, the disruptions of everyday life, the sacrifice of time and energy, and the intrusions on privacy are the more immediate concerns, if not benefits.

Hospitality also reveals our assumptions about the notions of rights and prerogatives, the tensions of obligations and refusals, the pressures of forced intimacy, and the need to provide and serve. Lastly, hospitality confronts us with the ethics of asking and of surrender, the relationship between guest and host and its implicit (if not explicit) power relationship, the images and prejudices surrounding the concepts of citizen, immigrant, and native, and the complications of tourism, voyeurism, and superficiality.

All of these issues are constantly transposed and shifted in a transdisciplinary practice, where all are both host and guest, served and server. With an interdisciplinary approach, we never really have to place ourselves at risk, we can remain within our disciplines and share, we can admit as through a screen the ideas and offerings from the other, but never really have to let her through the door all the way. Transdisciplinarity requires such an opening, a vulnerability, just the kind one offers through hospitality.