Kairos

Abstract

This chapter discusses one of the master concepts in the Western classical tradition, kairos (“the opportune moment”), and interrogates its function in a poem dating from the Long Reformation, a period that thrived on critical moments of decision and conversion. Richard Crashaw’s poem, written in the 1640s, presents its Christian readers with an opportunity for instant change and renewal. It does so in a manner that is both fascinating and disturbing, and that presents a perfect opportunity for rethinking the complex entanglement of anticipation and hesitation at work in kairos. The chapter experiments with two different readings, one that explores the early modern period’s obsession with time and occasion, and another that brings the poet’s attempts at persuasion into dialogue with Martin Heidegger’s rhetoric of resolution. This reading of Crashaw’s rich but under-researched poem provides a new perspective on Heidegger’s Augenblick or moment of vision. Taken together, the early modern poet and the modern philosopher challenge and expand our long-standing notions of kairos.