01-07-2013 - Traces, n. 7

THE THEME

FR. GIUSSANI: “OUR TASK IS TO RESTORE
 THE HUMAN PERSON TO HIMSELF”

Excerpts from a dialogue with university students in 1988, which focuses on the state of emergency in which we live, retracing what true freedom is.

Our task is to give human beings back their identity, because  “the human person is in a state of emergency!”

a) The human person is characterized by freedom. The dimension or the power that characterizes human beings and distinguishes them from all other beings is freedom–freedom first of all as capacity to perceive reality, but with a perception that is not inspired by or obliged by anything else, a perception born from within, from their own energy, through the comparison with what they encounter, the reality they run up against, what they run up against, with something that “preoccupies” them, that concerns them first, from which needs and evidence emerge.
This comparison is between what they run up against and something that “preoccupies” them, that occupies them within, that is within them, and it gives them the opportunity to seek satisfaction—in other words, when the encounter with reality, the impact, satisfies them, it satisfies something within them, that “preoccupies” them, that concerns them before the impact. This is why it is a liberation, the beginning of liberation; this knowledge is the beginning of liberation because it is the beginning of a way of relating with reality that satisfies, corresponds, responds to what The Religious Sense calls the “heart.” The thing that “preoccupies” us is the heart.
[…] Therefore, we have said that our task is the state of emergency of the human person, to give identity back to the human person. Compared to all other beings, humans are characterized by what we call “freedom.” What are the factors of this characteristically human dimension? The first factor is the capacity to perceive reality not in a way that is determined–determined by others!–but through comparison with the heart. The impact with reality demands they establish this comparison with something that “preoccupies” the human person, with the heart of the human person. Therefore, they see whether the reality they run up against corresponds, and how much it corresponds, how much it satisfies. For this reason, knowledge and affection are within the same gesture, are factors of the same gesture, are factors of the same presence and are factors of the same encounter with reality.
This is the opposite of what we saw earlier. Thus, the point of reference, the place where everything is determined is not the object that makes you react, the determination that makes you react, much less is it the powers that be, that is, the organization of the determinations that make you react, but it is inside you. And it is not inside you like a bird that flies around, no, but within you as reality that runs up against any thing, that encounters any thing; therefore, it is inside your unity with reality and is a way that finds the unity within you—you are one!
b) The second factor of freedom sees the violent entrance, the expansion of the first part, of the perception of the thing that is compared to your own heart. It is the expansion of the comparison: “Is it worth my while or not? How much is it in my best interests? Does it satisfy me? Does it correspond to me?” The expansion of this comparison is called “judgment” and judgment as such is not the fruit of a chance correspondence; its content is never chance. That which perception reveals immediately is like a beginning that judgment develops, is destined to develop. Judgment is the end of a work, is the fruit of a work. The first work of the human person is judgment. It can be very brief, or longer—it can take a long time, a very long time, can take centuries, as in the process of true philosophy or science. What else is needed for the initial perception, that carries an initial comparison, to become an increasingly dignified judgment? Continuity in that comparison. And continuity of the comparison between the heart and reality involves the ever vaster integration of reality, in the consideration of a detail as well.
Continuity: the work demands, above all, continuity, because the work that leads to judgment is a comparison, a comparison between what we run up against and our heart. This comparison gives an immediate perception that makes you stay involved and, in staying engaged, you have to work, and this work is what leads to a judgment that becomes detailed and big, and makes it become great as an awareness. […] Here then is the ultimate greatness of the human person that emerges on the horizon: people have set things in their place so well that they understand that the earth is something tiny, tiny, tiny, like a point, like a fly’s eye–and on this fly’s eye, what is the human person?–then they understand that their “all” is the relationship with that Other, with the One who makes them, who makes the fly’s eye, which is the Earth, and all the other flies’ eyes, which are all the other planets, the nebulas and all the rest. In other words, the highest dignity of the human person lies in the perception of the meaning, of the existence of the meaning—it is the religious sense. During the academic week organized by some of us at Madonna di Campiglio, a great cybernetic scientist, Trautteur, who is working on remaking the human brain, said that there is an insuperable threshold: meaning. We cannot make a machine that gives meaning. The listeners told me that he gave a beautiful comparison, albeit a bit extravagant: faced with a Gordian knot, even the most perfect machine, invented to untie all kinds of knots, would freeze, because the idea of pulling out a sword and cutting it would never occur to a machine. This is the level of awareness that goes beyond machinery.

c) The third characteristic of freedom exalts the second aspect and makes judgment the servant of affection, of creative energy: it is creative praxis. Freedom ultimately is creative praxis. Creative praxis means that it exalts the ultimate and total correspondence between the total reality and the total heart of the human person, because the heart of the human person and the totality of reality are facts, expressions, of the one intelligence, of the one love, of the one meaning, that is, of God. In creative praxis, creativity is not the imaginative exuberance that makes people dream about extraterrestrials or dream of space battles; they may well happen, but creativity does not give a fig—if there is some advantage, it will be that of distracting people more copiously from themselves and therefore making them want to stuff the heart deeper and deeper into the recesses of a hiding place to flee from the universal conflagration, increasingly more universal. Creative praxis lies precisely in the embrace and manipulation of reality according to the ultimate impetus of the heart, according to the ideal of the heart, according to the ideal. In this way, the design of God, the design of meaning, and the ever growing unity between the human person and things is achieved.
My friends, the human person is in a state of emergency! Our task is to reawaken the identity of the human person in this universal dissociation, produced by the powers that be and thus necessary to them. Give back to human beings their identity. Their identity is a pure relationship, free from any conditioning factor. It is something that “preoccupies” people; it is in them–because first it was not there, and now it is there, therefore it is given to them–it is the relationship with the Mystery who makes them. It is a perception of reality that is born from within, a cognitive and affective perception that is developed as work in judgment and in creative praxis.
You have to read the novels by Grossman, Life and Fate, and Everything Flows. […] When you finish reading Everything Flows, you have an idea of what freedom is, that the human person is freedom. Even if Grossman wrote this book against Stalin–in a certain way, he says this in Everything Flows–it is also a valid stand against the whole social climate of our times. Only, you see that he did not know the Gospel well (the most tremendous line of the Gospel is the one we quoted this morning), when he says: “What use is it if you gain the whole world–if you become a powerful industrialist, to the nth degree–and then lose yourself?” or “What can you give in exchange for yourself?” A quote like this is all you need to set the “I,” the “I” of a child, at the center of the universe! In fact, “He called a child over, held him close, and said, ‘Woe to anyone who touches a hair on the head of the littlest of these children. It would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.’”
(From Ciò che abbiamo di più caro [What We Hold Dearest], Bur-Rizzoli, 2011, pp. 64-70.)