culture
Philosophy: the Study of Being, not Nothingness
The four pages of the “Letter to the Fraternity” “subvert” four
centuries of Western thought, the parabola of which seems to end in nihilism:
from Being to nothingness. A professor of theoretical philosophy rereads Father
Giussani’s text together with Traces, bringing out its cultural force as
a judgment on modernity
edited by Alessandro Banfi
There is always an aspect of the words of truth said by Father Giussani that
conveys a judgment on the times we are living in, contemporary culture, and even
the prevailing “fashions.” His letter of June 22nd to the members
of the Fraternity falls fully within this logic, and indeed constitutes to a
surprising degree a reading of the great cultural and philosophical topics of
the past four centuries. The relationships between the “I” and reality,
between Being and time (to quote the title of a famous book by Heidegger), between
Being and nothingness (to use Sartre’s words), are described and molded
in a simple, profound way. In an attempt to begin to fathom some of these themes,
we talked about them with Massimo Borghesi, Professor of Theoretical Philosophy
at the University of Perugia.
The letter concerns Mary: “The personality of the Mother of Christ,” Giussani
writes, “plays a role and I now understand how decisive it is.” But
the letter starts from a description of the relationship between the “I” and
reality. What concept of reality emerges? And why is it so closely bound up with
the idea of freedom?
Freedom, as Giussani emphasizes elsewhere, is the capacity to separate the true
from the false, good from evil, being from nothingness. This capacity finds its
complete fulfillment in recognition and embrace, in being embraced by Being.
In this “separating,” freedom can either move into action or destroy
itself, choosing the false, evil, nothingness. The “I” is the drama
of freedom. This is achieved when the desire to be (of Being), which is at the
root of every man’s heart, finds satisfaction. There is a profound tie
uniting freedom to desire, to the deepest desire that dwells in the human heart,
the desire for happiness. A man feels free when his desire for happiness does
not encounter obstacles, when it is satisfied. Happiness is freedom’s achievement.
It brings with it, at least for an instant, the perception of being “saved,” being
subtracted from death’s cold shadow. In its dynamic, happiness cannot be
separated from the object, or the subject, which makes it possible. We are not
happy by ourselves, or free by ourselves. This sets in motion the desire to find
in the world a reality that fills its emptiness, that frees its “I” from
its limitations. This “other,” which the heart ardently and confusedly
seeks, is only partially satisfied by the “others” it encounters.
This “other” is the code of the infinite. Freedom is, in man, the
capacity for infinity.
“
The supreme drama is that the Being should ask to be recognized by man,” Giussani
writes, and later on he adds, “God destines you to eternity, because he
destines you to understand who you are.” The contemporary mentality denies
the vertiginous nature of this relationship and tends to close man up in the
unhappiness of “directions for use”…
“
The real drama of the Church which likes to call itself modern is the attempt
to correct the wonder of the event of Christ with rules.” These are John
Paul I’s words, quoted by Giussani in È se opera [He is, if He Changes],
which correspond to what you call “directions for use.” The reduction
of Christianity to a mere moral doctrine, which has marked the ecclesial climate
of the most recent decades, does not go beyond a Pharisaic position. In this
way, it is not understood that authentic morality is always the result of an
affection, a gratitude, a recognition of the positivity of Being. This recognition
is hindered because Being is taken for granted, as happens to so many in the
ecclesiastical world, or is sunk in nothingness, in the abyss of negativity,
as is the case of the prevailing culture. In both instances, this recognition
does not manage to grasp the mysterious heart that takes stock of our experience
of the world; the quest for meaning that springs forth from the reason and the
heart remains unfulfilled, stunned, violated. In Renato Farina’s interview
with him in Libero a year ago–an exceptional piece for the new things he
said and what he emphasized–Giussani stated that he realized every day
more and more that “Being is Mystery.” This perception accompanies
not only the reality of God, but also that of the world and the “I.” The
gratuitousness of existing, the fact that it is not a necessity, sinks into the
unfathomable divine Mystery, in its freedom which finds its reason, devoid of
reasons, in an inconceivable Love. It is this perception that makes possible
the “wonder” in front of a Being perceived as “event.” Contemporary
philosophy also speaks of Being as Event, as Heidegger does, but it separates
the Event from desire. Being is event if it is perceived as a loving gratuitousness
that corresponds to the desire for happiness and freedom, if it is experienced
within an experience of love. To introduce us to the “ontological mystery,” to
the discovery of how Being asks to be recognized by man, is the element that
Giussani has felt to be urgent in recent years. His passion for education has
become a loving tension toward reawakening the gaze, beyond the formalism and
nihilism prevailing today, to the surprise of a gratuitousness, a positivity
that exceeds all expectations. We understand, in this perspective, his closeness
to von Balthasar, to his theological aesthetic. We understand why Giussani speaks
of “Being as attraction,” as he does in L’uomo e il suo destino
[Man and His Destiny], and can publish a book entitled L’attrattiva Gesù [The
Attraction of Jesus]. This attraction is called Grace. There is nothing more
powerfully persuasive and beautiful than a gratuitous, uncalled-for love. To
paraphrase von Balthasar, “Only love is credible.” This is not only
always true, but today, in the general devastation of affections and reason,
it takes on a special historical value.
“
Our Lady totally respected God’s freedom,” Giussani says. “She
did not oppose it with her own method.” Conversely, the prevailing philosophical
culture, from Descartes on, has emphasized an autonomous method that, at the
end of this parabola, has shown itself to be reduction, not opening…
If God exists, it is God who established the method by which He wants to be known
by man. Knowledge arises from conformation to the object: this is the principle
of realism, which is opposed to idealism that wants to establish the shape of
the object a priori. Mary is the method, the road toward God, because she was
shaped by God in accordance with a humanly unique method. She is the being created
as God has always wanted her to be, as He imagined her. She, who is mater Dei,
is the filial being par excellence, she is the daughter of her Son. This is the
virginal heart of Mary, virgin and mother, a child’s heart, a human heart
that submits to God in everything. Mary is God’s method because she did
not oppose her own method to Him. She is the method because she is without a
method. She is, in human terms, the highest instrument and expression of God’s
freedom.
Giussani writes, “Our Lady is the method we need for familiarity with Christ.” Necessity.
How would you interpret this necessity?
“
Our Lady is like a royal invitation,” wrote Giussani in his “Message
for Loreto.” She can invite the guests because in her there is an attraction–“the
attraction of Mary”–that enables her to enter into man’s heart.
She is the Mater misericordiae who, like Piero della Francesca’s Madonna
of Mercy in Sansepolcro, envelopes with her cloak the supplicants and the poor.
In this sense, she is the eminent “form” of Being, the privileged
form. There is a latent concept of form in Giussani that, analogous to Balthasar,
supports his reflection. Being is; it is more “being” the more it
becomes form, the more it corresponds to the image with which God conceived it.
The more man pulls away from this plan, the more he slides toward nothingness.
In Mary, the form of Being shines with unparalleled intensity. This is why she
attracts, since in her, the merciful one, her Son’s face is even more glorified.
A Christianity without Mary, as is the case in Protestant northern Europe, is
a dark, gloomy Christianity. This, together with the wars of religion, explains
modern atheism better than any number of subtle philosophical analyses. In the
divine economy, Mary makes manifest the maternal face of God. For man, this is
a gratuitous necessity.
For a long time, the emphasis has been on companionship, and now it is on the
figure of Mary. It is evident that there is no contradiction, but why today,
why here, this emphasis, which has cultural consequences as well?
This is true. There is in Giussani, recently, an insistence on the figure of
Mary that does not have anything to do with a predictable pietism. This emphasis
is parallel to that of “Being as charity” which also prevails in
his latest reflections. These are important passages that enable us to measure
the limits of every possible sort of “group mysticism,” which, as
Giussani states in L’attrattiva Gesù, [The Attraction of Jesus]
does not deviate from a sociological, merely naturalistic point of view. Ever
since 1980, since his conversation with the Italian intellectual Giovanni Testori,
published in Il senso della nascita [The Meaning of Birth], Giussani has insisted
on the fact that it is no longer the time for “organized crusades,” or “organized
movements.” Obviously, this does not mean the end of the idea of movement.
Rather, it means that a Christian movement must not concentrate emphatically
on itself, as though a militant belonging to it constituted a gnostic guarantee
of salvation, but must help people to look beyond it. A Christian companionship
is a vocational companionship. Otherwise, it swings back and forth between militants
and superficial companions with whom to spend one’s free time. The emphasis
on Mary is, in Giussani, an historical judgment. Today, in the age of nihilism,
it is not the magic of a discourse that can persuade, as much as showing, witnessing
to Being as mercy, the loving face of Being. In the wasteland where we are living,
influenced by the Manichaean attempt to conceive of the world and life as evil,
only the experience of a true love, as Guardini suggested in the conclusion to
La fine dell’epoca moderna [The End of the Modern Age], can reawaken the “I” to
the affection of Being. This is why, in the Libero interview, Giussani indicates
Mary as the present opposition to nihilism, Mary about whom he would like to
write an article since “whatever she touches becomes human and at the same
time she places it in the Mystery.”
The great consequence of the encounter with Christ through Mary is called
charity. “The
essence of Being is love, this is the great revelation. Thus the whole moral
law is totally defined by the word charity.” “The whole moral law”–this
too is subversive with respect to Kantian morality, for example, which is the
dominant one, at least in the hypocritical façade of the contemporary
establishment…
“
The essence of Being is love”–this is a true statement that has to
be experienced in order to be understood. Whoever has lived an instant of charity
and devotion can intuit it. Conversely, Kantian morality shows itself to be completely
powerless in the face of today’s nihilism. The Christian experience has
its consistence in the introduction to the Father’s mercy as the face of
Being. Starting with his 1994 dialogues, collected in “You” (Or:
On Friendship), Giussani insists, starting from Trinitarian ontology, on the
nature of Being as “relationship,” “communion,” and he
does this against any sort of monism that tries to dissolve the many into the
One. This nature of Being, which does not carry death and conflict within it,
as the gnosis and today’s fundamentalisms would like, becomes visible as
charity. In his interview with Libero, Giussani states, “God as Mystery
of charity, this is the only letter I’d like to write, to the people in
CL, to everyone.”
The form of charity is a “living” hope. Rereading Ariosto, I found
that Orlando, when he discovers the love between Medoro and Angelica, starts
to cry and cannot stop weeping. He himself is amazed because, the poet says,
his tears are a “living fountain.” This quotation from Dante lights
up the meaning of the word. “Living,” in the sense of inexhaustible,
the opposite of death, but also the opposite of habit, of settling down into
a routine…
We have settled down… so many people, laymen and ecclesiastics, run to
occupy the front rows of the theater, the “Christian” theater. Very
few are left to love the nameless people of which today’s society is full.
The pathos in Giussani is striking, a Testorian pathos, which leads him to speak
in his interview with Farina of a “whirlpool” and in the “Letter
to the Fraternity” of an “explosion.” This is against formalism,
the repetition of a soul-less rituality, the extinguishing of a desire that mechanically
grabs onto habitual gestures. Only charity, in which wonder and sacrifice live
side by side, opens up to hope, to the hope that Being will triumph over nothingness,
love over death. It opens to joy, to the certainty that Being is good, that He
loves me. Christianity is the experience that introduces us to this perception
of Being. Otherwise, it is an ideology that, like all ideologies, contributes
to making the burden of existence more burdensome.