Philosophical and Religious Sources of Modern Culture (European Studies in Theology, Philosophy and History of Religions) [New ed.] 9783631632901, 9783653019858, 3631632908

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European Studies in T heolog y, Philosophy and Histor y of Religions Edited by Bartosz Adamczewski

Vol. 2

PETER LANG

Frankfurt am Main · Berlin · Bern · Bruxelles · NewYork · Oxford · Warszawa · Wien

Jacek Grzybowski (ed.)

Philosophical and Religious Sources of Modern Culture

PETER LANG

Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Cover Design: © Olaf Gloeckler, Atelier Platen, Friedberg

The publication was financially supported by Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University

ISSN 2192-1857 ISBN 978-3-653-01985-8 (E-Book) DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-01985-8 ISBN 978-3-631-63290-1 (Print) © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Frankfurt am Main 2012 All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. www.peterlang.de

Table of Contents Jacek Grzybowski Europe – freedom, culture, rationality – an everlasting challenge........................7 Jan Sochoń On the indefeasible relationship between philosophy and culture......................15 Jacek Grzybowski Astonishment, anger, community – the sources of European political philosophy ...........................................................................................................35 Sławomir Szczyrba A subjective interpretation of religious experience in the proposal of Martin Buber...................................................................................................55 Joanna Skurzak The liturgy as a source of modern culture. The philosophical proposal of Jean-Yves Lacoste..............................................75 Maciej Bała Comte-Sponville’s spirituality without God. A new foundation of modern culture? ................................................................................................................95 Jan Sochoń Faith or spirituality? New challenges of postmodernity ...................................113 Jarosław Babiński Ralf Konersmann’s Conception of the Philosophy of Culture..........................129 Maciej Bała Theodicy in Modern Culture. The Proposal of Paul Ricœur ............................145 Biographies of the authors ...............................................................................155 Index of the names ...........................................................................................158

Europe – freedom, culture, rationality – an everlasting challenge Rev. Jacek Grzybowski Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw (CSWU) The Faculty of Christian Philosophy

That which is most universal, and at the same time often least apparent, is culture. It is an extraordinary phenomenon springing from the free and conscious activity of man, and yet surpassing and often indeed determining him. It is what makes man capable of independently creating works that reach beyond him, so to speak, and of surpassing level of goodness he enjoys solely on account of his nature. It is for this reason that we can say that in creating culture man is himself its first creation. It is man's culture-making capacity and activity that bring to light his power and reflection. The pre-eminence of culture however is so great, that it not only surpasses man as an individual, but is capable of begetting entire social and political systems: in a word, civilizations. Thus it is by reflecting on culture that we may find an answer to the question asked by the authors of this collection, namely, “what are the ideological and civilizational sources of modernity?”. “What is Europe?” is a very old question and one that continues to pose difficulties. In spite of all the knowledge amassed about the heritage of this part of the world, the answer remains a challenge. History, however, comes to our aid, reminding us that Europe is the community of all the nations which, in the favorable conditions of a small yet extremely diversified continent, took over and developed the legacy of Graeco-Roman civilization, transformed and enriched by Christianity. It is thus that the free peoples living beyond the borders of the Roman Empire gained access to the grand values of the ancient world.1 Greece, Rome and the Christian Gospel were to prove fundamental in defining the way the world was viewed and conceptualized within this expanse between the Atlantic and the Urals. It was the culture of ancient Greece that first worked out the majority of the topoi which to this day continue to shape the way we perceive reality and ourselves. Man, being, cosmos, truth, politics, principle, beauty – all of these words imbued with a profundity of meaning. We would not be who we are as Europeans, and the world would not bear the mark imposed upon it by the natives of Europe, without these classical concepts and topics. It is this that entitles Europe – understood as a certain idea of culture – to under1

Cf. O. Halecki, Historia Europy – jej granice i podziały [A History of Europe – its borders and divisions], Lublin 2000, p. 29

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stand that it has contributed to the human community a number of extremely precious goods belonging to the realm of spirit. One of these is certainly a clear sense of speculative truth, since the logocentrism of Europe is undoubtedly a constituent of its very nature. European civilization "gives birth" to its identity with the emancipation of the logos from myth. The rational thought of the Greeks, rejecting mythological explanations of reality, discovers the power of the arché and logos, which emerge as reason in quest of cause and truth. Myth is replaced by discursive reasoning. A specifically European type of rationality, laying claim to the creation of universal systems, comes into being, exercising itself chiefly with respect to theoretical truths describing reality, for which philosophy as knowledge of ultimate reality as well as "things and their causes" became the queen of the sciences. This is how Europe came to be graced with the Logos and became, as a civilization, in and of itself capable of asking fundamental questions about truth, goodness and beauty, and, more importantly, of seeking to answer these rationally.2 The undeniable contribution of classical European Greek philosophy thus consists in its having first identified the absolute value of separating rationalism from the affective tendencies and set human reflection a task worthy of its intellect – namely that of defining that which is.3At the source of European philosophy and science lies the intellectual courage of Aristotle, who overcame the temptation of doubt and disappointment in the face of the inapprehensible nature of becoming and contradiction.4 The beginnings of Greek philosophy seem to portend the dawning of a new human dignity. Every people has brought forth its own type of law, but it was only the Greek who tirelessly sought the law abiding in the very nature of things, striving to ordain the conduct of his life and thought accordingly.5

For this reason, while Europe owes its legal existence to the Roman Empire, it owes its intellectual and political culture to the Greek classical tradition, deriving from it one of the basic elements that have come to form European unity – the courage of discursive thought.6 2

3 4 5 6

Cf. W. Jaeger, Paideia. The Ideals of Greek Culture, transl. G. Highet, B. Blackwell 1946, p. 33; J. Sochoń, Spór o rozumienie świata. Monizujące ujęcia rzeczywistości w filozofii europejskiej [The Controversy over the Understanding of the World], Warsaw 1998, p. 121; K. Narecki, Logos we wczesnej myśli greckiej [The logos in early Greek thought], Lublin 1999. Cf. J. Maritain, Science and wisdom, transl. Bernard Wall, G. Bles 1954, p. 82 J. Maritain, Pisma filozoficzne, trans. J. Fernychowa, Krakow 1988, p. 26 [my translation] Cf. W. Jaeger, Paideia…, op. cit., p. 36 Ch. Dawson, G. Weigel, Understanding Europe, CUA Press 2009, pp. 23-24

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Later, when the world came to know the Word that became Flesh, the West was able to develop scholastic discipline with all its intellectual refinement, which it retained as the speculative dignity of truth.7 This is how Christianity became the source of an impressive wealth of cultural and civilizational meanings. Without the biblical story of love for one's enemies, of forgiveness and of the God Incarnate, the treasury of medieval culture and grand scholastic reflection would simply not exist. The medieval Christian world, the inspiration of civilization,8 was born. A special moment occurs in the history of Europe – God takes over the initiative in His relationship with man, while the movement by which man rises towards God becomes a response to God's descent "into man". This is the law of the Incarnation, and the Middle Ages, as the French philosopher Jacques Maritain has put it, know this law. It was, in spite of succumbing to violent passions and crimes, a simple movement in which the intelligence rose towards knowledge, soul, perfection of the world, towards a uniform social and legal structure ruled over by Christ. Every man was a sign of the sacred and enjoyed its protection insofar as he was made to live it by love.9

Two factors influenced the shape of this ideal, giving it a special character: the myth of strength in the service of God on the one hand, and on the other, the very concrete fact that the earthly civilization of the time was to a certain extent a function of the sacred, of necessity containing the unity of religion. For after the fall of the western Roman Empire and the disintegration of political and public institutions, it was Christianity that assumed the political and administrative helm while continuing its civilizational mission on the ruins of the Empire. Preaching the Gospel and preserving the heritage of Greece and Rome was, of course, an important aspect of this mission. In a civilizational and cultural sense then, following the period of stagnation and fall associated with the migration period, European-ness comes alive again under the strong influence of the Church, which, somewhat of necessity, takes over administrative and state-related conceptions. The cultural substratum of the nascent new world – several centuries later unjustly dubbed the media aetas, medium tempus (transitory or passing period, the middle age) by Enlightenment 7 8

9

Cf. J. Maritain, Science and wisdom, op. cit., p. 83 See W. Jaeger, Early Christianity and Greek paideia, Harvard University Press 1985, p. 65. See also: J. Domański, Scholastyczne i humanistyczne pojęcie filozofii [The scholastic and humanist understanding of philosophy], Kęty 2005, p. 64nn; D. Dębińska-Siury, “Chrześcijaństwo, hellenizm i tradycja grecka w IV wieku” [Christianity, hellenism and the Greek tradition in the fourth century], in: Filozofia wczesnochrześcijańska i jej źródła, ed. M. Manikowski, Filozofia XXXVII, Wrocław 2000, p. 53 J. Maritain, Science and wisdom, op. cit., p. 130 [my translation]

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scholars – is constituted by a mixture of influences, symbols and traditions. Roman traditions and symbols on the one hand, with Latin as the language of learning and the aristocracy as well as an intact infrastructure and models of administration and law, and biblical and sacramental ones on the other, deeply set in the Judaic and Germanic traditions, the latter finding expression in the names, ethos and traditions of warriors. The administrative division of the Church into dioceses, deaneries and parishes as well as the control of bishops over assigned territories laid the foundation of the state institutions emerging in medieval Europe. Hierarchy and internal structure, centralization – manifest in legal relationships with the papacy, the cycle of fixed feasts and the liturgical year calendar – all of this provided the underpinnings of the emerging secular administration within the general framework of western Europe. Dioceses supplied a clear and uniform structure, enabling the development of a framework for the expansion of western Christianity and western civilization as well as the demarcation of Europe's boundaries.10 Most historians would probably agree that the one element unifying the Medieval world was institutionalized Christianity. And on this point they would agree with the inhabitants of Medieval Europe, who - had one asked them - would have described themselves as Christians living in a Christian era and in a Christian part of the world. And yet the very concept of "Christianity" remained flexible. Over the course of centuries it had shrunk and expanded, following the pattern of wars against Islam and campaigns against the pagans.11

The Christian spirit of medieval monarchy is without doubt its most important and highly innovative feature. It is a positive asset in that world, but at the same time a burden that will have to be grappled with until the end.12 10 Cf. R. Bartlett, The Making of Europe. Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change 950 - 1350, Penguin Adult, 2003, p. 12. See also: J. Le Goff, Medieval civilization 400-1500, Wiley-Blackwell 1990; The long morning of medieval Europe: new directions in early medieval studies, ed. J. R. Davis, M. McCormick, Publishing, Ltd. 2008; S. Wielgus, Z badań nad średniowieczem [From Research into the Middle Ages], Lublin 1995; M. Benniard, Genèse culturelle de l’Europe V-VIII siècle, Éditions du Seuil 1989, p. 34 11 N. Davies, Europe: A History, Random House 2010, p. 326 12 Yet by contrast with Byzantium the Roman Church becomes ever more Latinised and in spite of strong bonds with the state remains, in theory inasmuch as in practice, independent from the institutions of the state. This is why in the Middle Ages Christianity matures not just as a religion but also as a culture. In the political sphere, it is the West, together with the primacy of the papacy and cultural universalism that fights for independence and autonomy as opposed to the Byzantine Empire. Byzantium remained in a theocratic climate, where the sacralisation of monarchs took on very specific forms and was not questioned. The ruler was considered as on par with Christ, as the Thirteenth Apostle. In Byzantine iconography, the monarch and Christ have similar facial features and are pre-

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This is because Europe developed under the patronage, so to speak, of two very special symbols, the altar and the throne. This is expressed in the conceptual distinction between regnum and sacerdotium and reflected in the tensionridden co-existence of emperor and pope on the two "universal" thrones of medieval Europe. The result is the unending dispute between the vision of the Kingdom of God to be realized on earth and one of social and political structures. This antagonism gave rise not just to social movements, especially towards the end of the Middle Ages, that strove to eliminate wrongdoing and injustice, but also to the contesting of the Church's wealth and pride.13 One may however safely state that although the medieval Christian world is today merely one of Europe's historical memories, it is, as the French thinker Jacques Maritain used to say, a grand memory, one of the most precious to the people of the West.14 As Vittorio Possenti argues, the right understanding of Christianism as a civilizational conception emerges at the juncture of the theological and the historical moment. It is a social, cultural, civil, human, temporal and historical form sented in the company of saints. And yet monarchic succession does not take root in Byzantium, the emperor is elected by the senate, the army and the people, and thus in spite of his divine unction, has to be prepared for the possibility of a revolt or coup, in other words, dethronisation. And just as his election bore the sign of divine inspiration, his fall was perceived as a sign of God's disfavour. It is for this reason that Byzantium's strong position in the religious, cultural and legal spheres ultimately proved weak in the political dimension. It was the west of Europe that saw the emergence of the first institutions of territorial government, city administration, estate law as well as estate representation, leading to the rise of parliamentarism. And although these institutions took their initial shape under the protectorate of the Church, they ultimately emancipated themselves from it completely, setting up empire and monarchy as the second, next to the Church, power of medieval Europe. For a broader discussion, see: W. Berschin, Greek letters and the Latin Middle Ages: from Jerome to Nicholas of Cusa, Catholic University of America Press 1988, p. 51; Monarchia w średniowieczu. Władza nad ludźmi, władza nad terytorium [Monarchy in the middle ages. Authority over peoples, authority over territory.] ed. J. Pysiak, A. Pieniąsz-Skrzypczak, M. Pauka, Warsaw – Krakow 2002; J. Grzybowski, Miecz i Pastorał. Filozoficzny uniwersalizm sporu o charakter władzy. Tomasz z Akwinu i Dante Alighieri [The sword and the crozier. The philosophical universalism of the debate over the character of authority.] Kęty 2006, p. 279 13 See Medieval society: 400-1450, vol. 2: The structure of European history: studies and interpretations, ed. N. F. Cantor, M. S. Werthman, Crowell 1972, p. 154 14 Czasy katedr – czasy uniwersytetów. Źródła jedności narodów Europy [The times of the cathedrals – the times of the universities. Sources of the unity of the nations of Europe.] ed. W. Sajdek, Lublin 2005, p. 87; P. Mazurkiewicz, Europeizacja Europy. Tożsamość kulturowa Europy w kontekście procesów integracji [The Europization of Europe. The cultural identity of Europe in the context of the integration processes.] Warsaw 2001, p. 34

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arising from the positive "intersection" of the Gospel and culture, the Church and the world. Such Christianism, as a historic experience, appeared during the medieval period. Shaped thus, the European Christian community attained its most perfect flowering during the XII and XIII centuries, yet soon began to decline due to the appearance within Italy's culture of a very strong movement of "rebirth", deriving its outlook on world and man from ancient times and reviving the antique cultures of Greece and Rome, while at the same time depreciating the middle age. The body of the Christian world is further "ruptured" by Martin Luther's movement of reform. Scholasticism, identified with the power and oppressive policies of Rome, is rejected by Protestant teaching in the XVI century. The emergence of nation states with their multidenominational structures comes to define the new face of the continent.15 This abbreviated history already makes it clear that Europe is a very diverse community of nations inhabiting a small territory – a maximum of diversity within a minimum of space. The area known on the continent as Central Europe, for centuries welcoming throngs of refugees, Jews and newcomers from the distant steppes of Asia, has in a sense become Europe in a nutshell. If the diversified Greek poleis scattered around the Mediterranean Sea basin are often referred to as the "laboratory of political systems", Central Europe may be described as the "laboratory of multiculturalism". The cultural diversity we usually associate with North America or the modern metropolises of Western Europe, inhabited by large groups of immigrants, has for centuries been a permanent feature of this part of the continent. Around 1900, Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Warsaw, Vilnius, Lvov and other cities in Central Europe became prototypes for the multicultural societies today peopling cities like London, New York, Paris, Berlin or Zurich.16 15 G. R. Evans, Fifty key Medieval thinkers, Routledge 2002, pp. 156-158. As Halík demonstrates, there were many reasons for the fall and degradation of Christianitas. The postReformation schism in the western Church, the discrediting of the Church in the wake of the wars of religion, the inability of theology to face the challenges brought by the natural sciences, humanist critique of texts, Renaissance corporeity and individuality. As a result Christianitas ceases to function as the social language of culture. See T. Halík, Wzywany czy niewzywany Bóg się tutaj zjawi [Summoned or not, God will appear here] transl. A. Babuchowski, Krakow 2006, p. 28 16 See U. Altermatt, Multiculturalism, Nation State and Ethnicity: Political Models for Multi-Ethnic States. in:, Nation and National Identity. The European Experience in Perspective, ed. V. Rüegger, H. Kriesi, K. Armingeon, H. Siegrist, A. Wimmer, Chur Zürich 1999, p. 19. The Central European tradition of multiculturalism may be symbolised by a tombstone found in an Lutheran church in Lublin. The text, written in Cyrillic, announces that here lies Friedrich Marianowicz Dreiman, who found his small homeland

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In Poland, even before the appearance of the first advocates of the Reformation, there was far-reaching religious pluralism, reflecting an even more general cultural plurality. In the XVI century, nearly every one of the ethnic groups living in the Polish-Lithuanian state (united since 1386 by personal union) professed its own distinct religion: Poles and part of the Lithuanian population Catholicism, Ruthenians Orthodox Christianity, Germans Lutheranism and Calvinism, Armenians monophysite Christianity, Jews Judaism, and Tatars Islam. At a time when religious persecution was commonplace in the West, Poland could boast of nearly total religious freedom guaranteed by law.17 This freedom was confirmed in the famous act of the Warsaw Confederation, passed on January 28th, 1573, which granted all nobles the right to free choice of religion, prohibiting state authorities from exercising any type of religious discrimination in the allotment of state functions, land or leases on property belonging to the sovereign. More than any other place, Central Europe stands today as the original model of multiculturalism for modern times. This state of affairs was only disturbed in an artificial manner as a result of World War II and the arrangements at Yalta. Multiculturalism and diversity are still a current challenge. This is why we need a culture able to promote attitudes of peace, reconciliation and cooperation, capable of supporting and strengthening relations. This without doubt requires seeking help in that sphere of life where the key place is held by relationality, namely religion, and the Christian religion in particular. Christian theology assigns a fundamental value to mutual relations, including the establishment of and faith in the relationship with God, which serves as the best "school" of dialogue. This is particularly important on this continent, where Christian ideas have shaped entire generations of minds and hearts. Europe has taught the world equality, freedom and mutual respect, since we are all children of God. And it is not just about, as Joseph Ratzinger puts it, some kind of historical nostalgia for

in Lublin, where he lived, worked and dreamed. The name and last name of the defunct indicate that there were cultural interactions in his family. The Protestant congregation and the name Friedrich testify to a German influence. The patronymic „Marianowicz” as well as the use of Cyrillic point to Russian influences. The last name Dreiman on the other hand functioned among Lublin's Jews. A symbol of local tolerance is the twin pulpits in the Lublin church of the Dominican Fathers. When heretics were hunted down in Western Europe, in Lublin they were invited to public debates in keeping with the Jagiellonian principle - plus ratio quam vis. Cf. J Życiński, Rola kultury polskiej w doświadczeniu procesów integracyjnych [The role of Polish culture in the experience of the integration processes], Lublin 2004. 17 Cf. J. Tazbir, Silva rerum historicarum, Warsaw 2002, pp. 150-152

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the "rear guard of history", but about a great responsibility for the shape of the modern world.18 The authors of this book are deeply convinced of this view. Coming from the academic circles of the Faculty of Christian Philosophy, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw (CSWU), they lecture and conduct research aiming to illuminate and deepen the heritage that has come to be known as Europe. This is why the essays in this collection aim to bring readers closer to an understanding of the great wealth inherent in the European tradition and European history. Because Europe is not merely a region or geographical location. It is an idea expressing the most beautiful and elevated cultural and social ideals. The nature of European-ness is not defined by race or place, but by freedom and culture in the broad sense. Latin Europe created a sphere of civilization which, though ridden by contrasts and differences, established unity not just of an organic but also of a spiritual kind, through the accentuation and merging of things common. This was also made possible by Christianity, whose ethos came to pervade a multiplicity of socio-cultural phenomena. As Europeans, we want to continue and spread this great adventure of culture.

18 Cf. J. Ratzinger, Europe today and tomorrow: addressing the fundamental issues, transl. M. J. Miller, Ignatius Press 2007, p. 48

On the indefeasible relationship between philosophy and culture Rev. Jan Sochoń Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw (CSWU) The Faculty of Christian Philosophy

Culture as a search for form One of the most characteristic traits of philosophical thought seems to be a rule that I have called the miracle of non-obviousness. What this rule suggests is that the philosopher is first of all astonished with reality, astonished with himself as a subject capable of making free and sovereign decisions, and finally astonished at the fact of possessing a natural capacity for knowledge and making the world his own in a creative way. He has by now realized that he is only able to make use of this extraordinary donation because he is labouring within the space of human culture, which he at once co-creates and continually reorders, reinforcing social memory to inaugurate what becomes culturally sanctioned heritage passed down to future generations. For this very reason culture and philosophy are coupled together like two blocks of an Egyptian pyramid, and any reflection on the singularity of a given philosophical approach to the world and man is at once a study of the particulars of the culture in which this approach develops. And yet, in light of the aforementioned principle of non-obviousness: is that really the case? Human cultural activity has been a continuous fact since the very beginning of history, long before philosophy developed into a methodologically valid science. Culture, taken as personal culture, culture of the spirit and culture as such – a social phenomenon situated in time and space – has always been a fact of life, and it is just as inappropriate to ask about its beginnings, as it is to ask about the first gloss of myth. It is difficult to arrive at semantic unambiguousness, looking at the tangle of various definitions of culture in use among scholars. But to arrive at semantic unambiguity would be of little use, because our understanding of culture is largely determined by the type of philosophy, and in particular, the type of anthropology that we adopt as well as the type of worldview to which we subscribe. It should however be noted that culture is always a form of the way man relates to himself, to others, and to the world around him; it is a search for form or for an appropriate expression by which to reveal internal experience in a comprehensible way; it is that which occurs whenever man wants to shed light

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on his personal nature, whenever he realizes that the ability to strive for truth, to act in accordance with the good and to experience beauty is a miraculous gift of existence. This search for form begins in the family, which provides the initial cultural context. The child gradually begins to individuate him or herself and to discover the other, appropriating models and examples of conduct. In this way he or she is shaped by culture which in a certain manner becomes a medium of communication. This is true both of personal culture, namely the realization of one's full personality and excellence, as well as of the subsequent creation of material and spiritual works. The shaping power of culture is subsequently revealed, determining the shape of man's relationship to nature – over time – because works of art provide a sort of resort against the degenerative effect of ageing. I am always very much under the spell of Romanesque churches, small in size and blending in with their surroundings, usually hidden in quiet valleys. The charm of these masterpieces lies in their human proportions; they do not force sky-reaching impressions on the imagination, as do the cathedrals, but rather quieten one, reinforcing the experience of gentleness and peace. They shine not with colours but with the Romanesque monastic spirit. Flooded by the half-shadow of these incredible buildings, with their touching figural capitals portraying life and religious scenes, with an uncommon longing I think to myself that it is a pity that I cannot pause for longer beneath the eyelids of feelings, beneath beauty that carries the very current of the past. Memory is fragile, scattering and losing these experiences almost immediately, leaving only a general impression at the bottom of the heart. And yet perhaps we carry our development, all that we have achieved, done and made of ourselves, in other words our culture, with us also to the other side of life. Beauty, perceived and experienced profoundly, remains in a man's soul as a permanent value. Permanent in a sense superior to that of ordinary human memory – permanent in an eschatological sense.1 Of course culture of a global and archetypal kind should definitely be distinguished from traditional, closed culture understood as the sum of human actions and works that have throughout history exerted a propitious influence on man and given him a sense of order, harmony and spiritual peace. The latter type of culture was probably more fit to ensure people's happiness before they became stung with the modern dart embodied by Hamlet, Sęp-Szarzyński, Rimbaud and others suffering from the loss of their identity, having become unto themselves “someone problematic”. Traditional culture did not have such dilemmas. Subjecting people to an unwritten (political, ecclesiastic or customary) law, it made them feel at home in 1

Cf. J. St. Pasierb, Światło i sól [Light and salt] Paris 1982, p. 24.

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life, calm, obedient to the values of culture – an ordering, static force without individual dynamism. The priesthood and the Church went about their business within the framework of a set and unchanging partitions, duties, and casuistic principles. This provided a sense of certainty, as in an old-fashioned family. Modern times have witnessed a global loss of harmony in various spheres of life. Culture has lost its universality, has become a specialized type of human activity, inaccessible to ordinary people who now content themselves with “TV snooping” and “intellectual laziness”. The sheer number of aesthetic options, information overload, polyphony of form and genre in the cinema, theatre, music, fashion and – from a somewhat different perspective – political correctness, deafen man, sowing a perilous impression of chaos. Impossible to make the right choice, to find oneself, retrieve one's sensitivity and spiritual potency within this cultural mosaic. Hence the need to liberate ourselves from the “culture of no effort”, that treating its audiences like children who should be given easy formulas in a way that does not challenge their intelligence,2 and, importantly, to discover ourselves anew, to reflect consciously and responsibly on who we want to be, by what values we want our lives to be guided, what path to seek as individuals created by God and reconciled with Him in the person of Jesus Christ. We should moreover recall (since we have lost this ability in thrall to modern culture) that the adjective creativus – creative, is ours of right, on account of our very nature. We are all born with the need to create, and it is this that may save us3 by unleashing the forces of our inner growth to fulfil all of our personal abilities within the order of truth, goodness and beauty. We must however remain attentive to one thing: we must view these as analogous, in other words, we must not lose sight of diversity in the experience of what each one of us calls happiness. After all, we all build our relationships with people, with the world, and finally with God in different ways. This experience resembles those of other people but it is also different. This is why “my happiness” at once is and is not that of another. Moreover, what we consider the idea of perfect happiness from the Christian perspective is not attainable in the conditions of our earthly toil. The Ancients had already remarked that no one could be called happy until death.

2

3

This situation is the opposite of that in which an authentic culture prepares the ground for evangelisation. It is then very close to childish innocence, and manifests a tendency towards universality and being available to every man. Cf. S. Swieżawski, Prawda i tajemnica. Pisma filozoficzne [Truth and mystery. Philosophical writings.] Warsaw 2007, p. 205. J. St. Pasierb, Światło i sól, p. 15.

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In light of the above, salvation – of oneself and of "one's soul" – is a difficult task in the reality we are confronted with, yet we are not in a wholly hopeless position. By answering three basic questions concerning ourselves, others and the world, we may be able to avoid the gravest disappointment, that of realizing (at the middle or at the end of our existence) that we have lived a life that was not ours, that was of another, that was dictated to us by others, forced upon us by the nature of social relationships and connections, by our own conformism, opportunism or by our allowing ourselves to be stupefied or manipulated. Let us thus have critical respect for the past and maintain a sense of freedom from the present; faced with the "one thousand open roads" of modern culture,4 let us take them in with a tender and courageous gaze. Philosophy came into being as an independent discipline only towards the end of the seventh century BC, in Greece. We are thus dealing with that early stage of the development of civilization which preceded the emergence of philosophy as a methodologically distinct sign of human intellectual activity. For Aristotle, however, already the first "theologians", or poets and ecstatic sages, had asked about the nature of the cosmos and its ultimate causes, viewing the gods as responsible for the total arrangement of eternal reality. This is why those who love myths are in part philosophers, even though they express their intuitions in artistic, metaphorical language.5 Their reflection was thus typically philosophical, though clothed in theological attire, referring to the world of gods canonized by Homer and Hesiod. It is thus inappropriate to draw a dividing line between philosophy and culture, culture and philosophy. The former is the work of philosophy just as much as it is the work of Christianity,6 and thus depends for its shape on the questions, problems and transformations of philosophy in general and of metaphysics in particular, on the various forms it has taken throughout history.

The determinants of culture and philosophy Had Europe somehow cast away the achievements of Greek thought, today's world would be a completely different one. Perhaps even Christianity would have taken on a different vocabulary and customs. Remaining duly cautious, we must conclude that it was the Greeks who created the European rational approach to reality, including to the religious domain, and were the first to recog4 5 6

J. St. Pasierb, Światło i sól, p. 15. See Aristotle, Metaphysics A, 982 b 15; 983 b 30. B. Skarga, Człowiek to nie jest piękne zwierzę [Man is not a beautiful animal], Krakow 2007, pp. 10-11.

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nize the basic function of spirit, acknowledging it as the source of cognition, feeling and individual action. They were the people to have raised the great edifice of philosophy which has since then been an inseparable part of culture, and without which a total view of the world, the joy of cognition as such, free moral decisions and artistic activity would not be possible. This is why Europe bears a “recognizable singularity” which makes it stand out among the nations of the world. This singularity is not based on some kind of cultural identity, a type of “cultural racism”, but reaches down to the deepest ontological and anthropological foundations bound in with ideas specific to Christianity, in particular the dignity of the human person. No attempt to contemplate reality, and thus to philosophize, can be made without a reference to the cultural dimension of human life. And since this is so, what is the process whereby philosophy and culture have mutually determined and developed one another? To answer this question, we must look at the cultural circumstances that enabled the emergence of philosophy as a distinct branch of culture, prompting the appearance of a technical philosophical vocabulary and of metaphysics, the core of every version of philosophy that has been known in history. Even the subtlest form of philosophical atherosclerosis immediately causes a cultural stroke, or, to develop the medical metaphor, the collapse of that culture. At the basis of European culture we thus discover some fundamental questions, formulated by Parmenides, namely “What is being? What is its nature? And what are its properties?”. These questions have a theoretical dimension; they wish to guide us to a truth that does not have to be, and shouldn't be, be a source of personal or public benefit. Moreover, the above questions gave rise to new ones, especially about types of beings, which manifestly became a departure point for the development of new sciences. This is how the cultural activity of man began to branch out. The emergence of theology in the early centuries of Christianity has its source in the metaphysical spirit which gave faith in the Highest Being the impetus to make that Being the object of study, to subject it to intellectual scrutiny. At any rate, it is accepted in philosophical circles that the entire history of European culture may be presented as a history of philosophical (metaphysical) theses and their influence on human activity. Philosophy has influenced and probably continues to impact the reality of culture in two respects: it forces human culture to make an effort to explain that which is, and as Heidegger might have said, to explain the very “is” in addition to the “should be”. Thinking and paideia combine in metaphysics. It is thinking that strives to explain why something is as it is; it is what makes foresight and control over praxis possible. It shapes concepts, even overly abstract ones. This is how the culture of thinking is born. Paideia on the other hand shapes the culture of being, whose aim is to ensure nobility of the soul. Thus for the people of

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the university, but presumably also many others, theoretical thought (and not just strictly scientific thought belonging to the realm of natural science, but also philosophical thought) remains a constant topic of reflection, as do all questions relating to morality.7 Our culture is characterized and at the same time distinguishes itself in the sphere of world civilization by b…oj qewrhtikÒj or contemplative life. It is this life that causes our animal nature to be suspended, so to speak, yielding to contemplation and the building of cultural values, especially moral and aesthetic.

The contemplative life In order for these values to constitute themselves it is necessary to prepare appropriate conditions, strictly grounded in the material world. The distinctive processing of certain things and the setting in motion of certain processes bring into being a whole new world – the world of human culture in which values emerge and may impact the specific achievements of individuals and groups. This new world emerges thanks to powers and abilities available to man in the act of assigning meanings and value to objects which, because they belong to the realm of nature, are not inherently possessed of such qualities. This is how a special type of climate is created, necessary for endowing human life with a new meaning that transforms every human action and bestows previously unknown functions on human decisions, as a result of which man becomes capable of accepting his own existence.8 Abandoning these actions, he would essentially cease to “cultivate himself” and to become human. This precisely is what culture enables him to do. Humanity: and so the ability to make free choices, think, create axiological ladders, be religious, artistically creative: acquires its dignified stature and distinctly separates itself from the natural order. The ability to shape the cultural face of the world is not inscribed in genes or conferred at birth. Every generation has to receive and to embrace it as its own duty. Culture is acquired through transmission, which is a certain type of anthropological process. This process is what activates a certain kind of intellectual dynamism in human beings, enabling the expression (by means of cultural signs) of the interrogative situation in which they inevitably find themselves. The desire to understand one's personal entanglement in the mysteries of reality and to provide what are usually provisional and non-final answers to questions the world inflicts on human beings drives the evolution and the continued hermeneutical self-renewal of culture. 7 8

B. Skarga, Człowiek to nie …, p. 12. Cf. R. Ingarden, Książeczka o człowieku [Little Book on Man] Krakow 1998, pp. 23-24.

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Transmission as an anthropological process This is why the transmission of values, personal examples and visions accumulated in tradition and giving meaning to the world remains so important. This transmission does not have fixed semantic content and requires ceaseless interpretation and interference on the part of its inheritors. The individuality and ontic uniqueness of every human person makes culture an area of constant transformation, verbal addition, objection and dialogue. No question receives a final answer. It is thus impossible to renounce tradition, understood as an inherited system of meanings that allows one to orient oneself in the world. To suggest such a possibility is to do so only "in theory", since in practice one would remain entangled in tradition, be it only in a negative sense. New beginnings are made possible by transmission, not beyond it. Over the course of history transmission has grown and continues to become increasingly handy. At the beginning, so-called high speech, reinforced by mnemotechnique, was in general use. Philosophers lyrical sung out their addresses in euphoric, rhythmic language, striving to give the latter a form that would make it easy to memorize and recall. The content of social experience was amassed and interpreted as it was being learned, appropriated and enhanced in the act of reception itself. It was a time when the art of the narrative song constituted the basic mode of literary, philosophical, and indeed of artistic expression. When writing in all of its mysteriousness did however become dominant, epic singers approached this new mode of transmission with overt caution. The associated vicissitudes are well-illustrated by Plato, who gave precedence to oral transmission due its temporal character, continual openness and its connection with the physical. Oral transmission – he claimed – does not only imply the acceptance of human temporality, but also of the chiefly doxological nature of language. This means that language exists before all else and is of decisive significance in giving praise to divinity. Oral culture is thus not a "mask" of presence but remains pertinent to an understanding of the subject as a doxological one. In the Phaedrus and in other Platonic dialogues we can discern the suggestion that the value of rightful ethical conduct is determined by how much it orients itself towards liturgical praise of the gods inasmuch as it is by the ideal of rational contemplation.9

9

Theses by Catherine Pickstock directed against the interpretations of Derrida. See C. Pickstock , After Writing. On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy, Blackwell 2000; A. B. Lord, Pieśniarz i jego opowieść, transl. P. Majewski, Warsaw 2010.

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Written transmission, particularly in the form of the printed book, did however ultimately prove victorious, causing revolutionary changes in the evolution of tradition and its ability to influence the shape of history. Transmission has now acquired a global character. Indeed, it is often imposed on the world at large by all-powerful media houses whose goal is usually maximum effectiveness and the increase of financial profit. In the service of political objectives, transmission becomes one of the most powerful forces impacting the fate of the world today. In this respect, transmission prefers only whatever is trendy, universally accepted and attractive. It does not promote the art of living, namely civilized culture and moral sensitivity, as if knowledge and pragmatism could replace care for others and a solid purchase on one’s foundations. Meantime only religion, wisdom and the families in which they are passed down from generation to generation can teach us the art of living. And yet advocates of postmodernism consider religions to be old fashioned and families to be based on inequality.

From myth to logos Chantal Delsol thinks this suggestion merits deeper reflection10 and in keeping to her context I thus reflect on: how did the highly original desire to seek truth for its own sake emerge in Greek culture, with its mythical-religious tint? What was it that led Aristotle to make a generalization, and a symptomatic one at that, opening his Metaphysics with one of the most famous sentences ever pronounced by man, “All men by nature desire to know”(pantes ánthropoi toú eidénai orégontai phýsei).11What Aristotle refers to is every man's spontaneous knowledge of the world rather than a specialized apprehension belonging only to some individuals. This, Aristotle stresses,12 is the manner in which we differ from animals, that we also live through art and thus are able to produce various objects by means of experience and knowledge, techné, as well as reasoning. In order to attempt to answer, let us consider what follows. Greece became the source for the emergence of philosophy. Why do we look for its beginning there of all places? What was it that caused the cultural transition (if we are to adopt this interpretation) from the order of myth to the order of logos? It is difficult to say precisely. But it was certainly the discov10 See Ch. Delsol, Czym jest człowiek? Kurs antropologii dla niewtajemniczonych, transl. M. Kowalska, Krakow 2011, pp. 123- 160. 11 Aristotle, Metaphysics I, 1, 980a. 12 There is a current tendency to reduce this difference, based on the attribution of cultural gestures, in very basic form, to animals.

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ery of a new goal, an exceptionally intriguing one related to the power of the human intellect, which we should narrow down to one core principle: the acquisition of knowledge about all that exists, the whole cosmos, using nothing but experience and reason. Various factors conditioned this process, chiefly religion, along with the spiritual lifestyle deriving from the tradition of Orpheus and the mysteries rooted in Orphism, the politics and vision of Athenian democracy tied in with the polis: the community of citizens (kainonia ton politon) organized within the framework of a certain political system:13 and wisdom, symbolized by the hermeneutic craft of singer-sages, spreading an understanding of philosophy as a way of life centred on spiritual exercises and on language in its therapeutic function. Philosophy did not appear “out of nowhere” and “for no reason”.14 The world existing as a matter of fact, independently of human cognitive powers forced the Greeks, so to speak, into this kind of intellectual activity, which at a certain moment in history became known as philosophy and became distinctly set apart from the religious, mythical, historic and literary. The specific hue differentiating philosophy is thus the word (logos) and the art of reasoning that makes possible the proposing of rationally justified explanations of reality. At the dawn of history, people discovered their mortality, their existential nonnecessary-ness and fragility, and began to bury their dead, thus reaching for the questions “Why? What for? Where from?”. This reflection on the reasons of what is and of what is experienced (at the time still rather naïve and very spontaneous) acquired a methodical character over the course of centuries. Philosophers supplied culture with a hitherto unknown feature: the imperative of understanding (theory), entailing the necessity to search for the causes of reality in order to attain an original, absolute principle ending the need for further questioning. As thinking became paired with language, the flavour of discovering truth for its own sake turned out to be quite alluring, thereafter never to disappear from the horizon of culture, becoming a kind of spiritual foundation of Europe.

13 Aristotle writes: „For, since the state is a partnership, and is a partnership of citizens in a constitution, when the form of government changes, and becomes different, then it may be supposed that the state is no longer the same”, in: Aristotle, Politics 1276 b, trans. Jowett. 14 See J. Jaskóła, Pierwsza filozofia. Stanowienie i odkrywanie rzeczywistości filozoficznej [First philosophy. Constitution and discovery of philosophical reality.], Wroclaw 2011, p. 268.

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Religion, or the public cult And what of religion? It has been there since time immemorial, because man's relationship to transcendence, regardless of how it is understood, belongs to his personal endowments, because openness to mystery can hardly be obliterated from the order of human existence. The ancient Greeks bore exemplary witness to this ontological event, living in an eternal reality which the creative activity of the gods had turned into a cosmos devoid of an afterworld. This reality was worth knowing, indeed lent itself to being known, caused aesthetic experiences; it contained truth, goodness and beauty. Thanks to the spread of the Homeric tradition, “everything” in the Greek consciousness of the time was perceived as divine. We encounter no interhuman or social situation, no private gesture that was not somehow tied in with the activity of the gods. But their transcendence had a relative nature since they resided, along with people, within the bounds of the cosmic totality, even though their immortality placed them somewhat higher. So the duty of every free-born Greek was to serve the gods in accordance with and within the bounds of a minutely defined religious cult. It is of little surprise then that participation in socially binding celebrations, especially collective pilgrimages, was considered to be the main criterion of religiousness. Religious institutions were of no importance, there was no church, clergy (priests, hiereis, were elected annually as any ordinary officials, though not always), dogmas, doctrinal book or religious founder. Specks of divinity infused every aspect of Greek life, as the famous anecdote about Heraclitus illustrates. Some travellers wanting to visit the philosopher, who was by then famous, stop at the threshold of his home, seeing him warming himself by the fire. According to Aristotle, whose desire was to prove that the observation of the stars and of the movement of heavenly bodies amounted to as much as seeing ordinary objects, Heraclitus invited the guests in and said: “even there [in the kitchen hearth] the gods are present”,15 persuading them that drawing a boundary between the sacred and the profane is merely an easily discoverable language game. But this is also why the religiousness evolving within the public space of the polis necessarily became a mixture of ceremonies and rituals to which all citizens were subjected, including women and sometimes even slaves. The development of the city state saw the emergence of new cults connected directly to political institutions. Most poleis had their own separate patron deity (some of them more than one), and many commonly recognized symbols carried a reference to that deity, whose likeness was

15 Cited after: J.-P. Vernant, Człowiek grecki [The Greek man], transl. Ł. NiesiołowskiSpano, Przegląd Polityczny 2011 no. 105, p. 136. My translation.

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often featured on coins.16 “Faith” (pistis) was not seen as belonging on the individual level (apart from the mysteries, which had a private character, proposing rituals of personal initiation, loving acts of spiritual union with the deity, that were temporary and incomplete in the rite, and absolute following death),17 but realized in social practice, in sight, so to speak, of the polis. From this point of view any deviation with respect to religion did not command acceptance, since atheist views amounted to a negation of the political and social structure, stood out against the order imposed by the city state which, after all, stood guard over the religious cult, financed it, and often itself becoming the object of worship, at least during the Hellenistic period. We have but to turn to the example of seventy-year-old Socrates and his “fight” against the poet Meletos, amongst others, who brought a formal complaint against the former, accusing him of blasphemy and of demoralizing Athenian youth. Socrates did not succeed in convincing the judges of his innocence, but the message he left still rings true and persuasive. Philosophy, he argued with a hint of irony and humour, as a reflection on what is good and just, has its own autonomy, independent of political options or even the will of the gods. The happy life, which philosophy encourages us to attain, is living in accordance with one’s conscience, the “voice of the soul”, agreement to be oneself without the artificial straitjacket of various conventions that pervade everyday existence. Plato’s Apology describes these events in a hieratic tone. During the second stage of the trial, Socrates, “deconstructing” the charges brought against him, uses the term atheos, saying that he in no way is an atheist and did not commit the crime of which he is accused.18 Without going into the linguistic and technical details concerning Socrates’ alleged atheism (which pose certain difficulties) it is important to note that the issue of faith in God (gods), the place of religion in the life of the community and the duties imposed by the religious cult were a disputable matter. Socrates however, as opposed to the Sophists, maintained a favourable attitude towards religion. He listened to the voice of the mysterious daimonion, interpreted inner signs coming to him from the realm of revelation. Yet it is in the road of moral choices accepted by the gods that he finally put his trust, considering them the spring of all attainable happiness. 16 For more on this see M. H. Hansen, Polis. Wprowadzenie do dziejów greckiego miasta – państwa w starożytności[Polis. An introduction to the history of the Greek city-state in antiquity.] transl. A. Kulesza, R. Kulesza, Warsaw 2011. 17 See W. Burkert, Starożytne kulty misteryjne, transl. K. Bielawski, Bydgoszcz 2001; K. Kerényi, Eleusis. Archetypowy obraz matki i córki, transl. I. Kania, Krakow 2004; K. Pawłowski, Misteria i filozofia. Misteryjne oblicze filozofii greckiej [Mystery and philosophy. The mystery aspect of Greek philosophy.] Lublin 2007, pp. 26-38. 18 Plato, Apology, 26 c

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And yet even this religiously worthy (it would seem) stance did not command support in ancient Greece, even as a point of honour. Although we do encounter “atheists”, such as Diagoras of Melos, Theodorus of Cyrene or Euhemerus of Messina, not to mention the Roman poet Lucretius, considered the patron of unbelievers, with his famous exposition of Epicurean philosophy “On the Nature of Things” – the “Gospel of militant atheism”19. These examples clearly show that the social religious cult drew the boundaries within which the ordinary life of the city state had to go on, regardless of whether the latter was more of a settlement or a community, more or less populous. This was because cultural transmission did not cease, continually reinvigorating the need for public debate and judgement, and deciding on the best possible course of action given the current circumstances of the polis.

The longing for the true God The first Greek philosophers – this has already been stated – did not ignore the world of religion. And even though their pursuits no longer had much to do with cult-related activities, religion remained an integral part of their worldview. The formulation of the early Greek vision of the cosmos applied concepts derived from moral and political reflection carried on within the space of the polis. These related to the material, not the personal order. At the same time, we must bear in mind that state religion and the institution of the mysteries continued to have a strong influence. Even with maximum transparency of social life and the obligation of development incumbent on all the citizens of the polis with respect to its religious cult, there were religious rites functioning at the peripheries, designed to lead to individual internal transformation and the attainment of states beyond the earthly realm. The greatest thinkers of Greek culture (Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus), however, questioned the purpose of establishing tribal deities, moving their religious sensitivities to categories of their own devising, those of the Good, the First Mover and One. This is why it is interesting to highlight, while keeping in mind the revolutionary difference of the Christian understanding of God, the connection between Christian thought and the achievements of the ancient Greeks, whose longing for the “true God” manifested itself in the search for “the most fully existing being” as 19 Titus Lucretius Carus, Nature of things, ed. D. R. Slavitt, University of California Press 2008; K. Leśniak, Lukrecjusz, Warsaw 1985. A detailed discussion of these matters is available from Georges Minois [in:] Histoire de l’athéisme. Les incroyants dans le monde occidental des origines a nos jour, Paris 1998, pp. 39-67; see also: J. Sochoń, Religia w kulturze postmodernistycznej [Religion in postmodern culture] Lublin 2012.

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well as a language that would make it possible to speak of the Inexpressible. They may not have found the God,, but they did open up an intellectual horizon in which the religious experience of the Christian Revelation was eventually to find expression. Hence the generalization that without the roads traced out by the Greeks the Christian vision of philosophy, religion and life remains incomprehensible. By constructing an impersonal God, bringing the world forth out of himself as part of a natural, necessary creative process, Greek philosophers – with the exception of Plato, perhaps – did not abandon religion in favour of rational philosophical synthesis, but rather approached the former with a feeling of existential respect, because it fulfilled hopes that philosophy did not. Philosophizing did not make them enemies of religion. Even the Sophists seemed to consider beliefs an important component of the social order, though in principle one should not refrain from calling them destroyers of religion as such. In light of this, one should speak of a peculiar change within the theatre of social memory. Thanks to the total nature of philosophy's claims, aspiring to give a comprehensive theory of the cosmos-reality, religion seemingly reduced the scope of its competence, becoming a channel for the expression of the individual needs of those seeking religious fulfilment. The God of Aristotle remained a necessary, changeless and perfectly happy being, without a need for anyone or anything, as the cause of change in other things, being for them the “object of love”, the goal they towards which they are ceaselessly leaning. However this philosophical argumentation proved lethal. It necessitated the fall of the God of religion, who became replaced by the God of philosophy. One should thus repeat the well-known thesis that it is thanks to Aristotle that the Greeks acquired a rational theology at the price of the loss of their religion. The philosopher should love this God-Absolute, even though the latter does not love or, at most, loves only himself. He does not bend down to people, let alone to individual men. This is how things remained until the appearance of Christianity within the realm of Hellenic and Roman culture, with its proclamation of the news of Christ the saviour, at once God and man. Philosophy then came face to face with previously unknown problems and conflicts which it itself did not expect. At any rate, it became accepted in the classical tradition that God, in his very nature, is a mystery, and the philosopher cannot but accept the existence of this intellectual boundary. Yet this is precisely why He can be welcomed, all the more since through the Incarnation God has entered into a personal relationship with men, opening, so to speak, the space for religion and creed. This is why the God of philosophers does not have to preclude the God of faith. Things should be like this: faith supports the philosopher in his effort to understand the world, while philosophy makes it easier for faith to find the proper linguistic means of expression.

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Philosophical wisdom The crowning moment of the cultural, and hence also philosophical activity of the Greeks, was the attainment of wisdom, in accordance with the etymology of the word “philosophy”, meaning love of wisdom. Wisdom is almost universally perceived as the crowning of all human activity, including philosophy. It is, in principle at least, a goal pursued by all people on the unspoken assumption that it equates to happiness. European sapiential literature has retained the mark of this universal hope. Wisdom was at the time still understood as the art of the good life and good relationships with one’s kin and neighbours. It was not yet associated with theoretical knowledge of the world. Authors indicated ways of organizing one’s daily life so as to exclude evil, lack of prudence or neglect of the needs of the poor. The wise man’s responsibility was to transmit basic knowledge of morality, enabling society to gain a sense of structure and order. Wisdom was a means of increasing the common good and allaying potential conflicts; it also augmented the prestige of rulers. In Mesopotamian and Egyptian maxims20 we discover all types of disputes, instructions, counsels and warnings, such as: “A father’s advice is precious, submit yourself to it” or “Keep away from a quarrel, take a different route”. Similar suggestions have survived in the so-called Greek gnomes. Chilon, for instance, taught “Do not say much when you drink or you risk saying something foolish”, and Solon added “Ask the gods for advice”.21 The biblical revelation carries an echo of this tradition (although its originality clearly stands out), since the Hebraic books of wisdom were written following the period of Babylonian captivity. Wisdom, identified with the word of God, exceeds in its nobility the achievements of human culture. This is why earthly knowledge is rooted in and inspired by God. The Book of Proverbs states: “The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way” (Proverbs 8:22). It should thus be striven for so that it may take possession of human hearts and be present in each existential decision. Biblical thought equates wisdom with Providence, with prophetic vision, and finally with the Divine Spirit itself. To live in its aura is to have insight into matters guarded over by the Creator of all things. Yet it is only in the person of Jesus, the foretold Messiah, that we find the true Master of wisdom. He is the one who reveals the conditions of attaining 20 See K. Łyczkowska, Babilońska literatura mądrości [Babylonian wisdom literature] Warsaw 1998; J. Sochoń, Widzimy tylko znaki. O wierze chrześcijańskiej [We see only signs. On Christian faith.] Krakow 2011, pp. 183-185. 21 Filozofia starożytna Grecji i Rzymu[The philosophy of ancient Greece and Rome] ed. J. Legowicz, Warsaw 1970, pp. 47-52.

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the Kingdom of Heaven and appears as the impersonation of Divine Wisdom. He endows his disciples with powers that enable them to surmount fear and apostolic indecision, and to begin the evangelization of the earth.

Knowing the causes This religious perspective is also at the root of the belief that the wise man is the one who does not merely look at the world, gain knowledge of it, increase this knowledge and spread it, situating himself on the external flank of culture, so to speak, but is above all someone who can answer the question: why? (dia-ti), guided by the element of understanding. His experience is not limited to taking note of the facts; he has essentially grasped the mechanism of their presence. Or recognized the first causes. We only get to know a thing, Aristotle notes, when we think we have succeeded in getting to know its first causes.22 But the causes of what? One may easily reply: everything (ton panton). In order to understand in this way, we have to get to know the causes, without forgetting about moral responsibility. Imperturbable wisdom consists in the attainment of a comprehending type of knowledge that leads to free and rational decisions that increase the common good. It is worth calling it contemplative wisdom, since it combines spontaneous reflection on reality and “viewing” in an intellectual sense (theoría). After all, philosophy encompasses the general domain of pre-scientific, truth-seeking reflection, which is bound in with the consideration of the meaning of existence. Every man is summoned to this type of activity. In this way we come to the point connecting philosophy and culture. The issue seems rather important. Man loses something crucial from his humanity, from the marvellousness of his nature, when he lacks this dimension of wisdom. That is, when he is unable (for various reasons) to marvel at existence, at the world whose existential substance does not depend on subjective perception. And yet we should be amazed at what we find at the bottom of reality, whose sense and meaning we fail to remark in the whirl of daily life. We have to experience some kind of “shock”, a kind of joyous awe of being, and hence of whatever lies at the innermost, deepest, most intimate core of everything.

In a world of simulacra Modern culture does not make it easy for man to have these types of experience. It promotes the belief that reality is wholly inaccessible. The only thing we can do is rely on the power of our creative subjectivity and imagination. Impose a 22 Aristotle, Metaphysics I, 3, 983 a.

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network of ever changing linguistic images on the world, exist within a world of signs, signs that no longer refer back to a true reality but only to other signs. We lock ourselves up within the limited space of simulacra and deprive ourselves of a meditative view of reality, all because we have found ourselves under the influence of a post-Cartesian style of thinking. Since we do not get to know real being but only the content of consciousness (ideas), metaphysics becomes superfluous, while epistemology, whose object of study is cognition itself, becomes an absolute necessity. If we have torn our world and ourselves into “thinking things” (res cogitans) and “extended things” (res extensa), then whatever we produce in creative activity will no longer complement nature. The architects of culture have ceased to be sensitive to the true reality and have surrendered it to the rule of values. Thanks to Kant and neo-Kantians such as Heinrich John Rickert and Wilhelm Windelband, the notion of value will belong to the essence of culture, and cultural sciences will turn out to be sciences about different types of values.23 We also automatically lose the binding priority of truth as agreement between cognition (judgments) and reality, since the subject does not – is simply not able to – step outside of himself. Truth must therefore find a substitute, and this part will be played by ideas. It is here that we find aesthetics as the theory of lower sensory cognition, the popularity of creative arbitrariness and the beginnings of subjective culture, the culture of the human mind in its experiential-internal aspect. We are seeing a progressive elimination of metaphysical wisdom from all areas of the spiritual life of modern Europe. Subjectivism, closely linked to egocentrism, poses a threat not only to philosophy and wisdom, but also to the totality of spiritual life, both natural and supernatural, to faith and to love. This is why – after Stefan Świeżawski24 – I stress that the practice of philosophical wisdom in its culture-making capacity is currently becoming a fundamental task, not just for intellectuals and for the Church, but for all those seeking truth. Thanks to a wisdom-oriented philosophy receptive to the message of Revelation, culture unfolds and evolves according to the rhythm of reality and that which St. Thomas Aquinas refers to as revelabilia. The term refers to contents revealed, though we can also grasp them by means of our own reason and they belong to all of mankind. Let us only avoid practicism and naturalism, let us not disregard the Americanization of culture, and warn against it.25 Practicism is a 23 See Neokantyzm badeński i marburski. Antologia tekstów, [The neo-Kantianism of Baden and Marburg:an anthology of texts.] ed. A. J. Noras, T. Kubalica, Katowice 2011. 24 S. Swieżawski, “Kultura i filozofia”, Przegląd Powszechny no. 5 (1985), pp. 180-191. 25 See B. Skarga, O filozofię bać się nie musimy. Szkice z różnych lat [We needn’t be afraid for philosophy. Sketches from different years.] Warsaw 1999, p. 104.

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sin against rationality, an act of naïveté as well as a limitation, for it is impossible to build anything stable within the order of practicism. That which has an imperishable value needs a theoretical foundation. Naturalism, representing an attempt to derive all knowledge from natural history, also leads us astray. Neither physics, nor biology, nor even psychology and political science, enjoying undue popularity, are able to explain manifestations of spiritual culture, the soaring achievements of culture; they will not illuminate the dialogues of Plato, Romanesque art, the frescos of Giotto or the paintings of Perugino.

Philosophy as scientia divina We need a philosophy arising in the midst of human culture and co-creating it. Yet not just any philosophy that claims to do this, but only one that the Middle Ages referred to as scientia divina. Its vitality determines the health, the correct development and the amount of strength inherent in a culture. If we understand this, then we are also likely to accept the need for a connection between philosophy and culture. This will cause our daily life to arrange itself in such a way that we will consider ourselves happy. But in order for this to happen, we should subvert the nihilistic projects proposed by many of today’s influential philosophers and artists. We are living in a culture of near-depravity, offering us the image of someone called the last man,26 born to shut the door. All that he has inherited, he immediately viewed as hostile and unworthy of existence. He was cast into life with this counsel: this above all, do not believe anything and think only in order to reject or be indifferent to everything you experience. He is a man without a mission, giving nothing to others and gaining nothing from them. We have to do all we can today to maintain the continuity of cultural transmission and ensure that philosophy and culture permeate each other, creating a space of dialogue and mutual acceptance rising above the unfair divisions that may always creep up. The only road available to Europe is that of embracing gospel values, and to be more precise, accepting a vision of life springing from the mystery of the Incarnation and of society organizing itself according to natural law and pursuits leading to an increase of the public good. We have to face the truth. Our chances for getting out of the circle of religious indifference, terrorism or the dangers associated with the processes of world globalization should involve opening up to the spiritual testimony written into the works of the great masters of Christianity, or, taking a wider view, all manner of spiritual culture.

26 Cf. Ch. Delsol, Czym jest człowiek? … op. cit., p. 159.

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Christianity has provided an answer to questions concerning things supreme and ultimate, God, happiness, beauty. The great witnesses-saints and the architects of the Christian vision of the world are to remain our guides, because they are the ones to have ultimately shaped – in the Graeco-Roman perspective – our European way of reacting to reality, which does not exempt us from personal effort, especially in the face of the ever more pronounced European crisis. We must not forget the need to create a European community that makes a direct reference to the Christian tradition and gospel values. This general remark evokes specific and detailed principles. These have been described in the various sections of Church norms and the Church catechism. Postulates and obligations based on inviolable and fundamental principles – founded on natural law, with its main message: do good, avoid evil – constitute a solid basis on which statutory law in Europe’s various countries or homelands can develop. This means that the vision of man adopted by an integrated Europe should have its source in the evangelic formula of St. John (1:14) “The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us”. In this way culture and philosophy, recognizing their limitations, will build the foundation on which all human potentialities, all possible forms of human hope strengthen themselves and multiply.

Bibliography: Aristotle, Metaphysics Aristotle, Politics Burkert W., Starożytne kulty misteryjne, transl. K. Bielawski, Bydgoszcz 2001 Delsol Ch., Czym jest człowiek? Kurs antropologii dla niewtajemniczonych, transl. M. Kowalska, Krakow 2011 Filozofia starożytna Grecji i Rzymu, ed. J. Legowicz, Warsaw 1970 Hansen M. H, Polis. Wprowadzenie do dziejów greckiego miasta – państwa w starożytności, transl. A. Kulesza, R. Kulesza, Warsaw 2011 Histoire de l’athéisme. Les incroyants dans le monde occidental des origines a nos jour, Paris 1998 Ingarden R, Książeczka o człowieku, Krakow 1998 J.-P. Vernant, The origins of Greek thought, Cornell University Press 1982, p. 19; Vernant J.-P., The Greeks, transl. Ch. Lambert, T. Lavender Fagan, University of Chicago Press 1995 Jaskóła J., Pierwsza filozofia. Stanowienie i odkrywanie rzeczywistości filozoficznej, Wroclaw 2011 K. Leśniak, Lukrecjusz, Warsaw 1985 K. Pawłowski, Misteria i filozofia. Misteryjne oblicze filozofii greckiej, Lublin 2007 Kerényi K., Eleusis. Archetypowy obraz matki i córki, transl. I. Kania, Krakow 2004 Lord A. B., Pieśniarz i jego opowieść, transl. P. Majewski, Warsaw 2010 Łyczkowska K., Babilońska literatura mądrości, Warsaw 1998

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Neokantyzm badeński i marburski. Antologia tekstów, ed. A. J. Noras i T. Kubalica, Katowice 2011 Pasierb J. St., Światło i sól, Paris 1982 Pickstock C., After Writing. On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy, Blackwell 2000 Plato, Apology Skarga B., Człowiek to nie jest piękne zwierzę, Krakow 2007 Skarga B., O filozofię bać się nie musimy. Szkice z różnych lat, Warsaw 1999 Sochoń J., Religia w kulturze postmodernistycznej, Lublin 2012 Sochoń J., Widzimy tylko znaki. O wierze chrześcijańskiej, Krakow 2011 Swieżawski S., Kultura i filozofia, „Przegląd Powszechny”, no. 5 (1985) Swieżawski S., Prawda i tajemnica. Pisma filozoficzne, Warsaw 2007 Titus Lucretius Carus, De natura rerum

Astonishment, anger, community – the sources of European political philosophy REV. JACEK GRZYBOWSKI Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw (CSWU) The Faculty of Christian Philosophy

Mythic narratives and the courage of questions Many historians of philosophy wonder when and how philosophical thought began. How did this genius which changed the face of Western civilization in an unprecedented way ever come to be? Countless analyses and monographs have been devoted to the subject. But in spite of this profusion of commentaries, interpretations and controversies one thing remains indisputable – philosophy begins with questioning. Questions were what opened up the road to the intellectual journey which led the Greeks to Logos, to demythologized rationality that radically altered the way in which the world was perceived and understood. Discursive thought, especially the longing for a rational answer to the most fundamental of questions, the singular courage of the logos that wants to embrace” or „the singular courage of the logos, the deisre to embrace the world in an intelligible conception, is what distinguished the Greeks from all other contemporary civilizations. Władysław Stróżewski is right to have remarked that philosophy begins with astonishment buried deep within the soul, astonishment at the world, at its “being”, and with an unquestionable, and compelling, widely felt “to be”, which requires a response . A world that causes a distinctive type of cognitive disquiet, concealed within the troubling question about the “not-I”, the “something” that lies beyond me and demands explanation.1 The history of philosophy teaches us that this desire to know that torments the human soul found its first expression in myth. Myth however, tells a story, but does not answer questions. It is a narrative, which, pointing to an intervening transcendence, explains what human beings are apt to encounter in the world. For the community, it is not only a story, but a reality that affects decisions and attitudes.2 This is why it plays such a key role, why it is crucial in initiating cultural and intellectual ferment, in defining reality, why

1 2

Cf. W. Stróżewski, Istnienie i sens [Existence and meaning] Krakow 1994, p. 8. See K. Kerényi, Prometheus: archetypal image of human existence, Princeton University Press 1997, pp. 89-90.

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it becomes a source of knowledge without at the same time calling for justification on a deeper level.3 As W. Burkert states: Myth, in the form of a traditional tale based on a certain sequence of events played out by anthropomorphized characters is the oldest and most common way of talking about the gods in the ancient world, anchored in the oral tradition.4

The mythical tale serves up truths whose nature is sacred, unquestionable, original. This is why cosmological myths, portraying the dramatic beginnings and birth of reality while defining man’s place and situation in the world, play such an important role. Myths describe the world by means of analogy by transforming metaphor into metonymy. Natural phenomena are shown to be analogous to culture as a type of personification of what one can observe in the world, while relationships encountered in nature acquire an intentional character. This at once allows the world, ever mysterious and threatening, to become “domesticated” in culture and “sacralised” in religion and magic.5 Various versions of myth transmitted in stories told from generation to generation defined the whole system of common references, thus establishing relations of co-operation and subordination within society.6 In myth we therefore encounter an ordering and normative element that defines the wider cultural and existential context of the life of all ancient peoples.7 Myth was thus a formula of imperative wisdom, portraying rules of conduct as the manifestation of a superior force. Every power of action, rule and legislation had to be justified by myth. This is why myths played a key role during the initial formative stage of Greek culture: they offered truth about reality, enabled one to experience the sacred, and indicated the purpose of collective and individual action.8 Against this background – that of a mythological-sacred narrative – there emerges on the Ionian coast in the 7th century before Christ the phenomenon of speculative thought, seeking justification for questions concerning the beginning of the world and its structure and organization, meteorological phe3 4 5 6 7 8

Por. M. Eliade, Myth and reality. Religious Traditions of the World, Wavel and Press 1998, p. 18. W. Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults, Harvard University Press 1987, p. 75. Cf. W. J. Burszta, Od mowy magicznej do szumów popkultury [From magical speech to the buzzing of popculture] Warsaw 2009, p. 42. Cf. J.- P. Vernant, Myth and society in ancient Greece. European philosophy and the human sciences, Harvester Press 1980, p. 113. Cf. Der Wechselspiel von Mythos und Logos. Die Dialektik der griechischen Aufklärung als europäisches Paradigma, ed. L. Dreyer, Diesterweg 1998, p. 4. Cf. B. Snell, The discovery of the mind in Greek Philosophy and Literature, Courier Dover Publications 1982, p. 138.

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nomena and social systems. This manner of thinking represents an attempt to explain what we experience in nature in a different way to the dramatic spectacles of theogony and cosmogony. There are no supernatural elements in the daring of rational thought.9 We can therefore say that philosophy as the courage of rational reflection is born of darkness and in darkness, because the Greek term skotÒj appearing in the first known contiguous text, Parmenides’ poem, expresses this distinctive position of “obscurity” and “subconsciousness”. Love of wisdom, the effort that became filosof…a may thus be characterized as searching for the world in darkness. Blindness is vanquished by the power of seeing, first in the “sensory eye” and then in “the eye of the soul”. The phenomenon of logocentric thinking born in Greece can be portrayed by the metaphor of passage from a state of darkness and night, symbolizing the original indeterminacy of myth and its narrative, to light, representing the state of order and harmony of reason.10 9

Cf. E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, University of California 1951, p. 180. One should however keep in mind that, as Werner Jaeger says, it would be difficult to draw a line in history beyond which rational thought might be said to have started: this line would doubtless run through the Homeric epic, although the mixing of rational elements with so-called mythical thinking runs so deep there that it seems practically impossible to separate them. However, looking at the history of Greek philosophy, one cannot fail to notice the gradual rationalization of the original myth-based image of the world. W. Jaeger, Paideia. The Ideals of Greek Culture, transl. G. Highet, B. Blackwell 1946, p. 114. Copleston claims that the scientific passion of the Greeks could also have developed thanks to the absence of a sacerdotal class in Greece with strong traditions, doctrines and a gnostic conception of power. See F. Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. I, Greece and Rome, International Publishing Group 2003, p. 15. According to Vernant on the other hand, if mythos means speech, telling, then it does not stand in absolute opposition to the word logos, whose initial meaning is (before it begins to refer to intelligence and reason) also speech, discourse. It is only in the fifth century that these concepts begin to be considered as opposed, and the word myth acquires a pejorative meaning. For more see J.-P. Vernant, The origins of Greek thought, Cornell University Press 1982, p. 19; J.-P. Vernant, The Greeks, transl. Ch. Lambert, T. Lavender Fagan, University of Chicago Press 1995, p. 258. "It is not myth and logos that are opposed but myth and cosmology, with mythology as an intermediate step. The essential difference between mythology and cosmology relates to the object of what the logos refers to: in the first case, the actions of the gods and heroes, in the second, being and the unravelling of the world's impersonal forces – like Thales' water or Anaximenes' air". See C. Osborne, Presocratic Philosophy, Oxford University Press 1999, p. 34; B. Sandywell, Presocratic reflexivity: the construction of philosophical discourse c. 600-450 BC, Routledge 1996, p. 57. 10 Cf. D. Kubok, Prawda i mniemania. Studium filozofii Parmenidesa z Elei, Katowice 2004, p. 97.

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It is thanks to this “passage” that the process which altered and continues to alter the shape of human mental and creative culture began. Philosophical thought became an area of “delivering and purifying”, as Socrates put it in Plato’s Phaedo ,and that which leads to the fullest purification is truth itself.11 Nothing renders the distinctive aletheic and eidetic “work” of the Greek logos more accurately than philosophy, conceived as a kind of katharsis enabling us to “see” the world as it really is.12 Critical and courageous reflection thus begins with asking a question, throwing a challenge to reality, while at the same time risking that the answer may be an unexpected and astonishing one, forcing us to enter onto a path that will later become known as dialectic, dominated by both yes and no in the attempt to give a rational account of the mystery of the world. Those who summoned up the courage and freedom of rational thought appeared on the Greek coast of Ionia seven hundred years before Christ and engaged in per… fÚsewj ƒstor…a - "an enquiry into the nature of the all".13 These early Greek thinkers came forward with a certain proposal for explaining the world rationally. This turns out to be a decisive turning point in the history of human thought. Mythological narratives constituted cosmogonies of a religious type, portraying the history of the world as a struggle between personified beings, thus creating a sort of descriptive genesis of the world, a book of generations intended to remind the people of its forefathers and bring it into union with forces cosmic and divine. The specific disenchantment of myth undertaken by philosophers consisted in an effort to explain the world without reference to the battle of mythological forces and elements. It became an attempt essentially to alter the point of view in which the came to be grasped as it really was, of which the Greek word fÝsij – the nature of things – is a good illustration.14

The beginnings of philosophy - between the agora and the mystery cults But what was it that led the Greeks, alone of all the other developed civilizations and cultures of the Mediterranean, to embark on the adventure of philosophy that was to have such impact on the fate of the world? Jean Pierre Vernant pointed out 11 See. Plato, Phaedo, 69B, 82D. 12 Cf. K. A. Morgan, Myth and philosophy from the pre-Socratics to Plato, Cambridge University Press 2004, pp. 106-108. 13 Cf. W. K. C. Guthrie, The Greek Philosophers from Thales to Aristotle, Harper and Row 1975, p. 19; O. Gigon, Grundprobleme der antiken Philosophie, Francke 1959, pp. 14-18. 14 See P. Hadot, What is ancient philosophy?, transl. M. Chase, Harvard College 2002, p. 34; I. Dąbska, Zarys historii filozofii greckiej [Outline of Greekphilosophy] Lublin 1993, p. 13.

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that the best climate for the emergence of free, disinterested, rational and completely unrestrained questioning concerned with the causes of the world could have appeared in Ionia because of the political unity of the Greeks at that time. We may venture a guess that it was the social order of the polis that made the thinkers of the time consider the cosmos as a space whose purpose and cause could be inquired about without reference to mythological narratives. This is also what led to the emergence of the social kÒsmoj as a dominant image, in which its most important thinking subjects, people, begin to assign importance to the category of equality „sonom…a. The new world model construed by the physicists of Ionia brought about the secularization, rationalization and geometrization of thought, unleashing the critical approach and a spirit of inventiveness. 15 We may thus say that a distinct type of knowing, philosophy, was born somewhere mid-way between the religious mysteries and the polis agora. It contains a public element, subject to discussion, as well as a kind of mystery imparted to a handful of chosen ones, this latter aspect becoming particularly pronounced in the Pythagorean community. The reason for this duality may lie in the fact that the political world of the polis was of its very nature strictly tied to the realm of the religious. Religion, for its part, is made up of two elements: the public, manifest in talk about the gods, and the hidden, which remains implicit, mysterious, incapable of being fully enunciated. Similar inspirations are also to be found at the root of philosophy. The element of rationalization is public, but there is also a distinctly hidden space of mystery. A classic example of this are the so-called unwritten Platonic doctrines and the religious-mystical neoplatonic communities.16 15 Cf. J.-P. Vernant, The origins of Greek thought, Cornell University Press 1982, p. 13 16 In interpretations of Platonism we come across the thesis that the philosopher is truly a philosopher if and only if he does not write down things of greater import, but keeps them only for oral transmission. Plato himself was deeply convinced that many things could be entrusted to writing, but not the few most important ones, which may be transmitted only orally. Hence the appearance of the expression timiňtera (valuables) in the dialogues. These are only revealed in the philosopher's oral transmission - he speaks the most important things, those he does not want to commit to writing as a representation of the word. At the centre of Plato's account of unwritten science we find the famous story from the Phaedrus about the god Thoth and king Thamus. Hence the conviction, shared by many commentators, about the importance of Platonic esotericism as a prescription of reason. Philosophical knowledge is not a means to an end but an end in itself, which is why it should be imparted to others with due caution and not spread mechanically. In brief: esotericism intends the object, while keeping a secret intends power. This is why Plato does not consider writing the right occasion or the right means for communicating in full things of the highest rank: this necessitates another means of expression, oral, dialectic transmission. In the interpretation of the Tübingen school, Plato seems to say “do

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And so, in spite of the Greek "blending" of religion with communal life, philosophy, when it appears in opposition to religious myth, is not so much concerned with rendering the latter obsolete as it is with taking up the disinterested question δι£ τι – “why”? So it is the political freedom of the rational Greeks that prompts philosophizing.17 The scholarly life to which philosophical knowledge of the world and self lead was initially structured around political paradigms. Philosophical self-knowledge was subjected to the typical Greek social order. This was made possible by the fact that philosophical discourse emerged as a result of a distinctive causal connection: the order discovered in political structures allowed the Ionian physicists to rationalize the world, no longer however as a political community, but as the total structure of reality, of that which is. The Ionian sages, for such was their role in history, stirred up reflection leading to the discovery of a cosmic order, ruled over, as Heraclitus will eventually say, by the Absolute Logos. 18 It seems then that the Greek image of the social cosmos with humans as its most important rational subjects begins to gain value by virtue of distinct category of equality („sonom…a) mentioned above. The equality of free citizens and the birth of wisdom in the socio-political realm, coming to fruition in science, constitute the beginning of the astonishment that drives philosophical reasoning. It is thus probably safe to say that that Ionian philosophy, followed by free Greek reflection, is a child of the political and religious times in which the elements of openness and equality and of mystery and the religious mystery combined to form an irreplicable synthesis. The fruit of this synthesis was the question, growing out of astonishment with the world, that seeks a rational, coherent and transparent answer not just to being, but also to politics and religion.

not share things that are of great value to you with the majority of people because most of them will either fail to understand them or ridicule them, but keep them only for those few who will understand them correctly at the appropriate time”. See T. A. Szlezák, Reading Plato, Routledge 1999, pp. 39-48.; H. J. Krämer, Plato and the foundations of metaphysics: a work on the theory of the principles and unwritten doctrines of Plato with a collection of the fundamental documents, State University of New York 1990, p. 67.; G. Reale, A History of Ancient Philosophy, vol. II, Plato and Aristotle, transl. J. R. Catan, State University of New York Press 1990, pp. 65-75. 17 See J.-P. Vernant, The Greeks, trans. Ch. Lambert, T. Lavender Fagan, University of Chicago Press 1995, p. 56. 18 Cf. A. Kenny, Ancient philosophy. A new history of Western philosophy, vol. I, Oxford University Press, p. 42.

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Thymotic anger - the birth of politics This in brief is how we may characterize the beginnings of philosophy. What is it however that disclosed itself and emerged at the basis of Greek thought and political works? Works on the subject mention the idea that politics is born of anger, by which is meant a certain irritation or lack of assent that appears in a community and is caused by the events around us. Politics, then, springs from a lack of assent manifest in the tension between how things are and how they should be, how we want them to be. Anger is the beginning of this ferment which makes the philosopher take up political topics. Anger, but not hate. According to the archaic ontology of the Greeks, the world is a sum of the battles that must be fought within it. Epic anger, visible in the early works of Greek culture, appears as an original energy, swelling in and of itself, becoming an irreducible primeval force. As Peter Sloterdijk would make us believe “rage is the first word of Europe”, shaping the archaic ¢ret» and qumój of Homer’s “Iliad”. This Divine and human rage of the Greeks, Jews and finally of the apocalyptic Christians. 19 Heraclitean inspirations carry a similar note. For the philosopher of Ephesus all things are engendered and given their proper identity by pÒlemoj (conflict): in the case of men, some are made mortal slaves, others immortal masters. To Heraclitus, conflict is a specific manifestation of law - the cosmic Logos. 20 God is father and king of all, and some he features as gods, others as men, turning some into slaves, while others are made free. 21

Hence the process of mutability/becoming is here conceived of as a result of “war” (πόλεµος) between opposing elements, which remain in a constant tension that they “relieve” through change. Both in the “Iliad” and in the “Odyssey” we see the struggle of men and gods, and in the first place their rage, as force both destructive and constructive that brings about change in the world. The Homeric qumÒj is force, ardour, that is located in the breast (heart) of man, the source of the passions. In Homer, in this emotional context thymos appears 416 times, denoting, amongst other

19 See P. Sloterdijk, Rage and time, a psychopolitical investigation, transl. M. Wenning, Columbia University Press 2010, p. 3.; C. P. Caswell, A study of Thumos in early Greek epic, Brill 1990, pp. 3-4. 20 See K. Mrówka, Heraklit. Fragmenty: nowy przekład i komentarz [Heraclitus: Fragments. A new translation and commentary.] Warsaw 2004, p. 167. 21 H. Diels, F. Kranz, Die fragmente der Vorsokratiker 22 B 53, vol. II, Berlin 1951, p. 162.

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things, emotional-intellectual states of the human soul – courage, hate, fear, legitimate anger. 22 It seems that already in Homer anger has justly merited the predicate “selfexistent”, preceding any local provocation. The Homeric hero and his rage are an inseparable couple. Agamemnon and Achilles, Paris and Hector are all filled with rage. 23 But even though the heroes are angry and alter the world through their disagreement, in the Homeric epic it is the gods and not people who in the end administer justice. The poet denotes it using the Greek word qšmij,24 meaning a judgement that establishes the rule of conduct that, by decree of the gods, are to apply among men. To human kings Zeus granted “scepters and themis”.25 The gods are the source of law, and according to myth it is they that stand guard over justice. This is symbolized by Themis, the guarantor of order and justice. The word used to describe the goddess means “strengthened”, “untouched”, and symbolizes the law and order perpetuated by custom and not by human decree.26 It can also be translated as “decree”, because in patriarchal times the judge passed sentence according to the decree of Zeus, whose principles he drew at will from the traditional norms of customary law as well as his own experience.27 The expression themis esit, commonly used in classical Greek, means nothing but “it is fitting or just”. This suggests that customary law was recognized as to bear the eternal, divine law that causes the destiny inhering in the nature of every being to be duly realized. Any violation of the law was therefore tantamount to destabilizing reality, was a failure to stay within the bounds of the order established by the gods: the cosmos. The term qšmij contains the oldest Greek concept of a norm of law, whose meaning is reducible to divine will, 22 See T. Zieliński, “Psychologia Homerycka” [Homeric psychology], Heksis, no. 1-2 (1999) 18-19, pp. 11-16.; T. Kobierzycki, The Place and Role of Feelings in Homer’s Description of the Corporeal and Non-Corporeal Soul „Heksis. Philosophy, Psychology, Art”, no. 4 (2010), pp. 7-9. 23 See. P. Sloterdijk, Rage and time, a psychopolitical investigation, transl. M. Wenning, Columbia University Press 2010, p. 23. 24 Homer, The Iliad, XVI, 790.; Homer, Odyssey, XIV, 56. In mythology, Themis was the personification of justice or eternal law as advisor to Zeus. She ensured the fulfilment of the destiny of every being, flowing from its nature, and stood guard over respect for the law. Altars were raised to her in places of public assembly which she presided over as their patroness. For more, see P. Mazurkiewicz, Europeizacja Europy. Tożsamość kulturowa Europy w kontekście procesów integracji, Warsaw 2001, p. 206. 25 See Homer, The Iliad, II, 203-204. 26 Cf. E. Hamilton, The Greek way, W.W. Norton & Co., 1993, p. 45. 27 Werner Jaeger explains the Greek word qšmij as meaning fixed custom, and consequently - customary law, authoritatively binding and formulated in advance. See W. Jaeger, Paideia. The Ideals of Greek Culture, transl. G. Highet, B. Blackwell 1946, p. 71.

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bearing religious sanction. As time passed themis acquired an increasingly secular character. This is likely to have happened on account of the heads of families and kings who appear in between the god-lawgiver and the recipients of the norm, playing the part of the actual lawgivers.28 Political thymos is thus not uncontrolled anger and blind rage, but is brought into the framework of reason and law. In the Greek world this is most fully exemplified by the class of guardians (men of silver) described in the Platonic Politeia.29 The guardians, whose chief quality is thymos: spiritedness, noble fervour, passion, even a proclivity for anger, sometimes energy: stand for politically righteous anger and a reaction to evil. In a soldier, gentleness towards other soldiers and the citizens of his own state must combine with a lively and spontaneous temperament, just as in the case of a good dog guarding home and livestock. Anger is subject to social restraints in order to guard the community. In its political form, this anger helps the inhabitants of the polis to take an active stance in defence of that which is good and proper. Without this courageous spiritedness, as we should probably translate the word thymós, politics is unthinkable. What is more, the possibility of friendship between adult men in the city is dependent on thymotic premises, since he who is a friend among friends, an equal among equals, can play his part only if he appreciates a highly specialized display of the commonly honoured virtues.30 What one wants is not just to be proud of oneself, but also of one’s alter ego, one’s friend, attaining distinction before the esteemed community. A good opinion of one another among competing men ensures the community's thymotic attitude.31 Individual thymós may thus represent a part of the force field giving form to the common 28 29 30 31

Cf. P. Mazurkiewicz, Europeizacja Europy… op. cit., p. 209. Plato, Politeia, 374E-375A. Cf. C. P. Caswell, A study of Thumos in early Greek epic, Brill 1990, p. 58. For Aristotle justice is ultimately based on nous and philie. When people live in harmony, are in agreement with their true self, when the concord between them results from a similar type of concord within themselves, then the relation dominating between them is one that Aristotle calls homónoia – which may be translated as friendship based on similarity in the actualisation of the intellect. In this sense homónoia is a true type of "political friendship" based not on a confluence of opinions, which may exist between strangers, or agreement concerning scientific claims, but on agreement between citizens as to their interests, and on the conduct of politics in a way that satisfies them. We may speak of homónoia when citizens agree to elective offices, military alliances or the nomination of a captain. The stability of the polis depends on enduring feelings of friendship between good people, since common men are only capable of friendship where shortterm benefit and pleasure are involved. Thus discord will dominate the community whenever the interests of commoners come into conflict with one another and with the common interest. See E. Voegelin, Order and History, vol. 3: Plato and Aristotle, University of Missouri Press 1999, p. 345

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will to succeed both as individuals and as a community. An attitude of this sort implies behaviours exemplifying a rightly understood lack of agreement to the world’s being a certain way: political opinions, conditioned and modified by symbolic operations, manifesting a fixed reference to thymotic impulses, and rhetoric, as the science of the art of governing passions within political communities.32 Aristotle too, as a child of the political, scientific and artistic golden age of Great Greece, gave favourable recommendation to this affect. Anger is good, sometimes even desirable, as long as it goes hand in hand with courage and inspires rightful resistance to injustice. According to the Stagirite, justified anger hears the “voice of reason” even if it is subject to the passions. Anger becomes a misfortune only when it goes hand in hand with intemperance, which causes it to overflow its bounds. Now it appears that anger does to some extent hear reason, but hears it wrong, just as hasty servants hurry out of the room before they have heard the whole of what you are saying, and so mistake your order, and as watch-dogs bark at a mere knock at the door, without waiting to see if it is a mend. Similarly anger, owing to the heat and swiftness of its nature, hears, but does not hear the order given, and rushes off to take vengeance. When reason or imagination suggests that an insult or slight has been received, anger flares up at once, but after reasoning as it were that you ought to make war on anybody who insults you. Desire on the other hand, at a mere hint from [the reason or] the senses that a thing is pleasant, rushes off to enjoy it. Hence anger follows reason in a manner, but desire does not. Therefore yielding to desire is more disgraceful than yielding to anger, for he that fails to restrain his anger is in a way controlled by reason, but the other is controlled not by reason but by desire.33

Understood thus, anger is open, politically public, subject to judgement and discussion; lust however is covert and deceitful. Hence the political birth of free communities springs from a rightful stand against want and injustice, openly establishing its laws, boundaries, privileges and sanctions. Anger makes it possible to expose that which is evil, and, subjected to rational premises, to introduce order and transparency into relations.

Love of the good - the birth of community Aristotle’s thesis that man is a social animal is not limited to the recognition of a basic tendency of men to organize themselves, a tendency based on more or less developed opposition, anger or disagreement with a community’s mode of functioning. 32 See P. Sloterdijk, Rage and time, a psychopolitical investigation, transl. M. Wenning, Columbia University Press 2010, pp. 40-44. 33 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, transl. H. Rackham, Wordsworth Editions 1996, p. 181.

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Aristotle remarks that man is absolutely incapable of living in isolation and in order to be himself has to develop relations with other people. Nature herself points to the necessity of communal life: man and woman joining together create the first basic social community, the family.34 But since the family is not sufficient unto itself, a wider community emerges, the village, which guarantees the satisfaction of general life needs. And yet in spite of this satisfaction there emerges a need for further organization, because the family and the village are unable to provide the conditions for a perfect life in terms of moral and spiritual considerations. Such longings and pursuits can, says Aristotle, be satisfied only by laws, offices and a complex state structure. According to the philosopher, the state exists for a strictly specified purpose, namely for the highest good of man: his moral and intellectual life.35 This is expressed in the three symbolic buildings of the ancient Greek polis, the academy, the theatre and the temple. These demonstrate, also metaphorically, that community arises out of recognizing and coming to love the good in its perfection-oriented, intellectual and moral forms, the forms of science, art and religion. In his Ethics, Aristotle chooses to define politics as the science (or art) of human conduct. Human actions are goal-oriented and may serve higher purposes. Thus, if we presume that there is such a thing as the highest good, then the science inquiring into the nature of that good and studying human conduct insofar as it strives to achieve it, is the queen of all sciences. This science turns out to be none other than the science of politics (Nicomachean Ethics 1094a). It is the supreme science not just in the sense of hierarchical completeness, but also in a practical sense, since it relegates all other practical sciences to their rightful place in the economy of the polis. Every polis is a community and every community is established in view of a certain good, because people act in order to achieve what they consider to be the good. The purpose of the polis is thus to achieve the highest good, so long as we consider it to be the highest, most comprehensive form of community. The highest, all-encompassing community is in particular described as a political community or polis (Politics 1252al-6).36 34 Cf. Aristotle, Politics, I, 1252b. 35 "The polis is a community of families and towns founded for the sake of a perfect and self-sufficient existence". Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, V, 2. In the Greek word koinonia he expresses modern connotations of the concept of the community and that which belongs to it. It should be kept in mind that Aristotle's polis is not reducible to the concept of society nor to the notion of a state the way we understand these today. For more, see P. Rybicki, Arystoteles. Początki i podstawy nauki o społeczeństwie, [Aristotle: the beginnings and foundations of social science] Wroclaw 1963, p. 39. 36 See E. Voegelin, Order and History, vol. 3: Plato and Aristotle, University of Missouri Press 1999, p. 336

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It is thanks to this understanding and accomplishment of the good that the individual begins to live not by that which is good subjectively, but learns to know and choose that which is good objectively.37 This is also why the Stagirite views the state as a society different from the family and the village, not just in a quantitative but also in a qualitative sense. It is only within the state that man may lead a life that is perfectly good, and since such a life is the natural goal of mankind, the state - for Aristotle, as opposed to in Sophistic conceptions - is the natural society.38 It combines man’s growth with his belonging to a community. One cannot develop one’s potential living outwith a community. Man is a social being, and is so, as Aristotle emphasizes, by virtue of his nature. This is how the state, though it comes last, chronologically speaking, emerges as the first from the ontological point of view, since it represents a totality of which the family and the village are but parts.39 Intellectual and moral perfection, attainable only within a community thus constructed, make the state a source of meaning for human conduct and the only 37 Cf. A Companion to Ancient Philosophy, ed. M. L. Gill, P. Pellegrin, Wiley-Blackwell 2009, p. 395-397. 38 "Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. [Ð ¢nqrwpoj fÚsei politikon zwon]. Aristotle, Politics, I, 9, 1253a. "When Aristotle describes man as a political animal he emphasizes that, precisely, which distinguishes Greek reason from that of today. If he considers homo sapiens to be at once homo politicus, it is because Reason itself is in its nature political". J.-P. Vernant, The origins of Greek thought, Cornell University Press 1982, p. 132. Some commentators translate the expression politikon as "political" because it derives from the noun polis; its meaning however should not be identified with today's understanding of the term "political". In Aristotle this word means, above all, belonging to a small community of the legitimate citizens of one town. The cited fragment of the Politics contains what is perhaps the most radical defence of the state directed against the efforts of some Sophists to reduce the polis to a corollary of convention as well as the views of cynics preaching the radical negation of the state. Reale invokes the special political and social situation of Greece in Aristotle's time to explain his idea of the natural origin of the city state, which Aristotle proclaims even though common sense tells us that it is not wholly justified. The Hellenes, being without a hierarchical church inevitably considered the polis community to have a suprabiological and spiritual purpose, and identified it with the state. The differentiation between a community and a state was still alien to Aristotle. As a Greek, he was unable to grasp that there may be other legitimate types of state structure which are not poleis of the Hellenic type. Aristotelian man was destined to live in the polis and it was there that his humanity exerted itself. For more, see G. Reale, A History of Ancient Philosophy, vol. II, Plato and Aristotle, transl. J. R. Catan, State University of New York Press 1990, p. 340.; R. Kraut, Aristotle: political philosophy, Founders of modern political and social thought, Oxford University Press 2002 , p. 34. 39 Cf. G. Reale, A History of … op. cit., p. 342.

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self-sustainable entity.40 For Aristotle, the state does not constitute a community like that of bees (which also comes into being of necessity and is self-sufficient), because man is a rational being conscious of the purpose of his actions. The highest human goal is the good, and only the state as a society based on law and custom can ensure the good life of its citizens.41 Hence the thesis that although it is better to achieve the good and maintain it for one man rather than for none, it is by far more noble and divine to achieve it for the nation or polis. There is a sense of Platonic roots, as Eric Voegelin suggests, in this comprehensive conception of political science. The whole life of a man in society is part of a hierarchy of goods. The good of a human being is the same as that of the polis. The anthropological principle in its twofold Platonic form is presupposed here. Aristotle refers to Plato’s Politeia when he acknowledges the achievement of the good by one man to be better than the failure to achieve it by any one (the Platonic one-man polis), but he considers the achievement of the good by the whole polis more beautiful and divine. This program is simply an adaptation of ideas from the Politeia into a systematic science of politics.42 In Book VII of the Politics the author once more reminds us that the goal of a political system is the achievement of the good life, and a well-governed community should accomplish this goal by developing the personality of its citizens. The goal of the system calls for and defines the requirements to be met by those who are to accomplish it. Honest and educated individuals should find themselves at the top of the hierarchy, since they contribute to the good life more than anyone else.43 Thus, even if disagreement and anger have given birth to political-ness, their natural consequence is a clear objective, to demonstrate and to take pleasure in the good. Aristotle’s idea represents a specific victory of theory and speculation over real politics and political pragmatism. What in Plato was still a model and theocratic postulate becomes in Aristotle a means of assessing the polis. Form then determines the identity of the polis. If the order (form) changes, so does the polis. Aristotle is conscious of the fact that ethical virtues are necessary to man and to the community, although they are not among the former’s natural powers but have to be instilled in him by a process whose effectiveness depends on the right institutional surroundings. It is the legislator’s task to put these institutions 40 See Aristotle, Politics, I, 1252b, 8.; Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, I, 1094 b, 7-10. 41 Cf. K. Leśniak, Arystoteles, Warsaw 1989, p. 89. 42 See E. Voegelin, Order and History, vol. 3: Plato and AristotleUniversity of Missouri Press 1999, p. 334 43 See Aristotle, Politics, I, 1252b, 8.; Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, I, 1094 b, 7-10.

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in place. In this sense, this is the chief goal of the science of politics, to forge a specific type of personality among citizens; in other words, to cause them to be good and capable of noble deeds. The meaning of political science is here limited to the art of the lawmaker, who has to know which institutional systems will give rise to the desired ethical virtues and which will not. This limitation touches upon the reasons for dividing things up between ethics and politics. Whilst ethics is the science of virtue, politics studies the institutional means by which various virtues may be developed in citizens.44

The philosopher’s dilemma - why politics? The above considerations make us realize that philosophy, in the phenomenon of Greece, is closely bound up with politics almost from its very beginning. Yet not all philosophy textbooks tell us that this conjunction, though inescapable, is a serious discomfort to philosophy. The philosopher, by definition, should after all occupy himself with more important problems than the order of society. History however inexorably shows that he cannot carry on his reflection in a political vacuum. The success of politics depends on an effort to create a political system in which the life of the individual would be subjected to the pursuit of the common good, with some restriction of individual freedom. Grand visions of the ideal polity grow out of philosophical theories which the philosopher constructs in an attempt to solve the particular problems of the community. In this way philosophy and politics become coupled for ages to come, and this arrangement, though inconvenient for philosophy, proves surprisingly fecund for politics.45 The philosopher therefore has to turn towards politics (such, it seems, are the intuitions of some scholars and historians of philosophy), because the success of political action depends precisely on the wisdom born of philosophy, of astonishment, of the disinterested nature of the question di£ ti (why?), of the attempt to come up with alternative solutions and justify what seems most important to most people. The philosopher is however not merely a visionary of political order, but rather becomes, in the name of the metaphysical and anthropological conceptions he is seeking to actualize, an advocate of the rationally justified solutions he considers to be the best possible. We know, however, that history has shown up many such "appropriate solutions", revealing their historic bankruptcy. 44 See E. Voegelin, Order and History, vol. 3: Plato and AristotleUniversity of Missouri Press 1999, p. 378. 45 See L. Strauss, What is political philosophy? And other studies, University of Chicago Press 1988, p. 57-58.

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Hence political philosophy, as the domain of human activity related to reflection on the essence and difficulties of communal human nature, is always in some way dangerous. Why? Because the “right solutions” that philosophers have proposed in the course of hundreds of years of critical thinking have already on many occasions led to the proliferation of perverted models and murderous ideas. If philosophical theories give rise to grand visions of development by means of which the philosopher, as a sage, wishes to solve the particular problems of a community, a certain risk is always involved. One cannot avoid a certain discomfort when looking at the meeting of philosophy with concrete, defined and specific ways of implementing political projects. The considerations of politics thus draw the philosopher into a certain discussion. Politics is a way of creating social order, a type of reflection on the objectives of communal life, on certain definitions. In choosing to descend from the heights of metaphysics into politics (and there seems to be no alternative at some point), in choosing to lay hands on it, the philosopher needs to know that it will leave its mark on him. This mutual coupling is just as fascinating as it is disconcerting. He then who thinks he has philosophical reasons for distancing himself from politics betrays an insufficient knowledge of the origins of philosophy. Philosophy is a kind of mirror reflecting the self-discovery and the results of politics, enabling one to recognize good and evil and to create a world in which man might live humanely. The question that thus arises is not so much "if?" but "how?" to practice what today has been designated as the philosophy of politics.

Political philosophy – a conception This question makes us realize that perhaps the area of knowledge known as philosophy of politics should be treated as a certain type of reflection, reflection on the reasons for or against specific social and community solutions. It appears as the domain of human activity concerned with reflection on the essence and difficulties of communal human nature, and with assigning concerns for man to the essence and difficulties of communal human nature. European philosophy of politics can then be understood as history of philosophy, the history of ideas and human thoughts on political problems. Its purpose is reflective, not ethical. Like every type of wisdom-oriented reflection, it indubitably constitutes an area of demythologization, a particular “demystification” of the unravelling political spectacle. This understanding of political philosophy, however, demands mastery from the historian of philosophy as well as a metalinguistic grasp of the trends governing political ideas. Only in this way can it remain philosophy, and not be merely a columnist’s account of political processes. In order to fully understand this thesis we must realize that the history of philosophy is more than

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just a record of systems and people, a chronicle of long-forgotten problems and issues or a description of how given postulates function within culture. The history of philosophy is a particular skill, without which no philosopher deigning to pose questions and to discuss contemporary problems could carry on his work effectively.46 Having such a background helps to understand the historical and contemporary consequences of philosophical claims providing a context for the presentation of a variety of metaphysical, anthropological, ideological and political ideas. This is how the historian of philosophy is able to study and evaluate the direction in which specific solutions are formulated, judging them rationally decent or socially inadmissible. It is only on this level that he can risk value judgements and claims, and propose solutions. Without this historical and philosophical background research work is impossible, while the philosophy of politics becomes either dexterous journalism or historical moralizing exploited as an ideological weapon. When historical and philosophic skill is lacking, philosophy of politics turns into a type of erudite display or public marketing, a type of prepared and created social engineering reliant on the observation of moods, skill in picking up on certain social trends and in eliciting and directing them. Thus understood, the philosophy of politics in my opinion becomes at most politological reflection, in the sense of a journalistic evaluation of current events, but without the metalanguage required for carrying out sound research. In this form, it may be used in describing the current political situation and as an ethical benchmark. Such philosophers of politics then become acolytes of some “One True Vision”. This is caused by the destruction of a certain archetype that sets scholars apart from the commentators, journalists, politicians, moral preachers, and ethics experts usually making their appearance in the modern media sphere. The breaking and distortion of the historical and philosophical ethos of the philosophy of politics finds expression in the use of philosophy solely as a mask when passing moral judgement on the stance of different individuals or institutions in order to further the current goals of politics, beneath the banner of the philosophy of politics or historiosophy. This is why, in my opinion, the philosophy of politics will only be able to achieve its purpose, without abandoning philosophy, and rescuing current political judgements, if it is strictly joined to the history of philosophy, the history of human reflection on political problems. If it fails to meet these conditions, the philosophy of politics will move towards journalistic politology, in this way be46 Cf. M. Gogacz, "W sprawie koncepcji filozofii" [Concerning the matter of the idea of philosophy], Zeszyty Naukowe KUL, 7 (1964) 3, pp. 53-56.

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traying its first component, philosophy, the profound, wisdom-oriented reflection on the way one should act. Agreeing to the combination “political philosophy” is tantamount to agreeing not to mix the role of the philosopher with that of the politician. In my opinion, this non-mixing is founded on a sound knowledge of the history of philosophy and its research apparatus. It may help us to avoid the worst, namely philosophy of politics as a political and moralizing narrative, tainted by ideology, in the role of messiah and judge. Philosophy must always, whenever it wants to maintain its scientific and research ethos, refrain from mixing with ethical discourse. On the other hand it can, and even should, justify the political, ethical, cultural and civilizational consequences following from the various solutions it offers. Europe – as far as its ideological sources are concerned – was born in Greece. It was that culture, and that subsequently increasingly powerful civilization, that laid the foundation of Euro-Atlantic unity and force, not just in the sphere of culture, art or philosophy, but also in the manner of thinking about society, the state, and politics. The terms and ideological constructions of the ancients to this day play a key role in both politics and law.47 If the Greeks were the first people to consciously pronounce the words state, nation, democracy, oligarchy, citizen, it means that they were the ones who invented politics. If it does not want to lose its identity, contemporary European culture should remain an intellectual heir of the Greeks who worked out the fundamentals of thinking about the state as a community of citizens invested with rights and tasks. We have inherited a surprisingly large number of concepts from the output of Hellas. The words political and politics come from the Greek word polis, and in our civilization belong to the sphere of common designations, reminding us that what we call a state, an organized (civic) society,48 is the offspring of the Greek polis. It was there that the world witnessed the birth of “political humanism” that characterized the Greek cultural ideal in its strict connection with the social life of the time. It was there that free reflection on politics itself, a valuation by means of philosophy, seemingly from a distance, was born, giving rise to that which several centuries later came to be known as the philosophy of politics.49

47 Cf. A. J. Toynbee, Hellenism: the history of a civilization, Oxford University Press, p. 199. 48 Cf. P. Veyne, L'empire gréco-romain, Seuil 2005, p. 65. 49 Cf. W. Jaeger, Paideia. The Ideals of Greek Culture, transl. G. Highet, B. Blackwell 1946, p. 41.

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Bibliography: A Companion to Ancient Philosophy, ed. M. L. Gill, P. Pellegrin, Wiley-Blackwell 2009 Aristotle, Constitution of Athens Aristotle, Politics Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, transl. H. Rackham, Wordsworth Editions 1996 Burkert W., Ancient Mystery Cults, Harvard University Press 1987 Burszta W. J., Od mowy magicznej do szumów popkultury, Warsaw 2009 Caswell C. P., A study of Thumos in early Greek epic, Brill 1990 Copleston F., A History of Philosophy, vol. I, Greece and Rome, International Publishing Group 2003 Dąbska I., Zarys historii filozofii greckiej, Lublin 1993 Der Wechselspiel von Mythos und Logos. Die Dialektik der griechischen Aufklärung als europäisches Paradigma, ed. L. Dreyer, Diesterweg 1998 Diels H., Kranz F., Die fragmente der Vorsokratiker 22 B 53, vol. II, Berlin 1951 Dodds E. R., The Greeks and the Irrational, University of California 1951 Eliade M., Myth and reality. Religious Traditions of the World, Waveland Press 1998 Gigon O., Grundprobleme der antiken Philosophie, Francke 1959 Guthrie W. K. C., The Greek Philosophers from Thales to Aristotle, Harper and Row 1975 Hadot P., What is ancient philosophy?, transl. M. Chase, Harvard College 2002 Hamilton E., The Greek way, W.W. Norton & Co., 1993 Homer, Odyssey Homer, The Iliad Jaeger W., Paideia. The Ideals of Greek Culture, transl. G. Highet, B. Blackwell 1946 Kerényi K., Prometheus: archetypal image of human existence, Princeton University Press 1997 Kobierzycki T., “The Place and Role of Feelings in Homer’s Description of the Corporeal and Non-Corporeal Soul” Heksis. Philosophy, Psychology, Art, no. 4 (2010) Krämer H. J., Plato and the foundations of metaphysics: a work on the theory of the principles and unwritten doctrines of Plato with a collection of the fundamental documents, State University of New York 1990 Kraut R., Aristotle: political philosophy, Founders of modern political and social thought, Oxford University Press 2002 Krokiewicz A., Zarys filozofii greckiej, Warsaw 2000 Kubok D., Prawda i mniemania. Studium filozofii Parmenidesa z Elei, Katowice 2004, p. 97. Mazurkiewicz P., Europeizacja Europy. Tożsamość kulturowa Europy w kontekście procesów integracji, Warsaw 2001 Morgan K. A., Myth and philosophy from the pre-Socratics to Plato, Cambridge University Press 2004 Mrówka K., Heraklit. Fragmenty: nowy przekład i komentarz, Warsaw 2004 Osborne C., Presocratic Philosophy, Oxford University Press 1999 Plato, Phaedo Plato, Politeia Reale G., A History of Ancient Philosophy, vol. II, Plato and Aristotle, transl. J. R. Catan, State University of New York Press 1990 Sandywell B., Presocratic reflexivity: the construction of philosophical discourse c. 600-450 BC, Routledge 1996 Sloterdijk P., Rage and time, a psychopolitical investigation, transl. M. Wenning, Columbia University Press 2010

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Snell B., The discovery of the mind. In Greek Philosophy and Literature, Courier Dover Publications 1982 Strauss L., What is political philosophy? And other studies, University of Chicago Press 1988 Stróżewski W., Istnienie i sens, Kraków 1994 Szlezák T. A., Reading Plato, Routledge 1999 Toynbee A. J., Hellenism: the history of a civilization, Oxford University Press Vernant J.-P, The Greeks, transl. Ch. Lambert, T. Lavender Fagan, University of Chicago Press 1995 Vernant J.-P, The origins of Greek thought, Cornell University Press 1982 Vernant J.-P, Myth and society in ancient Greece. European philosophy and the human sciences, Harvester Press 1980 Veyne P., L'empire gréco-romain, Seuil 2005 Voegelin E., Order and History, vol. 3: Plato and Aristotle, University of Missouri Press 1999

A subjective interpretation of religious experience in the proposal of Martin Buber Rev. Sławomir Szczyrba Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw (CSWU) The Faculty of Christian Philosophy

Introduction The main problem of religious experience has to do with the issue of God, of whether God can be experienced directly, i.e. non-discursively, not through reasoning relying on causal connections within whose framework we can – as metaphysicians associated with the existential philosophy of being would have us believe – affirm the existence of an Absolute Being and formulate some kind of understanding of its nature. Such an interpretation maintains a certain neutrality vis-a-vis the metaphysical position. It does not depreciate that position as to its epistemic value, nor does it overvalue it because of its epistemic exclusiveness. And yet we cannot fail to notice that this interpretation involves a certain serious assumption, namely that God is (despite everything) an object of human experience, that he is simply one of the many things this experience may make its object. Experience is always composed of two parts. We perceive something, while at the same time the perceiving subject, through reflection, is conscious of the fact that the object he is observing, exists. What is more, he is conscious that it is not observation that determines whether that thing exists, and that that something, by its existence, precedes observation or even renders it possible.1 Experience always deals with something that has “some kind of being”, and hence presupposes the existence of difference. God, on the other hand, as St. ThomasError! Bookmark not defined. says “has no reality [being], but is reality [Being] itself”,2 and is thus without difference. If God could be experienced, he would ipso facto be a creature. Thus in principle every concrete reality 1

2

Several years ago in the circles of the Lublin School of Philosophy, Catholic University of Lublin, there was an ongoing debate between M. A. Krąpiec, OP, and A. B. Stępień, regarding the status of so-called existential judgements, differing from perceptions. See A.B. Stępień, “Istnienie (czegoś) a pojęcie i sąd” [The existence of something,, and concept and judgement], [in:] A. B. Stępień, Studia i szkice filozoficzne [Philosophical studies and sketches] vol. 1, Lublin: RW KUL 1999, pp. 185-186. In Deo autem ipsum esse suum est sua quidditas., In I Sententiarum, dist. 8, q. 1, a. 1. sol. Solus Deus est suum esse, quamvis alia esse habeant, quo esse non est divinum. Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate, q. 21, a. 4, ad 7.

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can be experienced in life with the exception of God. This is why, as St. Thomas rightly and aptly remarks, “religion turns man towards God, not as his object, but as his goal”.3 If we look at Aquinas’ writings on the life of souls redeemed in eternity, we will note that he considers the essence of the eternal life of the redeemed to be the vision of God, thus characterizing it as experiencing God directly.4 This would explain the reserve or even skepticism of the Church (Magisterium Ecclesiae) with regard to the notion of the experience of God (in this life, “here and now”) that has been enjoying a spectacular career in theology since the 1960s.5 Aquinas’ writings demonstrate that these contemporary hopes, expressed by theologians, scholars and philosophers of religion or religious thinkers, are unrealistic, and may therefore be deceptive. William J. Hoye is thus correct in noting that "[…] divine unity [i.e. the fact that God "has no reality [being], but is reality [Being] itself" – S.S.] represents the fulfillment of the divided unity of the concrete, assuming that the two constituent parts of the concrescence are completely identical. Although such unity is impossible in the circumstances of earthly existence, it describes a state that we inherently long for and which in general is the meaning of life. He who has realized the feeling of happiness shall be led down the painful path of insufficiency. Existence in the historical world is not characterized by the experience of God, but by the longing for God”.6 A critical question, according to Hoye, to be posed to the man asking himself whether he has experienced God and to the one who claims he has, according to St. Thomas, would simply be “Have you experienced some kind of reality?”, or (in a simpler form) “Was your experience reality?”, or (in an even simpler version) “Do you know that you experienced something or at least lived something? Was your experience concrete? Was it an I - Thou meeting?”. And the last version, in the language of mystics, “Did you have a feeling of God’s presence?”. If the person concerned were to answer “yes” to all of these questions, one would have to infer that he did not experience God as such, even if he was convinced that he took part in a religious experience and that it was indeed a religious experience.7 3 4 5 6 7

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 81, a. 6, ad 2. It is worth noting that St. Thomas does not use the expression "religious experience" or "mystical experience". Cf. W.J. Hoye, Teologiczne błędy myślowe, transl. P. Kolińska, Krakow: Wydawnictwo Salwator 2011, pp. 122-133. W.J. Hoye, Teologiczne błędy… op. cit, p. 123. The judgement that someone has participated in an authentically religious experience presupposes not just the conviction of that particular subject as to having participated in such an experience, and as having had the intention of participating in such an experience

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God is therefore not an object of experience, while existence in the temporal world is not characterized by the experience of God, but by the longing to experience God. This longing is rendered all the more acute since it is part of the experience of creatures that have reality [being], but are not reality [Being] themselves. Perhaps because reality originally means creation (the word “reality” is not assumed by Christian theology, nor by Judaic theology, but in itself presents a specifically theological problem8), which from the linguistic point of view denotes something complete (actualitas9), St. Thomas used to say of theology that God is its subject.10 The intent was not only to specify and to distinguish theology from philosophy, but also to show the limits of philosophical discourse, i.e. objective discourse, also successfully practised by Aquinas, and to raise awareness of the incomparable nature of knowing God, which knowledge God in some manner accords to man by drawing him towards himself. Many works devoted to the problem of knowing God, and in particular to the philosophical problem of knowing God, duly point to St. Thomas as the philosophermaker of “roads” – that is, classical, metaphysical models of argument for the existence of God and for a metaphysical theory of His nature, while forgetting that Aquinas was also and above all (something we cannot overemphasize) a speculative theologian. It thus turns out that Thomas Aquinas himself, to look no further than his classical text from the "Summa Theologica" (II-II, 97, a. 2, ad 2), and this is something that is often forgotten, next to theoretical cognition (cognitio speculativa) also distinguishes affective cognition, which he also refers to as experi-

(this is a necessary, though not a sufficient condition), but also a sign confirming the facticity of the experience in the form of a miracle, understood as something that happens beyond the order of all of created nature. Cf. P. Moskal, “Logiczna struktura apologii katolicyzmu” [The logical structure of the Catholic apologia] [in:] Apologia religii, ed. P. Moskal (Series: Religia i mistyka, vol. 6), Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL 2011, p. 184; See ibid., Apologia religii katolickiej, Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL 2012. 8 See W.J. Hoye, Teologiczne błędy… op. cit., p.174; p. 177. 9 The term actualitas itself came into being in XIII century theology. The "Dictionary of Medieval Latin" lists St. Albert the Great as the earliest source. In Aquinas, actualitas came about as a result of confrontation with Aristotelian philosophy, with its key concept of actus, in order to express the abstract (some kind of) reality, next to (this) concrete reality we are faced with, to give expression to the common intuition that we are dealing with something actualised. Cf. W.J. Hoye, Teologiczne błędy… op. cit., pp.177-180. 10 See J.-P. Torrell, OP, Święty Tomasz z Akwinu mistrz duchowy, transl. A. Kuryś, Poznan – Warsaw: „W drodze” 2003

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mental (affectiva seu experimentalis)11 cognition. How is this affective (experimental) cognition of God to be understood? Without going into detail,12 we may say that the term refers to cognition effected, so to speak, by a man drawn (available to be drawn) by love towards God, therefore receiving the gift of love and the gift of wisdom, which in a manner make him co-natural with God. Thanks to these gifts of God (specifically, through the communication of the Persons of the Holy Spirit and the Son), God himself makes man capable of knowing him, keeping in mind that this knowledge should be understood as being more akin to the type of knowledge mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (intimate communion with God) rather than in the Greek sense. Man indubitably experiences the beneficent presence of God which defines and reassures him in his “self”.13 It is sometimes the case among authors, especially those practising the philosophy of Judaism or attempting to give it articulation,14 that in defending the peculiarity of their own outlook against the singular outlook shaped by Greek rationalism (the rationalism of Greek philosophy), they in one way or another distance themselves from metaphysical discourse. The defence of the special character of religious experience, intended amongst other things as I understand it to salvage the immediacy (peculiarity) of the experience of God,15 is very often articulated in statements expressing “pre-conceptual knowledge”, which we 11 See also T. Huzarek, Tomasza z Akwinu teoria afektywnego poznania Boga oraz jej filozoficzne i teologiczne założenia [Thomas Aquinas's theory of the affective knowledge of God, and its philosophical and theological premises] Lublin: KUL 2011, doctoral thesis manuscript. 12 For details, see the aforementioned treatise by T. Huzarek. 13 Many theologians fail to appreciate St. Thomas' teaching on affective cognition as a contribution to mysticism. We may here wish to cite the opinion of Gershom Scholem, a distinguished scholar of the Jewish mystical tradition. In his famous work Mistycyzm żydowski i jego główne kierunki (transl. Ireneusz Kania, Warsaw 1997, p. 28) Scholem says: "an even narrower definition of mysticism was provided by St. Thomas Aquinas that of cognitio Dei experimentalis, or experiential cognition of God, the gaining of a knowledge of God through a living, concrete experience (…). It is a concrete, fundamental experience of one's self coming into direct contact with God or with the metaphysical reality; this is what defines the experience of the mystic". 14 This, for example, is what Abraham Joshua Heschel does in his seminal work Bóg szukający człowieka, Podstawy filozofii judaizmu (transl. A. Gorzkowski, Krakow: Wydawnictwo Esprit S.C. 2007) 15. Cf. A. J. Heschel, Człowiek szukający Boga, transl. V. Reder, Krakow: Znak 2008, p. 148. Heschel writes: “What does the Jewish road to God consist in? It is not a road that would have us ascend a ladder of speculation. Our understanding of God is not the result of a triumphant assault against the mysteries of the universe, nor a reward for submissiveness of mind. Our understanding comes to us through the mitzvah (religious deed). […] The Jew is called upon to effect a leap of action, not a leap of thought, to step outside his needs, to do more than he can understand in order to understand more”. Cf. ibid. p. 152

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may refer to as certain intuitions. Metaphysicians have been known to react to this type of attitude, entertained in particular by representatives of so-called Jewish philosophy, with the charge of irrationalism. It is symptomatic however that it is this type of thought that seems to be enjoying special popularity among the average audience interested in the subject. In light of the above, it should be noted that in the confrontation between these two styles or kinds of thinking: Greek and Jewish (conceptual and situational - according to Heschel16), conceptual knowledge, which often grows into a kind of absolute, is pitted against an experience of sense enabling one to maintain a distance with respect to the knowledge gained. In ancient Greece such permanent distance with respect to conceptual knowledge allowed Socrates, and others, not just to avoid absolutizing certain views, but also to keep searching for new and better solutions both in the theoretical and in the practical realm. But is man really doomed to an indirect – as we say – knowledge of God? Given the above, is religious revelation (i.e. the kind of revelation that allows man to enter and to remain in a relation with God17) superrational to such a degree that it in practice creates an “impassable gulf” for the average man, barring him from the experience of revelation? In what sense can the lack of this type of experience of God disrupt the development of culture? In posing the latter of these two questions I am moving on to an important proposal by Martin Buber. Buber highlights the meeting as an event of key importance to religious life. What this is in essence about is a certain understanding of grace.18 According to Buber, God does not withhold grace from man, i.e. does not deprive him of his love (concern), and consequently does not deny anyone a certain experience of Himself, since what is intended is the wholeness of man.19 If we thought differently of God, we would nolens volens succumb to a type of anthropomorphism. From the philosophical point of view, there is only the an16 See. A. J. Heschel, Człowiek… op. cit., p. 11 n. 17 I am here drawing a distinction between revelation characterised by a certain experience of God and revelation as a special type of instruction from God, the expression of His positive will. 18 Buber states that the event of the meeting comes about thanks to grace, through grace. He writes: „Das Du begegnet mir von Gnaden – durch Suchen wird es nicht gefunden. “Werke, I. Bd., 85; M. Buber, I and Thou, trans. R. G. Smith, T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, p. 45 19 M. Buber, who continued to be influenced by the idea of the whole man, present in the thought of rabbi Israel Ben Eliezer known as the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Chasidut movement and the creator of realistic and activistic mysticism, saw the salvation of the world as connected to the emergence of the whole man, and this, consequently, is how he interpreted God's will. See Rabbiego Izraela Ben Eliezera zwanego Baal Szem Towem to jest Mistrzem Dobrego Imienia pouczenie o Bogu zestawione z okruchów przez Martina Bubera, transl. J. Doktór, Warsaw: Fundacja Büchnera 1993.

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thropological problem, the problem of man. It can be formulated more forcefully as the following thesis: since man has lost the ability to bring about and to enjoy a certain type of experience, the problem of man has grown more severe.

Towards a religious relation with the Eternal Thou In the middle of the 20th century Buber wrote: To the man no longer able to enter relations, yet capable of thinking without flaw, it appears that the only question arising in the domain of religion is that of whether the existence of gods can be studied. And to that question, which is not accompanied by experience, one must consequently give a negative reply. […] in every case of profound religiousness, the reality of faith implies a life turned towards ‘that being, in which one believes’, in other words towards a being that is unconditionally confirmed and absolute”.20

One should first note that Buber, distancing himself from argumentation in favor of the existence of God, does not depreciate it as such. To him, quaestio Dei (to comment on the quotation cited keeping in mind other remarks by the author of “Eclipse of God”) cannot be broken down only (if at all) to rational argumentation. It is rather connected to the issue of man’s remaining in a relation with God and being conscious of the consequences of his remaining in a relation with God for his everyday existence.21 It is this matter that makes Buber concern himself with raising the importance of the experience of the meeting, which in the mind of the author of I and Thou, constitutes a special moment of entering into a relation and builds man’s remaining in an intentional reference to God. It seems that today many people do not so much negate the existence of God as fail to notice the existential meaning of the statement “God exists”, which is why they sink into indifference, opting for the lifestyle of etsi Deus non daretur. “This indifference”, as Dariusz Kowalczyk, SJ, remarks, “results from the lack of an experience of a personal (existential) relation to the reality we call God”.22 This diagnosis seems correct. Buber in some sense opposes the ability-inability to enter a relation (begegnungsfähigen – nicht mehr begegnungsfähigen) to the ability-inability to 20 M. Buber, Eclipse of God: studies in the relation between religion and philosophy, Humanities Press International 1988, p. 27; [Werke, I. Bd.: Schriften zur Philosophie, München-Heidelberg: Kösel Verlag und Verlag Lambert Schneider 1962, 525]. Compare this statement by Buber with the one cited above (see footnote 150 with the opinion of A.J Heschel. 21 A. J. Heschel gives a lot of attention to this matter in the works: Człowiek… op. cit., Człowiek nie jest sam. Filozofia religii, transl. K. Wojtkowska, Krakow: Znak 2008 22 D. Kowalczyk SJ, “Heinricha Otta mówienie o Bogu (Kwestie metodologiczne)” [Heinrich Ott’s speaking of God (Methodological questions], Bobolanum 9 (1998), z. 2, p. 365.

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think (denkfähigen – ungeschmälert denkfähigen). Both properties characterize human existence in an essential (ontic) way. However, both the first and the second are actualized, Buber will eventually say, when man in fact comes face to face with a certain tangible “opposite”. Since thinking is ambivalent, as it can concern both the reality that is independent from us and the reality expressed in concepts,23 and for reasons that Buber does not analyze in detail, it is often the second [ability] toward which the man “capable of thinking without flaw”, and yet, according to our author, he could not perform such a manoeuvre in the case of the first ability;24 man becomes incapable, we must add, rather paradoxically, of entering a relation, although he can continue to think about it. Buber writes: People, who in such periods [in periods when cognition is replaced by thinking as an operation involving meanings, to use one of M. A. Krąpiec’s expressions25 which nonetheless captures Buber’s intention quite well - S. S.] are still ‘religious’, tend not to notice that a certain relation, which they conceive of as religious, no longer occurs between them and a certain independent reality. This seemingly religious relation is consummated within the bounds of their own spirit, which encompasses images and ‘ideas’ that have become independent. A singular type of people then emerges, more or less distinctly, who proclaim this state of affairs to be authorized. These people think that religion was never anything but an interpsychic process, whose products are ‘projected’ on a plane, in itself fictive, but equipped with reality by the soul.26

Buber, as we see, stringently opposes authors who are apt to claim that any religious reality is but one great projection of the human spirit and that one projection differs from another at most by the strength of the evocative power expressed in its narration.27 He opposes himself, unmasking, as we have shown 23 Cf. M. Buber, Eclipse of God: studies in the relation between religion and philosophy, Humanities Press International 1988, p. 11; Werke, I. Bd., p. 511 24 This would mean that, according to Buber, the intention of the relation, intentional thought about the relation, or the "thought relation", to use a technical term, can in no way be a designate of the concept of "relation", because it is not a relation (i.e. a real relation) in Buber's view. 25 See M.A. Krąpiec, Dzieła [Works], vol. VIII: Poznawać czy myśleć. Problemy epistemologii tomistycznej [To know or to think: problems of Thomist epistemology] Lublin: RW KUL 1994. 26 M. Buber, Eclipse of God, p. 14 [Werke, I. Bd., p. 511] 27 For this reason, Buber's Moses (1945) is a great, though not directly addressed, polemic with S. Freud's work Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion (1939) as well as Freud's other texts in the philosophy of culture. Buber makes his only allusion to Freud's work in the first footnote of his monograph. In a sense, Freud himself considered himself the "new Moses", leading men out of the prison of illusion, out of their illusory

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above, the mechanism leading to the monologisation (solipsisation) of consciousness. For further on we read: Cultural periods, these people [who have first brought about the internal psychologisation of religion - S. S.] say, can be distinguished according to the evocative power of this projection, since after all man, having attained clarity of knowledge, must in the end recognize that every alleged dialogue with the divine was only a monologue, or rather a dialogue between the various strata of the Self. Since this is so, then, as a representative of this kind of people has already done in our era - we have to announce that God ‘is dead’. What this proclamation amounts to in essence, is that man has lost the ability to apprehend and to have a direct relation with reality independent of him; moreover, that he has lost the power to evoke it through images, which do not represent this reality to perception, itself unable to attain it.28

To Buber as a religious thinker the existence of God is not the leading question. The existence of God is not a problem, it is not subject to discussion. What is subject to discussion is man’s remaining in a relation with God, in other words: religious experience. Making this statement, I am conscious of a certain terminological divergence with the author of I and Thou, since Buber uses the term “experience”, and that, in a critical capacity, to refer to socalled object experience, in which the object of cognition is a correlate of the knowing subject.29 It is this type of cognition, as the only one authorized and prevailing in contemporary culture, that Buber blames for inflicting ravages on the sphere of religious experience: man’s entry into and remaining in a relation with God.

The anthropological dimension of the meeting: “something is happening to me” In the final fragments of I and Thou (precisely, the penultimate one) we come upon an interesting explanation, or rather an indication of a certain direction of understanding the event of the meeting. The author associates it with the revelation of the Eternal Thou. To describe this revelation is beyond man’s capacity, especially with regard to giving an object description of the Eternal Thou, even in the very moment of meeting. One thing however is certain beyond all doubt, that “man”, Buber says, “does not pass, from the moment of the supreme meet-

consciousness. Cf. P. Ricoeur, Ateizm Freudowskiej psychoanalizy, transl. J. G., „Znak” no. 151, 1967, pp. 70-71. 28 M. Buber, Eclipse of God, p. 11-12 [Werke, I. Bd., s.511-512]. 29 Buber frequently considered all of Western philosophical cognition, not just postmodern, or more precisely, post-Kantian, in this perspective.

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ing, the same being as he entered into it”.30 This brief remark introduces us to something wholly fundamental and of significance for the process-drama of human identity. The recognition that a change of the subject has occurred: the fact that man does not emerge from the meeting the same as he was when entering it31, of which our non-intentional simple self-consciousness (accompanying reflection) may inform us: is not (at least not in the moment of the meeting) the intentional correlate of an act of cognition, but the result of the event nature of the meeting. Not only does man not arrange the meeting, he also seems to have no control over it. Buber notes: “The moment of the meeting is not an “experience” (ein ‘Erlebnis’32) that stirs in the receptive soul33 and grows to perfect blessedness;

30 M. Buber, I and Thou, p. 109 [Werke, I. Bd., p. 152] 31 He is equivalent (numerically identical), but not the same (not qualitatively identical), as a metaphysically-oriented phenomenologist might say. 32 Placing the term "Erlebnis" in quotation marks and expanding on it in the way cited above, Buber distances himself from an understanding of experience as that wherein something is apprehended as an object (for example - as in the experience of the content of a perceptive act); here however, he draws attention to the empirical character of experience. He might thus be thinking of reflexio in actu exercito, rather than reflexio in actu signato. Later phenomenologists (chiefly Roman Ingarden) effected a distinction between Durchleben (experiencing as being aware of an act) and Erleben (experiencing as being aware of content). Ingarden, contrasting Durchleben and Erleben, dubbed the distinct awareness of an act (and of a state) the intuition of experience. See A.B. Stępień, “W poszukiwaniu istoty człowieka”[In search of the essence of man], in: O człowieku dziś [On man today] ed. B. Bejze, Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Sióstr Loretanek 1974, pp. 61-94, esp. p. 80. 33 Buber is probably referring to F. Schleiermacher's attempt to deal with faith that is not grounded in human thinking, the peculiar situation of faith arising as a result of the Kantian turn in philosophy and following the publication of Kant's Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. Schleiermacher concluded that there exist, within man, various irreducible ways of relating to the world and of apprehending reality. Each one of these has its own import and significance. Reason, will and feeling constitute three provinces of the human mind that cannot be reduced to one another. Reason is completed by science, the will by ethos and feeling by religion, which Schleiermacher defines as the perception and feeling of the universe, i.e. a type of sensitivity to the infinite. He later describes it as the feeling of absolute dependence. Through his idea, Schleiermacher thus makes religion independent from metaphysics and from pure reason as such: religion is an experience, the experience of infinity and of man's dependence on it; it is thus something distinct, as a separate domain of the human spirit it is independent from the reflection proper to metaphysics. See K.E. Welker, Die grundsätzliche Beurteilung der Religionsgeschichte bei Schleiermacher, Leiden-Köln 1965, cited after: J. Ratzinger, Wiara i przyszłość, transl. J. Merecki SDS, Krakow: Wydawnictwo Salwator 2007, pp. 41-43.

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rather in that moment something happens to the man. At times it is like a light breath, at times like a wrestling-bout, but always - it happens.”34 This statement inevitably leads us to a distinction made at a later time by Karol Wojtyła between “I act” and “something happens to me”, between acts and activations (The Acting Person, 1969).35 Above all, there arises the question of whether in Buber’s statement “in that moment something happens to the man” we are dealing with an action, in other words with dynamism in the form of “I act”, or with an activation, dynamism in the form of “something is happening to me”. If we were to gravitate towards classifying this “experience” as an activation, then the following question would of necessity be born: Does the above statement have its only source in events (occurrences) of an inward, somatic nature? Without doubt somatic reactions, though given chiefly to the subject, are not a product of the imagination, but something objectively apprehensible, just as - to take an example - the apprehensible reaction of the hearts (they asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning?”; cf. Luke 24:32) of the disciples on the road to Emmaus as well as the reason given for this reaction - the unrecognized stranger who “opened the Scriptures to us” (cf. ibid.), interpreting them against the background of concrete events, helping them in this way to discover the meaning of past events.36 Explaining, the stranger (let us go one step further) brought a certain call and proposal, thus inviting to a certain confrontation and verification.37 Briefly, what happened in that moment made it so that those who took part in the meeting “did not pass from it the same beings as they entered into it”. It may thus be inferred that somatic actions are thus not always internally determined, in other words subjected only to the immanent laws of nature: that there may be interaction of a kind other than immanent physical or psychic determinism. Thus the operation of some kind of external, transcendent factor with regard to man cannot be excluded, nor can a peculiar involvement38 on the man’s part as well as certain somatic symptoms accompanying the meeting, the event, that has just occurred. 34 M. Buber, I and Thou, p. 109 [Werke, I. Bd.,p. 152] 35 K. Wojtyła, Osoba i czyn oraz inne studia antropologiczne, Lublin: TN KUL 1994. 36 Cf. S. Szczyrba, “Doświadczenie chrześcijańskie” [Christian Experience], Łódzkie Studia Teologiczne 11-12 (2002-2003), pp. 23-44. 37 This characterisation of the meeting is remarked on by L. Giussani. See L. Giussani, Il cammino al vero č un’esperienza, Milano: Rizzoli 2006 38 The distinction between action and activation is questioned by proponents of determinism. They do not deny that man experiences situations described as actions and activations as different from one another, but question the reliability of that experience - I indeed of internal experience as such. According to the critics of this type of experience, it is easy to convince man of the free agency of his actions, while he is actually manipulated by others. The "hypothesis of freedom" is moreover problematic from the viewpoint

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Considered in a wider context, Buber’s remark justifies the above addendum, for we read: The man that emerges from the act of pure relation39 that so involves his being has now in his being something more that has grown in him, of which he did not know before and whose origin he is not rightly able to indicate. However the source of this new thing is classified in scientific orientation of the world, with its authorized efforts to establish an unbroken causality, we, whose concern is real consideration of the real, cannot have our purpose served with subconsciousness or any other apparatus of the soul.40

The reality is that we receive what we did not hitherto have, and receive it in such a way that we know it has been given to us. It should be noted that Buber’s “at that moment something happens to the man” in some sense broadens the subjective dynamics of the person, his actions and activations, while introducing a certain modification with respect to understanding the person-subject. At any rate, it implies such a modification.

The event of the meeting: from representationism to presentationism Focus on the possibility of investing the subject with a capacity for having a certain experience or impression (as exemplified in the statement “something is happening to me”): which in some manner forces man to “bear witness” to something that exceeds his currently available capacities, redirecting and reorganizing his attention (in other words his “towards”): points to the possibility of of scientific analysis (in the natural sciences), for it does not explain anything: it does not allow human actions to be predicted or successfully impacted. Determinist tendencies are aided by sensualism, which narrows the field of experience down to sensory impressions. It is difficult to polemicize with this, and Wojtyła never did so. All he did was underline that such refusal to ground anthropological and ethical knowledge in an experience more distinct and deeper than that wanted by the sensualists would lead to a great impoverishment of human self-knowledge as well as the heteronomisation of ethics, its reduction to a psychology or sociology of morals. 39 This means that man does not assume the I - It attitude. 40 M. Buber, I and Thou, p. 109 [Werke, I. Bd., p. 152]. In the original, we read: “Wie immer die wissenschaftlichen Weltorientierung in ihrem befugten Streben nach einer lückenlosen Ursächlichkeit die Herkunft des Neuen einreicht:” [As always, the scientific approach to the world in its imperious quest to establish an unbroken causal explanation classifies the origin of the new] “uns, denen es um die wirkliche Betrachtung des Wirklichen geht, kann kein Unterbewußtsein und kein anderer Seelenapparat taugen” [to us, however, who are concerned with the real view of the real, the [category] of subconsciousness or any other such mechanism of the soul may prove worthless]".

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turning away from representationism, which has characterized and marked the cognitive approach of the vast majority of authors since the time of the “Kantian revolution”. It is, consequently, tantamount to opting for a certain form of presentationism, ever so close to the heart of philosophers-metaphysicians of the Aristotelian-Thomist variety. It is in this turn from representationism to presentationism that I see the contribution of the so-called “new thinking”, with Martin Buber as its foremost advocate. I will not discuss this in metalanguage. I will try to show it.

The Buberian step towards presentationism The thing (that happens to a man) is neither the fruit of individual agency (“I act”), in the strict sense, nor a pure activation, which we only register as signals coming from inside the organism. It is something that man, despite everything, succumbs to, but this succumbing occurs only at first contact, so to speak, promptly yielding to the will’s assent “in the very next” moment41 on account of the goodness drawing man in.42 We may here speak of a pre-decision, of an “I want” this something to work on me. It would otherwise be difficult to conceive of true dialogism. In other words, the I takes an open stance, it listens, because it wants to (it can - though does not have to, but wants to!), as a certain type of response. This is why the “man that emerges from the act of pure relation […] has now in his being something more that has grown in him”. He could not have foreseen this growth, especially not as regards its content, and most of all, could not have wanted it, of himself, in such a shape. He is also unable to foresee the circumstances and the source whence this content originates. In other words, he is unable to formulate a theory, and consequently cannot justify anything, especially in the sense of argumentation, of the arguments applied in the exact sciences; this however does not mean that he cannot more deeply reveal the truth about man and his wholeness.43 For man is not just a collection of parts taken 41 See A.B. Stępień, W poszukiwaniu… op. cit. pp. 61-94. 42 We may here speak of so-called affective cognition. Cf. S. Szczyrba, Afektywne poznanie rzeczywistości warunkiem afirmacji Boga, [in:] Afektywne poznanie Boga, Series: Religia i Mistyka vol. 4, ed. P. Moskal, Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL 2006, pp. 19-37. 43 In Two Types of Faith Buber sketches out two attitudes, both of which may be characterized as "faith", and points to insurmountable obstacles in justifying both of them. He writes: „In both cases, this impossibility of justification results from the insufficiency of my thought, yet I am here concerned with a certain essential feature of my attitude towards those I trust or that which I consider to be true. It is a relation that is not essentially based on "arguments", nor does it follow from them; I can of course give arguments that justify my faith, but they

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separately: the cognitive function, thinking, feelings and the will to accomplish what man can accomplish:44 he is a dynamic whole made up of these parts, because "man's being is to become a whole, otherwise it is merely an illusion of becoming a whole, which does not in fact happen".45 This becoming a whole is precisely related to the idea of the whole man, of which Buber wrote and to which he bore witness. In terms of the content of what man receives, Buber, quite consequently and non-objectively (although he does not mention that given the presence of the world, it should be borne in mind that the meeting is always accomplished in the midst of and through the mediation of the world)46 remarks: Man receives, and he receives not a specific "content" (einen ‘Inhalt’), but a Presence (eine Gegenwart), a Presence as power. This Presence and this power include three things, undivided, and yet in such a way that we may consider them separately.47

Buber considers a man equipped with unique - but not functionally incomparable48 - subjectivity. This comparability is of course limited to the fundamental moments (threshold conditions) of the meeting and of the man participating in it;

44

45 46

47 48

shall never justify it fully. (…) By this I do not wish to say that I am talking about 'irrational phenomena'. My rationality, my function of rational thought is but a part, a partial function of my being: but where I - in one way or another - 'believe', it is my whole being, the totality of my being that participates in this process, what is more: this process is made possible only in virtue of the fact that this relation of faith is a relation of my whole being". Dwa typy wiary, transl. J. Zychowicz, Kraków: Znak 1995, p. 17 M. Buber, Two Types... op. cit., pp. 25-30. Here Buber considers the relation occurring between the existential human state "to believe" and the existential human state "to be able to". These considerations involve the problem of the will. An interesting reflection on the possibility and power of choice, in other words proairesis, as a predecessor of the will may be found in the works of H. Arendt. See also Wola, transl. R. Piłat, Warsaw: Czytelnik 1996, p.88 nn. According to Arendt, St. Paul discovered the powerlessness of the will, and consequently the need to educate it through a new law ("You shall want it!") "It is this experience of an imperative demanding voluntary obedience that led to the discovery of the will (…), that there is in man a power which regardless of necessity or coercion, allows one to say 'yes' or 'no', agree or disagree to what is actually given, including even one's own "self" and one's existence - that this power may determine human action". Ibid., pp. 99-111, esp. p. 105. M. Buber, Two Types… op. cit., p.18. It is not a mediation of the quod (medium quod) type, characterized by non-transparency, but rather of the quo (medium quo) type, of transparent character. See A.B. Stępień, “Rodzaje bezpośredniego poznania” [The kinds of immediate knowing], Roczniki Filozoficzne 19 (1971), z.1, p. 100. Buber, I and Thou, 110 [Werke, I. Bd., pp. 152-153]. See. H. Buczyńska-Garewicz, “Martin Buber i dylematy subiektywności” [Martin Buber and the dilemmas of subjectivity], Znak 32 (1980, no. 313 (7) pp. 875-889.

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it can never be operationalized into a formula for an effective meeting, since we are here brought close to the boundary and moving along an edge49. Buber continues: [This Presence and this power include three things (…)] First, there is the whole fullness of real mutual action, of the being raised and bound up in relation [commenting, he immediately adds - S. S.]: the man can give no account at all of how the binding in relation is brought about,50 nor does it in any way lighten his life - it makes life heavier, but heavy with meaning. [Secondly - S. S.] Secondly there is the inexpressible confirmation of meaning. [Buber’s commentary - S. S.:] Meaning is assured. Nothing can any longer be meaningless. The question about the meaning of life is no longer there. But were it there, it would not have to be answered. You do not know how to exhibit and define the meaning of life, you have no formula or picture for it, and yet it has more certitude for you than the perception of your senses. What does the revealed and concealed meaning purpose with us, desire from us? It does not wish to be explained (nor are we able to do that) but only to be done by us. [Thirdly - S. S.] Thirdly, this meaning is not that of “another life”, but that of this life of ours, not one of a world “yonder” but that of this world of ours, and it desires its confirmation in this life and in relation with this world. […] The meaning that has been received can be proved true by each man only in the singleness of his life.”51.

Conclusion: it is, therefore it works, and we can experience the effects of this operation Buber's intuitions are striking and inspire one to look for ways of making them more precise or to search for concrete examples confirming what he has said, seemingly not merely as a result of theoretical reflection but also most significantly as a result of his own experience, and - without fearing to call it thus - his own, by no means episodic spiritual experience, the experience he then also attempted to verbalize. Going back to the text we have been analyzing, we cannot overlook Buber’s articulation of a very interesting position regarding meaning: meaning is not so much given in advance and once and for all, given in the short term (created) by man, as it happens. Happening, it doesn’t so much confirm its eventistic character as the fact that it is confirmed, guaranteed by Someone Else. It is meaning

49 M. Buber, Problem człowieka, transl. R. Reszke, Warsaw 1993 p. 130. 50 Buber does not make an effort to characterise that which is "seen", but rather consequently refuses to ascribe meaning to efforts to describe appearance. Such an approach would result from experience of the Kantian variety (in the post-Kantian sense of the term), in which the subject creatively constructs the object for itself. 51 M. Buber, I and Thou, 109-110 [Werke, I. Bd., pp. 152-153].

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confirmed to the one who, by accepting the problem of the Mystery, enters a dialogic relation with It. Man can enter a direct relation with the Mystery, has to enter this relation, because it constitutes his personal I and allows him to fulfil his unique task, since man is in his essence co-existent with the Mystery. To put it briefly, he is a relation with the Mystery. Buber ends the analyzed fragment with the statement: “That before which, in which, out of which and into which we live, even the mystery has remained what it was. It has become present to us and in its presentness has proclaimed itself to us as salvation (das Heil); we have ‘known’ it but we acquire no knowledge from it which might lessen or moderate its mysteriousness (die uns seine Geheimnishaftigkeit minderte – milderte). We have come near to God, but not nearer to unveiling being or solving its riddle. We have felt release (Erlösung haben wir verspürt), but not discovered a ‘solution’ (aber keine Lösung).52 We cannot approach others with what we have received, and say ‘You must know this, you must do this’. We can only go, and confirm its truth. And this, too, is no ‘ought’, but we can, we must. This is the eternal revelation that is present here and now”53. In a certain sense Buber allows for a different "definition" of mystery. Usually when talking about a mystery we mean something incomprehensible, unknown or even unknowable, something that resists us. Meanwhile mystery, the Mystery (capitalized) is “something” that allows itself to be known in an infinite way, is “something” infinitely knowable. What is more, because we are continually exposing the cognitive sphere, it is “something” that draws us infinitely towards itself and fulfils man’s deepest wishes without thereby losing any of its mysteriousness. Is the man emerging from the meeting, who “has now in his being something more that has grown in him, of which he did not know before and whose origin he is not rightly able to indicate” changed in his humanity? Are we here entitled to speak of some kind of “new (transformed)” humanity, and should we at this point speak of this new humanity in moral terms? The first of these questions should be answered in the affirmative; as for the second, not necessarily so. This “new humanity” is above all the “new personal I”, confirmed as I as to its meaning (sense) here and now, hence in new circumstances of place and time. We may here speak of a “renaissance” in the sense that Buber encounters in Konrad Burdach’s treatise “Über den Ursprung des Humanismus” (in: Refor-

52 One could risk the following interpretation here: (for an instant) we felt the relief of a satisfying solution, but not of satiation. 53 M. Buber, I and Thou, 111 [Werke, I. Bd., pp. 153-154]

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mation, Renaissance, Humanismus, 1918)54 and which he adds. Burdach cites a sentence from Dante’s “Banquet”: “The greatest longing of each thing, instilled in it from the very beginning by nature, is to return to its original source, that is, not in speculative thought, but in a concrete transformation of its entire inner life”.55 Buber writes “it is in the Bible that we must search for our humanism”,56 and hastens to add “what Biblical humanism purposes is a ‘specific transformation’ not just of the inner life, but of life as a whole”.57 Buber himself clearly states that “The meaning that has been received can be proved true by each man only in the singleness of his being (mit der Einzigkeit seines Wesens) and the singleness of his life (in der Einzigkeit seines Lebens)”.58 And this accomplishes itself in the face of the Mystery.

Conclusion In this account I have outlined the conception of religious experience sketched out by Martin Buber in his work I and Thou. It seems that the comments made authorize me to draw the conclusion that we may here speak of a subject rather than an object experience. Given his philosophical programme, Buber would surely oppose the position that holds that the direct object of religious experience is, or even can be, God. According to the author of Eclipse of God,59 someone trying to approach the quaestio Dei in this manner would immediately reveal that (1) he does not know what he is talking about,60 and (2) that he has made the everyday, indeed, the mundane, the final horizon of his life. 54 See M. Buber, Humanizm biblijny, transl. J. Zychowicz, Znak 32 (1980), no. 313 (7), p. 842. 55 M. Buber, Humanizm… op. cit., p. 842. 56 M. Buber, Humanizm… op. cit. Following this statement Buber gives a closer characterization of this humanism: "Only he who listens openly to the voice that speaks to him out of the Hebrew Bible and gives him account of his life can be a Hebrew man". We may repeat that in the Bible Buber finds a record of a certain experience which he attempts to explicate using the original method of phenomenological description. 57 M. Buber, Humanizm… op. cit., p. 843. Buber concludes that "the rebirth of the original normative forces" is a condition of the rebirth of community, in the original sense of the term. 58 M. Buber, I and Thou, 111 [Werke, I. Bd., p. 153] 59 This, amongst others, is the work one should here refer to. 60 Buber never says this outright, but one may assume that he would agree with the statement that "God" is not a product of human thinking, nor for that matter of philosophy. Thus, the initial condition of responsible speaking-dialogue about God would have to be (according to Buber) a distinct type of identification with some tradition, even if this were to be a negative (rebellious) identification. We would then at least know against what we are really protesting.

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He would also oppose all approaches that present and explore the intentional character of religious experience and that are tied to a conscious and reflective relation of the subject to the object. Even when Buber says (and this text is unclear): “In the beginning is relation - as category of being, readiness, grasping form, mould for the soul; it is the a priori of relation, the inborn Thou”,61 it does not seem that he accepts the originally intentional character of the relation to God. The intentional character of man’s relation to God is secondary to the event of the meeting, by which that relation is built. Buber admits however the existence of a certain (ontic, inscribed in being, and hence inborn and preceding the experience of the meeting) reference (relation) which characterizes every being, especially human beings. Since the basic issue is not theoretical discourse, including the theoretical question of the existence of God and possibly also the issue of whether this argumentation is conclusive, but rather the ability to do experience, whose essence is participation in reality as a whole, “without reducing or diminishing it”,62 the fundamental ability proves to be walking “the way of the creature who accepts the creation”.63 Of course, in order to do this experience one should make an effort to describe it in some way. The purpose of a description, in accordance with Buber’s intention and practice, to indicate it rather than to give its theory. It is therefore not a subjective experience in the postmodern sense, where content functions as the correlate of an intentional consciousness. Here the subject, receptively, so to speak, and thanks to a non-acting consciousness, registers the effect of the meeting, “the inexpressible confirmation of meaning”. Effecting an objective characterization of religious experience in the context of investigations into the possibility of directly proving the thesis “God exists”64 by referring to religious experience in respect of the objects of religious experience distinguished in scholarly reflection, Piotr Moskal distinguishes six types of religious experience65:

61 M. Buber, I and Thou, p. 27 [Werke, I. Bd., p. 96]; Buber italicises the "inborn Thou", not a priori, as does the Polish translator J. Doktór. 62 M. Buber, Eclipse of God: studies in the relation between religion and philosophy, Humanities Press International 1988, p. 5 63 M. Buber, Eclipse of God, p. 6 64 The author has shown that such justification cannot be considered. See P. Moskal, Spór o racje religii [The controversy over the rationes of religion], pp. 165-167. 65 Cf. P. Moskal, Spór o …op. cit., pp. 166-167. All of these types of experience are more subjective than the type of experience spoken of by Buber. In this respect, Moskal's determinations may allow one to complement the entry by J. A. Kłoczowski, which seems somewhat suspended, incomplete. See J. A. Kłoczowski, the entry: Doświadczenie religijne [Religious

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1. Experiences of subjective states of consciousness, belief and surety as to the existence, presence and agency of God or as to being united with Him. In these experiences God is only a content of consciousness, a cognitive content; 2. Experiences of certain states and organic-affective impressions, interpreted as manifestations or the fruit of God’s agency; 3. Experiences of certain sensory, imaginary or intellectual cognitive forms, interpreted as revealed by God; 4. Experiences of non-transparent signs such as holy books or liturgical symbols, interpreted as places or modes of God’s presence; 5. Experiences of everyday or special anthropological and cosmological facts, interpreted as God’s works; 6. Experiences of intellectual-volitional acts, whose intentional correlate is God. Buber’s conception could be qualified as reflecting the first two of these types, with special emphasis on the second and, moreover, underlining a peculiar passivity on the part of the subject. The originality of Buber’s thought however lies in something that could be called the experience of exceeded adequacy,66 for the “inexpressible confirmation of meaning” is something that thoroughly frees the subject from its own interpretations. Buber’s position also has certain implications for the critique of transcendental experience as a possible basis for interpreting religious experience.67 Buber’s interpretation of religious experience as an experience of meeting, whose meaning has an anthropological dimension, is familiar to Christianity. For Christianity is born of a meeting and confrontation with objective reality, the Person of Christ68. This has been articulated in an expressive way by Benedict XVI in his first encyclical: “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical

experience] [in:] Religia. Encyklopedia PWN [Religion. The PWN Encyclopaedia] ed. T. Gadacz, B. Milerski, vol. 3, Warsaw: PWN 2001, pp. 265-269, esp. p. 265. 66 See. S. Szczyrba, „Dobro i zło w faktycznym kontekście życia ludzkiej osoby – stanowisko Martina Bubera” [Good and evil in the de facto context of the life of the human person: the position of Martin Buber], [in:] Tajemnice rozwoju. Materiały z konferencji [The mystery of development: conference materials] Łodź, 12-14 May 2008, ed. D. Bieńkowska, A. Lenartowicz, Łódź: Archidiecezjalne Wydawnictwo Łódzkie 2009, pp. 511-524. 67 Cf. Z. Sareło SAC, Etyczna doniosłość doświadczenia religijnego. Studium teologicznomoralne w świetle transcendentalnej antropologii K. Rahnera [The ethical sublimity of religious experience. A theological-moral study in the light of the transcendental anthropology of Karl Rahner.] Warsaw: Pallottinum 1992, pp. 127-160. 68 Cf. R. Guardini, Istota chrześcijaństwa, transl. G. Sowiński, Krakow: Znak 2000, pp. 11-15.

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choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive dimension” (Deus Caritas Est, §1). List of abbreviations used in the text: W-I

– M. Buber, Werke, I. Bd.: Schriften zur Philosophie, München-Heidelberg: Kösel Verlag und Verlag Lambert Schneider 1962. Ich-u-Du – M. Buber, Ich und Du, in: ibid., Werke, I. Bd., pp. 77-170. JaTy-W – M. Buber, Ja i Ty. Wybór pism filozoficznych, transl. J. Doktór, Warsaw 1992. Ja-i-Ty – M. Buber, Ja i Ty, in: ibid., Ja i Ty. Wybór pism …, pp. 39-123. PM – M. Buber, Das Problem des Menschen, [in:] ibid., Werke, I. Bd, pp. 306-407. PCZRR – M. Buber, Problem człowieka, transl. R. Reszke, Aletheia-Spacja, Warsaw 1993. PCZJD – M. Buber, Problem człowieka, transl. J. Doktór, PWN Warsaw 1993. GF – M. Buber, Gottesfinsternis, [in:] ibid., Werke, I. Bd, pp. 503-603. ZB – M. Buber, Zaćmienie Boga, transl. P. Lisicki, ed. R. Reszke, Wydawnictwo KR, Warsaw 1994.

Bibliography: Afektywne poznanie Boga, ed. P. Moskal, Lublin 2006 Apologia religii katolickiej, Lublin 2012 Apologia religii, ed. P. Moskal, Lublin 2011 Buber M., Ja i Ty, 108 [Werke, I. Bd., s. 152]. Buber M., Problem człowieka, transl. R. Reszke, Warsaw 1993 Buber M., Zaćmienie Boga, 11; Werke, I. Bd Buber. M., Humanizm biblijny, transl. J. Zychowicz, “Znak” 32 (1980), no. 313 (7) Buczyńska-Garewicz H., Martin Buber i dylematy subiektywności, "Znak” 32 (1980, no. 313 (7) Giussani L., Doświadczenie jest drogą do prawdy, transl. D. Chodynicki, Kielce 2003 Heschel A. J., Bóg szukający człowieka, Podstawy filozofii judaizmu, transl. A. Gorzkowski, Krakow 2007 Heschel A. J., Człowiek szukający Boga, transl. V. Reder, Krakow 2008 Hoye W. J, Teologiczne błędy myślowe, transl. P. Kolińska, Krakow 2011 Kowalczyk D., Heinricha Otta mówienie o Bogu (Kwestie metodologiczne), "Bobolanum” 9 (1998), book 2, Krąpiec M. A., Poznawać czy myśleć. Problemy epistemologii tomistycznej, Lublin 1994. O człowieku dziś, ed. B. Bejze, Warsaw 1974 Rabbiego Izraela Ben Eliezera zwanego Baal Szem Towem to jest Mistrzem Dobrego Imienia pouczenie o Bogu zestawione z okruchów przez Martina Bubera, transl. J. Doktór, Warsaw 1993 Ratzinger J., Wiara i przyszłość, transl. J. Merecki, Krakow 2007 Ricoeur P., Ateizm Freudowskiej psychoanalizy, transl. J. G., “Znak” no. 151 (1967) Stępień A. B., Studia i szkice filozoficzne, vol. 1, Lublin, 1999 Stępień A. B, Rodzaje bezpośredniego poznania, „Roczniki Filozoficzne” 19 (1971), book 1 Szczyrba S., Doświadczenie chrześcijańskie, “Łódzkie Studia Teologiczne” 11-12 (2002-2003) Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae

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Torrell J.-P., Święty Tomasz z Akwinu mistrz duchowy, transl. A. Kuryś, Poznań – Warsaw 2003 Welker K. E, Die grundsätzliche Beurteilung der Religionsgeschichte bei Schleiermacher, Leiden-Köln 1965 Wojtyła K., Osoba i czyn oraz inne studia antropologiczne, Lublin 1994

The liturgy as a source of modern culture. The philosophical proposal of Jean-Yves Lacoste Joanna Skurzak Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw (CSWU) The Faculty of Christian Philosophy

Introduction "There is no culture in history, and it seems there can be no culture in the future without a religion"1. This statement by Erich Fromm is a very good illustration of the interdependence between culture and religion. In spite of tendencies towards secularization in today’s world, most people do profess a religion of some kind and have beliefs regarding religious issues such as salvation, God or transcendence. Even if they do not declare themselves members of a specific creed they are able to relate to a transcendent reality. Analyzing this issue from a historical point of view, we are able to see how over the course of thousands of years and in various parts of the world culture and religion developed highly varied and complex mutual relations. For, as representatives of the Lublin School remark, religion is indeed the focal point of every culture and culture taken as a whole.2 One has but to mention the absolute wealth of religious art which constitutes the basis of European culture. Great works of music, Mozart, Bach or Beethoven’s famous masses, were brought forth within the context of this relation to the sacred, as were the greatest works of architecture, such as cathedrals, construed to serve but one purpose: to give man an even deeper experience of his relationship with God. A culture which, in its ongoing development, strives to disregard its religious sources, risks becoming merely a set of varied techniques, losing its indispensable moral values; it is only religion, especially the Christian religion, that gives the dignity of man its ultimate and final underpinnings as the imago Dei. In light of this, we may ask: does liturgy, as a part of religion, also play a vital role in culture? Can it become a valuable source of it? This article will attempt to answer this question in the affirmative, drawing on the thought of JeanYves Lacoste, who analyses liturgy from a philosophical perspective in his works.

1 2

E. Fromm, Szkice z psychologii religii, transl. J. Prokopiuk, Warsaw 1966, p. 134. Z. J. Zdybicka, "Religion" [in:] Powszechna Encyklopedia Filozofii [Universal Encylopaedia of Philosophy] Lublin 2001

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The term liturgy has already appeared in the history of philosophy, but it is not used commonly. It is much more readily associated with theology. Until as recently as the modern times the liturgy never found itself within the immediate sphere of interest of philosophy. Philosophers who did discuss it include, for instance, F. Rosenzweig3 or B. Welte, yet it was never the main topic of their reflection, as is the case with Lacoste’s phenomenology of the liturgy. The latter sets his philosophical analysis of the liturgy against the backdrop of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy. Lacoste can be considered a representative of French phenomenology of religion, which is not a “philosophical school” as such, nor for that matter a “philosophical system”, but rather a certain type of “intellectual movement”, encompassing works by philosophers such as Michel Henry, Jean Luc Marion or J-L. Chrétien. The thought of these authors has been designated as “radical phenomenology”, meaning, first and foremost, the courage of proposing new phenomenological approaches, for instance phenomenology of the gift, silence, promise, the liturgy, etc., and not being limited to commenting on the historical achievements of Husserl and his successors.4 The source text for the considerations presented here is for the most part Lacoste’s most important hitherto published work, Expérience et Absolu (1994), but also Le monde et l’absence d’śuvre (2000) and Note sur le temps (1990). Lacoste is a very important and visible philosopher in the French and English speaking worlds. A large number of commentaries and studies of his philosophy have been published, including: J. Schrijvers’ Jean-Yves Lacoste: une phénoménologie de la liturgie, Jeffrey Bloechl’s The Experience of God – Response to Jean-Yves Lacoste, Jean-Luc Marion’s Lacoste ou la correction de l’analytique existentiale or Emmanuel Falque’s La facticité visitée. Also worthy of mention is the magazine Transversalité, which discusses current topics in philosophy, one of whose issues has been devoted amongst other things to an analysis of Expérience et Absolu.5 Lacoste belongs to the same generation of philosophers as for example Marion. On the website of Presses Universitaires de France, the publisher of Expérience et Absolu, we find a short description of our author, written by the philosopher himself.6 In this brief note he cites the words of Heidegger, who states 3

4 5 6

See J. Maj, Wezwanie mowy. Myślenie mowy, liturgia i piękno w filozofii Franza Rosenzweiga, [The challenge of speech. Thinking speech, liturgy and beauty in the philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig.] Krakow 2009. See Ph. Capelle, “Qu’est-ce que la „phénoménologie française”?, Studia Philosophiae Christianae nr 43(2007) 1, pp. 55-73. See Transversalité (2009) 110. See http://www.puf.com/wiki/Auteur:Jean-Yves_Lacoste#Bibliographie.

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that the only possible biography for a philosopher amounts to saying “he was born, he worked and he died”, and having said so, says that he is currently in the phase of working on the second of these points. Lacoste studied at one of the most prestigious academic institutions in France, the École Normale Supérieure, where he became fascinated with ancient Greek. This made it possible for him to get to know the thought of the Church Fathers. He also studied the philosophy of Kierkegaard and the phenomenological current. This is why he calls himself a “classical-philosophical-theological hybrid”. His philosophy was also influenced by the fact he had the opportunity to live in countries such as Israel, Belgium, England (where the practice of philosophy differs diametrically from the way it is practiced in France; he had the opportunity to get to know analytical philosophy in Oxbridge and to gain fresh insights into phenomenology in Germany from a vastly different perspective than the one available in France). He has recently also visited and conducted studies in Romania and the United States, where he lectured at the University of Chicago. He is the author of a number of translations into English, including that of Henry’s Parole du Christ.

The need for liturgy Lacoste's usage of the concept of liturgy differs vastly from the way it has been used in theology or by the philosophers mentioned in the introduction. The definition he gives is the following: liturgy is “the logic that oversees the meeting of man and God”.7 Falque comments that both theology and representatives of philosophy of religion may have difficulty accepting this definition. In analyzing the liturgy the theologian above all emphasizes its community dimension. He sees it as related to the experience of the people, which gathers in order to give praise to the Lord. The individual dimension is pushed to the background. For the majority of philosophers of religion on the other hand, the concept of liturgy is limited to an individual, more subjectivist account of religious experiences, with their own experience serving as a point of reference. The community dimension is wholly omitted.8 Lacoste’s conception does not readily lend itself to being classified in either of these currents. We may therefore ask about the position from which Lacoste conducts his analyses of the liturgy, whether it is that of a philosopher or that of a theologian. Is he to be seen as part of the “theological turn in French phenomenology” described by Janicaud?9 Janicaud’s work is 7 8 9

J.-Y. Lacoste, Expérience et Absolu, p. 2. Cf. E. Falque, ęLa facticité visitéeę, Transversalités 110(2009), pp.197-222. See D. Janicaud, Le tournant théologique de la phénoménologie française, in: D. Janicaud, La phénoménologie dans tous ses états, Paris 2009, pp. 41-149.

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key in discussing the phenomenon of French phenomenology. Phenomenology is a philosophical current that has been strongly rooted in the French milieu since its very beginnings. It was precisely in Paris, at the Sorbonne in February 1929, that Husserl first presented his Cartesian Meditationsę, which became the basis for the book Méditations cartésiennes. Introduction à la phénoménologie, published in 1931. It should be added that the French translation by Lévinas10 appeared before the original in Germany (1950), and it is to this first edition that Ingarden refers in his critical remarks.11 This is particularly important insofar as it was in this way and thanks to Lévinas that phenomenology became a leading philosophical current in France. The next important translation that came to bear on the development of Husserl’s thought in France was the translation of Ideen I by P. Ricœur during World War II. All of this contributed to making Husserl’s influence in France particularly pronounced on the eve of the war and directly following it. Among the authors that can be said to represent the first reception of Husserl’s philosophy, apart from Lévinas and Ricœur, are Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. Later years saw the emergence of an intellectual movement which can be termed French phenomenology. Characterized chiefly by a reference to Cartesian criticism, its main proponents include Henry, Marion, Chrétien, and Lacoste himself. They not only refer to the historical achievements of Husserl and his disciples but also propose new phenomenological approaches, such as: phenomenology of the gift, promise, the liturgy. We may thus, with Capelle, conclude that phenomenology continues to be the most creative and promising philosophical current in France.12 Jean Greisch remarks that as far as French phenomenology is concerned, it is important to ask whether Husserl’s contemporary disciples are not to some extent in a position comparable to that of Joshua with respect to Moses. He wonders whether they succeeded in penetrating to the promised land of phenomenology of religion which Husserl himself could glimpse only from afar. And contrariwise, perhaps they are cutting themselves off from his heritage by effecting a “theological turn” within phenomenology.13 At this point we need to turn to an important text by Janicaud, Le tournant théologique de la phénoménologie française (1990). Its publication attracted a 10 See E. Husserl, Méditations cartésiennes. Introduction ŕ la phénoménologie, Paris 1931. 11 Published for the first time in Husserliana I, pp. 205-218. 12 See Ph. Capelle, “Qu’est-ce que la „phénoménologie française”?, Studia Philosophiae Christianae 43(2007); on the development of phenomenology in France see J. Greisch, “Les yeux de Husserl en France: Les tentatives de refondation de la phénoménologie dans la deuxième moitié du XXe siècle”, in: ed. P. Dupond, L. Cournarie, Phénoménologie: un sičcle de philosophie, Paris 2002, pp. 45-74. 13 Cf. J. Greisch, Le buisson ardent et les lumières de la raison. L’invention de la philosophie de la religion, vol. II, Paris 2002, p. 15.

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lot of attention not just in France but all over the world, initiating a debate about the condition of modern phenomenology.14 In his work, Janicaud formulates a charge against four French phenomenologists: Lévinas, Marion, Chrétien and Henry, accusing them of practicing crypto-theology. Although Janicaud’s work is critical, it is the first to raise a very important question about the situation of modern phenomenology: do we not observe disloyalty towards Husserl and Heidegger in modern phenomenology conducted à la française? Does it cut itself off from the roots of phenomenology? Janicaud answers in the affirmative. The manner in which the French conduct phenomenology is not faithful to the latter’s sources and the intention of the current’s creator. We may ask whether this diagnosis is appropriate. Without a doubt, phenomenology in France is to a large extent concerned with theological issues,15 and it is phenomenological thought precisely which has given theology new inspirations. It is interesting that authors such as Marion, Lévinas, Lacoste, and so on,. are attempting to understand the meaning of the word “God” in a world in which secularization has made spectacular progress, with France as one of the more secularized countries in Europe. In spite of this, it is here, at secular state universities (one should mention especially the Université de Paris Sorbonne – Paris IV, where both Marion and Chrétien currently lecture) that phenomenology, so deeply steeped in the influence of theological thought, is seeing a rapid growth. Doubtless, the “intellectual movement”16 constituting French phenomenology is heavily indebted to the Cartesian tradition, for which two discoveries are key: the discovery of the pure “I” as that which is final on the side of the subject, as well as the discovery of the idea of Infinity, in other words transcendence in immanence.17 The question of whether Lacoste also belongs to this turn described by Janicaud will here be of interest. Based on the description of this current, we may conclude that the answer is yes. However, we have to give the floor to the author himself, who, in his book Le monde et l’absence d’śuvre seems to question the existence of the above mentioned turn, stating that “there no longer is a theological turn in phenomenology, nor a phenomenological bent in theology”.18 14 See D. Janicaud and others, Phenomenology and the Theological Turn: The French Debate (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy), New York 2001, H. De Vries, Philosophy and the Turn to Religion, Baltimore 1999. 15 See God in France, ed. P. Jonkers, R. Welten, Leuven 2005. 16 See Ph. Capelle, “Qu’est-ce que...”, p. 55. 17 Cf. K. Tarnowski, “Główne nurty współczesnej francuskiej filozofii religii” [Principal currents of contemporary French philosophy of religion], [in:] ed. J. Barcik, Od filozofii refleksji do hermeneutyki. Francuska filozofia religii, Krakow 2006, p. 15. 18 Cited after: E. Falque, “La facticité...”, p. 198.

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Falque gives two reasons why Lacoste should not be charged with theologizing phenomenology. First, Janicaud himself has not assigned him to this group, and second, in light of the already mentioned attitude of our author, who sees no point in charging phenomenology with crypto-theology. In his opinion, it should be kept in mind that “there are stories to be interpreted and experience to think over”.19 In other words, he assigns key importance to the content of experience that philosophy gains based on the ordinary. To some it will be literature or art, to others, theology.20

The liturgy as the place of the experience of God Lacoste formulated his main reflections on the liturgy as a religious experience in a series of articles that were subsequently published in the form of a book under the title Expérience et Absolu. Questions disputées sur l’humanité de l’homme21 We would do well however to add a few words about this work here, since according to commentators it is currently the author’s most important book. The treatise’s main task is to discuss the problem of religious experience, used by religious anthropology in its attempts to describe the meeting between man and God.22 Lacoste however does not want to use the concept of “religious anthropology” as such. He gives a twofold explanation for this, expressing doubts both as to the term “anthropology” and the word “religious”. Firstly, citing Heidegger, he claims that “anthropology is that interpretation of man which, already at its basis, knows who man is, and therefore cannot ask about who he is”.23 Instead of this, Lacoste proposes considerations on disputatio de homine, emphasizing the need to speak of man’s humanity (l’humanité de l’homme) as a reality and as a problem. This is why his work is subtitled: “Questions disputées sur l’humanité de l’homme”. Secondly, the author claims that the considerations contained in the book do not pertain to questions of religion. The reason for this is that, since Schleiermacher, one of the chief spaces in which religion has acted itself out is the sphere of emotions, and this conception the author considers to be deleterious.24 The author states his main goal in writing Expérience et Absolu to have been the posing of a number of questions he considers to be of importance. First, if phenomenology lets us asks about who man is, does it not also 19 20 21 22 23 24

Cited after ibid., p. 198. See ibid., p. 198. J.-Y. Lacoste, Expérience et Absolu. Cf. ibid., p. 1. Ibid. Cf. Ibid., p. 2.

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provide us with the means to think the possibility of man’s relation with God? Secondly, assuming that a philosophy of the liturgy is possible, does phenomenology not lead to the framing of a new conception of the relation between man and God, defined as religious experience? If the liturgy can in no way be deduced from a priori laws, does this not mean that its function amounts to that of entertainment? What should the function of the liturgy be, how is it to aid the search for an answer to the question of man’s humanity? At the same time, Lacoste thinks it is possible to answer these questions, but only on condition of applying a different method than that hitherto applied to religious analysis. It is certain that the liturgy cannot remain locked within the subjective space of feelings.25 One should also note that the book is dedicated to the memory of Henri de Lubac, whose theology constitutes a frequent point of reference for our phenomenologist.

Man and his place The presentation of Lacoste’s phenomenology of the liturgy should begin with an analysis of the hypothesis of the “atheism of life”,26 which asserts, quoting Expérience et Absolu, that “life is atheistic”.27 God does not constitute any part of the sphere of that which is given to us in an obvious manner. “The disturbing hypothesis of mankind, contenting itself with existence ‘without God in the world’ should thus be taken seriously. Atheism is not just a theoretical problem, and it is not a theoretical problem in the first place: it is the a priori of existence”.28 In today’s secularized western world God is absent from the experience of most individuals. Based on Expérience et Absolu, Falque notes that the world, understood as facticity, is the starting point of all our reflection. We have no obviousness other than “being in the world”.29 He then remarks that one of the elements of this facticity is precisely atheism, for according to Lacoste, the claim that a relation to God is included in our experience is simply not true. In his view, Dasein exists without God in the world.30 In the cited commentary on the phenomenology of the liturgy, Falque notes that Heidegger did not hold out in his position of atheism found in his first teaching in Sein und Zeit. In “Build25 26 27 28 29 30

J.-Y. Lacoste, Expérience et Absolu, pp. 2-3. Cf. Ibid., p. 126. Ibid, p. 125. Ibid, p. 128. Cf. E. Falque, “La facticité...”, p. 203. Cf. J.-Y. Lacoste, Expérience et Absolu, p. 50.

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ing, Dwelling, Thinking”, he crossed to the plane of paganism31 with his conception of the fourfold [Geviert]. Lacoste demonstrates that this is not an about face, but merely a redirecting of attention to the other side of the problem. Falque describes the difference succinctly. “[A]theism and paganism are merely the obverse and the reverse of the same coin”, atheism is a methodological postulate, of great importance to philosophy, while “the return of divinity”, of nondenominational nature, can only occur on the plane of poetic discourse.32 He then compares this situation to the negation of God which could be observed in times such as the 1970’s. He does however remark that the present state or “the time of religions without Gods” still involves faith in the “return of the gods”, which is not the same as faith “in God”. On this basis it may be concluded that “atheism and paganism together profess the same facticity - ‘terrifying’ in the case of the strangeness of the world ("Sein und Zeit”), and ‘soothing’ in the case of familiarity between man and the world.33 This may evoke associations with similar intuitions present already in Tertulian, Anastasius, and then in Hegel. In the context of similarity to Lacoste’s though, Greisch gives the example of Lévinas and his conception of “volitional atheism”34 - a condition of the relation with God, just as in any relation, is separation, which Lévinas has termed atheism - it is a condition of receiving God and does not have negative connotations. It is synonymous to being oneself, being at home, being happy, briefly - of being created.35 Greisch points out that in order to speak of God, there must be a passage from the sphere of the profane to that of the sacred (although Lacoste himself does not use these two categories), which is best symbolized by the making of the sign of the cross with the holy water at the entrance of a church.36 “The world of life is that which must be overcome so that man can come face to face with God. The primary obvious facts of life have to make way before the secondary obvious facts that make the liturgy possible”.37 Here we can see the need for liturgy, which however in itself does not fulfil any life needs. “[L]iturgical logic accomplishes itself far from the immediate reality of life”.38 “Even if those involved in liturgical action are very engaged, their activity is not

31 32 33 34 35

Cf. E. Falque, “La facticité...”, p. 204. Cf. ibid. Cf. ibid., p. 204. Cf. J. Greisch, Le buisson ardent et les lumières de la raison... ., p.270. Cf. T. Gadacz, Historia filozofii XX wieku [History of twentieth-century philosophy], Kraków 2009, vol. II, p. 596. 36 Cf. J. Greisch, Le buisson ardent et les lumières de la raison... , p. 269. 37 J.-Y. Lacoste, Expérience et Absolu, p.125. 38 J.-Y. Lacoste, Expérience et Absolu , p. 124.

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linked to any life need”.39 In spite of this “uselessness” the liturgy is indispensable, because in entering its logic man can find himself within the order Lacoste describes precisely as “secondary obviousness” or “secondary naivete”.40 It is a way to overcome the “atheistic” facticity of the world. Greisch remarks that the above mentioned “hypothesis of the ‘atheism of life’ grows even stronger if we qualify life as ‘facticity’, which is something that Heidegger does in his first teaching”.41 For Lacoste however, “atheism is the most important word of the whole ‘logic of facticity’”.42 On the other hand, and this is something that is strongly stressed by Falque, “we are not only defined by facticity, but also by vocation”.43 In other words, we are not just terrified being-there in the world or peace on earth, but, using secondary naivete, a different perspective opens up, that of being-before-God. Lacoste asks whether “we exist for God or for death” and answers that empirical evidence suggests that our life ends in the moment of death. Empiricism is not able to progress beyond this point. “Liturgy, on the contrary, negates the fact that death is the final word of life”.44 Facticity would have man believe that he is only being-towards-death, while liturgy is the place where this can be transformed into the perspective of being-before-God. In a radical way, liturgy asks whether it is God that we live for, or only the world. Facticity has but one reply to this kind of question. There is no perspective beyond this world, or at least, no such perspective is given to us. The world is “given”, while the religious relation is “assigned”. It is a vocation and a call to man. These intuitions may evoke associations with a similar conception present in the philosophy of Paul Ricœur , namely that of the “capable” subject. It should here be added that Ricœur himself makes no attempt at a philosophical interpretation of religious experience, because it is given to us immediately.45 Yet “the man who acts, speaks, chooses is at once a religiously rooted subject, and the fundamental question is: does religious reality (…) make him ‘capable’ of spe39 40 41 42 43 44 45

J. Greisch, Le buisson ardent et les lumières de la raison..., p. 268. Cf. J.-Y. Lacoste, Expérience et Absolu , p. 126. J. Greisch, Le buisson ardent et les lumières de la raison..., p. 269. Ibid. Cf. E. Falque, “La facticité visitée...”, p. 205. J.-Y. Lacoste, Expérience et Absolu, p. 80. This follows from Ricœur’s basic assumptions related to subjectivity and hermeneutics: a consequence of the fact that the subject does not have direct access to his “I” is his lack of access to an immediate perception of the “I” as well as the religious self, cf. M. Bała, O możliwości hermeneutycznej filozofii religii. Propozycja Paula Ricœura [On the possibility of a hermeneutic philosophy of religion. The proposition of PaulRicœur, Warsaw 2007, p. 172.

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cific attitudes or reinforce those already present. The sacred becomes an area not just of understanding but also of shaping subjectivity. The religious subject is also someone of whom we can say that he takes certain actions, is an acting subject”46 In other words, is a ‘capable’ subject, although this notion did not appear in Ricœur’s works until very late. This “capacity” (capacité) can be reduced to “subjecting one’s actions to the requirements of the symbolic order”.47 A comparison with the Biblical prophets follows. The man “summoned” by a religious symbol becomes dependent on a “message” that is independent of him. The subject is initially chosen by God, but the free consent of the man to taking up the proposed mission is subsequently required. It is in this dimension of “being summoned”, which accomplishes itself in a manner similar to the prophetic call, that Ricœur sees the essence of religious subjectivity. He finally concludes that structures of calling occur which cause the subject to recognize himself in a religious relation and to take specific actions.48 In this sense there is a similarity between Lacoste and Ricœur; both consider the religious relation as not being given to man in an immediate way, but to be the result of a specific type of recognition of one’s subjectivity. In Ricœur this is done through the religious text, and in Lacoste, within the liturgical space. Having described existential atheism, Lacoste poses a fundamental question: is it the only way man can exist in the world? The answer is, of course, “no”. Paradoxically, this stems from the violence inflicted by the atheistic world, for only in the liturgy is man able to overcome the fact that all creation exists “without God in the world”.49 The violence of the world, finding its most radical expression in being-towards-death, is overcome in the liturgy, as another perspective is discovered. It turns out that the limits of “the violence of facticity” are not the limits of humanity.50 The liturgy becomes “a gesture of deliverance from that which orders (…) being-in-the-world to being-before-God and does violence to the first in the name of the second”.51 The violence of facticity is broken by the “violence” of the liturgy. Liturgy is useless from the point of view 46 M. Bała, O możliwości hermeneutycznej…, p. 172. 47 P. Ricœur, “Le destinataire de la religion, l’homme capable” [in:] Philosophie de la religion entre l’éthique et l’ontologie, Milan 1996, p. 21, cited after: M. Bała, O możliwości hermeneutycznej... ,p. 172. 48 Cf. M. Bała, O możliwości hermeneutycznej …, p. 176-177. 49 Lacoste here cites a passage from the letter to the Ephesians 2:12. However the sentence has been translated directly from the French based on Expérience et Absolu (p. 128), because a different grammatical formula occurs in the Polish translation of the Millenium Bible, unsuited to the phrase used by Lacoste: "without (…) God in the world". 50 Cf. J.-Y. Lacoste, Expérience et Absolu, p. 127. 51 Cf. ibid, p. 48.

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of “being-in-the-world”, and precisely for this reason, it makes possible another type of existence - existence is a religious relation. In order to fully understand how liturgy negates facticity, we have to consider the context in which Lacoste situates liturgical experience, and that context is a reference to Heidegger. The first part of Expérience et Absolu is entitled “Man and his place”. Topology, and more specifically phenomenological topology, is thus the area of interest. The word topology comes from the Greek topos, meaning place. Thus, to “think in terms of place” is to “think in terms of the liturgy”.52 Considerations focus on the question of what it means for man to have a place and to inhabit a place. Discussing the views of the Parisian philosopher Greisch takes, as his starting point, the most fundamental question in the Bible: “Adam, where art thou?”, illustrating the thin line between asking about a subject : “Who?”, “Who is man?”: and asking about a place :“Where?”, “Where is man?”.53 According to Lacoste, “we cannot know who we are without first asking where we are”;54 it is the basis of his reflection. The first of these questions is anthropological, focusing on the “humanity of man”, which we remarked on earlier, noting the subtitle of the Parisian philosopher’s work. In his view, liturgy is the central axis of questions concerning “man’s humanity”, “the human nature of man”. Man’s humanity depends on his ability to hear the question “Adam, where art thou?” This question is about where we are in the world, it is a question concerning place, and more specifically, of whether facticity is our only place. The fundamental question regarding place and the onliness of facticity presupposes a “logic” that leads to another place, in which the possibility of meeting between man and God is finally available.55 This question about a place does not, of course, concern space, but existence: where am I in my life? where am I going? does where I am enable me to find myself in my humanity?.56 It is precisely this “liturgical logic” that determines the meaning of the term “liturgy”, as Lacoste understands it. Negating the syntagm “religious anthropology”, he opts for using the word “liturgy” instead. In the introduction to “Expérience et Absolu”, he cites the definition of liturgy given in the Littré: “the order and rituals of divine worship”.57 He then explains that liturgy is all that 52 Cf. ibid, p. 27 cited after J. Greisch, Le buisson ardent et les lumières de la raison..., p. 271. 53 J. Greisch, Le buisson ardent et les lumières de la raison..., p. 266. 54 J.-Y. Lacoste, Expérience et Absolu, p. 100. 55 Cf. J. Greisch, Le buisson ardent et les lumières de la raison..., pp. 267-268. 56 Cf. J. Greisch, L’arbre de vie et l’arbre du savoir. Le chemin phénoménologique de l’herméneutique heideggérienne (1919-1923), Paris 2000, p. 214. 57 J.-Y. Lacoste, Expérience et Absolu.,p. 2.

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precedes man’s meeting with God.58 Every religion expresses itself in religious acts. These acts may be individual (prayer) or social (liturgy). In Lacoste’s view, primacy should be given to the liturgy, and not to prayer, because the former presents a lesser danger of subjectivism. It may be the subject of phenomenological study, because it consists of outward actions. To Lacoste, liturgy is a phenomenological, rather than an ecclesiological concept. Citing Heidegger, he confirms it to be the logic of being-in-the world, but to him, another logic, that of being-towards-God, has a higher importance. It is this second logic, of the man coram Deo, that is capable of overriding the logic of being-in-the-world. Lacoste refers to the philosophy of Heidegger, both the Heidegger of Sein und Zeit, discussing Dasein’s manner of being in relation to the world in § 12, and to “Building, Dwelling, Thinking” and the question of dwelling. Heidegger’s remark that ich bin, “I am”, comes from the word baun, meaning “remaining, residing” will be of particular importance here. The answer to the question “who am I?” shall be dependent on the determination of “where I am” - “I am the place of my residence”. The aforementioned difference between Heidegger I, whose reflection focuses on being there (être là) or an analysis of Dasein, and Heidegger II, chiefly concerned with the there of being (là de être) is brought into relief here. Lacoste’s discussion of place shall therefore be directed towards stating that the liturgy is a denial or overthrow of place. Lacoste continues, basing his train of thought on the statement that the liturgy challenges and “turns over” our being in the world.59 This accomplishes itself within two dimensions: those of time and space. Being in the world is first equivalent to being in space: we are always living somewhere, coming back or going somewhere. Liturgical experience on the other hand, is a utopian or atopological experience. He explains this by reference to the work Dieu, mystère du monde by the theologian Eberhard Jüngel,60 posing the problem of “God’s utopia”. What is meant by utopia however, is not the commonplace definition, meaning ideal social structures or an ideal political system, but rather the etymological signification of the word, which in Greek means “non-place” (ou - not, topos - place). The question posed by Jüngel is thus: “where is God?”, “is there any longer a place to talk of God today?” The answer is provided by another question, that, which, for its part, asks about the “utopia of man” (where is man?). It is this question that Lacoste begins his considerations with, writing “it

58 Cf. ibid. p. 2. 59 Cf. ibid., p. 78. 60 On Lacoste's reference to the theology of E. Jüngel see J.-Y. Lacoste, Expérience et Absolu, p. 99 and E. Falque, “La facticité visitée.”, p. 202.

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is very likely that we will not find an answer to the question “who am I?”, unless we involve another question, “where am I?”.61 Lacoste concludes that the problem of God’s utopia, that of whether there any longer is a place to talk of God today, though fundamental, should be paired with an even more fundamental issue, namely, in his view, the fact that God is utopos, without place. What is of importance to the liturgy, which is beingbefore-God-without-place, is the fact that it is a negation of being-in-the-world, which always relates to a given space. In negating space, the liturgy suggests that the world cannot be reduced to our being-in-the-world. What is primary, original (origine) does not reduce itself to that which is given to us as the beginning, facticity (initial). The liturgy’s denial of the world is a denial of space, because it does not allow all of space to be limited to our perspective. Beyond our space, given to us immediately, there is something that we cannot apprehend. The topos of Dasein and the topos of the liturgy should thus be seen as opposite. According to Greisch, the liturgy does not simply oblige us to search for a meaning of reality other than that proposed by the hermeneutics of facticity, but, as Lacoste himself does, casts doubt on facticity as such.62 The negation of reality as such however is not intended, but rather a rejection of the “dictate” of facticity, which precludes any other perspective. Monastic life is an example of the negation of space by the liturgy described above. It realizes itself in three ways. The first is the exclusion of place (l’exclusion), as presented in the vision of St. Benedict, the second, reclusion (la réclusion), as exemplified by the coenobite, and the third, alienation (le dépaysement), as illustrated by the life of the pilgrim monk. Lacoste illustrates the exclusion of place by reference to the vision of St. Benedict, described by Gregory the Great. During a night spent in prayer he saw, as in a dream, the whole world as a ‘small ball lost in an immeasurable sky’. Through this, he saw that the monk never satisfies himself with his place, but always strives to inhabit all places. Far from being only in the world, he finds himself both before the world, and ‘before God’ (coram Deo).63 It is only in severing oneself from a specific place that one is able to enter into a relation with God. The Absolute exceeds the man-made limits of the world, does not allow itself to be enclosed within its space. For this very reason the man, who wishes to rely on God, “flees the rulers of the world and partakes in God’s reign over the universe”.64 God cannot be reduced to one place, and so those who 61 62 63 64

J.-Y. Lacoste, Expérience et Absolu, p. 7. Cf. J. Greisch, Le buisson ardent et les lumières de la raison..., p. 273. Cf. J.-Y. Lacoste, Expérience et Absolu., pp. 28-32. Ibid., p. 31.

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want to enter a relation with Him also have to overstep this limitation. In his commentary on Lacoste’s phenomenology of the liturgy, Greisch notes that “the vision of St. Benedict establishes a ‘new division within the field of experience’, which goes beyond the ordinary relation of inseparability from the world without lifting us up into a sky unattainable by means of common experience”.65 This vision thus entails the exclusion of topology by the liturgy. The second way in which the liturgy contradicts the notion of place is called reclusion (la réclusion) by Lacoste and described in § 10 of Expérience et Absolu.66 The example he gives is that of monastic life, for the reason that the cenobite notes his place by choosing to be only in one place in the whole world – that is, in his cell. This experience of reclusion is an experience of choosing one’s place, while constituting a radical negation of other places. Through his one place of reclusion, the cenobite becomes indifferent to the logic of place. He does not go anywhere, does not seek better places, does not move. His place, in its simplicity and limitation, becomes the place of God himself, because God is without-place (Dieu est le non-lieu). The third experience that portrays the negation described is that of alienation (un dépaysement), symbolized by the pilgrim monk. This is yet another figure in denial of place. The pilgrim situates himself within the logic of alienation because he inhabits no place. God is not in this specific place, all places are perceived as temporary. There is no place to which he could attach himself. The pilgrim dwells everywhere and nowhere. For this reason we can say, using the terminology of Heidegger’s “Building, Dwelling, Thinking”, that the pilgrim inhabits the Geviert. The liturgical experience of alienation indicates that man cannot find peace on earth. The liturgy however stands in denial not just of place, but also of time. The antithesis of the chronos of Dasein is the kairos of the liturgy. Worldly time is bustle, pursuit, the constant checking of time. There is never enough time, which is not the case in the experience of liturgy, on the one hand it is a moment, time set apart, intended to make us stop. The liturgy is not in a hurry “after something”, but fully lives the given moment of meeting before God. Here and now are important, referring us to a reality beyond time, where there will no longer be any “before” and “after”. Liturgy not only is, but even should be “time wasted” in the eyes of the world. For the liturgy, topos or place should be understood as oikos, meaning home in Greek. It is at this point that Lacoste introduces the word oikology: “the to-

65 J. Greisch, Le buisson ardent et les lumières de la raison..., p. 273. 66 Cf. J.-Y. Lacoste, Expérience et Absolu., pp. 32-35.

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pology of existence is oikological”.67 It is the liturgy that provides a reply to Heidegger’s statement “I am where I live”; because a deeper analysis of beingin-the-world reveals that the world is Unzuhause, or “not-being-at-home, notdwelling”.68. The fear accompanying Dasein reveals to it the disturbing strangeness of its being-in-the-world. Lacoste concludes that the world is not ours, its reality governs and determines us, but man is not willing to submit to it.69 “The world is at once a homeland and a strange land”.70 This precisely is the paradox of the liturgy, which constantly reminds us that we are to overcome our limitations, both spatial and temporal. This is the only way that we can enter a mature religious relation.

The hermeneutics of beginning and the heuristic of origin The author notes that it is necessary to be able to tell the difference between beginning (initial) and the character of origin, source (originaire): “Origin is not beginning,71 that which is initial cannot be identified with that which is original. The first experience of man, as Lacoste says, is the experience of beginning, identified with the experience of being-in-the-world. Lacoste agrees with Heidegger and with his hypothesis of fear of death. Fear of death is constitutive of man, it is our first discovery, and in that sense, for Lacoste, being-in-theworld is primary, while the liturgy will always remain secondary.72 This fundamental formula means that if the beginning (initial) is identified with the experience of fear of death, and birth itself is already marked by an orientation towards death, then even in spite of all this, this experience does not determine our character of origin (origine). Life and immortality come before death, although we discover them as secondary to being-towards-death. This character of origin, source (originaire) Lacoste considers to be the reality that shaped us, and the goal we are journeying towards is consequently reducible to the fundamental experience of man standing before God himself. This reality on the one hand surrounds and penetrates man, and on the other wholly exceeds him. We may here cite Lacoste’s formula: “the liturgy challenges our being-in-the-world and overturns it”.73 This rebellion against the world is expressed, amongst other things, in the negation of the dimension of time and space. In his commentary on 67 68 69 70 71 72 73

Cf. J.-Y. Lacoste, Expérience et Absolu., pp. 12. Cf. ibid., p. 13. Cf. ibid. Ibid., p. 14. Ibid., p.109. Cf. J.-Y. Lacoste, Expérience et Absolu., p. 86. Cf. ibid, p. 78.

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the phenomenology of the liturgy, Falque states: “The first word heard at the beginning of our existence (death), is however not the last word”.74 The promise of resurrection is there. Lacoste however notes that originality is not identical only to the eschaton of the end times.75 That which is original may already be experienced here and now, in the “here and now” of the liturgy, not that of the world. Here it is worth citing the analyses carried out by Falque with regard to the relation that occurs between ‘creation and the world’ (création et monde), because they constitute another example of the aforementioned distinction between what is initial and what is original or source. Subsequent illustrations have to do with the relation between ‘desire and finitude’ (désir et finitude), in other words ‘openness and closure’, and between ‘fracture and transformation’ (brisure et transformation).76 The distinction between creation and world has been described in Expérience et Absolu (1994), but also chiefly in Lacoste’s earlier work Note sur le temps (1990) in § 41. Here we may find, as Falque writes, the full expression of Lacoste’s eschatological perspective, exhibited in the distinction drawn between that which is original and that which pertains to a source.77 Lacoste remarks that “the world is our only introduction to creation”78, “we have no other access to creation than through the world”.79 In spite of its facticity the world, at certain moments, refers us to creation, for instance the experience of beauty, aesthetic experiences, often suggest the “created” nature of the world. Experiencing the world and experiencing it as creation are not the same experience, although these experiences often interpenetrate one another.80 In his commentary Falque cites St. Bonaventure who, in his work Collationes in Hexaemeron81 writes that the liber mundi presents itself to us “as death and atrophy”, not because it will be completely destroyed but solely because we have grown incapable of reading it correctly. A fundamental question appears, namely whether we can and should speak of a definitive break between creation and the world. Facticity suggests the lack of such a relationship. The most frequent argument is that of the presence of evil, and not just moral evil related to 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81

Cf. Falque, “La facticité visitée”, p. 199. Cf. J.-Y. Lacoste, Expérience et Absolu, p. 109. Cf. E. Falque, “La facticité visitée”, p. 207. Cf. ibid., p. 208. J.-Y. Lacoste, Note sur le temps, Paris 1990, p. 91. Ibid. Cf. Falque, “La facticité visitée”., p.208. Cf. St. Bonaventure, Les six jours de la création, Paris 1991, XIII, 12, pp. 307-308, cit. after: Falque, “La facticité visitée”, p. 208.

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man, but also and above all physical evil. How can the world be created if there is so much evil, cataclysms, illnesses in it? One may try to explain moral evil away by invoking free will, but physical evil is irreconcilable with the hypothesis of the existence of a benevolent Creator. Lacoste, for his part, does not construct any kind of theodicy that would excuse God in the face of the mass of evil extant in the world; he merely states that there is no evil that wholly eliminates the possibility of such an interpretation of the world whereby it could have come from God.82 Another pair of opposites expressing the antithesis of ‘beginning-source’ is desire and finitude. These considerations are voiced in Expérience et Absolu as well as Le monde et l’absence d’śuvre. This time Lacoste does not so much link “beginning” with “origin” (which would involve protology), as he does with end (eschatology will thus be concerned). Falque points out that these concepts relate to the thought of de Lubac, and in particular to his conception of desire.83 Lacoste presents his reflections on desire in a chapter devoted to the work of de Lubac: “Le désir et l’inexigible: pour lire Henri de Lubac” in the already mentioned work Le monde et l’absence d’śuvre. This topic calls to mind associations with the charges brought forth by Michel De Bay, Denis the Carthusian and Cajetan, who claimed that there is no place for a conception of desire and lust in Thomism.84 Based on an analysis of de Lubac’s work Le Mystère du Surnaturel, Lacoste concludes that the presence of desire as such in man does not point directly to the object of that desire. We may desire without knowing what it is we desire. But the very presence of such desire points to a reality that exceeds us.85 The last pair considered is fracture and transformation. This means God’s intrusion into the life of man, which is something that occurs when a man begins to believe, pray, when he has accepted the appearance of God is his world.86 Lacoste proposes expressions such as: “overstepping the bounds of our experience”,87 “breaking the bounds of existence”,88 all of which convey the radical change that occurs as a result of the meeting between man and God. Man must, on the one hand, renounce hitherto applied patterns of thinking, which is often painful (fracture), and on the other hand must allow himself to be guided by God, which in consequence entails a transformation of our being. Experience of

82 83 84 85 86 87 88

Cf. J.-Y. Lacoste, Note sur le temps, p. 91. Cf. Falque, “La facticité visitée”, p. 209. Cf. ibid. Cf. ibid. Cf. ibid., p. 210. J.-Y. Lacoste, Expérience et Absolu., p. 53. Ibid., p. 128.

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this kind is frequently described by mystics.89 Falque makes a reference to Bultmann’s remark that the power of this transformation ultimately leads to true being, which, in spite of all its difference, does not entirely negate who we were before the transformation occurred.90 This is why we do not here witness to philosophy’s radical break from theology, in other words nature’s break from that which is revealed. A reference to St. Thomas Aquinas follows, who, through his statement nihil prohibet shows that some of the things grasped by the mind can also be revealed, which points to a certain ‘acquisition’ of natural theology by revealed theology. Such a state of affairs does not permit anthropological, cosmological or for that matter topological reduction, which reduces God to the dimensions, respectively, of man, the world or place, but enables the portrayal of God who chose incarnation not in order to subjugate himself to man, but in order to fully reveal himself to him.91 This is a kenotic reduction of God with respect to man, where it is not man who philosophically diminishes God, reducing him to the level of his finitude, but God who lowers himself to man in order to transform him.92

Conclusion How should we judge Lacoste’s proposal? Can liturgy, as a religious phenomenon, an act of cult, become a foundation for the discovery of universal truths? The first thing that strikes one upon reading Lacoste’s works is a very clear reference to Christian experience. It is not so much a philosophy of the liturgy as a philosophy of the Christian liturgy. Hence the next question: are we dealing with an autonomous philosophy, or are we witness to a mixing of the theological and philosophical orders? In this sense, Janicaud’s charge of crypto-theology is more than justified with regard to our philosopher. One does not of course have to have an approach as radical as that of this critic of French philosophy of religion; nonetheless the work of Lacoste may without doubt be classified more as religious philosophy than as philosophy of religion. This however does not detract from the aptness of the philosopher’s remarks cited in this paper. His conception of attaining universal truths through particular experience, which the liturgy undoubtedly is, is interesting. The philosopher should not renounce analysis of liturgical experience, for despite its being limitedto the followers of a 89 See J.A. Kłoczowski, Drogi człowieka mistycznego [The way of mystical man], Krakow 2001, pp. 22-26. 90 Cf. E. Falque, “La facticité visitée”, p. 211. 91 Cf. Falque, “La facticité visitée” 92 Cf. ibid., pp. 211-212.

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particular religion it may point to universal and timeless truths. The liturgy, for example, helps man to find himself within the reality of time and space and makes man learn how to function within it. It teaches man distance with regard to temporality and spatiality, immersing him in a different kind of sacred time, flowing in a somewhat different way. Without this distance man cannot carry out his mission and his calling. Liturgy thus becomes a fundamental dimension for culture. Even though it involves particular experience, it makes it possible to indicate the most basic direction for the development of man: we are called upon to engage in a constant struggle against spatiality and temporality. In spite of tendencies towards secularization in today’s culture, the liturgy should once more find its due place in it, not just as an element of tradition or a historical phenomenon, but as the living space for shaping appropriate desires and needs for modern man. Through the liturgy, man gains distance towards the world, towards himself, and can effect a true re-valuation of his life. The liturgy becomes a vehicle for conversion and transformation, not just in a religious, but also in a purely humanist sense. Lacoste’s approach is doubtless not original in the full sense of the word, but it expresses the need of prompting reflection about man’s place in society and beyond. Of course, and this must be stated clearly, Lacoste’s proposal proffers a functional approach to religion, since standing before God in religious experience is to bring measurable benefit. Are we not in this sense losing the essence of religion? Unfortunately Lacoste’s position does not reflect the essence of religion as such, not the essence of man as open to transcendence. The liturgy has a community dimension, which consequently means that it cannot be equated with private beliefs, and retains a community and social scale. In terms of methodology, the philosophy of Lacoste may also raise a number of doubts, yet it has one fundamental goal: it tries to show that modern culture, varied and rich as it is, should not and must not disregard religious experience, ever so strongly present in the liturgy. For it is a type of experience that not only does not alienate man, but makes him more human. And that precisely is the purpose of culture. Bibliography: Bała M., O możliwości hermeneutycznej filozofii religii. Propozycja Paula Ricœura, Warsaw 2007 Capelle Ph., Qu’est-ce que la “phénoménologie française”?, “Studia Philosophiae Christianae” 43 (2007) 1 Falque E., La facticité visitée, “Transversalités” 110 (2009) Fromm E., Szkice z psychologii religii, transl. J. Prokopiuk, Warsaw 1966 Gadacz T., Historia filozofii XX wieku, vol. II, Krakow 2009

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God in France, ed. P. Jonkers, R. Welten, Leuven 2005 Greisch J., L’arbre de vie et l’arbre du savoir. Le chemin phénoménologique de l’herméneutique heideggérienne (1919-1923), Paris 2000 Greisch J., Le buisson ardent et les lumičres de la raison. L’invention de la philosophie de la religion, vol. II, Paris 2002 Husserl E., Méditations cartésiennes. Introduction à la phénoménologie, Paris 1931 Janicaud D., La phénoménologie dans tous ses états, Paris 2009 Kłoczowski J. A., Drogi człowieka mistycznego, Krakow 2001 Maj J., Wezwanie mowy. Myślenie mowy, liturgia i piękno w filozofii Franza Rosenzweiga, Krakow 2009 Od filozofii refleksji do hermeneutyki. Francuska filozofia religii, ed. J. Barcik, Krakow 2006 Phénoménologie: un siècle de philosophie, ed. P. Dupond, L. Cournarie, Paris 2002 Phenomenology and the Theological Turn: The French Debate (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy), New York 2001 Powszechna Encyklopedia Filozofii, Lublin 2007 Vries H. De, Philosophy and the Turn to Religion, Baltimore 1999

Comte-Sponville’s spirituality without God. A new foundation of modern culture? Rev. Maciej Bała Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw (CSWU) The Faculty of Christian Philosophy

Introduction Religion is a phenomenon that continually inspires philosophical reflection. The end of religion or the death of God have on various occasions already been proclaimed, yet the problem of an Absolute, of faith, continues to be an important issue in every man’s world view, conjuring attitudes of affirmation or negation. Hence the need to subject religion to critical evaluation, characteristic of philosophical cognition. The philosophy of religion, as the discipline concerned with this task, tries to make use of rational reflection to determine what religion is (what the essence of religion is), whether its object (God) exists and what He is, in what way is religious cognition given to man, in what the religious existence of man consists, and, frequently, what the functions of religion are (e.g. sociological, psychological). Philosophy of religion should not be equated with theology, which is a systematic reflection on the content of a specific religious tradition, presupposing faith or another kind of acceptance of the tenets of that religious tradition. It should also not be confused with religious philosophy, which takes its inspiration from religion, drawing rational conclusions from it, although remaining detached from any particular religious tradition. Atheism denotes a position negating the existence of God. The theoretical and practical varieties of atheism are usually distinguished.1 The first involves a doctrine, and often makes reference to metaphysical or epistemological premises, states the necessity of rejecting the existence of Transcendence (conceived of as personal or impersonal), while practical atheism is an attitude towards life in which man does not relate to an existing personal God. Atheism should be distinguished from agnosticism, very common today, which holds the impossibility of resolving the issue of the existence or non-existence of an Absolute in a rational way. 1

There is a wide literature devoted to the problem of atheism, also available in Polish, see for example R. Coffy, Bóg niewierzących, transl. Paris 1968; H. de Lubac, Ateizm i sens człowieka, transl. Paryż 1969; E. Gilson, Bóg i ateizm, transl. Kraków 1996; M. Neusch, U źródeł współczesnego ateizmu. Sto lat dyskusji na temat Boga, transl. from the French, Paris 1980, J. Sochoń, Ateizm, Warszawa; H. Eilstein Szkice ateistyczne, Koszalin 2000.

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Atheism as a phenomenon is chiefly tied to the Judaeo-Christian religion, and since this tradition refers itself to Greek rationality, it is possible to carry on a rational polemic with it from the position of atheism. It was not until modern times that atheism emerged as a serious intellectual movement. Even though the term atheist was used in ancient times to refer to those who refused to obey state religion, as in the case of Socrates (as well as, paradoxically enough, the first Christians), the atheist attitude, in today’s sense of the word, was not common (Theodore of Cyrene was one exception). The appearance of atheism in modern times was no doubt influenced by the rise of skepticism (e.g. Michel de Montaigne) and empiricism. By their questioning – especially Hume’s discussion of causality – of metaphysical cognition, both of these currents contributed to the rejection of hitherto accepted proofs of the existence of God. The birth of Enlightenment thought in the eighteenth century, with its emphasis on autonomy and the need to free man from the chains of authority, spurred a radical critique of religion and the issue of the existence of an Absolute. The revolutionary thought of Immanuel Kant, which demonstrated the limits of human knowledge as well as the impossibility of reaching God through theoretical reasoning (which consequently shifted the problem of God’s existence into the practical realm) laid a wide field open to agnosticism. The existence or non-existence of God is no longer a philosophical or theological problem, but becomes a matter of man’s choice, based on subjective practical factors. Why is it that today we have reason to speak of a new wave of atheism, manifest, amongst other things, in the topic of our discussion, spirituality without God? The first wave being, of course, modern atheism, including such great masters of suspicion as Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche, the second wave is discernible in the 1960’s with their generalized spread of existential atheism. The third wave, appearing at the beginning of the 21st century is chiefly tied to the new context in which atheists have found themselves proclaiming their beliefs. This context is defined by the tragedy of 9/11, terrorist attacks in London and Madrid and growing fear of religious fundamentalism. Another crucial cause of the “new atheism” is rooted in the proposed introduction of a new morality, focusing only on the temporal and bearing no reference to a transcendent reality: something that currently characterizes the vast majority of secularized societies. An important factor stimulating the emergence of the third wave of atheism is also postmodern culture with its areligious approach to the realm of the sacred. This is particularly pronounced in its critique of institutional and doctrinal religion. The leading motif of this critique is of course the affirmation of man’s absolute freedom and the rejection of objective truth. And herein lurks one of the many paradoxes of postmodern thought, which negates all absolute values while

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at the same time absolutizing the value of individual autonomy, tolerance and pluralism. According to the postmodernists, religions as institutional forms, and the moral values and dogmatic visions of the world and man preached by them, bring about man’s enslavement. This kind of attitude towards religion is reflected in postmodern culture, where relativism and religious indifferentism hold sway. Religion “blurs itself” within culture. As J. Dupré has rightly noted, modern culture is open to religions and the spiritual, but this openness is only horizontal, it negates all transcendence. Culture has become a religion and has even begun to offer some of religion’s emotional and spiritual benefits; it does not however include such radical requirements as those present in revealed religions.2 This precisely is the proposal that has appeared in the works of ComteSponville.

A critique of religion In his investigations regarding the problem of God and religion Comte-Sponville presents arguments in favour of adopting an atheist position with regard to the issue of the existence of an Absolute. What he proposes is not atheism claiming that God does not exist, but only a specific form of agnostic atheism stating that “faith in the non-existence of God” is the only possibility. It is impossible to formulate any knowledge with regard to the problem of the existence of God. Some believe that He exists, while others that He does not. Atheism is a type of faith, and surely this approach distinguishes Comte-Sponville from the proponents of extreme scientism, such as Richard Dawkins. For his part, the French philosopher severely criticizes scientism, denoting it also a metaphysical system, since it demands scientific answers to questions lying beyond the realm of science. No empirical science, since this is the type of science we are here concerned with, is able to answer moral, metaphysical or even political questions.3 Meanwhile the scientist uses the system of empirical sciences to create a metaphysics. The attitude of (religious) faith is commonly perceived as being opposed to that of atheism. The religious man “believes that God is”, while the atheist “knows that God is not”. This opposition however is erroneous, since in the case of all beliefs concerning God we are always dealing with faith, faith in His existence or in his non-existence. God is not an object of direct cognition, thus all theses postulated with regard to Him (concerning his existence or non-existence) 2 3

J. Dupré, Życie i duchowe i przetrwanie chrześcijaństwa w świeckiej kulturze. Refleksje na koniec tysiąclecia, [in:] Człowiek wobec religii, ed. K. Mech, Krakow 1999, p. 66. A. Comte-Sponville, F. Euvé, G. Lecointre, Dieu et la science, Paris, 2010, p. 17.

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belong to the order of faith. Comte-Sponville is right to claim that the negation of God is precisely faith in his non-existence, since there is no way of formulating any knowledge with regard to the existence of God. It is nonetheless important to have a clear idea of the reasons leading us towards the formulation of our faith (whether atheistic or religious). Comte-Sponville presents his arguments in favour of “atheistic faith”.4 They are, first, the weakness of evidence allegedly proving the existence of God, secondly, the Absolute being too simple an answer to questions concerning the origin of the world, and thirdly, the existence of evil. All historical arguments for the existence of God are inconclusive. Moreover, why should God “hide” from man? Is, as theism argues, respect for our freedom a sufficient argument for this? The first proof discussed by ComteSponville, and the most deceptive, as he does not fail to add, is the ontological argument.5 It is astoundingly simple (God has to exist, otherwise the definition of God would be wrong), and fascinating, (as centuries of analyses devoted to St. Anselm’s reasoning prove), but for these reasons also the most insidious. In his rejection of this type of argument the French philosopher does of course make reference to various critiques, such as that by St. Thomas, that there is no passage from the logical order to the ontological. The definition of a being such that nothing greater than it can be thought, does not make that being exist. A concept remains a concept whether or not its designate exists. This criticism is more than justified. Comte-Sponville sees no other way in which this reasoning might be evaluated, for example as an attempt to rationalize theistic beliefs by analyzing the internal coherence of the concept of God. He admits it may even be thought of as a brilliant monument of the human mind, but it has nothing to do with a rational approach to faith. The existence of God, he remarks, is only an object of faith by man, yet he seems to deny any rational foundation to that faith. He interprets the classical cosmological argument in a similar way. He recapitulates it citing it in its Leibnizian version.6 The world is incapable of giving the reasons for its existence, because it is not a necessary being. There has to be a reason that lies beyond it, and since that reason could be sought indefinitely, one must accept the existence of a being that does not need such a reason, is an absolutely necessary being and is itself the reason of its existence, rather than having its reason beyond itself. How does the French philosopher tackle this 4 5 6

Cf. A. Comte-Sponville, L’esprit de l’athéisme. Instruction à une spiritualité sans Dieu, Paris 2007, p. 142-143. A. Comte-Sponville, L’esprit de l’athéisme... op. cit., pp. 90-92. Cf. ibid., p. 93.

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type of argument? In his opinion, applying the principle of sufficient reason does not lead to the conclusion that God exists, but only to some kind of necessary being, an absolute principle. But as to whether this is a personal God with whom we can enter into a relation, Comte-Sponville has his severe doubts. Another argument against cosmological proofs is linked to a rejection of the need to accept a necessary being. Can we not propose another solution, for example blind chance or the very mystery of being? We can, but the French philosopher does not explain how an alternative to sufficient reason could be proposed in such a case. As with most metaphysical principles, we accept the principle of sufficient reason by way of intuition, yet an intuition that ensures that existing reality does not entail contradictions. In this context, rational theism, through the hypothesis of God, wishes to give too simple an answer about the beginnings of the world. Why is there something rather than nothing? The reply of classical metaphysics leads to God, but, asks Comte-Sponville, why not propose another answer: that there is simply some kind of “mystery of being”, a mystery whose nature we are as yet incapable of sounding. The very mysteriousness of being as an explanation of reality however is in itself no explanation, but a suspension or even a limitation of man’s cognitive endeavours. The next type of proof requiring a polemic is the physio-theological argument, based on the idea of order and purpose.7 However, Comte-Sponville’s reasoning is limited to referring to the authority of science. Since science is able to explain most phenomena of nature, there is no justification for seeking supernatural reasons underlying the existing harmony; although, as we have already pointed out, he is not an advocate of extreme scientism. Science should not pose, nor for that matter seek answers to, metaphysical questions. The conclusion emerging from the arguments for the existence of God cited by the French philosopher is very simple: lack of decisive evidence is an argument in favour of the non-existence of an absolute. But is this conclusion altogether justified? It is true that arguments for the existence of God are not a proof in the mathematical sense, but one cannot fail to remark their internal coherence, and they may serve as a basis for justifying theistic beliefs. The claim that an unspecified mystery of being or even chance are better at explaining the existence of reality is less rational than referring to the principle of sufficient reason and the contingency of beings. The French philosopher spends quite a bit of time polemicizing against the theistic belief that evidence for the existence of God must of necessity be weak, since this follows from God’s respect for our freedom. Man should choose God freely, consciously, and not as a result of rational calculation or 7

A. Comte-Sponville, L’esprit de l’athéisme... op. cit., pp. 98-99.

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proof. Comte-Sponville believes himself to have three reasons that disprove this claim. In his opinion, the supposition that God respects our freedom as to His Existence would lead to the conclusion that man is more free than God, who does not have such an option. But this is a misunderstanding of the very concept of freedom, whether freedom is merely the capacity for choice or whether it is the self-determination of a subject through truth and goodness. God is free and it is his freedom precisely that is the source and point of reference for the freedom of man. The second reason for rejecting the theist proposal based on God’s respect for man’s freedom is Comte-Sponville’s conviction that knowledge gives more freedom than does ignorance. The claim that God conceals himself out of respect for freedom implies that ignorance is an element of freedom, which, however, is not a true proposition. It is precisely truth that is a fundamental factor constituting freedom; in the absence of truth, freedom turns into recklessness. But God does not after all leave man in ignorance; he uncovers himself to him through revelation, which is a manifestation of divine truth. The relation of truth and revelation does not however appear as an element in Comte-Sponville’s work. Criticism is also voiced against the incongruity of the conception of respect for freedom and the idea of a personal and loving God. What should one think of God the Father, the French philosopher asks ironically, hiding as He does from His children? Is He loving? Is He caring? Humanity is so flawed that the presence of God is more than needed. As in his previous train of reasoning, Comte-Sponville disregards the historical dimension of religion, such as Christianity. For the Christian, to take an example, is God absent or does he hide from man? Again, the answer is vastly different from that proposed in The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality. The history of nearly any religion points to God’s constant presence and concern for those to whom he revealed himself or whom he has chosen. Even if it is possible to speak of moments of “God’s absence” in the life of an individual or of society, as in some Judaistic interpretations of the Holocaust, the fundamental thought of every religion is based on the conviction that a living, present and acting God exists. This, moreover, is fully consistent with His Transcendence and surpassing of our realm of knowledge and being. The next charge addressed against the truth of the proposition affirming God’s existence is the most classical one concerning the existence of evil.8 Of course, not evil understood as the necessary outcome of human freedom or the nature of creatures, but radical evil, that which inflicts the greatest harm and is in a certain sense unjustifiable. There is too much of it, and too little 8

A. Comte-Sponville, L’esprit de l’athéisme... op. cit., pp. 121-123.

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good to allow us to suspect the existence of Self-Existent Goodness. Man is visibly too trite to claim that God is the source of his existence. It is to this argument that he devotes most of his attention, considering it the most important in the polemic against theistic views. Comte-Sponville refers to this type of argumentation as positive arguments. He begins his analysis with the classical objection from the surplus of evil. It is not the existence of evil as such, but its dimensions and monstrosity, the disproportion between good and evil, that become a charge against theism. The intent of this reasoning is not just to demonstrate the weakness of religion; it is to be a strong reason in favour of the atheist position. Evil is not a challenge to the atheist; it is one only to the believer. The former accepts evil as something simply existing in the world, whereas the latter finds his rationality challenged by the need to reconcile it with the existence of a good and all-powerful God. The French philosopher claims that the relation between good and evil is simply asymmetrical, that there is too much evil to affirm Absolute Goodness as standing at the beginnings of the world and man. The world cannot be God, it must of necessity contain imperfection, and with this Comte-Sponville would agree, but why is there so much evil? This question begs a reply, and the hypothesis of a Good God is certainly not one. As he concludes: “there is too much monstrosity in the world, too much suffering and injustice – and too little happiness – to allow me to accept the idea that they have been created by an all-powerful and infinitely good God”.9 We may of course take up lines of defence proposed by thinkers such as Hans Jonas or Simone Weil, but explaining the disproportion of good and evil by the idea of a weak God leads to an outright negation and rejection of the concept of God. A “weak God” who withdrew His power from creation so that it could fully and freely carry out its mission has little to do with the God of religion and testifies more to the presence of spirit in man than to a loving and acting Absolute. Comte-Sponville does not of course engage in a debate with possible solutions advanced to resolve the problem of theodicy (for instance the French proposal of Paul Ricoeur, to name but one), he limits himself to an arbitrary self-pronouncement in favour of theism on account of the existence of undeserved evil. For instance, the existence of evil as a divine mystery does not, to his mind, explain anything, but is only an example of repudiation of the radicalism of the question itself. On the other hand, there is a disproportion in Comte-Sponville’s work between his strong thesis of the nonexistence of God based on the existence of evil, and other possible interpretations in conflict with this view. Why does he fail to analyze solutions in ana9

Ibid, p. 125

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lytical philosophy and the whole theory in defence of free will?.10 This disproportion between the solution advanced and other possibilities is just as great as that between the radicality of evil and the other replies offered with regard to this question. Unfortunately he does not include modern thinkers in his analysis (such as Ricoeur or Lévinas), to whom the religious answer elucidating the scandalous phenomenon of evil is not as straightforward as it is according to Comte-Sponville. One of Comte-Sponville’s final arguments is connected to the previous one but concentrates on the evil in man. The facility of doing evil, the magnitude of man’s small-mindedness, and his weakness of will, are all sufficient reasons to doubt that a perfect God could be the author of such a “mediocre” work. Belief in God is in this case nothing but pride, a sign of man’s megalomania. Atheism, on the other hand, would symbolize the greatest humility and acceptance of the ultimate truth about man. No-one denies, of course, „man’s fallibility” (to use Ricoeur’s expression), but does the fact of its existence contradict the possibility of having been created by a Good God? Nowhere does the French philosopher show this contradiction to exist, relying chiefly on psychological arguments rather than on philosophical reasoning. It is a pity he does not pursue reflection on the hypothetical creation, by God, of man who would, on the one hand, be capable of choice and free will, whilst incapable of choosing evil on the other hand. The final reason justifying atheist faith, which proved decisive as regards Comte-Sponville’s progression towards this position, is the strength of man’s desire for God, which precisely demonstrates the illusory nature of religion. In this case however even Comte-Sponville himself realizes the highly subjective character of this type of reasoning. Why are we prone to this desire? It responds to man’s most secret needs, those of complete safety, the achievement of perfect happiness, justice, eternal life, and the idea of God is a perfect way of satisfying these. Too perfect indeed, the French philosopher argues, to be true. Here he of course invokes arguments by Freud, Nietzsche or Feuerbach. God is merely a projection of our humanity. Religions are too optimistic to be true. As Comte-Sponville himself has noticed, this is a highly subjective approach which may convince some, and not others, whilst on the intellectual level there is no decisive argument. All that remains is faith.

10 See A. Plantinga, God and Other Minds. A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief of God, Ithaca 1994.

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A new spirituality Does the negation of a personal, good God inevitably lead to nihilism? Certainly not. The French philosopher suggests adopting and developing a specific type of spiritual attitude, which he terms atheist spirituality. What is spirituality as such? All it is, is the life of the spirit, which allows for a very wide-ranging interpretation of the notion of spirituality. Man is a finite being, but open to the life of the spirit, to infinity, and as philosophy consists in thinking, so too does spirituality inhabit the level of experience. Atheism in no way negates this way of life. What is more, it does not deny that something absolute may in fact exist. A distinction of this sort also appeared in Feuerbach, who distinguished two types of negation with respect to God, the first rejecting the existence of a personal and transcendent God as well as any other types of absolute principles, the second limiting itself to a rejection of a transcendent being while admitting the existence of something absolute. Both Comte-Sponville and Feuerbach belong to the first current. Yet what is understood by “absolute”, or rather “that which is absolute”? That which is absolute entails the existence of a being independent from any determinants, relations or points of view.11 But it is not a personal or transcendent being existing independently of man and this world. The absolute is not God. Comte-Sponville calls this position materialism, naturalism or immanentism. From philosophy’s point of view these positions are certainly not identical. They do however have one thing in common, namely the rejection of all personal supernaturality, whilst the last named is the foundation of the new spirituality. Materialism, in this case, above all signifies the ontological dependence of spirit on matter, but, as Comte-Sponville argues, one should still accept the existence of a spiritual dimension. What is more, one should indicate the relation between spirit and matter. However this relation should be viewed as the reverse of what it is perceived to be in theism. It was not matter that was brought into being by Spirit; spirit is the result of the transformations and evolution of matter. Spirit is not at the root of matter, it is the result of its evolution and change. But how did this happen? Is it possible for matter to be at once material and immaterial? Metaphysical questions remain unanswered in this theory. But it is out of this materialism that the new spirituality emerges. What kind of spirituality? In order to characterize it, Comte-Sponville, paradoxically, makes reference to traditional Christian virtues, or more precisely, theological virtues, replacing them however with his own proposal. And so instead of the spirituality of faith he proposes the spirituality of faithfulness, the spirituality of hope is replaced with action and the spirituality of love is to be an alternative to the spirituality of 11 Cf. A. Comte-Sponville, L’esprit de l’athéisme... op. cit., p. 148.

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fear and subjection. In his mind, these experiences lead to mysticism, of course also of the non-religious variety. It is difficult to give one exhaustive definition of mysticism. It seems that a better way would be to indicate some of the essential features of the relation of a subject to a transcendent reality, which will allow us to distinguish mysticism from other types of spiritual and religious experience. A number of such features are mentioned by Kłoczowski.12 The first is the experience of radical passivity. The mystic feels himself enveloped and penetrated by a higher reality, which transcends him completely. He is “surprised” by this reality. It was not him who chose it, but just the opposite: he feels chosen by it. The mystic’s passivity suggests that that which is most important seemingly accomplishes itself beyond him, within a different, religious, realm. Passivity does not entail complete inertia on the the mystic’s part; the spiritual experience allows him to access the deepest strata of his soul which are illuminated to become the source of his new activity. The second “diagnostic” feature of mysticism can be described as the socalled idea of the whole. The mystic experiences his being as part of something greater. It is only in that whole (e.g. God, Cosmos) that he will find fulfilment. In eastern religions, for example, man is part of a cosmic order, and it is only in the moment of union with that order that he finds his place. In the case of theist religions we cannot speak of fusion with God. Christian mysticism, for instance, does not lead to a loss of ontic distinctness, but only to complete self-fulfilment thanks to a supernatural relation with God. Only God is able to satisfy all of man’s desires and needs. Cognition of a kind wholly different from common, scientific or philosophical cognition is the third feature of mystical experience according to Kłoczowski. Since the object of the mystic’s cognition is a reality wholly different from that which he has hitherto known, the manner of cognition must of necessity be different. Intuitive or affective cognition is among those most frequently cited. It is cognition of a more intimate, inner kind, accompanied by some sort of outward manifestation of supernaturality, e.g. stigmata. Finally, the last feature of mystical experience is the total transformation of being that it effects. According to Kłoczowski, “the mystic becomes a ‘new man’, he is born to a ‘new life’, he does not only experience a change of awareness, but his conduct too, changes radically: for the mystical experience makes him subject himself to another, more exigent scale of values”.13 A man gripped by this kind of experience undergoes a transformation, both in the dynamic 12 Cf.J. A. Kłoczowski, Drogi człowieka mistycznego, Warsaw p. 22-26. 13 J. A. Kłoczowski, Drogi człowieka mistycznego, Warsaw, p. 25.

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(will) and cognitive (intellect) dimensions. One of the most frequent consequences of the mystic’s existential transformation is the ordering and transformation of his sensual sphere, which begins to cooperate harmoniously with the desires of the soul.14 We can therefore extract certain common features of mystical experience, but in the majority of cases it refers to a transcendent reality, even if the idea of the whole, passivity or transformation of being can be interpreted in a purely naturalistic way. This is precisely what the new spirituality does, and the French philosopher cites examples such as that of Spinoza or Wittgenstein. One could add the Pole, Henryk Elzenberg. Contemplation of the boundlessness of the world, when man is completely at peace,when his egocentrism becomes less pronounced, when he is filled with the feeling of oneness with the surrounding limitlessness: such a state becomes the hallmark of this new, mystical spirituality. This however is more of an emotional and aesthetic experience than a religious or spiritual one. We are simply dealing with a case of the “oceanic feeling”, in other words feeling oneself in union with everyone. It is a type of instatic mysticism (from the Greek in-stasis, “to be within oneself”). The road to true reality does not lead through the outside world, for this latter is to be found within man himself - it is our “I” or “self”. On a strictly psychological level this “I” does not identify itself with the self. The road to union with something absolute leads through man’s interior. One has to learn detachment from the outside world, it being merely an illusion, and spiritually get to know the deepest truth of one’s identity with the divine. This type of mysticism, according to R. Otto, appears in yoga, for example.15 It is “pure” mysticism of the soul. The soul is not the place of meeting with God, who remains distinct from it, but a goal in itself. The human soul is not infused with God, but becomes God itself. It is not so much ecstasy as, to borrow Eliade’s terminology, enstasy, or the experience of interiority and immanence. And as such it is a purely natural experience. According to Comte-Sponville in this experience we find elements such as: silence, mystery and obviousness, fullness, simplicity, oneness, acceptance as well as death and eternity. The first of these is silence, which does not consist in lack of conversation, but in suspending the operation of reason, which, as the French philosopher rushes to add, has nothing irrational about it. What is meant is contemplation of reality which does not have to transform itself into any type of rational dis14 Cf. Ch.A. Bernard, Le Dieu des mystiques, vol. 1: Les voies de l’interiorite, Paris 1994, pp. 132-133; 525-558. 15 Cf. R. Otto, Mistyka Wschodu i Zachodu. Analogie i różnice wyjaśniające jej istotę, transl. T. Duliński, Warsaw 2000, p. 165-166.

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course. It is contemplation of the very truth-reality. Thus conceived, silence is man’s original form of contact with the surrounding world. Comte-Sponville does not however notice that one of the aspects of intuitive or pre-rational cognition of reality is, despite everything, the capacity to create concepts. Contemplation is also rational and manifests the operation of man’s cognitive powers. Atheist spirituality in this case identifies itself with the functioning of man’s cognitive capacities. Mystery and obviousness are the next elements of the spirituality described, standing for wonder over the mystery of being. There is only being. There is no point in asking why there is something rather than nothing, since being itself is obvious. The mystery of being is reduced to the obviousness of being. This attitude however renounces an important cognitive question. Why not confront the question of existence, of the beginnings of existence, of cause or the reason for being? Atheist spirituality is in a sense born of a disregard for the most important question: why is there something rather than nothing? It turns out that the new spirituality has nothing to offer in this matter, apart from the remark that there is no mystery of being, only being. Mystery and world become one. And the most profound joy, nothing short of fulfilment, is to flow from this experience of the obviousness of being. There is being and only being, could one possibly wish for more? This is doubtless a very optimistic assumption on the part of Comte-Sponville, for such experiences of ridding oneself of life’s cares and contingencies, of the absence of suffering, are not at all commonplace. These are very rare events and it seems preposterous to base man’s spiritual development on them. What further consequences does this mystical experience of being lead to? It leads to simplicity and oneness. Simplicity consists in concentrating on that which is important and significant. It is, as the French philosopher writes, “being with oneself to such a degree that there no longer is a self, because only the one remains, only the act, only awareness”.16 The consequence of this is oneness, experienced on two fundamental levels: oneness of world and oneness of man. Oneness relating to the whole world has been a recurring theme in all philosophical reflection; the search for it has often been the chief goal of cognition. In ancient times philosophers in quest of the so-called world principle reflected on whether there is something that “binds” the whole universe, standing at its basis. Several answers were brought forth, initially quite naïve. Thales of Miletus claimed that the first principle of everything was water. Since without water there is no life, since water is a part of ourselves, then it must be the thing of

16 Cf. A. Comte-Sponville, L’esprit de l’athéisme... op. cit., p. 179.

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greatest importance, the principle, the substance of the world. For Anaximenes it was air, filling every vacant space. After all, everything is immersed in air. But what is the most fundamental oneness? Is there something that connects men, animals, plants, machines as well as our thoughts and dreams? Is there a common denominator of all this? Yes, since we can say of everything that it is, and that it is what it is. The most elementary oneness is oneness in being, and we ourselves are continually immersed in that oneness. The other oneness that has also for centuries fascinated philosophers is the oneness of man and in man. Our lives are fleeting and changing. A great number of events go to make up the history of our lives, including those that alter us completely, such as love, work, children, participation in important historical events. Even our way of looking at the world and of interpreting events changes, and besides, man is constantly aware of the process of ageing. Yet in spite of these constant changes (both external and internal), man remains aware of a certain oneness. There is something enduring in man, something that does not change despite so many transformations. There is a certain principle which enables us to say that that which a subject does (or has done) are (were) his actions. This principle of our own oneness is simply our “I”, the centre that binds all our experiences. And through this oneness the mystery of the oneness of being is also engraved in us. The next stage of this spirituality is the experience of eternity: of course not in the theist sense of the concept. It is an experience of the present, since neither the future nor the past really exist. There is only enduring time. Even events that have passed are present in man only as present memories, and the future as the present expectation of its coming. All that exists within us and beyond us is present, so the present is all, even eternity, but eternity here and now. Even the idea of death ceases to frighten, since the present exists and there is no sense in waiting for any other eternity. Comte-Sponville’s suggestion of equating the present and eternity is not original, since the idea already appears in the works of the Stoics, but, based on the reasoning of the French philosopher himself, we may conclude that it is too optimistic a theory to be entirely true and capable of being realized in everyday life. The true crowning of atheist spirituality is the conception of unconditional acceptance. This, above all, is saying “yes” to everything that happens. This does not mean approval of everything, but the adoption of a true attitude of nonreligious faith that all that is, is true. This conception of faith as basic trust and acceptance of the world has already appeared in the thought of philosophers such as Gabriel Marcel, Karl Jaspers, Paul Tillich. They drew attention to an important aspect of faith, namely that it constantly accompanies us in our every-

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day lives, in its most basic forms.17 For faith is the foundation of life and not just some additional (needless) aspect of it. Every man bases his life on numerous elements of faith or trust, without necessarily perceiving this faith as tied directly to religion, often as an act of trust towards another person. We are talking about an even more basic attitude, which permeates literally everything: it precedes my every action and decision, my every though, and, more importantly, establishes my first, most basic contact with the surrounding world. Using, for instance, an interesting (in this respect) interpretation of Tillich’s, faith is “the state of utmost concern”.18 What does this mean? Well, every man is concerned with something. Concern is our basic state of life. We have many material concerns: concerns about keeping or finding work, providing ourselves and our children with a good life, etc. And we have just as many spiritual concerns: concerns about raising our children rightly, about our own and others’ happiness, about the health of our close ones. Of course by concern Tillich does not mean something that will manifest itself in dejection, sadness, or constant complaint. The fact that I care about something so much that it becomes an object of such all-encompassing concern indicates that we are dealing with something extremely valuable. I take care, because I consider someone or something extraordinary, unique. Tillich claims we feel something that may be termed ultimate concern. There is a certain “concern” that begins to be of utmost importance to a man, for which he is ready to sacrifice everything. It is in this moment that he opens up to what Tillich calls infinity and unconditionality. In this ultimate concern, for instance, about the good of a loved person who at this moment is to me the highest good, I begin to experience the existence of something that exceeds me infinitely, and which I myself begin to serve, to which I succumb without the possibility of retreat. In “the ultimate concern for love” there is something more than just the good of the other person. I serve something more than this one person, unique and irreplaceable to me. According to Tillich, I am unable to say and define exactly what it is. Developing Tillich’s thought, one can say that fundamental faith is a sort of “background” or “horizon” for our whole life, for all our actions.19 Fundamental faith is the most elementary acceptance of reality. It exhibits itself in the belief that life is worth living in spite of everything, that it is worthwhile to be good, to trust, to have expectations of oneself, to rise from a fall – in short, to take up the 17 Cf. K. Tarnowski, Usłyszeć Niewidzialne. Zarys filozofii wiary Krakow 2005, pp. 403448. 18 Cf. Tillich, Dynamika wiary, transl. A. Szostkiewicz, Poznan 1987, p. 31. 19 Cf. K. Tarnowski, Usłyszeć niewidzialne… op. cit., p. 421.

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ordinary hardship of existence. One must live like this because there is something that keeps us from losing our faith in the impossibility of living otherwise. Fundamental faith is original trust in the presence of “something more” in this life. Our goals, efforts, and concerns all have a certain horizon towards which they ceaselessly lead, and which is always present, even though unattainable. Moving towards the horizon I do not draw nearer to it, yet it is always present, always before me. Distant, yet at the same time within sight. Thanks to it I can see and contextualize everything. It is a background for my every look; it enables me to experience perspective. It is similarly so with fundamental faith, expressed for instance in the strong conviction that in spite of the presence or even omnipresence of evil in this world, good is that which is more fundamental, elementary, powerful, beneficial to man, more natural. We cannot shake this conviction. It is omnipresent, even in moments when we think we are utterly dejected over evil or in complete despair. And yet this feeling of pain is so overwhelming precisely because we are aware of the existence of goodness. Our dejection on account of evil is nothing but a longing for the good. Perhaps it seems unattainable and distant to us at that very moment, while moreover strongly contrasting with our current state of mind. Fundamental faith is stronger in us at one point and weaker at another, but we cannot lose it entirely.20 Fundamental faith “fulfils itself” in religious faith, but this aspect is entirely absent from the “new spirituality”. Bernhard Welte, on the other hand, one of the philosophers who analyze fundamental faith, does not see any sense in speaking of it if we do not ultimately view it in the context of Transcendence of a personal kind. In his opinion, faith understood as the foundation of reality is only possible because of God and through Him. Such faith becomes a “great yes” said to everyone and everything, a positive embracing of the totality of existence. This however accomplishes itself through the awareness of the existence of God as the ultimate source and consummation of all goodness. It should though be borne in mind that in pronouncing this “yes” we are not giving approval to evil, in which man is often enmeshed. This “no” to evil which should be overcome with all its consequences is part of the “yes” expressing faith. But evil cannot finally be conquered without the existence of Absolute goodness. According to Welte, it is man’s desire to reach goodness that is no longer endangered by anything, and this aspect belongs to the essence of fundamental faith. Fundamental faith is a retreat from a world saturated with evil and an entrance to an altogether different world, one whose “invigoration” shall be brought about by the power of the Absolute identified with Personal Goodness.

20 Cf. P. Fontaine, La croyance, Paris 2003, p. 144.

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Real faith does not stop with itself, but leads the subject towards the infinite Thou, which it finally calls God.21 Can the new spirituality take on the most important “challenge” any spirituality must face? This challenge is of course the mystery of death. As mentioned already, immersion in the present is to brush away its inevitability, but does it really do so? Death, as Comte-Sponville remarks, shall only take away the future and the past, but not the present. It does not take man in his entirety, but only part of him. In this respect, Ricoeur’s proposal, with its conception of horizontal and vertical resurrection, is much more interesting.22 Not only does our goodness endure in others after our death, but it also demands resurrection in a different order of being. For only God as the Absolute Good is able to appropriate every bit of a man’s goodness. Even the tiniest good cannot be wasted. It is not a purely philosophical argument, but it is certainly a very interesting postulate of complementing natural spirituality with spirituality of a supernatural kind. Atheist spirituality, based largely on the experience of oneness with the surrounding world, the acceptance of its existence and variety is, as ComteSponville himself remarks, something special. It is not an everyday type of experience, hence the reference to mysticism, which also in theism places itself among experiences of a special kind. But the “new mysticism” has left no place for reference to a personal God. He becomes redundant, since the experience of the oneness of existence, peace and acceptance fills a man completely, leaving no place for anything else. A God who ceases to be missed ceases to be a God, the French philosopher concludes.23

Conclusion How should we judge the new spirituality? Does it stand a chance of gaining a fixed place in modern culture? Is it attractive enough to replace traditional, most frequently religious, spirituality? Above all, it is a sign of modern culture’s distance towards the classical tradition, both metaphysical and religious. The transformations that have marked European culture: wars, migrations, consumptionism, secularization: have led to significant indifference towards the JudeoChristian tradition. As Jan Sochoń has remarked, the deconstruction effected by Nietzsche and his successors of basic metaphysical, moral and religious concepts brought about religion’s loss of its sanctioned place in the social as well as 21 Cf. B. Welte, Tajemnica i czas, transl. K. Święcicka, 2000, p. 165. 22 Cf. P. Ricoeur, Vivant jusqu’à la mort suivi de ‘Fragments’, Paris 2007. 23 Cf. A. Comte-Sponville, L’esprit de l’athéisme... op. cit., p. 202.

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individual consciousness.24 Ideological pluralism has become the chief principle, but with a notable exclusion of the sphere of the sacred that tied to a specific religious doctrine. Atheist spirituality is not so much a sign of a lack of interest in religious topics, as a sealing off from the univocal nature of the truth preached and argued by theism. In its place are proposed subjectivism and individualism. God at most becomes merely a symbol, which in turn is not acceptable to any religion. For this challenges the basic sense of the existence of religion as such, as it is not possible to sustain a religious, dynamic and personal relation with a God whose existence is only symbolic. Cupitt’s proposal for instance, with his idea of Christian non-realism, is completely off the mark.25 Retaining some benefits of religion, while at the same time categorically denying the existence of any form of transcendence, is a caricature of religion. The reduction of religion to a mere set of “spiritual tools” would obliterate all the achievements of religious thought thus far, deprive people of fixed points of reference that surpass this order of being, and consequently of hope of an afterlife. Atheist spirituality is doubtless not a sign of hostility or hatred towards religion as such; it merely purports to propose an alternative to people who do not agree with theist positions. But as a proposal replacing traditional theist spirituality, this proposal carries certain dangers. It essentially reduces itself to arousing in man a certain reference to the world, based on a personal experience of growth, fulfilment or acceptance, without however posing the fundamental question regarding truth. It is rather a mere subjective expression of the quest for self-fulfilment, which may lead to neglecting reflection over the direction of such development. Comte-Sponville tries very hard to emphasize that accepting the world as it is, is not equivalent to approving the evil present in it, but human deficiency shows that unfortunately such situations occur frequently. This is why it is difficult to agree with J. Tallez’s statement that atheist spirituality is more spiritual than propositions contained in religious spiritualities.26 What proponents of this new spirituality often forget is that religion can be reduced neither to the subjective beliefs of the subject nor to a sociological search for sense in the surrounding world. The central event of religion is Revelation, to which man responds by an act of faith, and this in turn expresses itself in prayer, liturgy, and institutions, as well as specific moral behaviours. Religion cannot be reduced to an unspecified humanist spirituality, nor to the promotion 24 Cf. J. Sochoń, Ponowoczesne losy religii [The postmodern fortunes of religion] Warsaw 2004, p. 15. 25 See Don Cupitt, After God: The Future of Religion, Basic Books 1997. 26 Cf. J. Tallez, Etre moderne. Introduction à la pensée d’André Compte-Sponville, Meaux 2008, p. 101.

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of universal values, nor to sociological functions. Religion will also never be a matter of private conviction. For it is above all the acceptance of a personal Revelation, which demands an answer on man’s part on all levels of his life. The new spirituality is a proposal that is and will probably remain present in modern, pluralist culture, but will definitely not become its foundation, for the latter, at least in Western European culture, will remain unchanged, and it is the rationalism born of ancient Greece, Roman law and the Judeo-Christian religions.

Bibliography: Bernard Ch.A., Le Dieu des mystiques, vol. 1, Les voies de l’interiorite, Paris 1994 Coffy R., Bóg niewierzących, transl. Paris 1968 Comte-Sponville A, L’esprit de l’athéisme. Instruction à une spiritualité sans Dieu, Paris 2007 Comte-Sponville A., Euvé F., Lecointre G., Dieu et la science, Paris 2010 Człowiek wobec religii [Man in the face of religion], ed. K. Mech, Krakow 1999 Don Cupitt, After God: The Future of Religion, Basic Books 1997 Eilstein H., Szkice ateistyczne[Atheist sketches], Koszalin 2000 Gilson E., Bóg i ateizm, transl. Krakow 1996 Kłoczowski J. A., Drogi człowieka mistycznego[The ways of mystical man], Warsaw 2004 Lubac H. de, Ateizm i sens człowieka, transl. Paris 1969 Neusch M., U źródeł współczesnego ateizmu. Sto lat dyskusji na temat Boga, transl. from the French, Paris 1980 Otto R., Mistyka Wschodu i Zachodu. Analogie i różnice wyjaśniające jej istotę, transl. T. Duliński, Warsaw 2000 Plantinga A., God and Other Minds. A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief of God, Ithaca 1994 Ricoeur P, Vivant jusqu’à la mort suivi de ‘Fragments’, Paris 2007 Sochoń J., Ateizm [Atheism], Warsaw 2005 Sochoń J., Ponowoczesne losy religii [Postmodern fortunes of religion], Warsaw 2004 Tallez J., Etre moderne. Introduction à la pensée d’André Compte-Sponville, Meaux 2008 Tarnowski K., Usłyszeć Niewidzialne. Zarys filozofii wiary [To hear the invisible. Sketch of a philosophy of faith.] Krakow 2005 Tillich P., Dynamika wiary, transl. A. Szostkiewicz, Poznan 1987 Welte B., Tajemnica i czas, transl. K. Święcicka, 2000

Faith or spirituality? New challenges of postmodernity Rev. Jan Sochoń Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw (CSWU) The Faculty of Christian Philosophy

Many people have trouble with the modern God Karen Armstrong 1

Metaphysics of the subject Many of us have probably already come to accept the world as postmodern, abandoning all illusion as to its permanence and predictability. After all, there are no fixed norms of action or behaviour that are not strictly connected with individual rationalization, with that which happens in the privatissimum, the most secretive retreat of monadic subjectivity. Moreover, the senses themselves can no longer lay a claim to ontic objectivity and certitude. It has become obvious that perception is subjective, freeing, in contradiction of Aristotle, perceptive experience from the necessity of direct contact with the real.2 This chorus is joined by a sizeable group of philosophers according to whom the human intellect is incapable of grasping being in all its complexity and structural magnificence, and is capable only of heaping up metaphors and echoing interpretations, of acting within the sphere of signs – signs which most of the time do not refer to any genuine reality (including divine reality, as already suggested by St. Augustine's post-ancient semiotics), but stop with themselves; they are merely simulacra, or become known as Derrida’s indeterminables. The modern subject appears as “empty, split, a-substantial, irreflective”3, unable to handle the growing consequences of its own helplessness. 1 2

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Karen Armstrong, Spór o Boga. Czym naprawdę jest religia?, transl. Barbara Cendrowska, Wydawnictwo VIK, Warsaw 2011, p. 307. For this reason the human "I" should be raised, made nearly equal to divinity and invested with faith in its infinite potential. A positive gnosis is spreading in the USA - selfism, proclaiming this "self" to be good or even divine and full of unlimited potential. For more on this subject, see: Rev. Aleksander Posacki SJ, Ezoteryzm i okultyzm – formy dawne i nowe. Aspekty filozoficzno-teologiczne i praktyczno-duszpasterskie, Polskie Wydawnictwo Encyklopedyczne, Radom 2009, p. 128; Jonathan Crary, Zawieszenie percepcji. Uwaga, spektakl i kultura nowoczesna, transl. Łukasz Zaręba, Iwona Kurz, Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, Warsaw 2009, pp. 23-24; Alain Renaut, Era jednostki. Przyczynek do historii podmiotowości, transl. Damian Leszczyński, Ossolineum, Wroclaw-Warsaw-Krakow 2001. Alain Badiou, Byt i zdarzenie, transl. Paweł Pieniążek, Kraków 2010, p. 13.

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This is why the life of human reason has to play itself out as discourse rather than discovery; in action and conversation and not in moments of silence and solitude. The world has become a “prison for language”, while philosophy, in the strict sense of the word, is that which can be thought in conversation, not that which can be discovered and constitute the object of belief in contemplative experience.4 The problem of intentionality, clearly formulated by Descartes and Kant, has led to a lot of confusion and – in the postmodern world – makes it impossible (at least in philosophical theory) to think and act in symbiosis with the real world, which is independent of human cognitive capacities. There has been a conscious rejection of the fact that relations existing between thought and being are realized in concepts, whereby the intellect touches and unites with the object of cognition.5 The human mind is matter’s complementary pole, capable of relating to matter thanks to its own flexible and open organization. This view is consistent with our fundamental experience of thinking and decision-making (also with regard to decisions concerning faith), without questioning the ground of every individual entity, namely corporeity.6

Religion’s changing fortunes Since this is so, I cautiously, yet resolvedly, put forward the thesis that the situation in which the weak “postmodern mind” has found itself is one of the main factors in the expulsion of traditional religion from the collective consciousness. Liberation from the pressures of realism and of philosophy founded on classical theories of being opened the way not just to the secularization of public space, but also to increased interest in a type of spirituality (pietas) standing in opposition to all that is official and tied to religious office and hierarchy. Gianni Vattimo, a friend of Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro, personifies this type of example when he confesses: “I am a faithful Catholic, though an anti-papist. And I have many problems with my faith. What I find off-putting about Catholicism is church hierarchy”.7 Similar statements have been heard from the world’s most influential woman of today, the global pop artist Lady Gaga:

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4 Cf. Jonh Patrick Diggins, Iluzje pragmatyzmu. Modernizm oraz kryzys poznania i autorytetu, transl. Michał Filipczuk, Warsaw 2010, p. 633. Cf. Vittorio Possenti, Dlaczego filozofia nie może się obejść bez prawdy?, transl. Arkadiusz Gaudaniec, in: Spór o prawdę, ed. Andrzej Maryniarczyk SDB, Katarzyna Stępień, Paweł Gondek, Polskie Towarzystwo Tomasza z Akwinu, Lublin 2011, p. 34. Cf. John C. Polkinghorne, Nauka i Opatrzność. Interakcja Boga ze światem, transl. Marek Chojnacki, Wydawnictwo WAM, Krakow 2008, pp. 153-154. See Rewolucja u bram Europy”[Revolution at the gates of Europe] „Gazeta Wyborcza” 4 September 2011.

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I don’t believe in organized religion and the institution of the Church. My fans are my God. Anyway, I’ve discovered that mentioning God in a pop song is the most controversial thing that one can do. […] I believe in spiritual life, in angels. And in my own way, each night I pray to my fans who help me to be a better artist and a better human being.8

Thus, in spite of a rejection of the institutional dimension of the Church, the sphere of spirituality, broadly understood, remains within reach of the experience of an Italian philosopher, a New York singer, and, in general, of postmodern culture, a culture that is reminiscent, as Zygmunt Bauman (who has an extraordinary talent for crafting suggestive metaphors) has put it, of a department store filled with clients susceptible to an unending process of seduction.9 Religion having become a commodity, one can choose from a wide variety of spiritual emotions, go beyond the limits of one’s current desires, dig down to the deepest strata of one’s self. Believe in a radiant sacredness, waiting, seemingly, for man to be able establish its manner of presence. Expect it to act and impart itself depending on human needs. This is and shall be possible because – as sociologists, empirically-minded and scrupulous, assure us – there have been fundamental changes, not so much an unrealized project as an accomplished fact (though surprising to some). Danièle Hervieu-Léger reports that religion still remains, so to speak, within the existential realm of worldly life,10 while radical and fashionable theses proclaiming the progress of secularization (in their varied strains) have today lost their edge and even become out of date.11 Contrary to forecasts from the 1960s and ‘70s religion has not become socially marginalized, while “lay” attitudes (some scholars such as Colin Campbell, for example,

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Lady Gaga, Moim bogiem są moi fani[My fans are my God]. Interview by Piotr Metz, „Newsweek” 2011 no. 36, pp. 115-116. 9 Zygmunt Bauman, Kultura w płynnej nowoczesności [Culture in fluid postmodernity], Narodowy Instytut Audiowizualny, Warsaw 2011, p. 30. 10 For this reason religion should be viewed as a pan-human phenomenon belonging to man on account of the spontaneous "activity of his intellect", naturally predisposed to grasp the concept of "divinity", apprehended and experienced differently in different religions; – as a spiritual (mystical) relation, incapable of being generalized, belonging only to individual experience. This is the level on which we find the language of prayer, in a certain sense also of the liturgy and the art of contemplation. And finally, as a scholarly phenomenon of the Christian culture of the West, since it is difficult to speak authoritatively of other cultures, thus subject to hermeneutic analysis from the viewpoint of specific philosophic, moral, sociological and political procedures. 11 Danièle Hervieu-Léger, Religia jako pamięć, transl. Magdalena Bielawska, Zakład Wydawniczy „Nomos”, Krakow 1999, p. 227.

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refer to them as irreligion12) whose bearers are hostile towards religion and want to eradicate it from the order of social life and take over its prerogatives, today seem quite marginal. On the other hand, ways of experiencing religion are undergoing very dynamic changes, especially in Europe, and are closely followed by sociologists of religion; on the global scale these changes do not lead to the extinction of religion but at most to its de-institutionalization, which is accompanied by a public process of its deprivatisation. In the same way that non-belief was once a private matter, so belief is now becoming a personal affair.13 Already before World War II Thomas Stearns Eliot remarked that society ceases to be Christian when it abandons religious practices, when the behaviour of its members is no longer regulated with regard to Christian principles and when earthly material success has become the only conscious goal of action for individuals or groups. And, he adds, from a somewhat different point of view, society does not cease to be Christian until it has worked out another positive system. Looking at today’s culture, one has to say that it is a negative culture, but its positive elements, in as far as they have successfully been preserved, continue to be Christian. This is why the choice emerging today is between creation of a new Christian culture and consenting to a pagan culture. Both options entail radical changes, but I conclude, along with Eliot and others, that most of us, faced at once with all the changes whose real-time occurrence would span the lives of a number of generations, would opt for Christianity.14 Will processes of secularization, namely (as Peter Ludwig Berger has deftly formulated the matter15) processes thanks to which the sectors of society and 12 See his essay Propozycja konceptualizacji pojęcia „irreligia” i „irreligijność”, transl. Włodzimierz Kurdziel, in: Ateizm oraz irreligia i sekularyzm [Atheism, and irreligion and secularism] Selected and edited by Franciszek Adamski, Petrus, Krakow 2011, p. 60. 13 For this topic, see Ronan McCrea, Religion and the Public Order of the European Union, Oxford, University Press 2010, pp. 16-50; Jean-Paul Willaime, Le retour du religieux dans la sphčre publique. Vers une laďcité de reconnaissance et de dialogue, Édition Olivétan, Lyon 2008, pp. 13-38; Thomas Luckmann, Niewidzialna religia. Problem religii we współczesnym społeczeństwie, transl. Lucjan Bluszcz, Zakład Wydawniczy „Nomos” 1996; Niklas Luhmann, Funkcja Religii, transl. Dominika Motak, Zakład Wydawniczy „Nomos”, Krakow 1998, p. 230; Eileen Barker, Nowe ruchy religijne, transl. Tomasz Kunz, Zakład Wydawniczy „Nomos”, Krakow 2002. 14 T. S. Eliot, Chrześcijaństwo, kultura, polityka. Selected, transl., annotated and with an introduction by Piotr Kimla, Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, Warsaw 2007, pp. 30-31. 15 Peter Ludwig Berger, Święty baldachim. Elementy socjologicznej teorii religii, transl. Włodzimierz Kurdziel, Zakład Wydawniczy „Nomos”, Krakow 1997, p. 150.

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culture are shaking off the domination of religious institutions and symbols, therefore cease to play any sort of role in European consciousness? It is difficult to say for now. Of course, we can answer the question of whether “secularization” actually describes sociologically graspable facts or remains merely a fancy theory regarding the social element of the cultural. Despite this, motifs proving the existence of secularist events as well as arguments for rejecting the myth of secularization, as the latter have been called by José Casanova,16 both seem equally credible. Secularization and sacralisation are necessary aspects of any radical change occurring in religion. In historical development, both of them, respectively, gain the upper hand at different times.

Faith and spirituality remain Pronouncing ourselves in favour of the secularist thesis we express, in modern language, the old dream of Joachim da Fiore: that history will purify Christianity and achieve that which is proper and a challenge for each subsequent generation of Christians. The danger of this eschatology lies in the certitude it engenders. This excessive optimism with regard to the future can weaken the development of any possible form of spiritual movement.17 I shall thus assume that secularization does not imply the waning of religious needs or strictly religious behaviours and expectations, because it does not so much occur in human hearts as make itself manifest on the level of civic structures. It presents itself as an unquestionably noticeable manner in which culture casts off the tutelage of religion and traditional metaphysics. Of course, it is also fitting to speak of individual secularization. This notion suggests that the individual creates his own religion and selects and creates rituals suited to its beliefs. He liberates himself from the influence of religious authorities, believing only in what is brought by individual experience and personal “spirituality”,18 the exposure of which is today considered an indubitable sign of “good taste”.

16 José Casanova, Religie publiczne w nowoczesnym świecie, transl. Tomasz Kunz, Zakład Wydawniczy „Nomos”, Krakow 2005, p. 33 17 Cf. Joseph Comblin, Sekularyzacja: mity, rzeczywistość, problemy, transl. Ludomir Bieńkowski, „Concilium” 1969 no. 6-10, pp. 130-131. 18 This interest however develops far from the ecclesiastic and sacramental world, while priests are often (not always!) sought more as social workers, managers of a parish treated as an institution offering specific services, rather than as sacerdos. See Gisbert Greshake, Być kapłanem dzisiaj, transl. Wiesław Szymona OP, W drodze, Poznań 2010, p. 17; Karel Dobbelaere, Sekularyzacja. Trzy poziomy analizy, transl. Renata Babińska, Zakład Wydawniczy „Nomos”, Kraków 2008, p. 225

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This is why the fundamental categories on which religion is founded as a on a rock, namely faith and spiritual activity, are not subject to the secularist tide. They have only changed their emotional, expressive hue. Hence the question: what is concealed beneath the semantic surface of the so-called new spirituality, that is developing next to various spiritual currents in Christianity? That this is so has been proven by research and attempts at synthesis publicized by sociologists. But what are the reasons for these transformations? Does modern culture’s regression from realism and classical philosophy, with its accoutrements of a long tradition beginning with the ancient Greeks and enduring all the way to modernity, play a significant part in this matter? Does the concept of spirituality, capable of holding an incredible volume of meanings, and yet also “soft”, fuzzy, used in multiple contexts and several humanist disciplines, really express the authentic experience of postmodernity, since culture always highlights spiritual experience? And if this were really the case, how should Christians, whose thought stems from the Bible, Tradition and the discipline of the Church, approach these new phenomena, subject to the hard rule of free competition, unsteady, poorly organized, characterized by great rotational power? Are these entirely separable ways of “being someone religious”, or do they meet with regard to certain points? If one were to consider everything that fits into man’s way of being a manifestation of living spirituality, it would turn out that no one is entirely insensitive to various sorts of inner transports, that everyone makes up the religious circle equivalent to the totality (I repeat) of that which defines man’s life as the life of man, precisely. The pursuit of spirituality is not a privilege of Christians alone. Every man wants to give his life a deep sense, develop his personality and accentuate his personal dignity. Given this, if we accept the eternal destiny of the human spirit as the basic building block of the term “spirituality” we should without fail conclude that there may be and will be spiritualities not just beyond Christianity, but even beyond faith as such, as we have recently been reminded by the French philosopher André Comte-Sponville, promoting the term “atheist spirituality” and “spirituality without God”19 with marked journalistic engagement. According to the latter we are currently dealing with an outright abandonment of religion in favour of spirituality, and what is more, with a renewal of spirituality as an alternative to the anachronistic structures of the decaying Churches. 19 See André Comte-Sponville, Duchowość ateistyczna. Wprowadzenie do duchowości bez Boga, transl. Elżbieta Aduszkiewicz, Wydawnictwo Czarna Owca, Warsaw 2011; see also Rev. Jan Sochoń, Ateista „ewangelizujący” [The evangelizing atheist] „Nowe Książki” 2011 no. 10; Albert-Marie Besnard OP, Kierunki rozwojowe współczesnej duchowości, transl. Jan Gaczoł, „Concilium” 1965/6 no. 1-10, p.656.

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And how to characterize these new religious (perhaps: cultural?) movements, such as New Age, the interest in Eastern spirituality, and other “invisible religion” cut-outs which seem to carry a response to many human needs? Interest in all types of yoga, studying of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, (partly on account of the appeal roused by the works of Jung regarding this text), an increasing use of hashish and psychedelic drugs in Europe and America: all of these doubtless reflect frustration and the desire to flee the suffocating mood of modernity, while in an obvious manner also being linked to the religions of Asia. Perhaps the East’s emphasis of mystical experience leads some to the conviction that through these they can find a quick way to achieve it.20 They become entirely free and easy in their search for meaning. These questions call for serious answers. It is obvious that I will not be able to give them here in full. I can only, by narrowing the field of analytical manoeuvre, reflect on the concept of faith used in Christianity and contrast it with some dimensions of postmodern spirituality in order to determine whether, in the case of the latter, we are still dealing with religion or rather already with signs of its pronounced decline.

Christian faith I shall skip over the concept of “faith” as referring to reality “here and now” (for example, as in I believe that it might rain tomorrow, or that my train will arrive on time). I shall concentrate on faith as an attitude of man directed towards God, conceived of as personal (“I believe in”) and accepting as true the tenets proclaimed by the Catholic Church (“I believe that”). It is not a static property in man, nor a property he can freely dispose of. It is the one-of-a-kind gratuitous gift of the grace of God’s election. In general terms, this is the faith constituting the “heart” of religious life, when man responds to this gift of God by an act of ultimate freedom. And this is why there is something irrevocably boundless and uncertain about an act of faith, something that belongs to our freedom and thereby demonstrates that this freedom is at once something utterly ours, incapable of being replaced or cast away, and at the same time something that cannot be entirely contained in reflection, and in that sense, uncommanded by us.21 Let us also add that dogmas formulated by the Church are not an object of faith. All of them however sustain the intensity of faith, straighten or correct, 20 See David Bradley, Atrakcyjność religii azjatyckich, transl. Janina Mroczkowska, „Concilium” 1970 no. 6-10, p. 203. 21 Cf. Johannes B. Metz, Niewiara jako problem teologiczny, transl. Ludomir Bieńkowski, „Concilium” 1965/6 no. 1-10, p. 432-433.

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prevent distortion or decay. They ensure an orthodox interpretation of a mystery that surpassed them infinitely. There is no particular value, for instance, in the abstract belief in the Trinity of God. It is a revealed mystery and the Church formulates it as a dogma, but not in order to “teach” us about the mystery of Divine through a conceptual game, but in order to illumine the path leading to our implantation in that life. The semantic core of faith includes two imports: the sensation of leaning on someone steadfast, strong (He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress, Ps 62:3) and the feeling of security and trust. It merges them into a single experience of mutual fidelity (God’s and man’s), joined with intellectual activity, whenever we try, using the appropriate words or symbols, to break through to that reality, now invisible, in accordance with the Letter to the Hebrews: Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). In faith we must therefore discern three things: the revelatory dimension, when God speaks in his word to man; man’s spiritual union with God; and a definite, free manner of action, affirming moral precepts flowing from the two aforementioned principles. These three aspects of faith mutually condition one another and make faith serious, immune to its own deficiencies as well as the varied charges coming from the world; a faith equipped with a self-apology and rational foundations. This is because reason and faith make up a twofold source of the same wisdom. They necessarily complete and support each other, reconciling in truth.

The reconciliation of faith and reason The basis for the “reconciliation” of reason and faith is the conviction that human cognition is not limited to the statement of events and descriptions consistent with experience, but desires something more. Faith would thus be necessary to reason in a rudimentary way in order to sustain its aspirations that surpass the finite and earthly, giving it a wisdom-oriented dimension. Hence it cannot be detrimental to reason, but rather, as St. Thomas Aquinas has put it, surpasses and perfects it (fides non est contra rationem, sed supra rationem).22 Meanwhile, reason, coming into contact with reality, asks spontaneously about the reasons of that which exists, and refers to a being that religious language calls God. This is how the union of faith and reason becomes meshed, the latter increased by the content of the Revelation, while faith itself draws away from fideism, irrationalism and rigid rationalism, both of which seem to plague the modern world.

22 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II, q. I, a. 3, Marietti, Taurini – Romae 1952, p. 5.

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The first of these attitudes, fideism, suggests that only faith, faith independent of reason, in its extreme form (embraced, bluntly speaking, on account of its “absurdity”), is necessary to salvation. Hard rationalism on the other hand banishes all mystery from human experience, making the self-sufficient and “absolute” subject cast in the role of the demiurge-creator the sole criterion of cognition and action. All matters in this world, the rationalist announces, can be solved and there is no reason to think that there are things faced with which reason might prove helpless. Irrational attitudes on the other hand indicate a crisis of sense in contemporary culture, the nearly all-pervasive spread of agnosticism, scepticism and nihilism. Man has placed his trust in himself only, rejecting all opportunities to get to know the truth lying beyond the sensual horizon. Every opinion has become possible and worthy of acceptance as long as it is consistent with the desires and dreams of one pronouncing it. Meantime faith is not and cannot be “blind faith”, its content arbitrarily construed. At its beginning, we find St. John’s constitutive and crucial phrase “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God” (John 1:1). The world did not emerge out of eternal Chaos, like the belief of Hesiod’s expressed in the Theogony, but arose out of the Creator’s love for each man. That same God revealed himself in Christ. He is accessible to us both from within religious experience and through our intellect. Both of these cognitive roads meet in the spirit of contemplation of the truth. We do not believe “in faith” but in a personal God concerned with the happiness of his creation.

Christian spirituality I have said that we encounter all types of spirituality, also within the Church, which anyhow seems inevitable and finds confirmation in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.23 What then is it that distinguishes Christian spirituality as a specific way in which the baptized experience an individual relation with God, revealing Himself most fully in Christ who assumed a human body in order to accomplish the task of our salvation? Well, the Christian builds his authentic ethos in being guided by Christ’s teaching and the example of his life, striving 23 „In the communion of saints, many and varied spiritualities developed throughout the history of the Churches. The personal charism of some witnesses to God's love for men has been handed on, like the "spirit" of Elijah to Elisha and John the Baptist, so that their followers may have a share in this spirit. A distinct spirituality may also arise at the point of convergence of liturgical and theological currents, bearing witness to the integration of the faith into a particular human environment and its history". Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2684.

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towards union with God through the state of grace, prayer, asceticism, the practice of love and mystical experience.24 This dictionary approach to spirituality reveals its Christian format. It is largely about the message of the Gospel, which can be summed up as an incitement to embrace the idea of the Kingdom of God and to achieve union with God. The road to this goal does not consist in some kind of abstract model of conduct or the performance of a set of prescriptions similar to the Buddha’s principles of wisdom, but in the person of Christ, even if his teachings crystallize in simple contexts, for example in the Sermon on the Mount or in parables. It is Christ who offers mercy that erases human sin and makes it possible to enter on the path of cultivation of the theological virtues faith, hope and love. Their full bloom finally leads to profound internal experience because it makes man conscious of the truths of faith and of the practical instructions contained in them as well as, finally, to the presence of God within his soul. But the most important causative power of all Christian spirituality is the Church with the Holy Scripture and Tradition, with its liturgy, sacraments and hierarchy. This presupposes that this ecclesial economy constitutes the basic principle needed for Christian spirituality in the broad sense in which we say that all grace comes through the Church, in accordance with the rightly understood formula extra ecclesiam nulla salus. True Christian spirituality develops “within the Church”, while membership of the Church involves receiving, as specified in the documents of the Second Vatican Council, the paternity of God through baptism. The consequent extension of baptism is accomplished through the Apostles and their successors. This explains why different spiritualities – Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox – can contain authentic parts of all Christian spirituality. To recapitulate: the source bringing all Christians and their various spiritualities together is Christ, the Church, the Bible and the liturgy, the paternity of God, grace and resurrection. Naturally over the course of history Christians have become progressively more aware of the meaning of what their spirituality has said; while not necessarily pointing to the emergence of some kind of “revolutionary spirituality”, this progress nonetheless leads to a fuller understanding of the mission of Christ.25

24 See Duchowość chrześcijańska, ed. Bernard McGinn, John Meyendorff, Jean Leclerc, transl. Piotr Blumczyński, Sławomir Patlewicz, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Krakow 2010; Jordan Aumann, Zarys historii duchowości, transl. Rev. Jan Machniak, Wydawnictwo Jedność, Kielce 1993; Religia. Encyklopedia PWN, vol. 3, ed. Tadeusz Gadacz, Bogusław Milerski, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, Warszawa 2001, p. 297. 25 Cf. François Vandenbroucke OSB, Duchowość i duchowości, transl. Jan Gaczoł, „Concilium” 1965/6 no. 1-10, pp. 670-672.

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Postmodern spirituality In light of the above, and in accordance with the so-called golden rule, that the more one sounds the depths of one’s own religion, the more one is able to penetrate the religions of others and vice versa, let us now ask about the new “postmodern spirituality”, or indeed the “new spiritualities”. These enjoy much greater popularity than “religion”, because “religion” belongs to the public sphere of ritual and conduct, institutions and beliefs, while “spirituality” does not have to reckon with facts, calculations and responsibility, massaging – as Nicolas Lash has vividly put it – feelings of bruised narcissism in the fantasies of well-off individualists.26 In the flood of writings on postmodern spirituality there is not only is there a terminological hesitancy, but this hesitancy is also marked. This has been brought to our attention by Rev. Prof. Janusz Mariański in his study Religia w społeczeństwie ponowoczesnym [Religion in postmodern society].27 Mariański has demonstrated that within the framework of today’s religious pluralism and continually emerging denominational moulds religion is once more beginning to command a type of social authority, although no longer within the bounds of traditional worship, but in considerably expressive models of spirituality coming into being at the juncture between forces of secularization and desecularization within the world’s global space. Unfortunately one cannot clearly identify these “new spiritualities” springing up in communities that are “religious otherwise”, since, being without tangible institutional structures, they are volatile and difficult to characterize more closely. One should however, intuitively but decisively differentiate them from Christian spirituality, linking them to terms such as: new religious scene, invisible religion, private religiousness, the black market of mysticism, unorganized subjective spirituality, religions of the “wild sacredness”, alternative spiritualities, agnostic spirituality, and new spiritual culture. This list of terms could be expanded depending on linguistic invention. It is important to know what these terms stand for. I would first of all draw attention to the fact that postmodern spirituality is assuming the character of project spirituality, namely a spirituality by means of which its proponents wish to take control of their destiny and achieve full autonomy. We may devise the following type of formula to represent it: the absolute power of the I = narcissistic idealism = development of new spirituality, 26 Nicholas Lash, Pytanie o Boga. Świętość, mowa i milczenie, transl. Janusz Ruszkowski, W drodze, Poznan 2009, p. 43. 27 See J. Mariański, Religia w społeczeństwie ponowoczesnym [Religion in postdmodern society] Warsaw 2010; Jan Sochoń, Socjologia religii czy socjologia duchowości? [Sociology of religion or sociology of spirituality?] „Nowe Książki” 2011 no. 6, pp. 18-19.

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levelling of indefinable transcendence, abandonment of theology and of the strictures of institutional religion. For this very reason postmodern spirituality cannot be an aspect of the type of religiousness exhibited by Christians. Its leading motto is expressing the religious by means of “lay” words and in the symbolism of lay culture. It does not give precedence to things Christian or that are evidently related to the Church and linked to the word “office”, which, though its Celtic origin (ampaht) means service, makes one think more of exaltation, rule and arrogance.28 It expresses a visible distaste for a specific religious lexis. One of the consequences of this type of thought is that God, conceived of as transcendent and personal, no longer matters in the various formulas for expressing spirituality accepted by its followers, who at most are willing to speak of some kind of tangibly experienced “cosmic energy”; nor is approval given to the Church, but only to the conscious use of ecstatic practices of the aesthetic, erotic or generally speaking cathartic sort. Hence the growing popularity of the slogan: “I am not religious, but I am spiritual”. All that happens is that personal emotions and people’s inner states of exaltation fuel each experience capable of bringing on some kind of para-religious internal shock”. From this point of view all that is needed are “sense-producing” agendas whenever a crisis of meaning strikes, while the traditional category of dignity is usually replaced by so-called existential authenticity and sincerity. All of existential experience is sometimes described in terms of the dynamics of human life. This is why for example dedicating oneself to some great cause will be a source of meaning and gain a spiritual dimension. This meaning may be anything and everything: God (variously conceived), science, fatherland, democracy, natural medicine, sports, business, politics, art (especially architecture) or any other thing. It will be dubbed an individualized sacredness “of this world”, found within reach, in every personal immanence. Some spirituality seekers refer to a superhuman reality, finding a place somewhere between esoteric science and occultism, faith in extra-terrestrial beings and Satanism or the new witchcraft movement (Wicca), while others devote themselves to a search for the secrets of their own inner self using meditation techniques and psychoanalysis. That which can give meaning to life, for example ecology, feminism, homosexuality, numerology, the defence of ethnic minorities, is considered a worldview professed with nearly religious fanaticism. Even aggressive combat against all religion has the character of a worldview.29 28 Gisber Greshake, op. cit., p. 18; see also Luc Ferry, Człowiek-Bóg, czyli o sensie życia, transl. Andrzej Miś and Hanna Miś, Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, Warsaw 1998, pp. 14-45. 29 Wolfgang Reinhard, Życie po europejsku. Od czasów najdawniejszych do współczesności, transl. Jacek Antkowiak, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, Warsaw 2009, p. 505.

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Spirituality will thus not be a sign of inner unity with God nor of the search for answers to fundamental questions arising in man by reason of his own existence and the world around him. Its aims are chiefly reducible to ensuring a good mood and relatively enduring (in terms of their attractiveness and strength) psychological experiences. The democratization of life makes it necessary for this type of “mystical experience” to be available to everyone, without the need for effort, either with regard to asceticism, prayer or respecting rules of moral conduct. It is easy to see that this devotio postmoderna has nothing to do with the religious-ascetic movement sparked by Ludolf of Saxony and above all by Gerard Groot in 14th century Europe, but is rather a desperate pursuit of experiences it is inappropriate to call anything but pseudo-mystical, or the sort of “Bacchic frenzy” to which Socrates refers in the Phaedrus. Spirituality as an antidote to all the pains and discomforts of existence – this is the centre towards which all those who are fascinated with it are hastening. What we may find disturbing about this process is the fact that it leaves out not just “matter” but “reason” too, because “spirituality” does not necessarily involve reference to categories such as mind, intellect, reason or intelligence. Man himself is here identified as a self-existing spirit loosely tied to the body, or a being made up of energy emanating from God, whose goal is the realization of its “higher Self”, opening up to divine light and the achievement of “enlightenment” – a state of oneness with the universe. Anthropology conceived as a path of spiritual development, as occult initiation, promoted for example by the reiki movement, is a case in point.30 Some proponents of the New Age movement go even further, proclaiming man to be not a person, but a unit constituting a part of the universe, in search not so much of religiously conceived salvation as of personal self-fulfilment in a process of self-surpassing, and, ultimately, through the loss of individuality, of becoming an unconscious fragment of the spinning cosmos – almost as in the medieval vision of Ibn Rushd or Ibn Rosch/Averroes.31 Here spirituality acquires an esoteric form; it is praise, in the ontic sense, of pantheism and all varieties of spiritualism, the promotion of the quest to achieve altered states of consciousness, the expansion of consciousness through different types of therapies such as rebirthing or going over painful emotional events from childhood,32 because the human “I”, subjectivizing 30 See Paweł Możdżyński, Duchowość ponowoczesna. Ruch Reiki w Polsce [Postmodern spirituality. The reiki movement in Poland] Zakład Wydawniczy „Nomos”, Krakow 2004, p. 116; Rev. Aleksander Posacki SJ, op. cit., p. 381-387. 31 On this topic, see Ernest Renan, Averročs et l’averroďsme. Préface d’Alain de Libera, Maisonneuve et Larose, Paris 2002, pp. 77-131. 32 See Beata Kostrubiec, Obrazy postmodernizmu. Badania empiryczne obrazu siebie i obrazu Boga u zwolenników postmodernizmu [Images of postmodernism. Research into

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reality, formatting it according to its own criteria which do not admit any objective truths or moral obligations, is most important. Concentrating one’s attention on oneself, on one’s most hidden feelings and impressions, the attempt to stir and multiply them continually, though giving one the feeling of private autonomy, often leads to situations which I call “the breakup of spirituality”. These cause stress, disappointment and a deepening feeling of seclusion. Christianity does not preach any sort of dualism of substance, nor any type, as I have demonstrated, of “cosmic eschatology”, not to mention over-excited egocentrism. It views man as a person, capable of various actions characteristic only of human beings, such as planning, telling stories, dreaming, creating complex systems of organization and behaviour. Thus in speaking of mind we simply assert that human capacity. Meantime, in speaking of the “soul”, we admit our created nature, that all we are and all we have at our disposal is a gift; that we ourselves are a special sort of “gift”, endowed with various capabilities, but also at the same time with the duty to reciprocate that gift with honour and reverence. Thus the soul reveals itself to us as the “shape” of human life, the history and identity of the body and also, we hope, its Divine destiny.33 This is why Christian spirituality stands for an integral vision of man, perceiving him as a person capable of finding God and of venerating him through a liturgic cult, but also listening closely to what God is saying to man in the symbols of Revelation. It is not something “to fill the present gap”, it is not episodic, occasional, but remains a harmoniously guided process, not just a constant tearing down of the whole. It should be held in decisive opposition to the postmodern spiritual gnosis, the latter being nothing but a subtle perversion of faith, which moves the meeting with the truth of God’s revelation further into the shadow, placing at the heart of man’s religion his own vision of the world.34 It has assumed a monistic and “titanic” identity, in other words that in which the subject constructs his own god, and invests him with a dogmatic shape and moral content. The division between the spheres of religion, science and art is also abolished. The divine is humanized and the human sacralized. The God person of European Christian tradition is replaced by a “God of low horizons” created by mass media culture and what we might call the interior human divine kingdom. From now on, the only source of truth is the “intimate voice”, proclaiming an area of spiritual arbitrariness and moral impressionism. Instead of the empirical image of oneself and God in the advocates of postmodernism] Wydawnictwo KUL, Lublin 2004, p. 59. 33 Nikolas Lash, op. cit., pp. 44-45. 34 See R. J. Woźniak, Sekularyzm i zanikająca transcendencja [Secularism and disappearing transcendence], „Znak” 2010 no. 10, p. 70.

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an authentic faith we encounter a de-institutionalized faith, a type of bricolage, one’s “individual” composition drawn from a reservoir of social and private memory, from “knowledge” based only on personal experience, often amplified or even caused by the use of psychedelic agents. This “faith” brings to the foreground the value of sophisticated and expressive spiritual attitudes of a visibly utopian condition, or indeed, as Jerzy Szacki has called them, attitudes constituting the utopia of human self-fulfillment.35

Crisis or renewal? Are these signs of a profound religious crisis with which we are currently dealing? Yes, and no! Christianity has survived competition with religions (thus also with hypertrophies of spirituality) teaching practices of self-redemption, professional fortune-telling, alchemy and astrology, as well as rivalry with a concept of the search for harmony with nature as a goal of human life. There is of course always the danger that the institution of the Church will take excessive control of the Gospel and keep it fast, so that Church doctrine would take the place that belongs to Divine truth. But if this danger were ever to materialize, then, as St. Paul had hoped, a rescue party would also appear, perhaps out of some desert seclusion, a party of those ready to work on the necessary change and reform.36 The age of renouncement (l’âge du renoncement) – to use Chantal Delsol’s term from her book – will have begun.37 Christianity will undoubtedly lose much of its historical acclaim and societal respect, by then operating only on the periphery of world culture, but it will not lose the spirit of the Gospel, the spirit of faith, love and peace. The spread of postmodern spiritualities will not I think succeed in overshadowing the universal importance of this momentous event.

Bibliography: Armstrong Karen,Spór o Boga. Czym naprawdę jest religia?, transl. Barbara Cendrowska, Warsaw 2011 Aumann, Jordan, Zarys historii duchowości, transl. Rev. Jan Machniak, Wydawnictwo Jedność, Kielce 1993 35 Cited after R. T. Ptaszek, Nowa Era religii? Ruch New Age i jego doktryna – aspekt filozoficzny [A new era of religion? The New Age movement and its teaching] Wydawnictwo Akademii Podlaskiej, Siedlce 2008, p. 270. 36 Cf. David Bradley, op. cit., p. 205. 37 Chantal Delsol, L’âge du renoncement, Les Éditions du Cerf, Paris 2011.

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Badiou, Alain, Byt i zdarzenie, transl. Paweł Pieniążek, Krakow 2010, p. 13 Barker, Eileen, Nowe ruchy religijne, transl. Tomasz Kunz, Krakow 2002 Bauman Zygmunt, Kultura w płynnej nowoczesności, Warsaw 2011 Berger, Peter Ludwig, Święty baldachim. Elementy socjologicznej teorii religii, transl. Włodzimierz Kurdziel, Krakow 1997 Bradley, David, Atrakcyjność religii azjatyckich, transl. Janina Mroczkowska, “Concilium” 1970 no. 6-10 Casanova, José, Religie publiczne w nowoczesnym świecie, transl. Tomasz Kunz, Krakow 2005 Comblin, Joseph, Sekularyzacja: mity, rzeczywistość, problemy, transl. Ludomir Bieńkowski, “Concilium” 1969 no. 6-10 Crary, Jonathan, Zawieszenie percepcji. Uwaga, spektakl i kultura nowoczesna, transl. Łukasz Zaręba, Iwona Kurz, Warsaw 2009 Delsol Chantal, L’âge du renoncement, Les Éditions du Cerf, Paris 2011 Diggins, John Patrick, Iluzje pragmatyzmu. Modernizm oraz kryzys poznania i autorytetu, transl. Michał Filipczuk, Warsaw 2010 Dobbelaere, Karel, Sekularyzacja. Trzy poziomy analizy, transl. Renata Babińska, Krakow 2008 Eliot T. S., Chrześcijaństwo, kultura, polityka, Warsaw 2007 Ferry Luc, Człowiek-Bóg, czyli o sensie życia, transl. Andrzej Miś and Hanna Miś, Warsaw 1998 Hervieu-Léger, Danièle, Religia jako pamięć, transl. Magdalena Bielawska, Krakow 1999, Luckmann, Thomas, Niewidzialna religia. Problem religii we współczesnym społeczeństwie, transl. Lucjan Bluszcz, Luhmann, Niklas, Funkcja Religii, transl. Dominika Motak, Krakow 1998 McCrea, Ronan, Religion and the Public Order of the European Union, Oxford, University Press 2010 Metz, Johannes B., Niewiara jako problem teologiczny, transl. Ludomir Bieńkowski, “Concilium” 1965/6 no. 1-10 Nicholas Lash, Pytanie o Boga. Świętość, mowa i milczenie, transl. Janusz Ruszkowski, Poznan 2009 Polkinghorne, John C., Nauka i Opatrzność. Interakcja Boga ze światem, transl. Marek Chojnacki, Krakow 2008 Posacki, Aleksander, Ezoteryzm i okultyzm – formy dawne i nowe. Aspekty filozoficznoteologiczne i praktyczno-duszpasterskie, Radom 2009 Reinhard, Wolfgang, Życie po europejsku. Od czasów najdawniejszych do współczesności, transl. Jacek Antkowiak, Warsaw 2009 Renan, Ernest, Averroès et l’averroïsme. Préface d’Alain de Libera, Maisonneuve et Larose, Paris 2002 Renaut, Alain, Era jednostki. Przyczynek do historii podmiotowości, transl. Damian Leszczyński, Wroclaw-Warsaw-Krakow 2001 Spór o prawdę, ed. Andrzej Maryniarczyk, Katarzyna Stępień, Paweł Gondek, Lublin 2011 Thomas Aquinas, St., Summa Theologiae, Marietti, Taurini – Romae 1952 Willaime Jean-Paul, Le retour du religieux dans la sphère publique. Vers une laïcité de reconnaissance et de dialogue, Édition Olivétan, Lyon 2008

Ralf Konersmann’s Conception of the Philosophy of Culture Rev. Jarosław Babiński Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw (CSWU) The Faculty of Theology

Philosophy of culture is a new, dynamically developing area of philosophy,1 on account of its “novelty” feverishly emphasizing its singularity and autonomy (both with respect to method and object) from other disciplines of science likewise engaged in reflecting on the phenomenon of culture. A vast array of publications has sprung up, seemingly overnight, aiming to respond to, systematize and organize this area of philosophical science .2 One of the pioneers in this field is the German philosopher Ralf Konersmann, who postulates the need to make culture a topic of philosophical reflection, demonstrating the incompetence of other sciences in describing the phenomenon.

The problem of defining the philosophy of culture and its relation to other disciplines of science Cultural science seems without doubt to come closest to the philosophy of culture in terms of range. The fact that these sciences have a common object of study causes their convergence in many areas of scholarly reflection. Due to the methodology adopted as well as the tasks incumbent on the philosophy of culture one is entitled to speak of its singularity and scientific autonomy. What is more, philosophy of culture and cultural science are not just irreducible to each other, but each approaches the same area the “field of culture” in 1

2

One may speak of specific conceptions of its practice. One such proposal is formulated by W. Perret, who divides philosophy of culture into the axiological current, philosophy of life and the ontological current. See Historisches Wörtebuch der Philosophie, vol. 4, Basel 1976, col. 1322-1324. For example: S. Kowalczyk, Filozofia kultury : próba personalistycznego ujęcia problematyki [Philosophy of culture: an attempted personalist approach] Lublin 1999; Co to jest filozofia kultury? [What is philosophy of culture?], ed. Z. Rosińska, J. Michalik, Warsaw 2007; F.-P. Burkard, Kulturphilosphie, Freiburg 2000; R. Lüthe, Der Ernst der Ironie: Studien zur Grundlegung einer ironistischen Kulturphilosophie der Kunst, Würzburg 2003; E. W. Orth, Von der Erkenntnistheorie zur Kulturphilosophie: Studien zu Ernst Cassirers Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, Würzburg 2004; an interesting book discussing the relations between culture, religion and politics: O. Roy, Heilige Einfalt, Über die politischen Gefahren entwurzelter Religionen, München 2010

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a manner particular to itself, which is why they “have something to say to each other” about it.3 Konersmann’s point of departure for showing the singularity of the philosophical versus the cultural science approach is the very problem with defining culture as an area of systematic, scientific reflection, this being due to its complex and multilayered structure as well as the large number of factors impacting and determining its development and metamorphoses: “However we define culture – it is not exhausted by any definition”.4 This however does not mean such attempts should not be made. On the contrary, given the philosophical and historical determinants of the problem we should make a persistent effort to carry out this task. The basis for differentiating the cognitive orders of the philosophy of culture and cultural science is the thesis of the pregnation of culture – this being the tendency to conceive of culture as a whole available to cognitive experience in order to render it into a precise theory, thus creating a total, closed system. The purpose of this theoretical device is to present culture as an autonomous phenomenon, a treasury of multifariousness and fertility. Culture is the first, independent reality, whose existence cannot be reduced to other, more primary phenomena. Two traditional cognitive attitudes present in cultural science with regard to culture seem however to constitute an obstacle to this autonomous understanding of culture. These are contextualism and constructivism. Contextualism, in Konersmann’s understanding of the term, refers to “the practice of framing cultural relevancies within the inner references of their world”.5 By this he understands the perception of manifestations of culture in their relation to other facets of the surrounding reality, for example language, tradition, social factors, and so on. The contextualist approach is in its point of departure a reductionist approach, imposing a definite interpretation of phenomena provoked by the external “surroundings” of the manifestation or cultural object studied. On the other hand, constructivism (also termed culturalism) “exposes the symbolic value” of objects, treating them as constructs that do not constitute the essence of a particular work or manifestation of culture, thereby effecting a type of amputation of originality, reference to nature, and, finally, “it questions the value of the phenomenon as that which is for those who surround and experience it”.6 It thus questions the meaning of cultural phenomena by emphasizing the importance of their outer description. 3 4 5 6

Cf. R. Konersmann, Kulturoznawstwo a filozofia kultury. Pregnacja kultury, czyli co właściwie znaczy to pojęcie?, „Kultura Współczesna”, 3(61)2009, pp. 5-6. Ibid., Filozofia kultury. Wprowadzenie [Philosophy of Culture: An Introduction] Warsaw 2009, p. 4 Ibid., Kulturoznawstwo a filozofia kultury… op. cit., p. 11. R. Konersmann,Kulturoznawstwo a filozofia kultury… op. cit, p. 12.

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Meanwhile culture is a field in itself, objective, irreducible (and in this sense autonomous), calling for a specific, unmediated description and analysis. Embarking on a reflection on the phenomenon, Konersmann remarks on its singularity, focusing on the various attempts that have been made to define it. According to the German philosopher, culture is neither a general concept nor a principle. “[T]here is no such thing as culture in general – there is the multiplicity of events, fabrications deposited in various forms”,7 constantly subject to change, development, to being brought up to date. Hence the proliferation of definitions focusing only on a certain aspect of the reality of culture. Konersmann organizes these into four principal categories. The first, descriptive, approach (concurrent with the notion of civilization) describes all of man-made reality as exemplified in the works and specific structures (characterized by specific types of behavior, standards of conduct and communication) created in the exercise of man’s physical and intellectual powers. The second ,dynamic, concept, on the other hand, emphasizes not just the fact of culture’s existence, but the self-reflection that accomplishes itself within it, conditioning its growth and the occurrence of change. This view in turn feeds into the third, archaeological,approach, arising in a concrete socio-historical context, deciding on a specific manner of reading and interpreting reality, also with respect to that which relates to culture. The fourth and last sphere has a normative character. It moves from a reconstruction of the determination of difference to the establishment of a gradation and system of the realities considered.8 Culture is thus an extremely complex phenomenon, which is why it escapes all classical attempts at providing an explicit definition: “however we define culture – it is not exhausted by any definition”.9 It is not a general concept. Due to the complexity of its object, it is neither a concept nor a principle, and should be included in the “open class of monuments to problems”. It slips through all attempts at definition because of constant changes and ceaseless “becoming”, updating, manifesting, all of which result from the dynamic nature of the reality it describes. Perceiving culture as the expression of a specific activity of man may inspire the temptation to identify philosophy of culture with anthropology. Konersmann claims that undoubtedly (as with any philosophical discipline) philosophy of culture to some extent touches upon the interest field of anthropology; what is more, it utilizes or is inspired by some of its achievements and conclusions. Yet 7 8 9

R. Konersmann, Filozofia kultury… op. cit., p. 4. Ibid., pp. 13-14. R. Konersmann, Filozofia kultury… op. cit., p. 4.

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it differs from anthropology, understood as a system, above all in its object of study. Its object of study is not man as such, responsible though he may be for the emergence of works of culture. Philosophy of culture focuses on the manmade manifestations of man’s cultural activity: “it focuses on traces and signs, forms and figures, which (…) [man] introduces and leaves behind in the course of struggling with his own existence”.10 Philosophy of culture is not interested in man as the creator of culture. It leaves this understanding of man to anthropology.11 With regard to man, it accepts him as capable, on account of his natural endowment, of creating and developing culture. From a historical point of view of course philosophy of culture is also a special sort of history of man. For he reveals himself through the works he creates – “along with his world, he at once creates himself”.12 However, and this is something that Konersmann also emphasizes, one cannot treat philosophy of culture as a specific area of the history of culture or the history of philosophy. In itself: culture has no history, […], does not have a dynamics of its own, independent of human activity, is not suitable as an appeal instance or theological insurance against the progress of complex spatio-temporal processes whose orientation towards an ultimate goal could serve to justify it.13

One may speak of the history of its concepts or of the history of forms of its expression. It is these that in particular become an area of interest and study for philosophy of culture, when it searches for the underlying causes of change and tries to understand specific structures, or the “story” of development.

Culture as a philosophical problem The mission of the philosophy of culture is most clearly manifested in its historical genesis, in the account of the historical and philosophical context which led to its emergence. The philosophy of culture stems from the failure of the history of philosophy, is the fruit of change. […] It may be considered the heiress of the philosophy of history.14

What Konersmann refers to is the process which at the turn of the century led to the emergence of cultural philosophy as an independent philosophical discipline. 10 11 12 13 14

Ibid., p. 36. See M. A. Krąpiec, Ja – człowiek [I-Man] Lublin 2005, pp. 236-238. R. Konersmann, Filozofia kultury… op. cit., p. 38. R. Konersmann, Filozofia kultury… op. cit., p. 33. Ibid., Zur Theorie des fait culturel, [in:] Romantische Kulturwissenschaft?, red. C. Jünke, R. Zeiser, P. Geyer, Würzburg 2004, p. 32.

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The genesis of the philosophy of culture is to be sought in the scholarly activity of philosophers such as Georg Simmel and Ernst Cassirer. Their proposals however constitute the crowning of a certain type of process which made its appearance in philosophical reflection in connection with the phenomenon of culture and philosophical attempts to interpret it. Konersmann asks about the causes of the very late emergence of philosophy of culture as an independent philosophical discipline. Undoubtedly, culture had always in some way been of interest to man, as prominently exemplified in the ancient formula by Cicero, terming it the cultivation of the human mind. It did not however find itself within the area of systematic philosophical reflection as an independent phenomenon.15 The reason for this, to my mind, has to do with the very process of the development of philosophy, which already in its beginnings adopted a certain style of interpreting reality, which in turn led to the adoption of a specific hierarchy with regard to issues submitted to scientific reflection. The German philosopher is here referring to a tradition he describes as Socratic and Platonic. The postulate of studying ideas that is central to the Platonic explanation of the world moves the reality of human activity manifest in culture “into the shadow” of philosophical discourse. Human affairs are unimportant in the face of the mission of philosophy, this being to perceive the world as the realization of supernal ideas. The intuitions that the Enlightenment subsequently delivered in the proposals of Vico, Rousseau or Bacon were quickly discredited by the thought of Hegel, who considered works of culture to be accidental, marginal, and constituting merely one of the phases the spirit must pass through to reach full consciousness. It was only the nineteenth century, an era which saw the dynamic development of technical civilization, that created favourable conditions for philosophers to become interested in the reality of human works as an integral and autonomous discipline of science. The first thinker we need to mention in the genesis of philosophy of culture is in Konersmann’s opinion Giambattista Vico. His work places him in the Enlightenment current in terms of its understanding of the world as a reality created by men.16 Culture appears in it as the work of humanizing the world; a work whose author is man. Vico called for a wider understanding of the philosophical approach to the world, vital to broadening the problem of culture.17

15 See M. T. Cicero, Rozmowy tuskulańskie, [in:] Pisma filozoficzne, vol. 3, Warsaw 1961, p. 557. 16 Cf. G. B. Vico, Nauka nowa, Warsaw 1966, p. 138. 17 R. Konersmann, Filozofia kultury… op. cit., p. 18.

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He was strongly opposed to leaving the world created by man (mundo civile) out of philosophical analysis, to the direction of the intellectual attention of philosophers exclusively towards natural reality (mundo naturale). For, he argued, since the mundo civile has been created by man, it has a greater potential to be known, provides greater possibilities for cognition.18 Without entering into conflict with the religious truth about the divine origin of the world, Vico asks about the quality of things human. And all that is human is anchored in the world: every human action means and points to something. Hence the need to answer the question “To what extent can man take credit for the existence of reality and its truth?”. Vico understands the idea of humanizing the world as a constant effort to draw meaning “from the projections, guesses, expectations of the one who appropriated it to maintain his own existence”.19 Rousseau brings forth his postulates independently of Vico’s intuitions, to a large extent basing his philosophical reflection on the antinomy between the realities of nature and culture.20 In his view, human civilization is a reality that condemns man to self-creation. For it favours an emphasis on that which is peculiar to each man, his talents and individual “reading” of the world, at the expense of that which is common to all human beings, namely, the virtues, one’s conducting oneself in accordance with conscience and nature, whose laws are inscribed in the heart of every man: fatal inequality introduced among men by the distinction of talents and the degradation of virtues. That is the most evident effect of all our studies, and the most dangerous of all their consequences.21

Man is unable to withstand this process. In this existential situation he is thus doomed to overcoming the self-alienation brought on by living in an unequal society. This in turn, according to Konersmann, propels man towards activity, invention, and hence towards being a creator of culture: leaving the world of original security and introducing the development of civilization are taken as a sign of taking man as a contingent person, forced by his

18 Cf. G. B. Vico, Nauka… op. cit., p. 138. 19 R. Konersmann, Filozofia kultury… op. cit., pp. 47-48. 20 R. Konersmann, Kultur der Philosophie und Kulturphilosophie. Zur Einführung, [in:] Kulturphilosophie. Grundtexte Kulturphilosophie. Benjamin, Blumenberg, Cassirer, Faucault, Lévi-Strauss, Valery u.a., ed. R. Konersmann, Hamburg 2009, p. 13, R. Konersmann, Einleitung, [in:] Grenzen und Grenzüberschreitungen: XIX Deutscher Kongress für Philosophie, ed. W. Hogrebe, J. Bromand, Berlin 2004, p. 545. See R. Spaemann, Rousseau – człowiek czy obywatel. Dylemat nowożytności, Warsaw 2011, pp. 45-84. 21 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Basic Political Writings, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, transl. Donald A. Cress, Hackett Publishing Company 1987, p. 17

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“weakness” (faiblesse) to assume concern for the stability of his living conditions, and this means: to be a creator of culture.22

The ideas formulated by Vico and Rousseau will resound in the systems of Georg Simmel and Ernst Cassirer, whom Konersmann considers pioneers of philosophy of culture as an independent discipline within the spectrum of today’s philosophical science: Simmel was the first to provide orientating slogans to later debates carried on in the area of philosophy of culture. […] then Cassirer - subjecting to criticism Simmel’s intellectual premises derived from the philosophy of life, as well as speculative philosophy of history.23

Culture is fully coupled with human activity. Its observable dynamism and changes issue from the actions undertaken by man in order to satisfy the needs and goals that motivate him. This thesis seems to find confirmation in the historical emergence of the term “philosophy of culture” coined by Gottfried Semper in the wake of his reflection on the Great Exhibition in London in 1851.24 Philosophy of culture is thus an effort to capture human activity in the world, it is “an understanding dispute with a finished, man-made world”.25 Rapture over the creative talents of man gave birth to messianic thought, inclined to view as true the thesis of the possibility of realizing mankind’s eternal dream of universal happiness, which, by harnessing the human mind to the task of transforming the world of nature, will permit the creation of paradise (till then only perceived as an eschatological religious idea) on earth. Science was considered the heiress of religion, capable of fulfilling promises made by the latter.26 But this positive thinking about the unlimited potential of the human mind quickly declined, unable to withstand the painfully exposed facts of the limitedness of human cognition and invention. The debacle that struck a fatal blow to this type of thinking was that of the catastrophic events of the 20th century, especially the two world military conflicts which shook the positive vision of the world and man.27 The phenomenon of the cultural turn is understood by Konersmann as a. philosophical reaction to the crisis of spirit caused by the shocking atrocities of 22 R. Konersmann, Filozofia kultury… op. cit., p. 56. 23 R. Konersmann, Filozofia kultury… op. cit, p. 29. Cf. ibid., Kultur der Philosophie… op. cit., p. 9. 24 R. Konersmann, Filozofia kultury… op. cit., p. 25 Ibid., p. 27. 26 Cf. E. Cassirer, Naturalistische und humanistische Begründung der Kulturphilosophie, w: Kulturkritik, ed. R. Konersmann, Leipzig 2001, pp. 137-139. 27 See R. Konersmann, Die Kultur kann sterben. Der „cultural turn” im philosophischen Denken der Gegenwart, „Neue Zürcher Zeitung”, 8/9, April 2000, no. 84, p. 78.

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the 20th century. The culture existing hitherto has to die along with the vision of the world existing hitherto, whose development has shown it to be a road to nowhere. In order to create a new world, it is necessary to understand what culture is. “The cultural turn is a result of understanding that the one-of-a-kind drama of crisis is a challenge to philosophy and science, requiring a reconsideration of their theoretic foundations and place in the totality of the human world. The undertaking of cultural philosophy, which has been the result of irritations, stimuli and objections of diverse origin as well as renewed action, was and could only be a philosophy coming into being after this turning point”.28 The challenge that faced the philosophy of culture was that of attempting to reply to the question of its own self-understanding. This meant readiness for change, agreement to a change of its statute or even of the binding paradigm, in the face of the devaluation of everything that had seemed certain and fixed. This situation led Cassirer to discern opportunity for a new formulation of the concept of culture.29 Culture is to his mind something ambiguous and intermediary: a sign, symbol, metaphor, which permits one to attain the right meaning: Various productions of spiritual culture: language, scientific knowledge, myth, art, religion become […] elements of a singular great problem framework, various dispositions oriented towards one goal: that of transforming the passive world of common impressions in which the spirit seems for now to be bound up, into a world of pure spiritual expression.30

Thus there is no one specific and definite meaning to the reality surrounding man, interpreted in an individual manner, specific to each man alone. There is no clearly spelled out canon […], which is worth knowing […] we have to take on the multifarious work of interpretation in order to find out, just then and time and again, how meaning comes about in each particular case and to what extent we, who turn ourselves towards the objects of culture, are concerned by it.31

28 R. Konersmann, Filozofia kultury… op. cit., p. 78. 29 Cf. Z. Kuderowicz, Ernst Cassirer jako filozof kultury [Ernst Cassirer as philosopher of culture] [in:] Filozofia współczesna [Contemporary philosophy] ed. Z. Kuderowicz, vol. 2, Warsaw 1990, pp. 118-119. 30 E. Cassirer, Krytyka rozumu jako krytyka kultury,[ in:] Filozofia współczesna… op. cit., p. 259. 31 R. Konersmann, Filozofia kultury… op. cit., p. 89.

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The emancipation of cultural criticism The emergence of philosophy of culture as an independent discipline also precipitated the autonomy of cultural criticism.32 Criticism – in its original, seemingly natural sense understood as the art of deciding, judging, assessing or accusing33 – has, especially since the time of Kant, become an important tool of philosophical analysis. In the context of culture, it is an important element stimulating its development by animating discussion about the value of new objects. Works of art are here portrayed in a temporal-evolutionary context, which enables culture to be portrayed as a continuum while at the same time emphasizing its development. According to Konersmann the development of modern cultural criticism has a specific, historically determined, four-phased structure. Within this structure he distinguishes first the “preparatory phase”, expressed in contesting or indeed protesting against the existing reality of decline in the field of aesthetics, ethics, morality, binding principles and paradigms. It stigmatizes the flaws and imperfections of existing culture and leads to the “phase of becoming” – the creation of a discourse critical of the current state of affairs. It thus constitutes a form of culture’s being concerned with itself in order to define its own identity, which it discovers by confronting the functioning principles, emerging tasks or expectations. The motivation for actions undertaken in this phase is the desire to popularize the problems that are of interest to criticism, stimulated by “the will to restitution”. Konersmann points to the Enlightenment roots of this stage of criticism, which assumed a new quality in that era of the evolution of human thought. It is not (as was the case in earlier times, dominated by the SocraticPlatonic paradigm) a place for reflecting on issues of conformity to an ideal or the world of ideas, justified by the existence of absolutely perfect ideas, but an area of investigations with regard to culture as an expression of human essence. Culture is interpreted as an expression of man’s functioning within the framework of rules he himself has established, as a measure of man, not a reflection of the wisdom or perfection of an absolute. This stage is a departure point for the next stage of the emancipation of cultural criticism, namely the “phase of eliminating boundaries”. This phase accomplishes itself in an attempt to describe the condition, quality or direction in which culture is developing, expressed in the search for a resolution of the antinomy between “progress” and “fall” as relating to it. This leads to the emergence of “philosophical cultural criticism” that implements the postulate to 32 See ibid., Kultur der Philosophie… op. cit., pp. 13-15. 33 See. H. Kiereś, Krytyka, [in:] Powszechna Encyklopedia Filozofii,vol. 6, Lublin 2005, p. 94.

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break with the tradition of cultural interpretation appearing in the course of the evolution of human thought. The historical moment that provokes the formulation of this idea is the catastrophe of World War I and later events which can be subsumed under the special heading of “the Auschwitz event”. These events call on culture to rethink its place in the totality of the human world. This requires asking about the quality, appropriateness or adequacy of the tools previously used to study culture, thus questions about criticism as criticism. The German philosopher describes this as the turning of the practice of cultural criticism in towards itself.34 This leads to the introduction of a distinction between normative and descriptive cultural criticism. Normative cultural criticism is, to the mind of the German philosophy of culture theorist, an anachronistic formula given the tasks currently placed before the philosophy of culture and its critique. It opens a perspective whose horizon continues to be limited to an already decided tragic quality of defeat and the idealization of pre-modern forms of life.35

Citing the views of its opponents, Konersmann charges this conception with the the manifestation of acute forms of cultural pessimism, […] a fatal tendency towards forcing complex situations into the simple schematism of opposite pairs of concepts […], demonizing the Western model of civilization, […] apotheosis of the original state of innocence before the plunge into original sin.36

Its main flaws are its hermetic character and adherence to its own inflexible tenets of interpretation. However, great hopes are attached to the second form of cultural criticism – descriptive criticism, which thanks to its formula, is able to meet the expectations placed on modern cultural criticism. According to Konersmann, “it reconstructs the process of cultural self-observation and itself also propels it forward”.37 Hence as a reflection on the methods applied by criticism in describing culture, it indicates possibilities for interpretation as well as potential lines of development, thereby stimulating not only criticism but also culture itself. Criticism is thus essential. Without it, “there is no science of culture, because criticism is the truth about culture”.38 It allows us to capture the specific

34 See R. Konersmann, Filozofia kultury… op. cit., p. 102-108. 35 Ibid, p. 108. 36 Ibid., p. 109. To confirm his theses, Konersmann invokes works such as: S. Breuer, Ästhetischer Fundamantalismus. Stefan George und der deutsche Antimodernismus, Darmstadt 1995; K. Flasch, Die geistige Mobilmachung. Die deutschen Intellektuellen und der erste Weltkrieg, Berlin 2000. 37 R. Konersmann, Filozofia kultury… op. cit., p. 109. 38 M. Horkheimer, Korreferat zu Rothackers “Problem und Methoden der Kulturanthropologie”, [in:], M. Horkheimer Gesammelte Schriften, ed. G. Schmidt, G.

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nature of relations present within the sphere of culture, these always embroiled in specific patterns of interpretation and conventions, conditioned historically, socially, sociologically, etc. The style of criticism is to a large extent a product of the characteristics of the era in which it comes into being and functions, at once stimulating the development of contemporary culture and helping it to understand itself, its specificity and identity as well as the mission it has to accomplish in the given moment of the evolution of human reality, which it co-creates.39 The impulses criticism gives to culture are variable, specific to each particular era. A study of criticism thus also leads one to uncover the specific mechanisms of culture in a given era, to take that culture for what it is, and finally to identify the vectors determining its shape and potential directions of development as well as areas in which its interests and tasks accomplish themselves. In this way “cultural criticism becomes criticism of culture for the sake of culture (…) and encompasses (…) criticism of that criticism”.40 Konersmann’s proposal, inspired to a large extent by the ideas of Cassirer, shows cultural criticism to be a modern and inescapable phenomenon, for it brings the whole wealth of culture to life, the changes occurring within it as well as its internal dynamism; it also guarantees that the field of cultural interpretation will not be narrowed down to efforts to pin down the governing laws of culture and the implications between its constitutive phenomena. There should be constant development within cultural criticism, expressed in the conscious transgression of established rules and principles. Such an approach ensures the certainty of growth, but is also the foundation of autonomy, expressed in the current status of criticism, which from a descriptive tool has evolved into an institution.41

The praxeological aspect of philosophy of culture “Culture understood functionally manifests itself in the fait culturel”.42 The latter, according to Konersmann, is at the centre of the philosophical reflection undertaken by philosophy of culture (as well as by the aforementioned cultural criticism). It is what makes it possible to define the conditions of philosophical cogni-

39 40 41 42

Schmidt Noerr, Frankfurt/M. 1985, p. 17; after: R. Konersmann, Filozofia kultury… op. cit., p. 111. Cf. R. Konersmann, Kulturkritik und Eigensinn, „Nach Feierabend. Zürcher Jahrbuch für Wissengeschichte”, 2010/6, p. 107. Ibid., Filozofia kultury… op. cit., p. 113. Ibid., Filozofia kultury… op. cit., p. 116. R. Konersmann , Kultur der Philosophie… op. cit., p. 7.

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tion, which occurs in space and time while maintaining its distance from the reality it subjects to scrutiny, begetting various connections within the area of study. It is thus embroiled in reality. The fait culturel distinguishes existential determination as a fragment. It is thus never a complete meaning, full, unchanging and ultimately defined content. This is why it necessitates constant reinterpretation. Efforts to grasp it each time become the manifestation of something new.43 A work is always an expression of the human spirit. In order to understand it, it is necessary to interpret it within a context wider than that based on the object-subject relational model sanctioned by the post-Cartesian tradition. This is why Konersmann discerns the need to introduce a certain convention, the social background, another subject: “You”. The process of describing manifestations of culture is not a simple relation, but the sum of at least three elements. These are I, You and the Work. This way “the work maintains distance while creating connections, it is (…) a point of passage and a bridge”.44 It is only in considering both the world of the “I” in its sphere and that of the “You” that we arrive at a full, co-relational image of the world. The image of the bridge, borrowed from Cassirer, enables Konersmann to create an area of interpretation that is both wide and as intelligible as possible: The metaphor of the bridge, in other words the image of contact while maintaining distance, by articulating the two-sidedness of the position of works between the spontaneity of the I and the receptivity of the You […] does not show the relation between isolated individuals, responsible for themselves, only to laboriously establish contact, but clearly demonstrates the mutual influence, grounded in the sphere of culture itself, of mutually relating subjects who […] erect for themselves a ‘common world of sense.45

This also emphasizes philosophy of culture’s specific approach to the work, apprehended in all of its complexity, taking into account the context in which it came into being and within which it continued to function within culture (as an expression of the creative activity of individuals) but also historical and social determinants which impacted the specific “shape” of the work and the manner of its interpretation. The sensible exercise of philosophy of culture requires that the the three previously mentioned elements be always taken into account, “I”, “You” and the work, and that the temptation to simplify, manifest in the complete disregard of one of these elements, be thus avoided. For the work, submitted to philosophical reflection within the framework of philosophy of culture, is always placed within the relation of “I” and “You”, relating to each other. A 43 Cf. ibid., Zur Theorie des fait culturel… op. cit., p. 39. 44 Ibid., Filozofia kultury… op. cit., p. 116. 45 Ibid., pp. 122-123.

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context of this kind makes it possible to interpret the work in a new, broad manner that escapes the clasp of inflexible research principles. Apart from the theory of meaning, traditionally involved in the reflection on works of art, a prominent place is gradually being won by representation theory. The existentially determined work, the fait culturel, forms the basis for continually renewed scientific reflection and ensuing efforts of interpretation, which discloses ever new possibilities of understanding. This however, is not tantamount to adding something new to the work, but discovering something “which has belonged to it for a long time”.46 The originality of the work is thus brought to light. Even though it is finished, it constantly calls for reinterpretation, for its meaning to be brought up to date. It is not the category of permanence, unchangeability, but the category of possibility that becomes central to philosophy of culture in its modern formulation. The work is placed within the perspective of its constitutive possibilities, within a wide interpretation field. Their updating, and efforts to refresh the understanding of the work, constitute a permanent procedure for entering a relation with it. This continual search for new possibilities of interpretation does not however mean unorganized or spontaneous movement within philosophy of culture’s research field, nor can it be a replication of the methods characteristic of other fields of philosophy or those organizing the reflection of other exact sciences.47 Konersmann draws attention to the existence of two possibilities thathe considers inappropriate for philosophy of culture. Instead, he proposes his own special formula, which he refers to as “the round-about way”.48 To his mind, it is the most appropriate, new and original method of orienting research, since it overturns the paradigm of Enlightenment thinking, and thereby decides the originality and autonomy of modern philosophy of culture. The cognitive approach to culture in philosophy has an aim. And that is not merely to provide answers, arising out of the meeting with the reality constituted by culture in all the wealth of manifestations that compose it. Philosophy of culture is also to be a contribution to understanding man, the way in which he manifests himself in culture and through culture, understanding who he is as its creator and “creation”. An answer to this question may be formulated precisely by resorting to the conception of culture as a round-about way, and man as a being on that road,

46 R. Konersmann, Filozofia kultury…op. cit., p. 131. 47 R. Konersmann, Kulturkritik und Eigensinn… op. cit., p. 112. 48 See ibid., Umwege der Kultur, „Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie”, 15(2006), pp. 5-17.

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such “as he in himself appears in his works”.49 One should therefore abandon the insouciance of the errant way, a way without direction, based on chance and spontaneity, because this way does not yield any important or interesting answers. Nor is entering the “straight line” path a good solution, since it is too narrow a vista, necessitating simplification and renouncement of the particularity and wealth of the phenomenon of culture described: the artifice of the straight line, the line of elimination, from whose calculation follows everything else, constitutes the basis of those systems of which it has been said that they know neither history, nor authorship: they distance themselves from all contexts and conditions and give the impression of coming from nowhere and from no one.50

They lose the aspect of human contingency, ultimately of interest to philosophy of culture. It is only the round-about way project, that of a road continually redrawn, spontaneous, constituting a reaction to changing conditions fully expresses culture and its creator, man. “Man is a creature of round-about ways, which in culture comes face to face with himself”.51 While culture is always dependent on the human condition and man’s relation to the world, it arises only when reality is known as bearing openness towards the world and curiosity about it. *** Konersmann’s project is ambitious, since it purports to set up an autonomous, rigorously scientific, independent philosophy of culture. This requires a clear specification of its distinct nature in terms of both material and formal aspects in order to avoid identification with other scientific disciplines whose object of study is culture. This is particularly important since philosophy of culture is known to be perceived as an academic discipline of rather limited specificity and cohesion.52 Konersmann sees the special character of philosophy of culture as deriving from the philosophical and historic facts accompanying its emergence as a reaction to the traditional philosophical paradigm of Socratic-Platonic, then Cartesian origin, which has not survived confrontation with the catastrophic events of the 20th century. Faith in systematic progress and the flourishing of civilizations 49 50 51 52

Ibid., Filozofia kultury… op. cit., p. 146. Ibid., p. 140 R. Konersmann, Filozofia kultury… op. cit., p. 141. J. Hartmann, Filozofia kultury [Philosophy of culture] [in:] Słownik filozofii [Dictionary of philosophy] ed. J. Hartmann, Krakow 2004, p. 73.

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as well as the development of man, their creator, has been irreversibly weakened. This cultural turn has given birth to a new quality of civilization which, as a human creation, calls for a new quality of description and interpretation. The German philosopher sees the genesis of contemporarily evolving philosophy of culture in the anthropocentric conception of understanding man, which, born in the Renaissance, was transformed during the Enlightenment, becoming an interpretation of existing reality as a human work. Philosophy of culture interprets man’s activity as the work of humanizing the world, it understands the surrounding reality as a phenomenon of man’s making. Through culture, man manifests himself as his creation and creator. Such an understanding of the world is what allows various philosophers to be classified as philosophers of culture. The first systematic attempts at formulating a philosophy of culture as an autonomous discipline are owed to two German philosophers, Georg Simmel and Ernst Cassirer. Drawing, in this respect, on their ideas, Konersmann tries to show the emergence of philosophy of culture as a consequence of changes in human thinking on reality, which cannot be interpreted in terms of succeeding stages, but must account for “qualitative jumps”, of which the cultural turn of the beginning of the 20th century is an evident example. Philosophy of culture is an open project, still waiting to be developed and cast into shape. Special care should thus be taken in demarcating its area of study and specifying the factors identifying it. According to Konersmann, the philosophy of culture approaches the work from a post-war perspective, as an achievement of the acting subject, and having in mind the context of its emergence. The factors allowing this to be grasped and presented are, primarily, noting the special, stimulating role of cultural criticism, discerning the particularity of approaching the work as a fait culturel, as the effect of the joint operation of a number of factors non-omissible in the process of its interpretation, and an understanding of philosophy as a “round-about way” that manifests the truth about man in an unconventional way.

Bibliography: Breuer S., Ästhetischer Fundamantalismus. Stefan George und der deutsche Antimodernismus, Darmstadt 1995 Burkard F.-P., Kulturphilosphie, Freiburg 2000 Cicero M. T., Pisma filozoficzne, vol. 3, Warsaw 1961 Co to jest filozofia kultury?, ed. Z. Rosińska, J. Michalik, Warsaw 2007 Filozofia współczesna, vol. 2, ed. Z. Kuderowicz, Warsaw 1990

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Flasch K., Die geistige Mobilmachung. Die deutschen Intellektuellen und der erste Weltkrieg, Berlin 2000 Grenzen und Grenzüberschreitungen: XIX Deutscher Kongress für Philosophie, ed. W. Hogrebe, J. Bromand, Berlin 2004 Historisches Wörtebuch der Philosophie, vol. 4, Basel 1976 Horkheimer M. Gesammelte Schriften, ed. G. Schmidt, G. Schmidt Noerr, Frankfurt/M. 1985 Konersmann R., Die Kultur kann sterben. Der "cultural turn” im philosophischen Denken der Gegenwart, "Neue Zürcher Zeitung”, 8/9, April 2000, no. 84, Konersmann R., Filozofia kultury. Wprowadzenie, Warsaw 2009 Konersmann R., Kulturkritik und Eigensinn, “Nach Feierabend. Zürcher Jahrbuch für Wissengeschichte”, no. 6 (2010) Konersmann R., Kulturoznawstwo a filozofia kultury. Pregnacja kultury, czyli co właściwie znaczy to pojęcie?, “Kultura Współczesna”, 3 (2009) 61 Kowalczyk S., Filozofia kultury: próba personalistycznego ujęcia problematyki, Lublin 1999 Krąpiec M. A., Ja – człowiek, Lublin 2005 Kulturkritik, red. R. Konersmann, Leipzig 2001 Kulturphilosophie. Grundtexte Kulturphilosophie. Benjamin, Blumenberg, Cassirer, Faucault, Lévi-Strauss, Valery u.a., ed. R. Konersmann, Hamburg 2009 Lüthe R., Der Ernst der Ironie: Studien zur Grundlegung einer ironistischen Kulturphilosophie der Kunst, Würzburg 2003 Orth E. W., Von der Erkenntnistheorie zur Kulturphilosophie: Studien zu Ernst Cassirers Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, Würzburg 2004 Romantische Kulturwissenschaft?, ed. C. Jünke, R. Zeiser, P. Geyer, Würzburg 2004 Rousseau J. J, Trzy rozprawy o filozofii społecznej, Warsaw 1956 Roy O., Heilige Einfalt, Über die politischen Gefahren entwurzelter Religionen, Munich 2010 Spaemann R., Rousseau – człowiek czy obywatel. Dylemat nowożytności, Warsaw 2011 Vico G. B., Nauka nowa, Warsaw 1966

Theodicy in Modern Culture. The Proposal of Paul Ricœur Rev. Maciej Bała Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw (CSWU) The Faculty of Christian Philosophy

The existence of evil has always been a challenge to every culture. Where does evil come from? Who is to blame? Why me in particular? Why is it that I do evil in spite of desiring good? Such questions do not only appear in the reflection and investigations of the greatest intellectuals. They are also the lot of ordinary men. Surely there is no final and satisfying answer to the problem of evil and suffering that would make it possible to explicate their intriguing phenomenon. Does this mean that all effort to shed light on the mystery of evil is doomed to failure? Surely not. The confrontation of philosophical reflection with suffering carries a special challenge for the human mind, not to turn away from what is important and crucial to man, and not to avoid giving consideration, in philosophical reflection, to existing reality, so very thoroughly imbued with good and evil.1 This, among other things, is the essence of wisdom, beloved of philosophers, namely to seek creative answers to important, fundamental questions. And the problem of evil is doubtless such a question. The concept of “theodicy” (gr. theós – God, dike – victory, justice) entered into general use in the eighteenth century thanks to Leibniz, who published the work Essai de theodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l’homme et l’origine du mal in 1710. This was a response to Bayle, who questioned the existence of God on the ground of the existence of physical and ethical evil in the world.2 The term later became used to refer to the philosophical science treating of the existence and nature of God in reliance on the human mind and searching for a final cause of the existing world. Theodicy uses a rational and intuitive method.3 It is currently more often referred to as philosophy of God. Ricœur applies the term theodicean thinking to any type of thinking that contains a formulation of the problem of evil in statements striving for nonambiguity; to arguments whose goal is clearly apologetic: God is not responsible for evil; and to means consistent with the requirements of non-contradictory

1

2 3

An interesting interpretation of philosophy's attitude towards evil is expressed in the article by J. Fileka, Filozofowanie pośród cierpienia [Philosophizing amid suffering], in: ibid., Filozofia jako etyka [Philosophy as ethics], Krakow 2001, pp. 130-151. See S. Kowalczyk, Filozofia Boga [Philosophy of God], Lublin 1997, p. 9. See ibid., p. 10.

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logic and the systemic whole.4 In his considerations Ricœur does not take into account that the task of thinking with regard both to thinking God and to thinking evil in relation to God may not be exhausted by a reasoning whose basis is not only the rule of non-c but also the systematic consideration of the whole. An analysis of original sin is an example of what it means to think taking symbols as one’s departure point.5 Ricœur’s thesis is the following: the notion of original sin is a pseudo-concept, a false rationalization of the Adamic myth, erroneously mixing the legal category of imputation of guilt with the biological category of inheritance. The true meaning of this religious tenet should be derived from the world of myths and symbols, and it amounts to this, that evil is contained in our will as quasi-nature, something that we are born with. The erroneous interpretation of the Adamic myth is chiefly owed to St. Augustine.6 He is the one to have adopted, from philosophy, the idea that evil cannot be a substance because thinking in terms of being attaches to the category of goodness, which makes evil merely a lack of a due good. The most important consequence of negating the substantial nature of evil “is that admitting evil establishes a purely moral vision of it”.7 The problem of evil in its totality becomes entangled in the problem of freedom and free will. Looking at the Adamic myth, there is no reason to search for other causes of the fall other than human will itself. This vision however entails an interpretation of the whole history of mankind in which no suffering or pain that appear in this world are unjust and unmerited. Another manner of resolving the aporia of evil is so-called theodicean think8 ing. The problem of evil is formulated in three statements striving for nonambiguity: God is all-powerful, God is good, Evil exists. Can these three statements be reconciled? Theodicy claims that they can be, but at a price. One should likewise not forget the apologetic nature of this task. The question is formulated for a concrete purpose, to defend the good God from the charge of the existence of evil. Again, as in the case of the erroneous interpretation of the Adamic myth by means of the concept of original sin, the weakness of theodicean explanation lies in situating evil within the plane of morality. It is not God who is responsible for evil, but man, abusing the gift of freedom. Freedom itself as a gift and a task, in spite of the risk of choosing evil, is nonetheless a sine qua non of man’s being able to respond with love to God’s self-revelation. Evil is a 4 5 6 7 8

Cf. P. Ricœur, Zło. Wyzwanie rzucone filozofii i teologii, transl. E. Burska, Warsaw 1992, p. 23. Cf. P. Ricœur, Le conflit des interprétations, Paris 1969, pp. 265-282. Cf. P. Ricœur, Zło. Wyzwanie rzucone filozofii i teologii, op. cit., p. 21. Ibid., p. 21. Cf. ibid., p. 23.

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side effect of the creation of man in the image and semblance of God. Yet we continually succumb to the temptation of totalizing, in other words subjecting evil to a larger whole, by which we hope to make it less radical and less terrifying. Theodicy however triumphs not over real, concrete and undeserved evil, but over its aesthetic ghost.9 The first fundamental step forward in the reflection on evil is Kant’s interpretation, although even he does not avoid the mistake of thinking in purely moral terms, especially in the initial phase of his philosophical work. Of special interest to us is his conception of radical evil, in which he breaks with an interpretation modelled after Augustine’s conception of original sin, in other words with the category of retribution. Ricœur says that three stages of the rationalization of evil may be discerned in Kant, the first indicating the place of evil, the second, its radicality, and the third, the problem of its origin.10 The place of evil is the power of our will, at the same time the most fundamental, because it gives rise to all the other evil forces. This is also why evil should not be sought in the realm of feeling or in the realm of reason. From this description of evil one should move on to the transcendental level, asking about the foundation of bad maxims. This is where we encounter the most important concept, that of radical evil. This concept has no deceptive meaning that critical thinking ought to uncover. We are marked by a radical tendency towards evil that cannot be understood by rational thought.11 The analysis of radical evil effected by Kant in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone leads to the origin of evil, namely “being seduced” by evil. In a certain sense Kant rationalizes the symbol of the snake, already present in the Adamic myth; evil is “already” present, even prior to our free action, it seems. We are seduced by it. But this means that our nature is not wholly evil and that there is hope for its transformation. It is in this formulation that Ricœur sees the greatest achievement of Kant, who, apart from the hermeneutics of evil, discerns the need for a hermeneutics of hope .12 Also worthy of mention is the attempt at explaining evil that appears in the system of Hegel. Hegel portrays evil as belonging to a great system in which it manifests itself as something necessary. It is part of a larger process. Dialectic makes it possible to combine the tragic with the logical moment: something must die in order for something greater to be born.13 Every suffering is over9 Cf. P. Ricœur, Le conflit des interprétations, op. cit., p. 308. 10 Cf. P. Ricœur, Une herméneutique philosophique de la religion: Kant, in: Lecture 3. Aux frontières de la philosophie, Paris 1994, p. 22. 11 Cf. P. Ricœur, Le conflit des interprétations, op. cit., p. 304. 12 Cf. P. Ricœur, Une herméneutique philosophique de la religion: Kant, art. cit., p. 27. 13 Cf. P. Ricœur, Zło. Wyzwanie rzucone filozofii i teologii, op. cit., p. 27.

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come because it is succeeded by reconciliation on a “higher level”. But have we not once more reconstructed the extreme optimism of theodicy? “What fate is reserved for the suffering of victims in a vision of the world in which pantragism is constantly recovered in panlogism?”.14 This vision is supported by something that Ricœur calls the “symbol of the end”, namely a symbol representing the eschatological victory over evil at the end of days. The lament arising from the suffering of one man cannot be justified in light of a higher order and future reconciliation. As a consequence, suffering withdraws from the system. One reply to Hegel’s panlogism, which of course is unacceptable, is the work of Barth, especially his distinctive theology which Ricœur described as “broken dialectic”.15 We should abandon the idea of a systemic whole, but maintain the effort to think through the mystery of evil as such. The use of the adjective “broken” has the intention of demonstrating that Barth’s theology assigns to evil a reality irreconcilable with the goodness of God and the goodness of creation. One should point to the paradox of the annihilation of God in Jesus as a model for this attitude. If God struggles against the nothingness of evil and suffering, then we in a certain sense become party to that struggle. Since evil has been conquered in the passion and death of Christ, then we have to believe that it will not annihilate us either. If Barth admits the dilemma at the root of theodicy, then he rejects the logic of non-contradiction and systemic totality governing all the rulings of theodicy. All of these statements should thus be interpreted according to the Kierkegaardian logic of paradox, with any trace of reconciliation removed from its enigmatic formulas. But is this still not an attempt to subject evil to reasoning, even if the reasoning involved is paradoxical? If ethical or theodicean thinking is insufficient, are we helpless against the phenomenon of evil? Do we have to stop at the level of myth and symbol? It seems that through his criticism Ricœur wishes to demonstrate that evil cannot become a mere theoretical or speculative dilemma, but is a problem that requires the concord of thinking, acting and the spiritual transformation of feelings.16 Any attempt to interpret the evil that is based solely on the thinking, it is usually an attempt to master the whole of reality. Evil should elicit a response in the form of a specific course of action as well as the right kind of wisdomoriented thinking. Wisdom will in such a case consist in my admission of the insurmountable aporia of evil and suffering.

14 Ibid., p. 28. [Transl. - quoted from P. Ricoeur, Evil. A Challenge to Philosophy and Theology. London/New York: Continuum 2007, p. 56] 15 Cf. ibid., pp. 30-33. 16 Cf. ibid., p. 34.

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Evil however cannot be reduced only to the order of speculative thought; it should likewise be seen as belonging to the order of practice. This conclusion flows from the statement that even if I myself do evil, am its perpetrator and thereby a certain evil in the world is initiated by me, then the most important discovery that should be made regarding evil is that it is always before me, is a challenge to me, is already existent. How should one respond to such evil, how to combat it in practice? Mongin thinks that Ricœur proposes four levels on which such action should be undertaken. These are the political sphere, the memory of victims, the religious solution and wisdom.17 Ricœur views man as a political animal. We cannot live outside the state, and likewise the fight against evil should be supported by political structures. And yet the political response (attempts to bring about political and economic transformations with the aim of producing a social order whereby the possibilities of evil might even parttly be reduced) is nonetheless limited. Man must never cease from constant effort to eliminate evil and suffering through politics and power. But there are great dangers associated with this too, as the French philosopher firmly emphasizes. One has but to recall how often such hopes for a better, wonderful new world turn into utopias. Often political structures themselves are the very source of evil. Moreover the evil rooted in state structures is much more difficult to overcome. It is as it were self-justified and selfauthorized. The boundary between combating evil and inflicting evil in the name of the fight against is a fragile one. The state, for instance, uses so-called “legal violence”.18 This includes the whole penal system at work in every state, and this is not true of totalitarian systems alone. Even the state considered to be the most just, most democratic and liberal appears to us as a synthesis of legality and violence, in other words as a moral authority imposing expectations and a physical authority applying violence.19

This legal character of violence opens the road to illegal and unjustified violence. The existence of injustice, violence and suffering is striking when we look at the whole of human history. One could even venture the conclusion that violence is a kind of driving force of the world. New historical orders were rarely gradual to emerge; rather, they have sprung up out of chaos and violence. Defence against violence on the part of others has provoked heroic actions on the part of whole nations as well as individuals. But does this justify violence as such? There has to be a clear and intransgressible boundary. The state in its structures can never allow it to be crossed and, if it wants to remain a state of 17 Cf. O. Mongin, Paul Ricœur, Paris 1980, pp. 222-227. 18 P. Ricœur, Podług nadziei, transl. S. Cichowicz, Warsaw 1991, p. 126. 19 Ibid., p. 127.

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justice, must respect it itself. For Ricœur this boundary is very clear: it is the adhortation “Thou shalt not kill”. This commandment is the only place that allows for the co-existence of two ethical systems: the ethics of power and the ethics of love. The only form of penalty that may be said to comply with love for every human being is punishment that does not resort to taking life. Can the state remain itself, i.e. adequately fulfil its tasks, without violating this prohibition? Ricœur thinks it impossible. The state is unable to accommodate itself within the bounds of the interdiction of killing. Yet one should always strive towards making it more just and conducive to the alleviation of suffering. The second plane on which evil may be overcome in practice is the “memory of victims”. Ricœur develops this subject in Temps et récit as well as in one of his final books Memory, History, Forgetting. Questions regarding memory, forgiveness, forgetting come visibly to the foreground in the aftermath of World War II, when we come face to face with the tragedy of the Shoah. Are those who survived capable of remembering those who perished? Is mourning possible? Can one still speak of forgiveness when considering the victims of the Holocaust? Ricœur rightly claims that there are three notions involved here, difficult to describe let alone reconcile: memory, forgetting and forgiveness.20 Our duty and way of overcoming evil and suffering is surely to remember the victims, but not to dwell on and nourish the hate within oneself. To remember is to pay tribute to the victims, but on this other hand this has to be accompanied by a future-oriented gaze. I remember, I cultivate this in my memory to prevent anything like it from happening again. Only thus will memory be a way of overcoming evil. Forgiveness, for its part, is not simply erasing from memory all that has happened in the past for the sake of forgetting and wiping out all traces from our mind, because this is not wholly possible. We need to work towards forgetting, understood only as effacement of that which may cause my negative reaction in the present. Gaining distance with respect to events of the past, and not their obliteration, is the key. Forgiveness is strictly tied in with hope. I forgive you, in other words I believe you can become better, that all is not yet lost. The formula that sums up these three realities in Ricœur’s works is the Christian appeal to love one’s enemies.21 In analyzing this type of love, we first see that evil has been done, due to which fact someone has become my enemy. Love for this individual is not at all to consist in completely forgetting the evil, but rather in a specific act, whereby I do good to the one who inflicts or 20 See P. Ricœur, Pamięć, historia, zapomnienie, transl. J. Margański, Krakow 2006, pp. 652-666. 21 Cf. P. Ricœur, Entre philosophie et théologie I: La «Règle d’Or» en question, in: Lecture 3, op. cit., p. 278.

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has inflicted harm. I shall not erase from memory this evil “suffered” by me on account of another, while the process of forgetting is here related to getting over my attitude towards a particular man: because the enemy is a man like myself, has his dignity, I want to be good to him. I try to forget the attitude that comes over me naturally, to do evil in response to evil. Forgiveness cannot be accomplished without a simultaneous turn towards the future, in the hope that my goodness is capable of unleashing resources of goodness I may not yet have recognized, though they are surely present. The third plane that enables us to assume the right attitude towards evil is related to religion. To religion, the problem of evil is not limited to the problem of its origin; the question posed is that of its end. The religious discourse concerning evil will always be tied in with hope.22 The whole teaching of Jesus revolves around the mystery of the approaching Kingdom of God. Religious thinking differs essentially from the moral interpretation of freedom and evil, as even the question of freedom is reduced in it to hope. To tailor freedom to hope is nothing other than to see one’s whole life in the perspective of Jesus’ resurrection, which in practice comes down to freedom in spite of death, a freedom that chooses itself in spite of all the signs of mortality. Another aspect of the religious solution to evil is seeing evil as done against God.23 For man, this takes the formula of the confession of guilt: “I have sinned against You”. Moreover, the very content of the awareness of evil changes. In moral thinking, it is always subjected to some kind of law, although many religious people see sin only as a violation of specific commandments, or norms of law. But evil should rather be viewed as a consequence of man’s pretension to be the master of his life, independently of God its giver. Ricœur seeks the re-establishment of the proper approach to evil in the interpretation of evil from the perspective of hope. This differs from the moralist’s approach. Man’s motivation in his choices does not in this case consist in fear of Divine anger, but in the continual discovery of the insufficiency of his love.24 Finally, the last attitude towards evil relates to wisdom and consists in the fact, amongst other things, that evil should be experienced emotionally.25 It is wisdom’s task to alter the quality of our lament and plaint that are the natural reaction to evil suffered and inflicted. Ricœur describes a possible process of

22 23 24 25

Cf. P. Ricœur, Le conflit des interprétations, op. cit., p. 427. Cf. ibid., p. 428. Cf. P. Ricœur, Podług nadziei, op. cit., p. 235. Cf. P. Ricœur, Zło. Wyzwanie rzucone filozofii i teologii, op. cit., pp. 36-39.

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“spiritualizing” our lament, and the “incarnation” of this attitude is of course the character of Job.26 The first, lowest stage of imbuing our plaint with wisdom consists in stating: I do not know why this is happening. The world is ruled by chance, such is the nature of things. In the second phase, the lament of the man stricken with evil turns into complaint against God, but this complaint does not amount to cursing Him. Rather, it smacks of impatience: how long will I have to suffer this? In the third phase the religious man discovers that the reasons why we believe in God have nothing to do with the need to explain the source of suffering (…) thus, we believe God in spite of evil.27

Reducing evil to an affective category is extremely helpful, because it allows for the expression of the gravest, radical and inexplicable evil.28 Such evil provokes a legitimate outcry and can never become the sort of evil we shall begin to tolerate. What is the goal of this “spiritualization” of lament, of our emotional reaction to evil? The horizon towards which the wisdom-oriented attitude strives is the avowal of what constitutes the most frequent reason for our suffering, namely our desires.29 One would have to abandon the desire to be rewarded for virtue, to be spared by suffering, to abandon even wishful thoughts of immortality. What this ultimately leads to is having to love God for nothing, and this, finally, amounts to breaking out of thinking in terms of retribution and morality.30 For Ricœur an attitude towards evil of this sort could become a bridge towards inter-religious dialogue (especially in the dialogue with Buddhism, which strives to eliminate desires born of our self). What Ricœur’s critique of theodicy shows is above all the insufficiency of “easy theodicy”. Evil and suffering will remain a mystery, an enigma, that even in religion does not find a full (satisfying) explanation. Man’s essential attitude can be summed up as that of overcoming evil encountered, even though it is very difficult, or even impossible to rationalize its origins. What is more, the impossibility of formulating an adequate theodicy does not give the French philosopher reason to adopt an atheist attitude, which is what often happens in these cases. Humility with respect to reality, the admission that under certain circumstances reality surpasses man’s cognitive abilities, are not signs of weakness, but 26 27 28 29 30

Cf. ibid., p. 37. Ibid., pp. 37-38. Cf. E. Mukoid, Filozofia zła. Nabert, Marcel, Ricœur, Krakow 1999, pp. 144-145. Cf. P. Ricœur, Skandal zła, „Znak”, (1990)12, p. 54. Cf. B. Vergely, Le silence de Dieu. Face aux malheurs du monde, Paris 2006, pp. 260261.

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indicate a highly reasonable attitude that accepts the bounds of human reason. Reason like this, seeking truth on the one hand, and conscious of its limitations on the other, is perhaps what modern culture needs.

Bibliography: Filek J., Filozofia jako etyka, Krakow 2001 Kowalczyk S., Filozofia Boga, Lublin 1997 Mongin O., Paul Ricœur, Paris 1980 Mukoid E., Filozofia zła. Nabert, Marcel, Ricœur, Krakow 1999 Ricœur P., Le conflit des interprétations, Paris 1969 Ricœur P., Lecture 3. Aux frontières de la philosophie, Paris 1994 Ricœur P., Pamięć, historia, zapomnienie, transl. J. Margański, Krakow 2006 Ricœur P., Podług nadziei, transl. S. Cichowicz, Warsaw 1991 Ricœur P., Skandal zła, "Znak”, (1990)12 Ricœur P., Zło. Wyzwanie rzucone filozofii i teologii, transl. E. Burska, Warsaw 1992 Vergely B., Le silence de Dieu. Face aux malheurs du monde, Paris 2006

Biographies of the authors Jarosław Babiński, born in 1974, Pelplin, Poland, catholic priest, Ph. D. assistant profesor at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski in Warsaw. Author of books and scientific articles on the theology, dogmatic and philosophy: Man theological in writings of Bishop John Bernard Szlaga, (Polish version, Pelplin 2007), Ir-Religion, (Polish version, Pelplin 2010), Physics in the service of eschatology, “Ateneum Kapłańskie”, (no 1, 2007), Modern ideological and messianic theology, “Homo Dei” (no 3, 2007), Transcendence in the physical sciences?, “Ateneum Kapłańskie”, (no. 1, 2008), Hermeneutics in terms of Odo Marquard, “Studia z filozofii Boga, religii I człowieka”, (no. 5, 2009), God is dead - Allah is alive, „Studia Oecumenica”, (no. 11, 2011), Problem of ecology in teaching of John Paul II, „Studia Gdańskie”, (no 30, 2012). Deals with the influence of contemporary philosophical trends challenging the cultural heritage of the Christian, methodology issues in dogmatic theology and Christian dialogue with Islam. Maciej Bała – born in 1966 in Torun, Poland, professor of philosophy, Vicedean of the Department of Christian Philosophy at the University of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski in Warsaw, a mountain climber. He is head of the Department of Philosophy of God and Religion at the University of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski in Warsaw. He belongs to the Société Francophone de Philosophie de la Religion, Pomeranian Society of Philosophy and Theology, Philosophy Teachers Association. He published several books on philosophy and encyclopedia entries: Philosophy in the exercises (1998), Letters from the Bible (2001), I can not help but wonder (Polish version, 2003), Dialogues of Jerusalem (2004), The possibility of hermeneutical philosophy of religion. Proposition of Paul Ricoeur (2007), I can not help but wonder ... Introduction to Philosophy (English version, 2008); Love wisdom. Outline of teaching philosophy and ethics (2009), and over 50 scientific articles. His research work deals: French philosophy of religion, hermeneutics, contemporary critics of religion, teaching philosophy. Jacek Grzybowski – born in 1973, in Wołomin, Poland; catholic priest, Ph.D., assistant professor at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski in Warsaw and a lecturer at the Papal Faculty of Theology, author of books and scientific articles on the history of philosophy and political philosophy: Sword and pastoral stuff. Universal philosophical dispute about the

156

Biographies of the authors

nature of power (Polish version, Warsaw 2006); Jacques Maritain and a new Christian civilization (Polish version, Warsaw 2007); Theatrum Mundi. Cosmology and theology of Dante Alighieri (polish version, Warsaw 2009) and scientific articles: Civilization and the creative role of religion in terms of Arnold Toynbeego „Collectanea Theologica” (nr 4, 2008); Culture and metaphysics. The Thomistic inspirations of Jacques Maritain’s philosophy, in: Some Questions of Classical Philosophy, edited by: J. Krokos, P. Mazanka (English version, Warszawa 2008); Religious language in the discourse of affairs - the certificate of appropriation language changes or semantic? in: Religious discourse in the media, (Polish version, Tarnów 2010); The God of Abraham – The God of Derridda? in: Phenomenology and Religion (Polish version, Warsaw 2011). Author of entries in Universal Encyclopedia of Philosophy (published by the Polish Thomas Aquinas Association, a section of the Societa Internazionale Tommaso d'Aquino). In his works takes the issue of philosophical inspirations and contemporary sources of political, cultural and civilizational questions. Jan Sochoń – born in 1953 in Wasilkow, Poland; catholic priest, professor of philosophy, poet, literature critic and essayist; biographer and publisher of blessed Jerzy Popiełuszko’s writings. He is managing the Department of the Philosophy of Culture at University of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, giving classes at Higher Metropolitan Clerical Seminar in Warszawa. He is constantly cooperating with offices of various journals and the Polish Radio. He belongs to the Association of Polish Writers, P.E.N. - Club, the Polish Society of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Polish Philosophical Society and other scientific societies. He has published many books on philosophy, editorial works, literary texts and encyclopedia entries: The dispute over the understanding of the world. Study of the historical-hermeneutic (Polish version, Warsaw 1998); God and Language (Polish version, Warsaw 2000); The life that pleases God (Polish version, Warsaw 1999); Father Jerzy Popiełuszko (Polish version, Cracow 2001); Paul Ricoeu’s Critique of Theodical Thinking, in: Between Suspicion and Sympathy: Paul Ricoeur’s Unstable Equilibrum, ed. Andrzej Wierciński, The Hermeneutic Press, (English version, Toronto 2003); Husserl’s “God”, in: Between Description and Interpretation: The Hermrneutic Turn in Phenomenology, ed. Andrzej Wierciński, The Hermeneutic Press, (English version, Toronto 2005); We see only signs. About the Christian faith (Polish version, Cracow 2011), Religion in the postmodern culture (Polish version, Lublin 2012) and over 400 articles and publications. In his research work deals with the philosophy of culture, metaphysical influences of civilization, influence of the philosophy on social phenomena.

Biographies of the authors

157

Joana Skurzak – born 1985 in Warsaw, Poland; graduate of philosophy, faculty of Christian Philosophy, University of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski in Warsaw, pre-doctoral studies in Chair of Philosophy of God and Religion, also a student of roman philology at the University of Warsaw. Defended an MA thesis in 2010 based on Liturgy as religious experience in J-Y Lacoste's philosophy. Own studies revolve mostly around french philosophy of religion, didactic method in philosophy, philosophical anthropology, especially the problems of corporeality. Sławomir Szczyrba – born in 1955 in Lodz, Poland; catholic priest, professor of philosophy and theologian. Employed as an assistant professor, Department of Philosophy of God and Religion at the University of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski in Warsaw, he teaches at the Higher Metropolitan Clerical Seminary in Lodz. He belongs to the Scientific Society of the Catholic University of Lublin, Polish Society of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Polish Philosophical Society. Scholarship holder of International Academy of Philosophy in Liechtenstein. Co-founder and a longtime leading editor of „Łódzkie Studia Teologiczne”. Author of more than 100 articles in books and Polish scientific journals such as: „Roczniki Filozoficzne”, „Roczniki Kulturoznawcze” „Ethos”, „Studia Philosophiae Christianae”, „Ruch Filozoficzny”, „Więź”, „Łódzkie Studia Teologiczne”, author of entries in Universal Encyclopedia of Philosophy (published by the Polish Thomas Aquinas Association, a section of the Societa Internazionale Tommaso d'Aquino). He published books: The affirmation of God and the moral life in terms of Jerzego Mirewicza SJ (Polish version 1994); The problem of the relation of religious. (in philosophy to Martin Buber, Polish version 2009). In his research work deals with the philosophy of God and man, Jewish philosophy, philosophical interpretation of faith and religion.

Index of the names Altermatt U., 12 Anastasius, 85 Anaximenes, 39, 111 Arendt H., 69 Aristotle, 7, 18, 23, 24, 25, 28, 31, 34, 40, 42, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 55, 56, 119 Armstrong K., 119, 134 Aumann J., 128, 134 Babiński J., 137 Bach J. S., 77 Bacon F., 141 Badiou A., 120, 134 Bała M., 86, 96, 99, 155, 165 Barcik J., 82, 97 Barker E., 122, 134 Barth K., 158 Bartlett R., 9 Bauman Z., 121, 134 Bayle P., 155 Beethoven L., 77 Bejze B., 76 Benniard M., 9 Berger P. L., 123, 134 Bernard Ch. A., 109, 116 Berschin W., 10 Besnard A.- M., 125 Bloechl J., 78 Bradley D., 125, 134 Breuer S., 147, 152 Bromand J., 142, 152 Buber M., 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76 Buczyńska-Garewicz H., 70, 76 Bultmann R., 95 Burdach K., 72 Burkard F.-P., 137, 152 Burkert W., 26, 34, 38, 55 Burszta W. J., 38, 55 Campbell C., 122 Cantor N. F., 11 Capelle Ph., 78, 80, 82, 96 Casanova J., 123, 134 Cassirer E., 141, 143, 144, 145, 148, 151 Castro F., 121 Caswell C. P., 45, 55 Chávez H., 120

Chilon, 30 Chrétien J.-L., 78, 80, 81, 82 Cicero M. T., 141, 152 Coffy R., 99, 116 Comblin J., 123, 134 Comte-Sponville A., 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110, 111, 112, 114, 115, 116, 117, 125 Copleston F., 39, 55 Cournarie L., 97 Crary J., 119, 134 Cupitt D., 115, 117 Davies N., 9 Dawkins R., 101 Dawson Ch., 8 Dąbska I., 40, 55 Delsol Ch., 23, 33, 34, 134 Descartes R., 120 Dębińska-Siury D., 8 Diagoras, 27 Diels H., 43, 55 Diggins J. P., 120, 134 Dioceses, 9 Dobbelaere K., 124, 134 Dodds E. R., 39, 55 Domański J., 8 Dreyer L., 55 Dupond P., 97 Dupré J., 101 Eilstein H., 117 Eliade M., 38, 55 Eliot T. S., 122, 123, 134 Elzenberg H., 109 Euhemerus of Messina, 27 Euvé F., 101 Evans G. R., 11 Falque E., 78, 79, 80, 82, 84, 86, 89, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96 Ferry L., 130, 134 Feuerbach L., 100, 107 Filek J., 163 Fileka J., 155 Fiore J., 123 Flasch K., 147, 152 Fontaine P., 114 Freud Z., 107

Index of the names Fromm E., 77, 96 Gadacz T., 74, 85, 96, 128 Geyer P., 153 Gigon O., 40, 55 Gill M. L., 48, 55 Gilson E., 99, 117 Giotto di Bondone, 33 Giussani L., 66, 76 Gogacz M., 52 Gondek P., 135 Gregory the Great, 90 Greisch J., 81, 85, 88, 90, 91, 96, 97 Greshake G., 124, 130 Grzybowski J., 6, 10, 37, 165 Guardini R., 75 Guthrie W. K. C., 40, 55 Hadot P., 40, 55 Halecki O., 6 Halík T., 11 Hamilton E., 44, 55 Hansen M. H., 26, 34 Hegel G. W. F., 85, 141, 158 Heidegger M., 19, 78, 79, 81, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 89, 91, 92 Henry M., 78 Heraclitus, 25, 42, 43 Hervieu-Léger D., 121, 122, 135 Heschel A. J., 60, 61, 62, 76 Hesiod, 18, 127 Hogrebe W., 142, 152 Homer, 18, 43, 44, 55 Horkheimer M., 147, 152 Hoye W. J., 58, 59, 76 Husserl E., 80, 81, 97 Huzarek T., 60 Ingarden R., 20, 35 Jaeger W., 7, 8, 39, 45, 54, 55 Janicaud D., 80, 81, 97 Jaskóła J., 24, 35 Jaspers K., 112 Jonkers P., 81 Jung K. G., 125 Jüngel E., 89 Jünke C., 153 Kant I., 32, 100, 120, 145, 157 Kenny A., 42 Kerényi K., 26, 35, 37, 55 Kiereś H., 145 Kierkegaard S. A., 79

159

Kłoczowski J. A., 74, 94, 97, 108, 109, 117 Kobierzycki T., 44, 55 Konersmann R., 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153 Kostrubiec B., 132 Kowalczyk D., 63, 76 Kowalczyk S., 137, 152, 155, 163 Krämer H. J., 42, 55 Kranz F., 43, 55 Kraut R., 49, 55 Krąpiec M. A., 63, 76, 140, 152 Krokiewicz A., 55 Kubalica T., 32, 35 Kubok D., 40, 55 Kuderowicz Z., 152 Kurdziel Wł., 122 Lacoste J.-Y., 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96 Lash N., 129, 132, 135 Le Goff J., 9 Leclerc J., 128 Lecointre G., 101 Legowicz J., 30, 34 Leśniak K., 27, 35, 49 Lévinas E., 80, 81, 85 Lord A. B., 22, 35 Lubac H., 83, 94, 99, 117 Luckmann T., 122, 135 Lucretius Carus T., 27, 35 Ludolf of Saxony, 131 Luhmann N., 122, 135 Lüthe R., 137, 153 Łyczkowska K., 30, 35 Maj J., 78, 97 Marcel G., 112 Mariański J., 129 Marion J.-Y., 78, 79, 80, 81, 82 Maritain J., 7, 8, 11, 165 Marx K., 100 Maryniarczyk A., 120, 135 Mazurkiewicz P., 11, 44, 45, 55 McCrea R., 122, 135 McGinn B., 128 Mech K., 101, 117 Meletos, 26 Merleau-Ponty M., 80 Metz J. B., 126, 135

160

Index of the names

Meyendorff J., 128 Michalik J., 137, 152 Milerski B., 74, 128 Mongin O., 159, 163 Montaigne M. de, 100 Morgan K. A., 40, 56 Moskal P., 59, 68, 74, 76 Mozart W. A., 77 Możdżyński P., 132 Mrówka K., 43, 56 Mukoid E., 162, 163 Narecki K., 7 Neusch M., 99, 117 Nietzsche F., 100, 107, 115 Noras A. J., 32, 35 Orth E. W., 137, 153 Osborne C., 39, 56 Otto R., 110, 117 Parmenides, 19, 39 Pasierb J. St., 16, 17, 18, 35 Pauka M., 10 Pawłowski K., 26, 35 Pellegrin P., 48, 55 Perret W., 137 Pickstock C., 22, 35 Pieniąsz-Skrzypczak A., 10 Pietro di Cristofero Vannucci, 33 Plantinga A., 106, 117 Plato, 22, 26, 28, 33, 35, 40, 41, 45, 48, 49, 50, 56 Polkinghorne J. C., 120, 135 Posacki A., 119, 135 Possenti V., 11, 120 Ptaszek R. T., 133 Pysiak J., 10 Ratzinger J., 13, 66, 76 Reale G., 42, 49, 56 Reinhard W., 131, 135 Renan E., 132, 135 Renaut A., 119, 135 Rickert H. J., 32 Ricœur P., 64, 76, 80, 86, 87, 106, 114, 117, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 165, 166 Rimbaud A., 16 Rosińska Z., 137, 152 Rousseau J.-J., 141, 142, 143, 153 Roy O., 137, 153 Rushd I., 132

Rybicki P., 47 Sajdek W., 11 Sandywell B., 39, 56 Sareło Z., 75 Sartre J.-P., 80 Schleiermacher D. E. F., 83 Scholem G., 60 Schrijvers J., 78 Semper G., 143 Sęp-Szarzyński M., 16 Simmel G., 141, 143, 151 Skarga B., 18, 20, 33, 35 Skurzak J., 77, 166 Sloterdijk P., 43, 44, 46, 56 Snell B., 38, 56 Sochoń J., 7, 15, 27, 30, 35, 99, 115, 117, 119, 125, 129, 166 Socrates, 26, 40, 61, 100, 131 Solon, 30 Spaemann R., 142, 153 St. Anselm, 102 St. Augustine, 119, 157 St. Benedict, 90 St. Bonaventure, 93 St. Thomas Aquinas, 33, 57, 58, 59, 60, 76, 95, 102, 127, 135 Stępień A. B., 57, 65, 68, 70, 76 Stępień K., 135 Strauss L., 51, 56 Stróżewski W., 37, 56 Swieżawski S., 17, 32, 35 Szacki J., 133 Szczyrba S., 57, 66, 68, 75, 76, 166 Szlezák T. A., 42, 56 Tallez J., 116, 117 Tarnowski K., 82, 112, 113, 117 Tazbir J., 12 Tertulian Q. S. F., 85 Thales of Miletus, 111 Theodore of Cyrene, 27, 100 Tillich P., 112, 113, 117 Torrell J.-P., 59, 76 Toynbee A. J., 54, 56 Vandenbroucke F., 129 Vattimo G., 120 Vergely B., 163 Vernant J.-P., 25, 35, 38, 39, 41, 42, 48, 56 Veyne P., 54, 56 Vico G. B., 141, 142, 143, 153

Index of the names Voegelin E., 46, 48, 49, 50, 56 Vries H. De, 97 Weigel G., 8 Welker K. E., 66, 76 Welte B., 114, 117 Welten R., 81 Werthman M. S., 11 Wielgus S., 9 Willaime J.-P., 122, 135

Windelband W., 32 Wittgenstein L., 109 Wojtyła K., 66, 76 Woźniak J. W., 133 Zdybicka Z. J., 77 Zeiser R., 153 Zieliński T., 44 Życiński J., 12

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European Studies in Theology, Philosophy and History of Religions Edited by Bartosz Adamczewski

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