Israel, witness of the historicity of our faith

Just learned that the Pontifica Università Lateranense has a "Cattedra per la Teologia del Popolo di Dio". The Cattedra / PUL is organizing a convegno: "Un'Alleanza mai revocata: Nostra Aetate - il lungo cammino dal Lateranense IV al Vaticano II. 1215 - 1965 - 2015," Monday, 9 Nov 2015. Pity I am not there. The Israeli Ambassador to the Holy See will be intervening, with Michael P. Maier of the PUG and Achim Buckenmaier of the PUL.

Just yesterday, in the reading, Paul was saying: I would willingly be cut off from Christ if that could in some way be good for my people, the Jewish people (Rom 9,1-5). I found that very passionate, very strong. Paul, for whom Christ was everything, is willing to give up this most precious thing if it could help his brothers of Israel, his own flesh and blood.

And F. Rossi de Gasperis: the people of Israel are a living testimony of the historical dimension of our faith in Jesus. "La mia fede mi immette in una storia. Ogni tentativio di ridurla a qualche altra dimensione, più o meno verticale, ideologica, filosofica o univocamente esistenziale, la fa morire di asfissia. Lo so, l'ho sperimentato, l'ho capito bene, ormai. E non finirò di ringraziare Israele per essere, di questa storicità, un testimone vindice, un martire irreducibile. / Che cosa avremmo fatto, e non faremmo, noi, cristiani della gentilità e gnostici irriducibili, di questa storicità della nostra fede, se Israele non avesse continuato e non continuasse a esistere di fatto? ..." (Sentieri di Vita: La dinamica degli Esercizi ignaziani nell'itinerario delle Scritture. 2.1. Seconda Settimana. Prima Parte [Milano: Paoline Editoriale Libri, 2006] 38)  

Refugee crisis

To Mark Ulysses' email of 31.10.2015, sending me the 4 volumes of Live Encounters Dec 2015 issue celebrating 6 years: 

wow, that's quite some work.

sorry i did not get back to you re the guest editorial. there was nothing brewing in my mind. the issue of the refugee crisis is complex. one thing is the humanitarian angle; the other is the practicality, the possible reactions (already these seem to be forming), and so on. how to be loving as well as wise. how to be fraternal as well as practical. 

i keep thinking of the invasion of parts of north east india by people coming in from Bangladesh; in a couple of years citizenship is obtained, and elective power passes on to the immigrants, giving rise to violent situations or else the dominance that is also structurally violent, the "minorization" of people in thier own land. i keep wondering what Pope Francis would think of that, what Jesus would think of that. 

it is not the same situation here in Europe, but potentially it also goes that way. 

part of the way for humanity is somehow to solve problems at their roots. which means calling into question the whole world order, the economic system, the political systems...

did you know that the Vatican some years ago, in a low level document, called for the establishing of some sort of world authority? if airlines can get their act together, for time zones and things, so, it argued, could we get our act together in the economic field. i think it was Cardinal Turkson who issued that document. 

once again, congratulations for the great work, and a prayer.

Ivo

Edith Stein, joy and gift

Heidegger-Stein, la gioia contro l’angoscia

Pier Luigi Fornari. 5 March 2014. http://www.avvenire.it/Cultura/Pagine/heideggere-stein-la-giogia-contro-angoscia.aspx

Il convegno / L’Antropologia filosofica di Edith
Si apre giovedì 6 marzo alla Lateranense, con un saluto del rettore, il vescovo Enrico dal Covolo, il convegno internazionale sulla antropologia filosofica di Edith Stein. Introdurrà il prorettore Patrick Valdrini, che presiederà la prima sezione nella quale Angela Ales Bello tratterà delle "radici husserliane dell’antropologia filosofica della Stein". Hanna Barbara Gerl Falkovitz, rintraccerà la concezione dell’esistenza come dono nell’opera di Santa Teresa Benedetta della Croce. Venerdì Hans Reiner Sepp (Università di Praga) terrà una relazione sul tema della persona, e Jean-François Lavigne (Nizza) sull’intenzionalità e l’essenza dello spirito. Nel pomeriggio Antonio Calcagno, (University College di Londra) analizzerà l’evoluzione del concetto di comunità nell’opera della Stein, e Daniela Verducci (Macerata) la metterà a confronto con quella di Max Scheler. Presiederanno rispettivamente le 3 sezioni del 7 marzo: Ulrich Dobhan Ocd, direttore dell’Edith Stein Jahrbuch, Gianfranco Basti, decano di filosofia della Pul, Jacinta Turolo Garcia Ascj (San Paolo in Brasile), e Luisa Avitabile (Cassino). Concluderà i lavori la Ales Bello. Il convegno corona una serie di lezioni tenute da Ales Bello, Nicoletta Ghigi, Anna Maria Pezzella. 

Gioia versus angoscia. Chi volesse semplificare al massimo il confronto tra Edith Stein e Martin Heidegger potrebbe trovare in questa opposizione un’immagine efficace della diversità del loro pensiero. Una rappresentazione che stride evidentemente con la conclusione tragica della vita terrena di santa Teresa Benedetta della Croce e il successo incontrastato (incontrastato perfino dal dibattito sulla qualità e l’importanza del suo coinvolgimento nel nazismo) di cui il filosofo della Foresta Nera ha goduto e sembra godere anche in università e circoli culturali cattolici. 

Purtroppo poco meditata e studiata è l’intensa interlocuzione filosofica che la fenomenologa di origine ebraica ha intrattenuto con l’autore di Essere e tempo: grande attenzione al suo pensiero, concordanze, ma soprattutto lucidissima critica. La Stein, tra l’altro, rimprovera a Heidegger di mitizzare il nulla [mythologische Redeweise] «come se si parlasse di una persona da aiutare una a ottenere una volta per tutte un diritto negato da sempre». 

E ancora gli imputa di aver concepito la temporalità e la finitezza dell’uomo come «catenaccio», per una sorta di suo «risentimento» anticristiano [antichristlicher Affekt], motivato forse dalla volontà di cancellare la fede che aveva ereditato.

Oltremodo opportuno, dunque, per approfondire questi e altri attualissimi temi, il convegno che prende l’avvio domani a Roma, alla Lateranense, sull’antropologia filosofica di Edith Stein, con la partecipazione di esperti di primo piano a livello mondiale. Ad aprire e concludere il convegno sarà Angela Ales Bello, iniziatrice e guida in Italia degli studi sulla santa filosofa, e ora direttrice dell’Area internazionale di Ricerca Edith Stein nella filosofia contemporanea, attivata da un anno dalla Lateranense. Proprio in tema di rapporti con Heidegger, la relazione di Hanna Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz, illustrerà come la filosofia della Stein non abbia nulla da invidiare alla suggestiva meditazione di Jean Luc Marion sul "dono". 

Proprio un’analisi fenomenologica dell’essere umano, nella sua finitezza e nella sua temporalità, invece, come argomenta la studiosa tedesca, consente alla Stein di elevare il pensiero a un Essere Eterno. «Questa apertura della riflessione – osserva la Gerl – porta la Stein oltre il pensiero dell’essere di Tommaso, oltre quello dell’Io di Hussserl a quello di Agostino sulla relazione: in essa si rivela il carattere di dono dell’esistenza, e in risposta, l’abbandono a una Persona Eterna e l’accoglienza attraverso una Persona eterna». 
Si apre così una "breccia" nell’ontologia: dal concetto di essere a quello più ricco di Persona. Pur nella finitezza umana, conclude la docente della Hochschule filosofico-teologica dell’Austria citando la Stein, «il conoscere amare e servire, e la santa gioia nel conoscere, amare e servire, è al contempo un ricevere e accettare, è libero dono di sé a questa vita donata».

È in gioco dunque una visione antropologica, tema oggi quanto mai strategico nella salvaguardia dell’umano e delle sue istituzioni fondamentali, come il matrimonio e la famiglia. Su questo terreno, significativamente, può essere individuato uno spartiacque tra Edmund Husserl e la Stein, da una parte; e Heidegger, dall’altra, come dimostrano gli studi della Ales Bello. Seppur l’iniziatore della fenomenologia e il suo assistente si scambino reciprocamente accuse di "antropologismo" ricorda la fenomenologa italiana, di fatto Husserl si colloca nel solco della antropologia di San Paolo: l’uomo è corpo, anima e spirito. «Una concezione assolutamente insufficiente», replicherà Heidegger, bocciando tutto l’orientamento dell’antropologia greco-cristiana, che ha coniugato la definizione dell’essere umano come animale razionale con l’essere e l’essenza di ordine teologico.

«È stata comunque la Stein – sottolinea la ex decana di filosofia della Lateranense – a contribuire in modo determinante alla nascita della antropologia filosofica, ancora sconosciuta negli anni ’30, e a conferire alla disciplina questo nome». La fenomenologa che Giovanni Paolo II volle patrona d’Europa, supera, integrandola, l’antropologia concepita come scienza della natura, e studia l’essere umano in quanto essere spirituale. «Non basta perciò – aggiunge la Ales Bello –, riferirsi alle cosiddette scienze dello spirito, ad esempio la storia, il diritto, le quali non sono altro che prodotti dell’attività spirituale, ma è necessario esaminare che cosa sia lo spirito, all’interno della complessa stratificazione dell’essere umano». 

Non a caso nelle prime pagine della Struttura della persona umana, testo preso in esame nel primo anno di vita dell’area internazionale di ricerca sulla Stein, la filosofa avverte che è impossibile fare opera pedagogica se l’uomo è concepito solo come «un essere gettato di fronte al nulla» (Heidegger) o come un fascio di istinti (psicologia del profondo). «Ci si deve domandare che senso possa avere una chiamata a una esistenza che viene dal nulla e va verso il nulla», osserva la Stein, avversando l’idea che un educatore possa farsi difensore di questa chiamata presso i giovani. Osservazioni probabilmente dettate anche dal clima che stava montando in Germania in quei giorni. Una ragione in più, per la Stein, per fondare l’azione educativa sulla metafisica cristiana. Un altro terreno di contrasto con Heidegger, che liquidava una filosofia che assumesse una tale qualifica come «ferro ligneo».

Husserl's edifying death

EDITH STEIN AND THE TRUTH ABOUT HUSSERL

[a loose and free translation of Pier Luigi Fornari, "Edith Stein e la verità su Husserl," Avvenire 26 July 2015, p. 19]

In the easy way in which Italian papers contain items about philosophers, Pier Luigi Fornari has a little article in the Avvenire of Sunday, 26 July 2015 entitled “Edith Stein and the Truth about Husserl.” In contrast to what some say, it would appear that Husserl died a peaceful and edifying death.

It is a providential ‘lapsus’ on the part of Maurizio Ferraris that helps us discover the profound spiritual exchange between Edith Stein and her master Edmund Husserl. In his essay, “Ontologia ansiosa,” Ferraris tells us about the last dramatic days of Jacques Derrida, and in this context he mentions a letter of Husserl to Stein.

In point of fact, we are dealing not with a letter of Husserl to Stein, but with a conversation between the founder of phenomenology and Sr Adelgundis Jaegerschmid who was assisting him during the last years of his life. (The conversation itself was published in a famous German journal along with other dialogues with Husserl.) “I had no idea that it would be so difficult to die,” Husserl confesses. “And yet I have tried hard, all my life, to get rid of all futility! Now that I have arrived at the end, and everything is finished for me, I know that I have to begin all over again.”

Ferraris’ source, which is Derrida’s Il problema della genesi nella filosofia di Husserl, correctly attributes the phrase to the report by the Benedictine nun. But the philosopher of deconstruction mistakenly interprets these words as evidence of the human failure of Husserl, because of “an objectivist or idealist checkmate.”

Instead, if one goes further into Jaegerschmid’s account, one realizes that the true last words of Husserl indicate a victory rather than a defeat. Husserl’s agony began on Holy Thursday, 14 April and ended on 26 April 1938, extending over the weeks before and after Easter. Sr Adelgundis’ long account begins in 1931 and shows how Husserl slowly drew near to a faith that was intensely lived and not merely thought. On 14 April we find him still determined to maintain the neutral position of a thinker: “I have lived as a philosopher, I want to try to die as a philosopher.” Then things begin to change, in dialogue with the religious sister and nurse: “Is it possible to die well?” he asks. “Yes, and in deep peace,” responds the sister. “But how?” Husserl persists. “In God,” comes the response.

Later, at the end of a reflection on Psalm 22 (“You are my shepherd”) that the sister recited aloud, Husserl makes a request: “Now you must pray for me.” Towards 9.00 p.m. on Holy Thursday he says to his wife: “God has received me into his grace, and has allowed me to die.” From that moment he did not speak any more of his philosophical work and he appeared relieved. When he awoke the next morning he said: “Today is Holy Friday, what a marvellous day. Yes, Christ has forgiven everything.” Then he passed thorugh moments of anguish and of pain, but his struggle ended luminously. He said to the sister-nurse: “I have seen something marvellous: quick, write!” But when the nurse returned with a notebook, Husserl was dead.

We have a confirmation of this account by Husserl’s wife Malvine, who converted to Catholicism in 1941. The testimony is reported by Karl Schuhmann, the most rigour biographer of Husserl. Malvine recounts that for her husband, “the night of his death was like a revelation of the most profound mysteries of existence. Wonder, reverence, emotion, a presentiment of a wonderfully great reality, all these awakened in him, together with a feeling almost of happiness. There were no tears, he did not show any sign of bitter suffering. He lay in complete peace, his face becoming more and more beautiful, no wrinkle on his bright skin, his breath ever more peaceful. And when the nurse bent over him and said, ‘Proficere anima christiana,’ he breathed his last, barely perceptible breath. ‘He died like a saint,’ the Sister said in tears.”

It seems that Edith Stein has nothing to do with all this. But instead she does. She was following the final suffering of her master from her Carmelite monastery in Cologne, where she was preparing for her final vows, which she professed on 21 April. In a letter written a few days after the death of Husserl she said about a letter from Malvine: “The events of this week seem to me a real gift on the occasion of my profession. I was earnestly hoping that Husserl would pass to eternal life during this week, in the same way that my mother passed away exactly at the moment when we were renewing our vows. Not that I have great faith in my prayers or in my ‘merits’. I am only convinced that God does not call anyone for his own sake and that, besides, when he is happy with the offering of a soul, he is prodigal with the signs of his love.”

What Edith Stein had always thought about the sincerity and honesty of her master’s search for truth had actually come to pass: “The man who really searches for truth lives at the very heart of his intellectual quest. If he really aims at truth (and not merely at a collection of particular notions), he is perhaps closer to God than he himself suspects.”

Why do I keep discovering such things? In Jerusalem there was Minh Dang who told me about the little (or big) tricks that Heidegger had played with the work of Husserl and Stein. And now this.

Add to it the fact that Heidegger himself had that very ambiguous funeral. But certainly Husserl, if we are to go by the above, is clearer, far clearer – and more peaceful, in death as in life. That he passed his last agony in Holy Week; that his pupil and then Carmelite nun and later martyr Edith Stein should be praying her serene prayer for him; that he should be assisted by a Catholic nun and that his wife should later become Catholic.

And that I should discover that Stein’s godmother was a Protestant, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, herself a disciple of Husserl’s, and who wrote books that should be one of the driving inspirations in the thought of Joseph Ratzinger on person and community.

Edith Stein, and Gift

Edith Stein has a meditation on gift that is equal to and perhaps surpasses that of Jean-Luc Marion. Pier Luigi Fornari reporting about a convention on Stein held in the Lateran University in March 2014:

Ad aprire e concludere il convegno sarà Angela Ales Bello, iniziatrice e guida in Italia degli studi sulla santa filosofa, e ora direttrice dell’Area internazionale di Ricerca Edith Stein nella filosofia contemporanea, attivata da un anno dalla Lateranense. Proprio in tema di rapporti con Heidegger, la relazione di Hanna Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz, illustrerà come la filosofia della Stein non abbia nulla da invidiare alla suggestiva meditazione di Jean Luc Marion sul "dono". 

"Heidegger-Stein, la gioia contro l’angoscia"

Pier Luigi Fornari. 5 March 2014. http://www.avvenire.it/Cultura/Pagine/heideggere-stein-la-giogia-contro-angoscia.aspx

Jesus, humanity, the cultures and the religions

Given our faith that Christ is not only the historical Jesus, but also at the same time the Lord who will come again, the process of the Christian Fact is not finished with the original event, even if it received from this event its definitive and permanent norms. If we were to move closer to the conceptions developed by the Greek Fathers, in their attempt to reach a global understanding of the Christian Fact, we could say that the process of the Incarnation, of the assimilation of the human on the part of the divine manifested in Christ, began in him, but did not end with him. Yet again, in other words, borrowing modern categories, we could express the same thing by saying that the encounter of humanity, starting with Jesus of Nazareth, continues as long as there are human beings; it is only in the course of this encounter that it can develop itself in all its possibilities. (J. Ratzinger, Il problema della storia dei dogmi nella teologia cattolica, Natura e compito della teologia: Il teologo nella disputa contemporanea Storia e dogma [Milano: Jaca Book, 1993] 118-119)

Earlier versions:
Das Problem des Dogmengeschichte in der Sicht der katholischen Theologie (Koln-Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1966).
"Il problema della storia dei dogma nella teologia cattolica," Storia e Dogma (Milano: Jaca Book, 1971) 11-34.

The highlighted text is extremely interesting for its world-ecumenical implications. If the assertion is true, then the encounter of humanity with Jesus continues in every religion, in every age, in every culture. And only in the course of this encounter can it develop and unfold in all its possibilities. 

Hermeneutics

From Sathish Thiagarajan, 8 July 2015:

Dear Fr.,

I know you are busy! I got your hermeneutics notes… 

I am choosing to treat you as my professor and so willingly disturb you, as a student. 

I am reading on hermeneutics these days. 

I got an article by Jean Grondin. I am attaching it with this mail. 

I get the development of the hermeneutical concern from Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger (hermeneutics of existence), Gadamer (hermeneutics (original problem with Heideggerian insights) language and tradition)! 

What is the problem of Habermas against Gadamer? Is Habermas unable to accept the necessity of language and tradition as the path to understanding? Is Gadamer losing hope in the possibility of systematically moving towards a fusion overcoming prejudice etc.. (Lonergan’s method of interpretation)

What does Habermas mean when he speaks of the possibility of ’self-transcendence’ of language? (does he mean to say that there is a way out… and is critical of the pessimism of Gadamer?) So does Habermas agree with Lonergan’s project? (I am sure they might not have seen each other or agree to each other in person. But I am asking conceptually.)

Grondin seems ignorant of Lonergan’s project in Insight and MIT. He switches to postmodernists and then projects Ricoeur as sorting out the problem between Gadamer and Habermas! 

What is ‘hermeneutics of trust’ and 'hermeneutics of suspicion’? I get something… but it is ambiguous. 

Gianni Vattimo (nihilism) and Rorty (pragmatism) make a renewed commitment to relativism as the choiceless option given the impossibility of reaching Truth of a given text or reality (combination Gadamer-Heidegger-Nietzsche-Postmodern concerns)! Finally, Grondin concludes with the Derridian suspicion of every hermeneutic project (good will of the reader to understand the other) as also stripping the other of its otherness? 

All along i see all these french, Italian, american, and german philosophers, suspicious of any attempts towards resolving the problem? I understand the depth of the hermeneutical problem raised by them… but don’t we have a way out? In our daily life, their problematisation has helped us to be cautious, sensitive in our judgements, humble about our opinions, etc. Is that only the fruit of this pursuit? 

These are some of my questions. 

Thank you!

Love,

Sathish.

Tuesday, 14 July 2015:

Dear Sathish,

What a lot of questions! 

I need to refresh myself by reading at least my own notes, but just now I cannot do that. 

from what i remember: 

Habermas feels that Gadamer allows tradition to overwhelm him. Gadamer feels this is an unjustified criticism. In fact, I am not sure that Habermas has any way out of this impasse. Gadamer has some way, which is perhaps the way discovered by Heidegger (the question is not jumping out of the hermeneutical circle, but entering properly into it = becoming aware, to the extent possible, of our situatedness). But Gadamer is more open than Heidegger to the dynamic / dialectic of questioning, and that is his salvation. It is the dialectic of questioning that is one of the ways out. Ricoeur also admits this, affirms this. But I find Lonergan to have given me most clarity on this matter: how questioning is an approach to truth (remember the absence of further relevant questions); the limitations of this approach (and hence the need for a remote criterion, which is authenticity in all its dimensions); how, therefore, our attainment of truth remains fragile in so many cases (except in the most ‘stupid’ ones - not really stupid, but the banal ones, the ones in fact without which we would not be able to live, catch trains, do anything at all…). 

Grondin’s book Introduction to Phil Hermeneutics I found good because of the way it made Heidegger and Gadamer intelligible. surely he has no idea of Lonergan. no one is God, no one can read everything - though people like Heidegger were amazing in what all they read. but then even Heidegger has his limitations, coming from his own background. “Everyone fights with his own demons.” 

Rorty realises our situatedness, and feels there is no way out of it, so he opts for what he calls ethnocentrism. within this kind of option, he still has many brilliant and useful things to say. he also does know the dynamic of questioning, as I try to show in my article on him. the dynamic of questioning is the dynamic of conversation or dialogue, and anyone who appeals to conversation is admitting the dynamic of questioning, and therefore has an approach to truth. you will find Rorty talking about a pragmatic approach, in which everything is conventional. and that to an extent, in the area of ordinary, everyday, commonsense life, is true! it works! that is how in fact we work! His problem is that he then universalises this fact which is valid in the area of common sense. 

About Vattimo I do not know enough. but he also, i am sure, has something from which we can learn. as far as I remember, he is not an out an out relativist. 

about Derrida i know even less, but the remarks i gathered in my notes might be indicative. even the most postmodern thinker is upset when he feels misrepresented. that is interesting for me. and then, I have discovered that there are many varieties of postmodernism. naturally. it is not a dogma, it is not a school. but it looks like everyone has an inbuilt tendency to absolutize what is no doubt true in some limited area of experience. 

so dear Sathish, i do not think there is no way out. I think hermeneutical philosophy and its postmodern daughters have done us a great service by bringing to the centre of our attention our situatedness, our “being already engaged”, the fact that there is no God’s eye view, there is no Hook from which we can Hang, there is no jumping out of our minds. Also that the subject is by no means an isolated cartesian individual something. the deep interconnectedness of subjects, of persons; the priority of the We, of community. the fragility of the community and of subjects and persons within it. but of course it is still groping its way. 

i am sure if I read Derrida i will find much that is fascinating. these are all great men! they have taken the trouble to think.

as for myself, I am happy with the little I have learnt from them. like in the case of faith: not that we have to think our way into it. it is that we have been already Loved, and that we need to take the time out to discover what it is that has happened / is happening to us… and so on. (see the paper I gave in Yercaud for the jubilee). (and also what Pope Francis is saying. worth reading, calmly, Evangelii Gaudium, and even the last chapter of Laudato Si’.)

thanks for that! I think I find philosophy easeir than formation!