The Religious Sense

by Giussani, Luigi; Zucchi, John

• ISBN13: 9780773516267
• ISBN10: 0773516263
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-10-01
• Publisher: McGill Queens Univ

Summary

Giussani challenges us to penetrate the deepest levels of experience to discover our essential selves, breaking through the layers of opinions and judgments that have obscured our true needs. Asserting that all the tools necessary for self-discovery are inherent within us, he focuses primarily on reason, not as narrowly defined by modern philosophers, but as an openness to existence, a capacity to comprehend and affirm reality in all of its dimensions. Part of the so-called new religious revival, The Religious Sense avoids any sentimental or irrational reduction of the religious experience. It is a forthright and refreshing call to reassess our lives.

Table of Contents

Foreword	ix	(2)
Jean Bethke Elshtain
Introduction	xi	(4)
J. Francis Stafford
Preface	xv
1 The First Premise: Realism	3	(9)
Our Subject	3	(1)
The Method of Research Is Imposed by the Object: A Reflection on One's Own Experience	4	(2)
Experience Implies an Evaluation	6	(1)
Criterion for the Evaluation	6	(1)
Elementary Experience	7	(2)
Man, the Ultimate Judge?	9	(1)
Ascesis for Liberation	10	(2)
2 The Second Premise: Reasonableness	12	(11)
Reasonableness: A Structural Requirement of Man	12	(2)
Reductive Use of Reason	14	(2)
Diversity of Procedures	16	(1)
A Particularly Important Procedure	17	(4)
An Application of the Method of Moral Certainty: Faith	21	(2)
3 The Third Premise: The Impact of Morality on the Dynamic of Knowing	23	(11)
Reason Inseparable from the Unity of the "I"	23	(1)
Reason Bound to Feeling	24	(2)
The Hypothesis of Reason Without Interference	26	(1)
An Existential Question and a Question of Method	27	(1)
Another Point of View	27	(3)
The Morality of Knowing	30	(2)
Preconception	32	(2)
4 The Religious Sense: The Starting Point	34	(11)
Premise	34	(1)
How to Proceed	34	(1)
The "I"-in-Action	35	(1)
Involvement with Life	36	(1)
Aspects of the Involvement	37	(3)
A Double Reality	40	(2)
Corollary	41	(1)
The Materialistic Reduction	42	(3)
5 The Religious Sense: Its Nature	45	(14)
Premise	45	(1)
The Level of Certain Questions	45	(1)
At the Core of Our Being	46	(1)
The Need for a Total Answer	47	(1)
Disproportion Before the Total Answer	48	(1)
Structural Disproportion	49	(2)
Sadness	51	(2)
The Nature of the "I" as Promise	53	(2)
The Religious Sense as a Dimension	55	(2)
Conclusion	57	(2)
6 Unreasonable Positions Before the Ultimate Question: Emptying the Question	59	(11)
Premise	59	(1)
The Theoretical Denial of the Questions	59	(3)
The Voluntaristic Substitution of Questions	62	(2)
Personal Praxis	62	(1)
Utopianism	63	(1)
The Social Project	64	(1)
The Practical Denial of the Questions	64	(6)
7 Unreasonable Positions Before the Ultimate Question: Reduction of the Question	70	(10)
The Aesthetic or Sentimental Evasion	70	(2)
The Desperate Negation	72	(4)
The Impossible Aspiration ("The Impotent Hope")	73	(1)
Reality as Illusion	74	(1)
Nothingness as Essence	75	(1)
Alienation	76	(4)
8 Consequences of the Unreasonable Positions Before the Ultimate Question	80	(14)
The Break with the Past	80	(3)
Incommunicativeness and Solitude	83	(4)
Loss of Freedom	87	(7)
9 Preconception, Ideology, Rationality, and the Religious Sense	94	(6)
Preconceptions: Clarifications	94	(1)
Ideology	95	(2)
Reason	97	(1)
The Religious Sense and Rationality	98	(2)
10 How the Ultimate Questions Arise: The Way of the Religious Sense	100	(10)
Awe of the "Presence"	100	(3)
The Cosmos	103	(1)
"Providential" Reality	104	(1)
The Dependent "I"	105	(2)
The Law of the Heart	107	(1)
Conclusion	108	(2)
11 The Experience of the Sign	110	(10)
Provocation	110	(1)
The Sign	111	(1)
Irrational Denial	112	(1)
Life as Need	113	(2)
You, the Supreme Sign	115	(1)
The Discovery of Reason	116	(2)
Openings	118	(2)
12 The Adventure of Interpretation	120	(5)
The Factor of Freedom Before the Ultimate Enigma	121	(2)
The World as Parable	123	(2)
13 An Education in Freedom	125	(7)
Education in Freedom as Responsibility	125	(1)
An Education in Learning How to Ask	126	(2)
The Experience of Risk	128	(4)
14 Reason's Energy Seeks to Penetrate the Unknown	132	(9)
Reason's Driving Force	132	(2)
A Vertiginious Position	134	(1)
Reason's Impatience	135	(1)
A Distorting Point of View	135	(2)
Idols	137	(1)
A Consequence	138	(1)
Dynamics of the Identification of the Idol	138	(1)
Conclusion	139	(2)
15 The Hypothesis of Revelation: Conditions for Its Acceptability	141	(6)
Notes	147	(8)
Subject Index	155	(8)
Author Index	163	(2)
Permissions	165