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The Religious SenseNew Revised Edition |
eBook Available
A new translation of one of Giussani’s seminal works.
The Religious Sense, the fruit of many years of dialogue with students, is an exploration of the search for meaning in life. Luigi Giussani shows that the nature of reason expresses itself in the ultimate need for truth, goodness, and beauty. These needs constitute the fabric of the religious sense, which is evident in every human being everywhere and in all times. So strong is this sense that it leads one to desire that the answer to life’s mystery might reveal itself in some way.
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. In this revised edition, John Zucchi offers a new translation of this seminal and best-selling work.
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. In this revised edition, John Zucchi offers a new translation of this seminal and best-selling work.
Details
192 Pages, 6 x 9
ISBN 9780228016212
February 2023
Formats: Cloth, Paperback, Paperback, eBook
"I express my personal gratitude for the good it did for me, as a priest, to contemplate some of Fr Giussani’s books … and I do so also as universal Pastor for all that he knew how to sow and spread everywhere for the good of the Church." Pope Francis, address to the members of Communion and Liberation, St Peter’s Square, 15 October 2022
Monsignor Luigi Giussani (1922-2005) was the founder of the Catholic lay movement Communion and Liberation in Italy. His works are available in over twenty languages.
Foreword | ix
Archbishop Christophe Pierre
Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America
Preface | xi
1 The First Premise: Realism | 3
Our Subject | 3
The Method of Research Is Imposed by the Object:
A Reflection on One’s Own Experience | 4
Experience Implies an Evaluation | 6
Criterion for the Evaluation | 6
Elementary Experience | 7
Man, the Ultimate Judge? | 9
Ascesis for Liberation | 11
2 The Second Premise: Reasonableness | 13
Reasonableness: A Structural Requirement of Man | 13
Reductive Use of Reason | 15
Diversity of Procedures | 17
A Particularly Important Procedure | 18
An Application of the Method of Moral Certainty: Faith | 22
3 The Third Premise: The Impact of Morality on the Dynamic of Knowing | 24
Reason Is Inseparable from the Unity of the “I” | 24
Reason Bound to Feeling | 25
The Hypothesis of Reason without Interference | 27
An Existential Question and a Question of Method | 28
Another Point of View | 29
The Morality of Knowing | 31
Preconception | 33
4 the religious sense: the starting point | 35
Premise | 35
How to Proceed | 35
The “I”-in-Action | 36
Involvement with Life | 37
Aspects of the Involvement | 38
A Double Reality | 41
Corollary | 42
The Materialistic Reduction | 43
5 The Religious Sense: Its Nature | 46
Premise | 46
The Level of Certain Questions | 46
At the Core of Our Being | 47
The Need for a Total Answer | 48
Disproportion before the Total Answer | 49
Structural Disproportion | 50
Sadness | 52
The Nature of the “I” as Promise | 54
The Religious Sense as a Dimension | 56
Conclusion | 58
6 Unreasonable Positions Before the Ultimate Question: Emptying the Question | 60
Premise | 60
The Theoretical Denial of the Questions | 60
The Substitution of Questions with Willpower | 63
Personal Praxis | 63
Utopianism | 64
The Social Project | 65
The Practical Denial of the Questions | 65
7 Unreasonable Positions Before the Ultimate Question: Reduction of the Question | 72
The Aesthetic or Sentimental Evasion | 72
The Desperate Negation | 74
The Impossible Aspiration (“The Impotent Hope”) | 75
Reality as Illusion | 76
Nothingness as Essence | 77
Alienation | 78
8 Consequences of the Unreasonable Positions Before the Ultimate Question | 83
The Break with the Past | 83
Incommunicativeness and Solitude | 87
Loss of Freedom | 90
9 Preconception, Ideology, Rationality, and the Religious Sense | 98
Preconceptions: Clarifications | 98
Ideology | 99
Reason | 101
The Religious Sense and Rationality | 103
10 How the Ultimate Questions Arise: The Way of the Religious Sense | 105
Awe of the “Presence” | 105
The Cosmos | 108
“Providential” Reality | 109
The Dependent “I” | 110
The Law of the Heart | 111
Conclusion | 113
11 The Experience of the Sign | 115
Provocation | 115
The Sign | 116
Irrational Denial | 117
Life as Need | 118
You, the Supreme Sign | 120
The Discovery of Reason | 121
Openings | 124
12 The Adventure of Interpretation | 125
The Factor of Freedom before the Ultimate Enigma | 126
The World as Parable | 128
13 An Education in Freedom | 130
Education in Freedom as Responsibility | 130
An Education in Learning How to Ask | 131
The Experience of Risk | 133
14 Reason’s Energy Seeks to Penetrate the Unknown | 138
Reason’s Driving Force | 138
A Vertiginous Position | 140
Reason’s Impatience | 141
A Distorting Point of View | 141
Idols | 143
A Consequence | 144
Dynamics of the Identification of the Idol | 145
Conclusion | 146
15 The Hypothesis of Revelation:
Conditions for its acceptability | 147
Notes | 153
Subject Index | 165
Author Index | 175
Permissions | 177
Archbishop Christophe Pierre
Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America
Preface | xi
1 The First Premise: Realism | 3
Our Subject | 3
The Method of Research Is Imposed by the Object:
A Reflection on One’s Own Experience | 4
Experience Implies an Evaluation | 6
Criterion for the Evaluation | 6
Elementary Experience | 7
Man, the Ultimate Judge? | 9
Ascesis for Liberation | 11
2 The Second Premise: Reasonableness | 13
Reasonableness: A Structural Requirement of Man | 13
Reductive Use of Reason | 15
Diversity of Procedures | 17
A Particularly Important Procedure | 18
An Application of the Method of Moral Certainty: Faith | 22
3 The Third Premise: The Impact of Morality on the Dynamic of Knowing | 24
Reason Is Inseparable from the Unity of the “I” | 24
Reason Bound to Feeling | 25
The Hypothesis of Reason without Interference | 27
An Existential Question and a Question of Method | 28
Another Point of View | 29
The Morality of Knowing | 31
Preconception | 33
4 the religious sense: the starting point | 35
Premise | 35
How to Proceed | 35
The “I”-in-Action | 36
Involvement with Life | 37
Aspects of the Involvement | 38
A Double Reality | 41
Corollary | 42
The Materialistic Reduction | 43
5 The Religious Sense: Its Nature | 46
Premise | 46
The Level of Certain Questions | 46
At the Core of Our Being | 47
The Need for a Total Answer | 48
Disproportion before the Total Answer | 49
Structural Disproportion | 50
Sadness | 52
The Nature of the “I” as Promise | 54
The Religious Sense as a Dimension | 56
Conclusion | 58
6 Unreasonable Positions Before the Ultimate Question: Emptying the Question | 60
Premise | 60
The Theoretical Denial of the Questions | 60
The Substitution of Questions with Willpower | 63
Personal Praxis | 63
Utopianism | 64
The Social Project | 65
The Practical Denial of the Questions | 65
7 Unreasonable Positions Before the Ultimate Question: Reduction of the Question | 72
The Aesthetic or Sentimental Evasion | 72
The Desperate Negation | 74
The Impossible Aspiration (“The Impotent Hope”) | 75
Reality as Illusion | 76
Nothingness as Essence | 77
Alienation | 78
8 Consequences of the Unreasonable Positions Before the Ultimate Question | 83
The Break with the Past | 83
Incommunicativeness and Solitude | 87
Loss of Freedom | 90
9 Preconception, Ideology, Rationality, and the Religious Sense | 98
Preconceptions: Clarifications | 98
Ideology | 99
Reason | 101
The Religious Sense and Rationality | 103
10 How the Ultimate Questions Arise: The Way of the Religious Sense | 105
Awe of the “Presence” | 105
The Cosmos | 108
“Providential” Reality | 109
The Dependent “I” | 110
The Law of the Heart | 111
Conclusion | 113
11 The Experience of the Sign | 115
Provocation | 115
The Sign | 116
Irrational Denial | 117
Life as Need | 118
You, the Supreme Sign | 120
The Discovery of Reason | 121
Openings | 124
12 The Adventure of Interpretation | 125
The Factor of Freedom before the Ultimate Enigma | 126
The World as Parable | 128
13 An Education in Freedom | 130
Education in Freedom as Responsibility | 130
An Education in Learning How to Ask | 131
The Experience of Risk | 133
14 Reason’s Energy Seeks to Penetrate the Unknown | 138
Reason’s Driving Force | 138
A Vertiginous Position | 140
Reason’s Impatience | 141
A Distorting Point of View | 141
Idols | 143
A Consequence | 144
Dynamics of the Identification of the Idol | 145
Conclusion | 146
15 The Hypothesis of Revelation:
Conditions for its acceptability | 147
Notes | 153
Subject Index | 165
Author Index | 175
Permissions | 177
