Islam ed Ermeneutica

«Il mondo dell’Islam se ha tradotto, e ha enormemente tradotto, (…) non ha però conservato gli originali. (…)La conseguenza di questa scomparsa dei testi originali e della negligenza delle lingue originali è che il mondo musulmano non è potuto ritornare su ciò che traduceva e approfondirne l’esame (…). Facendo ciò il mondo islamizzato ha reso impossibile il fenomeno delle "rinascenze", cioè del ricorso ai testi originali contro le tradizioni che vi hanno fatto appello. Nel mondo europeo, la presenza degli originali rende possibile un costante processo in appello. Le scuole di pensiero possono affrontarsi con più o meno asprezza.Ma allora dibattono sulle stesse fonti. Le "rinascenze" non sono altro che la contestazione attraverso una nuova lettura di una lettura antica di uno stesso corpus di testi». Così Rémi Brague in «Il futuro dell’Occidente» (Bompiani editore): un libro senza la cui lettura non si dovrebbe neppure poter cominciare a parlare di Europa.

da Calendario di Ernesto Galli della Loggia corriere.it

Rosary ロザリオ

from: Catholic Spirituality Thomas Howard An excerpt from The Night Is Far Spent: A Treasury of Thomas Howard
http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/thoward_cathspirit2_mar07.asp

Let me see if I can help you see at least the reason Catholics appreciate the Rosary. First, we all know how terribly difficult it is to fix our minds in Christian meditation. If you have attempted it yourself, you know that your worst enemy is wandering thoughts. You also know that you very quickly run out of things to say when you are pondering one of the Gospel mysteries (and surely if one is a serious Christian one will have as part of one's daily exercises just such meditating and pondering). The Rosary supplies us with a way of tarrying [remain ndr] (that is the key word, actually) in a systematic and progressive way, in the presence of all the great events of our salvation, in the company of the one who was most receptive to the Lord, namely, the Virgin Mary, who said, you will remember, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it done unto me according to Thy word." Alas--that is what you and I, in our father Adam and our mother Eve did not say in Eden; and it is one way of summing up this whole process of growth in the Christian life we have embarked on. If only I can learn, increasingly, to say, from my heart, "Be it done unto me according to Thy word."
The Rosary presents us with fifteen of the Gospel events--the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and so forth-and, by giving us a sort of refrain to murmur as we place ourselves in conspectu Dei at each scene--the way charismatics will murmur "Jesus! Jesus!" or the way we Evangelicals repeat "Alleluia!" or "Crown him! crown him!" in a hymn--by giving us a quiet refrain to keep on our tongues as we tarry, it helps us to stay in place. The words are like ball bearings, so to speak. They assist our poor scattered faculties to stay in line. And of course, the "Hail Mary" is biblical: we are simply

Public Reason and the Truth of Christianity

Public Reason and the Truth of Christianity
Bishop Crepaldi Examines the Teachings of Benedict XVI
VATICAN CITY, MARCH 10, 2007 (ZENIT.org).
http://www.zenit.org/english/
For Kant, reason has a public use that serves a critical purpose. To illustrate this public use, Kant especially dwells on the rational critique of religion, i.e. the complete freedom of citizens, indeed even the calling, "to impart to the public all of his carefully considered and well-intentioned thoughts concerning mistaken aspects of that symbol, as well as his suggestions for the better arrangement of religious and church matters."[3] [3] Immanuel Kant, "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?," translated by Ted Humphrey in "Immanuel Kant: Perpetual Peace and Other Essays," Hackett, Indianapolis, 1983, pp. 41-46.
Relativism is a philosophy and not a fact, and its foundation would require a different kind of reasoning which, however, is excluded by self-limited reason. This is why relativism can only either be "implicit" -- lived and not justified -- or dogmatically "assumed" -- accepted, for example, by an act of faith. In this sense then, the "dictatorship of relativism" is the necessary conclusion of the "self-limitation" of reason. However, with relativism, the public role of reason fails.
Actually, this self-limitation was already present in Kant's thought. In the above-mentioned 1784 short essay he "pretended" to assign to reason the public role of critiquing even religion, but it was an incautious claim as his vision of reason was already confined to mathematical-experimental knowledge.
For the Gospel of St. John, Jesus is the Logos [which] relates "to that divine presence which can be perceived by the rational analysis of reality … In Christianity, rationality became religion."[12] [12] Joseph Ratzinger, Conference "2000 Years After What?," University of Sorbonne, Paris, Nov. 27, 1999 in "Christianity. The Victory of Intelligence Over the World of Religions," English text in 30 Days, no. 1/2000, pp. 33-44
[11] Many times and in many places Benedict XVI wonders, rhetorically, whether it is more rational to think of a Spirit that creates matter or of matter that creates spirit.
Cardinal Ratzinger points out that St. Paul (Romans 2:14ff) does not say that non-Christians will be saved by following their religion, but by following natural religion. (Joseph Ratzinger, "Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions" cit.. Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2004). [Cf. Letter 95 of Francis Xavier]
The respective roles of state and Church are clear, in their complementary distinction, if we take the example of the so-called reciprocity.
[D]ialogue requires reciprocity without which there is no real dialogue. The problem is this: Who should demand such reciprocity, the Church or to the state? Not the Church, who must be guided by charity and truth. Her only duty toward the faithful of the other religions is to bear witness to the charity and the truth of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, reciprocity should guide the actions of the states that recognize elements of public truth in Christianity, i.e. a fundamental contribution to the common good.
Christianity corresponds to authentic public reason more than other religious confessions
According to the declaration "Dignitatis humanae" of the Second Vatican Council, the right to religious freedom "leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ."[19] Now, from where does the state, which is secular, derive these obligations to the true religion?
Not from being a "Christian" state, but from reason, that is from the natural ability to see truths about man in society, from the ability to understand the common good. This also founds the ability to see that one religion consolidates and helps pursue humanization objectives while another contributes to the degradation of man. Christian religion has this claim, the claim of preaching a "God with a human face."[20] [19] Second Vatican Council, Declaration on religious freedom "Dignitatis humanae," Dec. 7, 1965, No. 1.
[20] Benedict XVI, Address to the Participants in the Fourth National Ecclesial Convention of Verona, Oct. 19, 2006. The Holy Father also mentioned "God with a human face" on Nov. 3, 2006 in the Address at the Gregorian Pontifical University.

Public Reason and the Truth of Christianity

Public Reason and the Truth of Christianity
Bishop Crepaldi Examines the Teachings of Benedict XVI
VATICAN CITY, MARCH 10, 2007 (ZENIT.org).
http://www.zenit.org/english/

For Kant, reason has a public use that serves a critical purpose. To illustrate this public use, Kant especially dwells on the rational critique of religion, i.e. the complete freedom of citizens, indeed even the calling, "to impart to the public all of his carefully considered and well-intentioned thoughts concerning mistaken aspects of that symbol, as well as his suggestions for the better arrangement of religious and church matters."[3]
[3] Immanuel Kant, "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?," translated by Ted Humphrey in "Immanuel Kant: Perpetual Peace and Other Essays," Hackett, Indianapolis, 1983, pp. 41-46.

Relativism is a philosophy and not a fact, and its foundation would require a different kind of reasoning which, however, is excluded by self-limited reason. This is why relativism can only either be "implicit" -- lived and not justified -- or dogmatically "assumed" -- accepted, for example, by an act of faith. In this sense then, the "dictatorship of relativism" is the necessary conclusion of the "self-limitation" of reason. However, with relativism, the public role of reason fails.

Actually, this self-limitation was already present in Kant's thought. In the above-mentioned 1784 short essay he "pretended" to assign to reason the public role of critiquing even religion, but it was an incautious claim as his vision of reason was already confined to mathematical-experimental knowledge.

For the Gospel of St. John, Jesus is the Logos [which] relates "to that divine presence which can be perceived by the rational analysis of reality … In Christianity, rationality became religion."[12] [12] Joseph Ratzinger, Conference "2000 Years After What?," University of Sorbonne, Paris, Nov. 27, 1999 in "Christianity. The Victory of Intelligence Over the World of Religions," English text in 30 Days, no. 1/2000, pp. 33-44

[11] Many times and in many places Benedict XVI wonders, rhetorically, whether it is more rational to think of a Spirit that creates matter or of matter that cre

神無論について

神無論について

「不可知の雲」(The Cloud of Unknowing)はキリスト教の書物であるが、キリスト教をどの程度代表するかを調べなければならない。「不可知の雲」＝キリスト教となれば、これは基礎的論理の誤りとなる（logical　fallacy)。

キャサリン先生は日本語をしゃべる。キャサリン先生はアメリカ人である。従って、アメリカ人は皆日本語をしゃべる。こういうのは悪い三段論法である。

神の人格性を抜きにすれば、「不可知の雲」と仏教的思想は似たものと見える。ひいて、キリスト教と仏教は似たものになるであろうか。

けれども、神の人格性は必要条件であるので、ここも基礎的論理の誤りとなる。私はこの文章をコンピュータで書いている。印刷すれば、昔のタイプライタの文章と似たものになる。けれども、コンピュータには電気がないと動かない。キリスト教も神の人格性を抜きにすればキリスト教でなくなる。

Paleotomismo

Not a neo-thomist but a paleo-thomist

Global warming

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
18/2/2007

Global warming doomsdayers were out and about in a big way recently, but the rain came in Central Queensland and then here in Sydney. January also was unusually cool.

We have been subjected to a lot of nonsense about climate disasters as some zealots have been painting extreme scenarios to frighten us. They claim ocean levels are about to rise spectacularly, that there could be the occasional tsunami as high as an eight story building, the Amazon basin could be destroyed as the ice cap in the Arctic and in Greenland melts.

An overseas magazine called for Nuremberg-style trials for global warming skeptics while a U.S.A. television correspondent compared skeptics to “holocaust deniers”.

A local newspaper editorial’s complaint about the doomsdayers’ religious enthusiasm is unfair to mainstream Christianity. Christians don’t go against reason although we sometimes go beyond it in faith to embrace probabilities. What we were seeing from the doomsdayers was an induced dose of mild hysteria, semi-religious if you like, but dangerously close to superstition.
I am deeply skeptical about man-made catastrophic global warming, but still open to further evidence. I would be surprised if industrial pollution, and carbon emissions, had no ill effect at all. But enough is enough.

A few fixed points might provide some light. We know that enormous climate changes have occurred in world history, e.g. the Ice Ages and Noah’s flood, where human causation could only be negligible. Neither should it be too surprising to learn that the media during the last 100 years has alternated between promoting fears of a coming Ice Age and fear of global warming!
Terrible droughts are not infrequent in Australian history, sometimes lasting seven or eight years, as with the Federation Drought and in the 1930s. One drought lasted fourteen years.
We all know that a cool January does not mean much in the long run, but neither does evidence from a few years only. Scaremongers have used temperature fluctuations in limited periods and places to misrepresent longer patterns.

The evidence on warming is mixed, often exaggerated, but often reassuring. Global warming has been increasing constantly since 1975 at the rate of less than one fifth of a degree centigrade per decade. The concentration of carbon dioxide increased surface temperatures more in winter than in summer and especially in mid and high latitudes over land, while there was a global cooling of the stratosphere.

The East Anglia university climate research unit found that global temperatures did not increase between 1998 – 2005 and a recent NASA satellite found that the Southern Hemisphere has not warmed in the past 25 years. Is mild global warming a Northern phenomenon?

While we might have been alarmed by the sighting of an iceberg off Dunedin as large as an aircraft carrier we should be consoled by the news that the Antarctic is getting colder and the ice is growing there.

The science is more complicated than the propaganda!

http://www.sydney.catholic.org.au/Archbishop/STC/2007/2007218_978.shtml

Sense of sin

Today it is said there is no repentance because the sense of sin has been lost. However, this is not totally true, since the era is characterized by the constant denunciation of sin in the media and in courts.
This means that the sense of sin exists -- but the sense of sin that others commit, the cardinal said.
He said the repentance that saves is that which recognizes one's own errors; to move away from one's faults is to come closer to God as he is the antithesis of evil.
Cardinal Biffi

今日、人々は罪意識をもっていないとよく言われる。けれども、それは完全に正しい見解ではない。なぜなら、我々の時代の特徴の一つとしては、マスコミや裁判において絶えず罪が訴えられるからである。従って、罪意識はあると言える。ただし、それは他人が犯す罪に関してである。ところが、救いに導く罪の悔い改めは、自分の罪に対するのそれである。自分の過ちから離れることは、神に近づくことに等しい。なぜなら、神は悪の正反対であるから。

ビッフィ枢機卿（BOLOGNA教区名誉大司教）、今週教皇ベネディクト16世の四旬節黙想会を指導している。

Malintesi (altro che dialogo !!)

"Le monde ne marche que par le Malentendu.
-- C'est par le Malentendu universel que tout le monde s'accorde.
-- Car si, par malheur, on se comprenait, on ne pourrai jamais s'accorder"

Ch. BAUDELAIRE, Mon coeur mis a nu, XLII, Pleiad, p. 704.


「世界は誤解によってしかうまくいかない。
ー　世界が一致するのは人類普遍の誤解によるのだ。
ー　なぜならもし、不幸にも、理解しあっていたなら、決して一致できないだろうから。」

（ボードレール、Mon coeur mis a nu, XLII, プレイヤッド版、第一巻、704頁）

Semplicita'

"Il segno di Dio e' la semplicita'" (Benedetto XVI, omelia di Natale 2006)

La semplicita' si distingue dalla INGENUITA' e dalla SPROVVEDUTEZZA in quando e' sostenuta dalla PRUDENZA, cioe dalla capacita' di vedere la realta'.

"In un mondo segnato dalla brama di potere, di successo, di affermazione - e a questo non sfugge a volte neanche il mondo ecclesiastico - puo' capitare che la semplicita' sia poco apprezzata, guardata con diffidenza, ritenuta poco funzionale e, infine, anche piu o meno apertamente derisa" (Aldo Basso, Testimoni, 31 gennaio 2007)

La semplicita' "non si cura di quello che fanno o possono fare gli altri...Questa virtu' ha molta affinita' con l'umilta'... E' solo l'amor proprio che ci fa guardare se quanto abbiamo detto e' stato ricevuto bene o male: la santa sem-plicita' invece non sta dietro alle sue parole e azioni; ma ne lascia la cura alla Divina Provvidenza, alla quale e' essenzialmente affidata. Percio' va avanti rettamente per il suo cammino senza guardare ne' a destra ne' a sinistra" (Francesco di Sales, Trattenimenti spirituali, San paolo, Roma, 1941, 217)

"Questo esercizio di abbandono continuo in Dio, nella sua semplicita', comprende eminentemente tutta la perfezione degli altri esercizi: e poiche' la pratica di esso e' gradita a Dio, dobbiamo usarlo di preferenza su tutte le altre pratiche" (Ibidem, 225)

"HOC EST PHILOSOPHIAE CULMEN: SIMPLICEM ESSE CUM PRUDENTIA" (S. Giovanni Crisostomo, citato da Giovanni XXIII nel Giornale dell'anima, pp. 275-276)

-----------------

1. La liturgia esiste per tutti. Dev'essere "cattolica", cioè comunicabile a tutti i credenti, senza distinzione di luogo, di provenienza, di cultura. Dev'essere pertanto "semplice". Ma semplice non significa a buon mercato. C'è la semplicità del banale e c'è la semplicità che è espressione di maturità. Nella Chiesa può tuttavia trattarsi soltanto di quest'ultima, della vera semplicità. La più alta tensione dello spirito, la più alta purificazione, la più alta maturità generano la semplicità autentica. L'esigenza del semplice, a guardare bene, è identica all'esigenza del pulito e del maturo, che si può avere a molti livelli, ma mai a quello della semplicità psichica.

Brani tratti da: Joseph Ratzinger, La festa della fede, Jaca Book, 1983
Fondamento teologico della musica sacraCenni riassuntivi della disputa postconciliare sulla musica sacra
http://www.ratzinger.it/modules.php?name=AvantGo&file=print&sid=223

Brain, mind and hope

Friday, Jan. 19, 2007
The Power of Hope
By Scott Haig M.D.

David's head was literally stuffed with lung cancer. I was called in to take care of his hip and pelvic bones broken by the growing metastases. His seeming nonchalance about the pain and the surgery was clearly out of concern for his beautiful, young family--his wife Carol, a nurse, and his three kids, who were there every night. He couldn't keep up the carefree charade over the next two weeks, though, as his speech slurred, then became incoherent. He stopped speaking, then moving.
I dreaded making rounds on a patient for whom there was no good news, no good plan. When his doctors rescanned his head, there was barely any brain left. The cerebral machine that talked and wondered, winked and sang, the machine that remembered jokes and birthdays and where the big fish hid on hot days, was nearly gone, replaced by lumps of haphazardly growing gray stuff. Gone with that machine seemed David as well. No expression, no response to anything we did to him. As far as I could tell, he was just not there.
It was particularly bad in the room that Friday when I made evening rounds. The family was there, sad, crying faces on all of them. I fussed with the hip a bit. His respirations had become agonal--the gulping kind of breathing movement that immediately precedes death. I knew Carol had seen this and that she knew what it meant. I said something inane and slid out the door fast, looking importantly at the papers in my hand, striving for the nice, empty corridor. But Carol came after me, needing to catch me away from the kids. Her eyes red-rimmed, she asked me where her husband was. I had noticed the cross around her neck. I said I wasn't sure where he was, but I was pretty sure where he was going. She wanted to believe me, and I think she did.
Saturday morning the sun poured in as I checked the room. The bed was at chest height, made up and empty, with clean, fresh sheets over the vinyl mattress. As I turned to leave, I was blocked by a nurse, an older Irish lady with a doleful look on her face. She had taken care of David last night.
"He woke up, you know, doctor--just after you left--and said goodbye to them all. Like I'm talkin' to you right here. Like a miracle. He talked to them and patted them and smiled for about five minutes. Then he went out again, and he passed in the hour." My eyebrows went up.
Two weeks later I saw Carol in the lobby. It was busy and very public. But before her last "God bless you," I couldn't help asking, "Uh. Carol, did ...?"
She knew my question. With a wide, knowing smile, she nodded and said, "Oh, yes, he sure did." And I believed her.
But it wasn't David's brain that woke him up to say goodbye that Friday. His brain had already been destroyed. Tumor metastases don't simply occupy space and press on things, leaving a whole brain. The metastases actually replace tissue. Where that gray stuff grows, the brain is just not there.
What woke my patient that Friday was simply his mind, forcing its way through a broken brain, a father's final act to comfort his family. The mind is a uniquely personal domain of thought, dreams and countless other things, like the will, faith and hope. These fine things are as real as rocks and water but, like the mind, weightless and invisible, maybe even timeless. Material science shies from these things, calling them epiphenomena, programs running on a computer, tunes on a piano. This understanding can't be ignored; not too much seems to get done on earth without a physical brain. But I know this understanding is not complete, either.
I see the mind have its way all the time when physical realities challenge it. In a patient stubbornly working to rehab after surgery, in a child practicing an instrument or struggling to create, a mind or will, clearly separate, hovers under the machinery, forcing it toward a goal. It's wonderful to see, such tangible evidence of that fine thing's power over the mere clumps of particles that, however pretty, will eventually clump differently and vanish.
Neuroanatomy is largely concerned with which spots in the brain do what; which chemicals have which effects at those spots is neurophysiology. Plan on feeding those chemicals to a real person's brain, and you're doing neuropharmacology. Although they are concerned with myriad, complex, amazing things, none of these disciplines seem to find the mind. Somehow it's "smaller" than the tracts, ganglia and nuclei of the brain's gross anatomy--but "bigger" than the cells and molecules of the brain's physiology. We really should have bumped into it on the way down. Yet we have not. Like our own image in still water, however sharp, when we reach to grasp it, it just dissolves.
But many think the mind is only in there--existing somehow in the physical relationship of the brain's physical elements. The physical, say these materialists, is all there is. I fix bones with hardware. As physical as this might be, I cannot be a materialist. I cannot ignore the internal evidence of my own mind. It would be hypocritical. And worse, it would be cowardly to ignore those occasional appearances of the spirits of others--of minds uncloaked, in naked virtue, like David's goodbye.

Dr. Haig is an assistant clinical professor of orthopedic surgery at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons

Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580392,00.html

How language grows (cfr. realism)

The growth of language follows the growth of knowledge and theexpansion of human activities. It is a vast, anonymous process, with manyvariations (in the optional area), many changes, false starts and short-livedattempts. Yet certain basic principles can be observed, demonstrating, notthe arbitrary character, but the objectivity of that process. … [A] wordsurvives and gains general usage only when and if it designates an actualcategory …. Many slang terms are coined every year, by one group oranother; some of them become fashionable, enjoy a brief, artificialpopularity of random mouthing … and vanish, like the stale debris ofsome noisy party. But a few slang expressions survive and become part offormal language – the apt, incisive ones that designate some aspect ofreality for which no formal term had previously existed …


Ayn Rand. 1997. Journals of Ayn Rand. Ed. David Harriman. New York: Penguin. pp. 691-2.

Luoghi comuni per muovere le masse

Victor Hugo: “Ogni pensatore che vorrà diventare oratore, ogni uomo di spirito e di cuore che vorrà diventare ed essere eloquente, muovere le masse, dominare le assemblee, agitare gli imperi con la sua parola, non avrà da fare nient’altro che passare dalla regione delle idee al territorio dei luoghi comuni”.


雄弁家になりたい思想家、雄弁術を通して大衆を動かしたい、集会を支配したい、言葉で天下を動揺させたい精神豊かな人、心のある人だれでも、思想の国から常套句の領域に移動すれば十分である。
ヴィクトル・ユーゴー

Perche' Tommaso

“Con lungimirante saggezza, san Tommaso d’Aquino riuscì ad instaurare un confronto fruttuoso con il pensiero arabo ed ebraico del suo tempo, sì da essere considerato un maestro sempre attuale di dialogo con altre culture e religioni. Egli seppe presentare quella mirabile sintesi cristiana tra ragione e fede che per la civiltà occidentale rappresenta un patrimonio prezioso, a cui attingere anche oggi per dialogare efficacemente con le grandi tradizioni culturali e religiose dell’est e del sud del mondo”.

Angelus papale di domenica 28 gennaio

Ricerca e Scoperta della Verita'

in the "Message to Men of Thought and Science" we read: "Continue your search without tiring and without ever despairing of the truth", and this, in fact, is the great danger: losing interest in the truth and seeking only action, efficiency and pragmatism! "Recall the words of one of your great friends, St Augustine: "Let us seek with the desire to find, and find with the desire to seek still more'. Happy are those who, while possessing the truth, search more earnestly for it in order to renew it, deepen it and transmit it to others. Happy also are those who, not having found it, are working toward it with a sincere heart. May they seek the light of tomorrow with the light of today until they reach the fullness of light".
SOLEMNITY OF THE EPIPHANY
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
Vatican BasilicaSaturday, 6 January 2007

Filosofia della musica

La musica parla dell'universo in una lingua che ancora non si conosce ma è compresa da chiunque.

Claude Lévi–Strauss, “fra tutti i linguaggi, solo la musica riunisce i caratteri contraddittori d’essere a un tempo intelligibile e intraducibile (…) il suo privilegio consiste nel saper dire quello che non può esser detto in nessun altro modo”.

Più di ogni altro, è Vladimir Jankélévitch a sostenere con appassionata eloquenza la funzione simbolica della musica, intesa da Paulus come la “capacità di rappresentare l’assente”.

Scrive Tieck:“La musica opera il miracolo di toccare in noi il nucleo più segreto, il punto di radicamento di tutti i ricordi (…) simili a semi stregati, i suoni prendono radici in noi con una rapidità magica (…) in un batter d’occhio percepiamo il mormorio di un boschetto di fiori meravigliosi”.

Anche se la musica ha perciò una struttura simile al linguaggio risulta che non ha nè denotazione nè lessico e di conseguenza la musica non è traducibile in altri linguaggi, in quanto un sistema simbolico essenzialmente non-verbale. Infine la musica non si assoggetta autonomamente alle regole dei modelli di comunicazione come trasmissione di messaggi perché non dispone della facoltà di riferirsi agli oggetti extramusicali.
Ma tale nozione ci potrebbe condurre a pensare che la musica non ha alcun significato, così come se ad un linguaggio mancasse la semantica.

La musica parla una lingua che non conosciamo nella vita quotidiana, che abbiamo imparato non sappiamo dove e come, e che si vorrebbe definire soltanto lingua degli angeli.Wackenroder/Tieck, Phantasien über die Kunst, II, 2

大阪教区の問題

In fondo la strategia è vecchia. Una minoranza che si ritiene illuminata si assume con determinazione il compito di trainare una maggioranza che si ostina a non pensarla come lei. A questo punto, mobilitando mass media e opinion leader, semplicemente parlando di più e più forte, si cerca di convincere la maggioranza di essere minoranza, o almeno di non avere argomenti validi, ammutolendola.

Perche' Tommaso oggi + INTERCULTURALITY vs INCULTURATION

In maniera molto sommaria, diremo soltanto che l’unità relazionale tra razionalità e fede, alla quale S. Tommaso d’Aquino aveva dato una forma sistematica, è stata progressivamente sempre più lacerata attraverso le grandi tappe del pensiero moderno, da Cartesio a Vico a Kant, mentre la nuova sintesi tra ragione e fede tentata da Hegel non restituisce realmente alla fede la sua dignità razionale, ma tende piuttosto a convertirla completamente in ragione, eliminandola come fede.

Il passo successivo, che ha come figure emblematiche Marx e Comte, rovescia la posizione di Hegel, che riduceva la materia allo spirito, riducendo invece lo spirito alla materia – con l’esclusione della possibilità stessa di un Dio trascendente – e facendo di nuovo venir meno, in linea di principio, una “metafisica” distinta dalla “fisica”.

Contestualmente ha luogo una trasformazione del concetto di verità, che cessa di essere conoscenza della realtà esistente indipendentemente da noi per divenire conoscenza di ciò che noi stessi abbiamo compiuto nella storia, e poi di ciò che noi possiamo realizzare mediante le scienze empiriche e le tecnologie (concetto “funzionale” della ragione e della verità).



Il concetto chiave a cui egli ricorre è quello di incontro delle culture, o “interculturalità”, differente sia dall’inculturazione, che sembra presupporre una fede culturalmente spoglia che si traspone in diverse culture religiosamente indifferenti, sia dalla multiculturalità, come semplice coesistenza – auspicabilmente pacifica – di culture tra loro diverse.

L’interculturalità “appartiene alla forma originaria del cristianesimo” e implica sia un atteggiamento positivo verso le altre culture, e verso le religioni che ne costituiscono l’anima, sia quell’opera di purificazione e quel “taglio coraggioso” che sono indispensabili per ogni cultura, se vuole davvero incontrare Cristo, e che diventano per essa “maturazione e risanamento” (cfr “Fede”, pp. 66 e 89, il discorso di Verona e in particolare il dialogo del 19 gennaio 2004 tra J. Ratzinger e J. Habermas, pubblicato in “Etica, religione e stato liberale”, edito in Italia da Morcelliana 2005).

Così proprio il cristianesimo può aiutare l’Occidente ad annodare i fili di quel nuovo e positivo incontro con le altre culture e religioni di cui oggi il mondo ha estremo bisogno, ma che non può costruirsi sulla base di un radicale secolarismo.
Egli dedica grande attenzione al rapporto della fede con la ragione e alla rivendicazione di verità del cristianesimo.

Fa questo però in un modo che non è affatto razionalistico. Al contrario, egli ritiene che sia fallito il tentativo della neoscolastica di voler dimostrare la verità delle premesse della fede (i “praeambula fidei”) mediante una ragione rigorosamente indipendente dalla fede stessa e che siano destinati a fallire altri eventuali tentativi analoghi, come d’altra parte è fallito il tentativo opposto di K. Barth di presentare la fede come un puro paradosso, che può sussistere soltanto in totale indipendenza dalla ragione (cfr “Fede”, pp. 141-142).

da:
Al cuore dell’insegnamento di Benedetto XVI: Proporre la verità salvifica di Gesù Cristo alla ragione del nostro tempo
di Camillo Ruini

Auguri di Natale 2006

“Vieni di notte,
ma nel nostro cuore è sempre notte:
e dunque vieni sempre, Signore.

Vieni in silenzio,
noi non sappiamo più cosa dirci:
e dunque vieni sempre, Signore.

Vieni in solitudine,
ma ognuno di noi è sempre più solo:
e dunque vieni sempre, Signore

Vieni, figlio della pace,
noi ignoriamo cosa sia la pace:
e dunque vieni sempre, Signore.

Vieni a liberarci,
noi siamo sempre più schiavi:
e dunque vieni sempre, Signore

Vieni a consolarci,
noi siamo sempre più tristi:
e dunque vieni sempre, Signore

Vieni a cercarci,
noi siamo sempre più perduti:
e dunque vieni sempre, Signore

Vieni tu che ci ami:
nessuno è in comunione col fratello
se prima non è con te, Signore

Noi siamo tutti lontani, smarriti,
né sappiamo chi siamo, cosa vogliamo.
Vieni, Signore.Vieni sempre, Signore"

(David Maria Turoldo, Lettera di Natale, Vicenza, 1999)


"You come at night
but in our heart is always night:
therefore come always o Lord.

You come in silence
we don't know anymore what to say to each other:
therefore come always o Lord.

You come alone
but each one of us is evermore lonely:
therefore come always o Lord.

Come Son of Peace
we don't know what peace is:
therefore come always o Lord.

Come to free us
we are evermore slaves:
therefore come always o Lord.

Come to comfort us
we are feeling evermore sad:
therefore come always o Lord.

Come to find us
we are evermore lost:
therefore come always o Lord.

Come you that love us
none of us can communicate with his brother
if first he is not with you.

We are all far apart, we lost our way,
we don't know who we are and what we want.
Come o Lord.
Come always o Lord."

(from: D. M. Turoldo, Lettera di Natale, Vicenza, 1999)


「あなたは夜に来ます
私たちの心のうちはいつも夜です。
ですから、主よ、いつも来てください。

あなたは静かに来ます
私たちはお互いに何を言えばいいのか分からなくなった。
ですから、主よ、いつも来てください。

あなたは寂しいところに来ます。
私たち一人一人はますます寂しく感じます。
ですから、主よ、いつも来てください。

来てください、平和の子よ。
私たちは平和とは何か知らないのです。
ですから、主よ、いつも来てください。

私たちに自由を与えに来てください。
私たちはますます奴隷になっています。
ですから、主よ、いつも来てください。

私たちを慰めに来てください。
私たちはますます悲しくなっています。
ですから、主よ、いつも来てください。

私たちを探しに来てください。
私たちはますます迷子になっています。
ですから、主よ、いつも来てください。

私たちを愛するあなた、来てください。
まずあなたと一緒でなければ、
誰も兄弟姉妹と交わることはできない。

私たちは遠くに行ってしまって、迷っている。
何をしたいのか、私たちは誰であるのか分からなくなった。
主よ、来てください！主よ、いつも来てください。

（D・M・トゥロルド）

What is a Classic? T.S. Eliot

/maturity
/balance between monotony and eccentricity
/universality


Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot 930.4 E5 3