... to desire God's presence includes then the historical task of charity and justice
without end. By participating in this history, one can become a gift--part of the
movement by which the Good creatively overflows. Love of God is then
experienced as co-incident with love of all. [...] For to seek God is to devote oneself
to others and vice versa (Philosophy Between Faith and Theology: Addresses to
Catholic Intellectuals, (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005),
153).
The transcendence of Desire directs us form the outset toward a Meaning that,
neither high nor low, is the mystery concealed in all the highs and lows that we
experience. The Sought gives itself to be 'known' because it wants to be 'in' and 'with'
and 'as' everything given, without giving up the gratuitous freedom of its giving. To
enjoy without greedily annihilating the givenness of the given is to be thankful. The
'Nothing' that jars us from all our apparent security and the 'All' that fulfills us are
provisional names for the Inexpressible that escapes all names, without however
dissolving into anonymity. We recover from an all-too-known (commercial, judicial,
fatherly, motherly) God through strong doses of atheism, but secularization is not
more than a halfway measure, only an introduction to the search (Reason in Faith:
On the Relevance of Christian Spirituality for Philosophy, (New York: Paulist Press,
1999), 48).
Within philosophy, religious faith has no authority; in this sense, philosophy does
not rely on religion, but its autonomous (re)construction of the relations between the
universe and God grows out of the historical reality of religion. Philosophy of
religion is the attempt to clarify the phenomenon of religion so that its reasonability
comes to light (Ibid., 76).
This passion has a history: a history of responding and experimentation. Human life
is touched, moved, affected by phenomena which invite appropriate responses. Life
itself demands a responsive and responsible self to live it in an appropriate--i.e.,
authentic, correctly corresponding--way. This demand cannot be fulfilled without
the trial and error of the self's adjustments to its life-fulling task. The experiment of
life is the ongoing practice of the self's responsive attempts to cope with the reality
of its being on earth. Experience, empeiria, is the general name for all the modes of
being involved in affections and affective responses by which the self is constantly
transformed. If its orientation is good--which presupposes a turn from
inauthenticity to authentic responsivity--the transformation makes the self better
and wiser. This enables us to feel, behave, and speak accurately in response to the
phenomena of life and world. Speaking to or about them must do justice to their
appearance and touch them in what they truly are, even if they blind or paralyze the
self's experience (Ibid., 110-11).
Purification of the ways in which we let ourselves be affected, and--more
primordially--purification of our being turned to the various levels and instances of
phenomenality, are necessary conditions for thinking in accordance with reality
(Ibid., 112).
As a community of faith, Christian life permits and demands a plurality of
intellectual unfoldings that cannot be leveled to the unity of one theory or
methodology (The Quest for Meaning: Friends of Wisdom from Plato to Levinas,
(New York: Fordham University Press, 2003), 22).
Freedom is primarily the possibility of pro-hairesis [Aristotle's word often
translated as choice]: taking advantage of an opportunity for being good or bad;
dedication or devotion of one's self to a demand, a task, a way of life (Elements of
Ethics, (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2004), 189).
Freedom or liberty is thus discovered as a (transcendental) condition of our being
called to appropriate responses (Ibid., 197).
Life, love, death, evil, being, and so forth cannot be captured in the patterns of a
crystal clear language or thought. Obscurity is here quite appropriate. In such cases,
the demand for transparency expresses a desire that cannot be fulfilled except by
distortions of the truth (Modern Freedom: Hegel's Legal, Moral, and Political
Philosophy, (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001), 39).
without end. By participating in this history, one can become a gift--part of the
movement by which the Good creatively overflows. Love of God is then
experienced as co-incident with love of all. [...] For to seek God is to devote oneself
to others and vice versa (Philosophy Between Faith and Theology: Addresses to
Catholic Intellectuals, (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005),
153).
The transcendence of Desire directs us form the outset toward a Meaning that,
neither high nor low, is the mystery concealed in all the highs and lows that we
experience. The Sought gives itself to be 'known' because it wants to be 'in' and 'with'
and 'as' everything given, without giving up the gratuitous freedom of its giving. To
enjoy without greedily annihilating the givenness of the given is to be thankful. The
'Nothing' that jars us from all our apparent security and the 'All' that fulfills us are
provisional names for the Inexpressible that escapes all names, without however
dissolving into anonymity. We recover from an all-too-known (commercial, judicial,
fatherly, motherly) God through strong doses of atheism, but secularization is not
more than a halfway measure, only an introduction to the search (Reason in Faith:
On the Relevance of Christian Spirituality for Philosophy, (New York: Paulist Press,
1999), 48).
Within philosophy, religious faith has no authority; in this sense, philosophy does
not rely on religion, but its autonomous (re)construction of the relations between the
universe and God grows out of the historical reality of religion. Philosophy of
religion is the attempt to clarify the phenomenon of religion so that its reasonability
comes to light (Ibid., 76).
This passion has a history: a history of responding and experimentation. Human life
is touched, moved, affected by phenomena which invite appropriate responses. Life
itself demands a responsive and responsible self to live it in an appropriate--i.e.,
authentic, correctly corresponding--way. This demand cannot be fulfilled without
the trial and error of the self's adjustments to its life-fulling task. The experiment of
life is the ongoing practice of the self's responsive attempts to cope with the reality
of its being on earth. Experience, empeiria, is the general name for all the modes of
being involved in affections and affective responses by which the self is constantly
transformed. If its orientation is good--which presupposes a turn from
inauthenticity to authentic responsivity--the transformation makes the self better
and wiser. This enables us to feel, behave, and speak accurately in response to the
phenomena of life and world. Speaking to or about them must do justice to their
appearance and touch them in what they truly are, even if they blind or paralyze the
self's experience (Ibid., 110-11).
Purification of the ways in which we let ourselves be affected, and--more
primordially--purification of our being turned to the various levels and instances of
phenomenality, are necessary conditions for thinking in accordance with reality
(Ibid., 112).
As a community of faith, Christian life permits and demands a plurality of
intellectual unfoldings that cannot be leveled to the unity of one theory or
methodology (The Quest for Meaning: Friends of Wisdom from Plato to Levinas,
(New York: Fordham University Press, 2003), 22).
Freedom is primarily the possibility of pro-hairesis [Aristotle's word often
translated as choice]: taking advantage of an opportunity for being good or bad;
dedication or devotion of one's self to a demand, a task, a way of life (Elements of
Ethics, (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2004), 189).
Freedom or liberty is thus discovered as a (transcendental) condition of our being
called to appropriate responses (Ibid., 197).
Life, love, death, evil, being, and so forth cannot be captured in the patterns of a
crystal clear language or thought. Obscurity is here quite appropriate. In such cases,
the demand for transparency expresses a desire that cannot be fulfilled except by
distortions of the truth (Modern Freedom: Hegel's Legal, Moral, and Political
Philosophy, (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001), 39).
| Chungsoo J. Lee |
| A philosophic and religious corner |
Quotes by Adriaan Theodoor Peperzak
| With Adriaan Peperzak at Loyala University, October 2004 |
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