Breathing

Contrary to an animal to which sense is given from the start on, man is the being in which sense is being decided. An animal never 'loses' the sense. Only man can lose it. What is sense? It is difficult to conceive it in itself. You better 'feel' it in counterpoint vis-a-vis of opposite experiences: situations where sense is lost or gone foolish.

“Make way for man!” The heartfelt cry of our audacities. It started with an innocent stammering nine centuries ago; it developed as a thundering claim. With great violence we drove out of our space the Spirit of God, the Breath of God, thinking we could breathe more freely. Until the moment we suddenly felt going short of breath.

Never as big as today was the risk of suffocation. Nevertheless never did a civilization as rich in cultural productions as ours exist. Of course. But this proliferation of 'constituted' sense misses a spiritual space large enough for its disproportion. It misses the 'constituent' sense. The sense giving sense. The sense strong enough to protest against absurdity. The sense holding out against nonsense.

The sense is more fragile than the air, and more vulnerable. Once locked up, it pollutes quickly. We breath it out into the 'bubble' of our immanence. Thus condemning us to breathe only the polluted air of our own bad breath.

Humans seek sense everywhere. Why on the scene of the large world the important questions are so absent and why does futility occupy so largely the space of the stage?

See its etymology. Spiritus. Spirare. To breathe. There is an analogy between the spirit, its breath and the air. The sense is the breath of the human word. This word is as well a humanizing word. It can get breathless! It needs permanently the breath of 'elsewhere'.

The existential sense is identical with the reason for being, for existing and for living. Beyond its abstract and intellectual meaning, you should never forget its concrete dimensions. Failure. Death. Scandal… When you are expelled from the 'middle' to be projected towards the 'extreme' situations. When your liberty leaves you alone to decide about the sense of your life.

Devenir maître et possesseur de la nature... To become Master and owner of nature. This Cartesian dream could not have been formulated if it had not been preceded, more than five centuries before, of this other dream to become Master and owner of the sense. The control of nature is not possible without being master of its essences and of the verb.

That starts around the year 1100, first very timidly and in a quasi innocent way. Among the protagonists we find a man with a singular destiny, Abelard, one of the first 'modern' thinkers. With this 'master of dialectics' begins a drama between reason and faith. And through the nominalistic crisis the Western intelligence starts to succumb to schizoid temptation.

It happens that humans be caught by the mirages of the original tempter, always 'prince of this world'. Break the great Alliance. Take your autonomy. Buckle your world on itself. Become 'Masters and owners' of your possibilities. 'You will be like gods!'

It is impossible that immanence buckled on its strict immanence can leave something else than tautological nonsense. The spirit of man to become really human has to become divine. It needs the great vertical Difference. It needs the Breath of God.

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