Artigo4Epistemologiaesensibilidade

Ciberteologia - Revista de Teologia & Cultura - Ano VI, n. 31 45

Epistemology and sensibility: The assertion of

experience as kind of perception of reality.

by Alessandro Rodrigues Rocha*

I try to say what I feel without thinking what I feel.

I try to lean the words to the idea and have no need of a thinking corridor for the

words.

It is not always that I can feel what I know I should feel.

My thought only very slowly swims across the river

because of the clothes that man makes it wear.

I try to undress what I learnt,

I try to forget the way of remembering that I was taught,

and scrape off the paint my senses were painted with,

to unpack my true emotions, to unpack myself and be myself [...]

And thus I write, wanting to feel Nature not like a man

but like one who feels just Nature and nothing else.

And thus I write, sometimes well, sometimes badly,

sometimes getting right what I want to say,

sometimes making mistakes, falling down here, getting up there,

but always going on my way like a stubborn blind man.

Fernando Pessoa

Introduction

“I try to undress what I learnt, I try to forget the way of remembering that I was taught,

and scrape off the paint my senses were painted with”. The metaphor of the paint that

covers up what previously was something else is very suitable for the introduction of

* Ph.D. in Theology, PUC-Rio, researcher of UNESCO Full Professor of Reading, PUC-Rio.


this text, where we are going to deal with the affirmation of experience as a perception

channel of reality.

Enlightened by the poet we can better understand how our capacity of perceiving reality

received many “paint coatings” by the paintbrush of rationalism. These layers are: a

dualistic view of the world, a fundationalist epistemology and a conception of totalizing

truth expressed in meta-narratives. Covered by so much paint, we got such appearance

(rationalism) that through an ideological process of naturalization it became to be

affirmed as identical, therefore unique, to what we are and could be. It seems that the

wall has always been and should be for ever like this.

Following further the poet‟s intuition about the “epistemological traps” that modern

reason placed on the tracks of our existential path, we can unfold the metaphor “of

senses covered by painting layers”. One who lives in or knows an old house can

understand perfectly what such metaphor proposes: the first layer of paint is covered by

many others applied in the course of time. Only if we scrape the wall off we are going

to find out how many colors covered it.

Knowledge as theory of perceptive relations that the human being has with the world

passes by this same process – mainly in what concerns “how to know”. All along

history he gains successive paint coatings and he is conceptually putting on distinct and

plural meanings becoming different from a certain project originally drawn up. The

theoretical task of thinking the knowledge would be similar to the work of a repairman

who searching for the architectural work‟s originality has to do also the history of the

many stages and historical conjunctures that those several paint coatings represent. His

work therefore is not just to get to the oldest paint but also to know the other paintings

and all the elements that determined them.

Talking objectively, the challenge in the process of understanding the theories of

knowledge is to perceive that each time and epistemological emphasis correspond a set

of circumstances that confer plausibility to a certain theory of knowledge. A paint

coating is not just a layer of paint. It is the objectification of the socio-economic-

aesthetic-cultural reality of the family that lives in that house. A theory of knowledge is

not just a theory. It is the expression of a current of thought before the unfinished task

of telling the reality.

Thus every time that a certain “theorethic layer” is not in harmony with the real

existential horizon of the “dwellers in certain places in the world” it is inadequate. “To


scrape off a paint coating” finds its meaning when it allows the “dweller” to perceive

better the “wall” through mediation of the adequate “painting” to its history.

From the perspective we view the theme, there is inadequacy of the paint put on the

reality, that is, an inadequacy of the rationalistic epistemology in respect of the

historical-cultural horizon to which we belong and from where we have to perceive and

translate reality. In a nutshell: the ascension of modern reason to the status of

sufficiency found its decline. This requires a new theorization about the ways of

knowing that can inspire new ways of being-in-the-world.

We therefore want to take up the challenge of proposing a new way of perception of the

reality that involves us which is adequate to the historic-cultural outline of

Postmodernism. We are proposing experience as such way of perception. In order to do

this we are going to cover the following path: the experience as element of rationality in

the philosophical perspective; the experience capacity of perceiving and communicating

the expressions of religion according to the viewpoint of phenomenology of religion;

and the experience as an adequate way for the perception of the unveiling of the real in

theological perspective.

However, before working the topic of experience, it is necessary to make clear the

understanding of rationality that we present as an alternative to modern rationalism.

Such conception of rationality that asserts the opening up to the diverse and the

integration of what constitutes ourselves as men and women is the ratiovitalism.

Ratiovitalism as realization of the proposal of an expanded rationality

As we have proposed until now the main problem of modern rationalism is its

expression of a closed and dualistic rationality. Closed because it reduces the task of

perceiving reality to just one dimension of the human existence: reason conceived as

conscience and thirst of the being. Dualistic because it disintegrates the human being in

a hierarchizing dynamics where the mind is superposed in order to dominate the other

instances of our being. This disintegration ultimately hinders our fulfillment as complex

beings.

This topic is directly linked to the affirmation of the so-called Postmodernism. In

Gianni Vattimo‟s view, built on the interpretation of Nietzche‟s and Heidegger‟s

thinking, Modernity set up a model of objectivity and makes it necessary for the

existence and affirmation of the subject as being. G. Vattimo states:


To think the being as fundament, and the reality as a rational system of cause

and effect, is just a way of expanding to the whole being the model of

“scientific” objectivity, of the mentality that in order to dominate and organize

everything has to reduce them to the level of pure, measurable, manageable,

replaceable presences – eventually reducing also man himself to this level. His

interiority, his historicity.

The model of rationality built on this enlargement of scientific objectivity, as pointed

out by Vattimo, creates artificially and ideologically a sole legitimate possibility of

being-in-the-world grounded on concepts such as human nature, universality and

absoluteness of the truth and as necessary result the univocity of the discourse about this

truth. The intrinsic plurality of the human condition becomes obnubilated by this

metaphysical veil. Precisely on that account it is so important that such veil be torn

away “from bottom to top” in order that we can perceive that there are accesses to

reality as much multiple as this presented to us.

In G. Vattimo‟s opinion this process of des-obnubilation identified by him as an

uprooting operated by the mass media generates “liberation from differences, local

elements, from what we could call globally the “dialect”. With the generalized

communication world breaks out “a multiplicity of „local‟ rationalities – ethnic, sexual,

religious, cultural or aesthetic minorities – which take the floor, eventually neither

silenced nor repressed by the idea that there is only one kind of true humankind to

accomplish”.

The commonest reaction to such kind of conception of reality that states plurality as

value – even with epistemological value – is the argument of the inevitable chaos to

which humankind would be led as result of the lack of rules. Attacks accordingly arise

not only from lay intellectual places but also and mainly from religious ones. G.

Vattimo wrote about these reactions:

By the way this process of liberation from differences is not necessarily the

abandonment of all rules, the shapeless manifestation of demarcation: the

dialects also have grammar and syntax, but only when they conquer dignity and

visibility they discover their own grammar. Liberation from diversities is an act

through which they “take the floor”, they introduce themselves, they “turn fit” in


such way that they can become recognized; in no way it is a raw manifestation

all of a sudden.

Therefore we are not talking about any kind of irrationalism or barbarity before

perceiving the constituting rationalities of the numerous “dialects” that represent the

cultural mosaic of our contemporaneous world. This is the experience of a rationality

open to the complexity of reality. Finally it is not possible anymore to support a

conception of reason that states identity between discourse and reality: the reality is

always greater than the discourse.

The most noticeable improvement that such position about the emancipation of

differences and “dialects” conveys to us concerns the supervening of the way of being-

in-the-world built upon the exclusive principle of modern reason, a way that until then

viewed as value the underlying univocity in dogmatism of lay and religious discourses.

G. Vattimo comments on this progress:

If I speak my dialect, after all, in a world of dialects among others, if I confess

my system of values – religious, aesthetic, political, ethnic – in this world of

plural cultures, I will also have an intense awareness of historicity, contingency,

limitation of all these systems, to begin with mine.

To face the task of rationality in these terms is to step down to the real ground of

existence and assume it as the only possible place where we can live and from where we

can perceive reality, not in a ultimate and definitive perspective, but as it is revealed to

us and we reveal ourselves to it. This difficult but necessary path from the abstract

universal to the real local leads us to the topography in which one can accomplish an

open and integrating rationality: life. It is precisely with this meaning that we talk about

ratiovitalism.

“To submit reason to the test of plasticity of what is alive”. In this sentence by the

French sociologist Michel Maffesoli is the main question of ratiovitalism: to accept the

dynamics of life as constitutive of human reason. From the axiom “I think, therefore I

exist” to the vitalist conception “I think because I exist”. Existence precedes every

axiom and it is in it that they are generated even if afterwards they rebel against it trying

to suppress its density and complexity.


In the exercise of “submitting reason to the test of plasticity of what is alive” arises a

rationality pierced all along by life in all its dimensions, a rationality capable of

integrating intellect, affection, sensibility, intuition. A rationality open to the new which

befits the dynamicity of living beings.

It is clear that this perspective suggested by M. Maffesoli asserts itself critically before

the understanding of reason that dominated the Occident all along Modernity. It is also

true that this criticism to modern reason became commonplace sometimes

communicating nothing more than a mere rhetorical effort deprived of practical-

epistemological consequences. In the case of M. Maffesoli this childish criticism is not

repeated. M. Maffesoli launches the element of the modern reason that condemns the

relevance of its own development and permanence: the detachment of reason in relation

to the effervescence of life and its new demands.

This is essentially what can be criticized in the abstract rationalism, its power of

discrimination: its capacity of recognizing the potent vitalism that affects deeply

the entire social life. Of course this is the reason why a fosse increasingly

insurmountable was dug between intelligentsia from several aspects too […] and

the social base that does not identify itself in them anymore.

The fundamental point is therefore the dissociation between reason and life. M.

Maffesoli‟s proposal about such rupture is that reason finds in vitalism its place of

realization and criticism. Paradoxically this means that reason must be accomplished in

the empiria that was so much criticized by it throughout Modernity. Thus our task is

that of going back to this lived or closer life, to this empiria; recapturing an expression

in phenomenology, “to the thing itself”.

Vitalism assumed as place to realize reason works an epistemological rupture in relation

to the abstract reason. This rupture means that “to know how to break with an

intellectual posture […] that seeks always an imposing reason (a Reason) beyond what

invites to be seen and to be lived. It is necessary to go back with modesty to human

matter, to everyday life”. Such vitalist reason does not constitute a priori reason but an

understanding a posteriori “that is supported by a rigorous description made of

coexistence and empathy (Einfühlung)”.

However prior to proceeding in the in-depth examination of this vitalist reason –

ratiovitalism – it is necessary to specify further the category vitalism as applied by M.


Maffesoli. In the beginning of the fifth chapter (“Organicity of things”) in the work The

eternal instant, M. Maffesoli places vitalism surprisingly for its simple character and,

why not?, obvious. He states:

It is necessary to go on challenging these simple things that are the fundament of

life. Too simple, perhaps. Too much evident for our suspicious minds which are

always concerned with multiple “transworlds” that have marked western

tradition. And yet life is here. It is lived. Thus what is missing is to know how to

express it.

It is the assertion of life “that is here” that constitutes vitalism. Going back to the

density of the expression “to think” M. Maffesoli brings life back to the core of rational

activity. He states:

We should not forget that to think takes us to the Latin pensare: at the same time

“to judge” and “to weigh”. We favor “to judge” with the judicative and

normative perspective that we know and we forget “to weigh”. To weigh what is

dense, earthly in the human being. To take into account the heaviness of life, its

weight, perhaps this is precisely what will enable us to appreciate it: to know

how to give it its fair weight.

In this statement M. Maffesoli makes at the same time a criticism and a proposal. He

criticizes the narrowing of judicative reason and proposes the integration of rational

activity to the dynamics of life. In other words, for Maffesoli in vitalism “the being is

not reduced to thinking”. On the contrary, vitalism requires entireness of man.

His breathings and sighs. His belly, too. There is no recognized or unrecognized

intentionality without some kind of enjoyment of the world as it is, with its

obligations, limitations, deep-rootings, without forgetting its openings,

perspectives and multiple multicolor efflorescences.

Entireness, this is the watchword. The vitalism for assuming real life with all its

nuances is in the dynamics of coincidentia oppositorum. And because it makes peace

with the unsteady ground of reality, reason can get close again to the amor mundi which


for a long time was restricted to damned poets and dreamy philosophers. Vitalism in its

statement of amor mundi places reason before the principle of sensibility turning it into

a sensitive reason.

To a sensitive world should correspond a knowledge that can handle it: a

“sensitive reason”. It is nothing new. The pedestal of several eastern thinking has

this nature. The same happens in our cultural sphere with this merry knowledge

that served as fundament for the great Occitan civilization. It allow

“troubadours” to show cleverness, invention, imagination to celebrate a world in

which reigns the coexistence of men among them and with nature.

Vitalism can help us think the experience of living. Its fundament is a great trust in life,

“in its regulatory balances, successive adjustments, acceptance of excesses; summing

up, these anomias that prefigure tomorrow‟s order”. As we can see there is in this

thought no appeal to irrationalism but the stress on another rationality which is capable

of conjugating the threads of the entangled human existence and its multiple relations.

In M. Maffesoli‟s words:

Surely this is not irrational, as often classified. We can say that it expresses the

modality of human that we cannot enclose in what was the modern instrumental

rationalism; it is instead something “not rational” that includes affections,

feelings, emotions. I myself call it “sensitive reason”, which is close to

“ratiovitalism” which consists, retaking Diltey‟s proposition, of “understanding

life from itself”.

After this discussion on vitalism we can resume the in-depth study of the perspective of

rationality which is based on it: the ratiovitalism. In his book Eloge de la raison

sensible M. Maffesoli dedicates the first chapter of the section entitled “The inner

reason” to explain thoroughly his understanding of such category. Already in the

introduction he identifies it as a sensitive reason. Sensitive to “affection, emotional,

affective, things that belong to the category of passion”. These dimensions of human

life that over Modernity were confined to private life are now integrated and applied to

formulate an epistemology.


The ascension of these purely mundane elements to the epistemological status enlarges

the concept of rationality placed in the scope of Modernity. This enlargement makes the

rationality move towards the real ground of life, thus occurring a mutual illumination

between reason and life. This is in fact an expansion of conscienciousness that man has

about himself and his multiple relations. In M. Maffesoli‟s words:

Thus, through illumination or enlargement of conscienciousness what is being

taken into account is life. Taking again Schelling‟s expression, one can apply a

“creative science” that allows to establish a link between nature and art, concept

and form, body and soul. What emphasizes such link is life. Life as pure power,

expression of a nature that is expressing itself in a certain shape.

Ratiovitalism is therefore a larger rationality, holder of an “inventive flexibility”, at the

same time holder of a certain audacity and aware of being “precarious, haphazard,

submissive to the instant”. M. Maffesoli supports that ratiovitalism has an organicity in

its system that can overcome the functional rationality a feature of Modernity and its

emphasis on techniques. This organicity shows itself as capable of integrating

epistemologically the multiple in order to be able to understand it without using the

means of modern rational unidimensionality. Starting from the multiple this does not

become a challenge to truth, instead it is a necessary result. M. Maffesoli states:

In such conception History with its resolute gait gives submits to punctual,

ephemeral events, those moments full of intensity that we live together with

others in the scope of a mythic time. This demands that one puts into action

another logic, different from that we were used to.

This is one of the most significant features of ratiovitalism: it presumes a “background

rationality that is expressed in momentary little reasons”. There is here an enormous

affinity with G. Vattimo‟s thinking concerning what he identified as “liberation from

differences or dialects”. To deal with “momentary reasons”, or “to release dialects”,

consists of perceiving the inner reason of all things. Of things which are not diverse

from those which make up life as such. This may lead us “not to neglect anything of

what surrounds us in this world where we are and which is at the same time feeling and

reason”.


Making a kind of conceptual systhesis of his epistemology, M. Maffesoli states about

ratiovitalism as follows:

In the epistemological perspective, which is mine here, one can extract from all

this that there is a close link between a concept – that characterizes a people, a

civilization, a particular community – and the life that expresses it. This is what

we can call ratiovitalism. What means that an entity, whichever it is, finds its

reason to be in itself, it is cause and effect of itself, its own fundament (Grund).

In the face of such clear conceptual synthesis, it is evident that ratiovitalism comprises

an epistemological shift in relation to modern rationalism. Such shift finds justification

and legitimacy in the option for integrality of life as space of rationality in

contraposition to the option of modern reason for the unidimensional emphasis of its

understanding of rationality in human mind.

The ratiovitalism therefore assumes an epistemological perspective clearly established

upon the shift from the dualism in modern reason to the holism of postmodernist

rationality. According to M. Maffesoli: “In a nutshell, in opposition to the simple

mechanicism of rationalism, it is necessary to seek also the organic rationality of a

certain structure. It is the search for such organicity that produces the specificity of the

postmodernist situation”.

“To seek an organic rationality”. This is the task that we proposed up to now. This

rationality we assumed as ratiovitalism. We do it precisely because we understand that

rationalism is “particularly inapt to perceive, moreover to aprehend, the dense, imagetic,

symbolic aspect of the experience lived”.

To undertake such task leads us to the opening of other ways to perceive reality beyond

the simple and reductionist objectifying rationalization of things. In the scope of our

thesis we elected experience as this more adequate way to perceive reality in a

postmodernist context.

An organic rationality – open and integrating – as expression of an enlarged reason

should establish a resultant relation in the process of knowledge. Resultant mainly

because its assumption is that “there is a close link between a concept and the life that

expresses it”. The holism of this rationality requires a closeness that takes it into

account throughout the whole epistemological development as well as its practical

expression. It is clear that the relation subject/object, as proposed by the Cartesian


cogito, is not up to this holism, of this complexity of reality. Accordingly we wish to

propose experience as a form of perception capable of articulating and communicating a

knowledge that takes into account the entireness of life in the knowledge of reality.

Experience and reality: the perspective of philosophy

The subject/object relation can now be resumed in another level. We think it is already

enough evident that the criticism made to the subject/object relation can only be

understood in its full dimension and depth in the perspective of the Cartesian cogito. In

other words, it is in the scope of this specific moment of philosophy that one can

perceive the deep dualism between subject and object, conferring to the first the status

of res cogitans and to the second an inferior condition of res extensa.

Notwithstanding it is necessary to perceive also that this feature of the Cartesian

thinking extended along the following centuries as an underlying epistemology to the

scientific methodology that predominated – predominates? – over Modernity. Precisely

for this, when we criticize such perspective of the Cartesian thinking we are at the same

time doing it to the epistemology resulting from it.

Therewith it is necessary to say immediately that the subject/object relation finds other

ways of realizing itself apart from the Cartesian way. It is clear that the relation between

the thinking being and the thought establishes the subject/object couplet but this does

not mean that this couplet necessarily constitutes an epistemological hierarchy that

requires the operation of mind as the only way to perceive the reality (rationalism)

present in the world of objects or phenomena.

Every knowledge is born from a relation between the subject, that actively seeks

knowledge, and the object, that must be known. From the mutual relationship of these

two poles (the subjective pole – the subject – and the objective pole – the object) arises

human capacity of thematizing reality. Experience is a means for this thematization, a

kind of very primitive knowledge, the most primitive of all, that is, original,

primigenial. It is through it that knowledge is inaugurated.

In order to deepen the understanding of this difficult concept that experience is, we are

going to run a path that starts from the systematic exposition of dictionaries

(etymological and general philosophy) to the more dense discussions of some authors

that dedicated themselves to such concept to reflect it at different moments of the

history of philosophy.


The commonest access to the meaning of concepts expressed in words is the dictionary,

notwithstanding the limitation that dictionarized expressions have when presenting

some interpretation fixed in a determined moment. Precisely to perceive how

expressions start to have certain contents – thus becoming concepts – we cite in the first

place the acceptations of “experience” in an etymological dictionary:

(Latim experientia) 1. Act or effect of experimenting. 2. Knowledge achieved

through practice or observation. 3. Skill, expertise, practice. 4. In the study of a

natural or caused phenomenon, a testing that has the purpose of verifying a

hypothesis or induce it from observation; scientific investigation, experiment,

experimentation.

The four acceptations presented to tell the meaning of experience derive either from the

so-called common sense (an act of trying something that can be a fruit or a shirt) or the

theorethic aporia between rationalism and empiricism (in this second case the

acceptations of experience represent the empiricism in its assertion that all knowledge is

eminently sensitive).

Expreience from the dictionarized perspective leads us to infer two provisional

conclusions: first of all as a thing of common sense experience is deprived of its whole

epistemological possibilities. In other words, experience is something of somebody who

does not apply reason. Secondly experience is restricted to empiricism thus being

considered irrational by the rationalism, and it should only rest upon the sensitive

dimension. In the last case experience is not emptied of its epistemological possibilities

but the epistemology that arises from it is deeply dualistic as much as the Cartesian

rationalism is, except that it is in the opposite perspective.

Although the theme of experience as conceived in the scope of common sense is an

important field of research, our reflection is restricted to the aporetic dimension that the

acceptations about experience reveal even if indirectly. We do this not to examine in-

depth such aporia but to try to overcome it and so evidence that experience as a way to

know reality is not restricted to certain dimensions of human in its existence in the

world – interiority and exteriority – but it is an exercise of this human in its entireness.

Moving forward from the explanation in the etymologic dictionary to the historic-

philosophical acceptations in the dictionaries of philosophy, we want also to expand a

little more the understanding of experience in the general scope and, therefore,


superficial as it is presented to us such kind of literature. So it is worth noticing how

Walter Brugger conceives experience. In a first approach, he states:

In common language, experience usually denotes the knowledge achieved thanks

to the reiterated social contact with men and things in opposition to the

knowledge obtained in the books. The philosophical acceptation is greater.

According to it experience generally denotes every simple perception produced

by an external impression. As this is only possible through the action of exterior

bodies on sensorial organs, experience is properly a feature of the soul linked to

the body, what does not mean that it is necessarily something of pure sensitive

nature.

It is already possible to perceive the questionability from the philosophical view-point

that is being introduced by W. Brugger: experience operates a union of soul and body in

the act of knowledge and, while epistemological action, it does not depend on the pure

sensitive nature. This second feature becomes even clearer when he states: “Our human

experience is therefore one of a sensitive-intellectual nature.” Body and soul (mind),

reason and senses. Thus the insistent rationalism x empiricism aporia can be overcome

or, for now, a lot diminished.

In an attempt to explain the complexity that experience is for a philosophical reflection,

W. Brugger makes the following remark: “We distinguish between external experience

and internal experience. External experience means the perception of objects and

corporeal processes through the external senses; internal experience denotes living

consciously those own states and internal operations”.

However such distinction is mainly for didactic purposes. It tries to make explicit the

complexity of experience. However it is fundamental to emphasize that internal and

external make up the cognitive act operated by experience.

Continuing still in a historical-philosophical perspective, Nicola Abbagnano builds a

dense reflection about experience in a long entry in his dictionary. He opens the entry

like W. Brugger, showing the two meanings that experience can have in the scope of

philosophy, mainly focusing the classic period of Greek philosophy and modern

philosophy. However it deserves attention the reflection that N. Abbagnano does about

the theory of experience as intuition. He states:


The theory of experience as intuition considers experience as immediate relation

with the individual object using as model of experience the sense of sight. From

this viewpoint an object “known by experience” is present in person and in its

individuality […] experience, which is “the principle of arts and sciences”, is the

perfect intuitive knowledge that has for object the things present.

Experience as relating oneself with something that is present. Relation and presence are

two important features for our understanding of experience as a form of perception of

the reality in the postmodernist culture. Bringing together W. Brugger‟s and N.

Abbagnano‟s propositions, we can make a good frame for the canvas (experience) that

we are painting. For the first, “1) experience operates a union of the soul with the body

in the act of knowledge and, 2) while epistemological action it does not depend upon

the pure sensitive nature”; for the second, “3) experience is to connect, 4) with what is

present”.

Interpreting these propositions we could say that experience as an adequate way to

perceive reality has the following features: 1) it is an alternative to the mind/body

dualism; 2) it enables the overcoming of the rationalism/empiricism aporia; 3) it asserts

the relationality (connectedness) in the process of knowledge; 4) it departs from the real

ground of existence, “from what is present” to construct its epistemology. These

features are in line with the expanded rationality that we identified as ratiovitalism.

A comparison subject/object that takes into account the features above mentioned

makes possible a path to a source of knowledge. This path is made of a simple and

immediate perception of the object that affects the subject and causes in him the

knowledge based on evidence. It implies essentially the participation of the human

being in its entireness: body, soul, intelligence, memory, reason, conscience, volition,

feeling, senses, imagination… It is lived through the person what is witnessed and then

expressed by it what one lived.

Leaving the dictionarized definitions about experience and advancing to a deeper

reflection developed by philosophers who dedicated themselves to such theme, we

begin with Henrique C. de Lima Vaz‟ thinking. In his work Escritos de filosofia.

Problemas de fronteira [Writtings of philosophy. Border Problems] Lima Vaz faces the

theme of experience from the philosophical viewpoint but as a “border problem” in the

relation with theology. In chapter XI (“A linguagem da experiência de Deus” [The


language of the experience of God]) the author tries to unfold with “enough rigor the

notion of experience” and its intrinsic ambiguity.

Applying the strictness of his reflection, well-known feature of his thinking, Lima Vaz

proposes the removal of a misunderstanding that has become a commonplace when

dealing with the theme of experience. He states:

The opposition between experience and thought is the first false commonplace

that is fit to remove. A tradition that runs parallel either in the sensist inspiration

or intellectualist inspiration usually establishes a fictitious opposition between

experience and thought or experimental and theoretic […] An opposition

commonly admitted but which is necessary to overcome. In fact experience is

but the face of thought that turns to the presence of the object.

This image of the experience as “the face of thought” suggests the complexity of the

intellectual activity that the rationalism/empiricism aporia does not notice or values.

The peculiarity of this aspect of thought is that it faces the presence of the object. When

rejecting too abstractive models experience seeks the presence of that unveiled reality

which is therefore sound. To the reality itself, irreducible, that shelters the being-in-the-

world.

This relation of the “face of the thought” with the “presence of the object” establishes

some proportionality “between the plenitude of the presence and the depth of the

experience, that is, the penetration of this plenitude by the act of thinking”. The grade of

perception of the object‟s presence is therefore linked to how much the face of the

thought is aware of its possibilities. The experience should be asserted as a kind of

perception of reality and be understood as such, assuming its peculiarity – to be before a

presence – without being reduced to intellectualisms and/or sensisms. For this it is still

needed to clarify a little more the contours of experience:

It is then necessary to distinguish experience in the strict sense from other

psychic acts that may be prior, concomitant or consequent to it, but that do not

rightfully belong to its structure. Thus, for instance, the feeling of presence that

accompanies the perception of an external object, the emotion or experience of

life that are born from this feeling. The concept of experience should be

rigorously circumscribed in terms of intellectual knowledge, although its full


meaning is only reached when experience is referred to the total movement of

the spirit life.

Experience cannot be reduced to the feeling resulted from and about a presence, but it

cannot do without this feeling and its derivatives as grounding movement of a way of

being-in-the-world. Lima Vaz, applying his epistemological strictness n order to

perceive the necessary distinction of the primary operations of experience as a form of

knowledge, helps us not to incur in dualisms for not understanding strictly and

adequately the experience before reality.

If it is not very clear what experience is before reality, as well as its epistemic

peculiarity, we can view it by reducing it to a psychic act – feeling – what would

establish a false impossibility of the experience asserting itself with its full

epistemological capacity. Lima Vaz examines in-depth the constitutive traits of

experience drawing our attention to two aspects. The first of them concerns the relation

between conscience and phenomenon.

Firstly, it is appropriate to stress that experience as knowledge is generally a

kind of active relation between the conscience and the phenomenon. The

presence that manifests itself in experience does not occupy the conscience as an

object that invades an empty space. To be manifested to the conscience means to

do it according to the structural rules of conscience itself which enable the

manifestation as such. Here is why there is no experience without a kind of

expression of the object by the subject of the experience.

Because experience – how to know before a presence – depends for its realization upon

a certain kind of expression that the subject shows about the object, appears the second

aspect worked by Lima Vaz: the plurality of forms of expression of the experience. “But

this plurality supposes the original and constitutive act of the expression itself. Active

expression, that is, acceptance of the manifestation of the object to the subject who

interiorizes it, assumes its presence and in a way identifies with it”. Presence and

expression are necessarily related in the development of experience as epistemological.

Lima Vaz states about that: “Presence and expression are diversified and experience

obeys this diversification. However we can already establish that every true experience


has to find its expression, that is, its language, and that every expression or language of

experience translates a presence”.

Here we reach a mature point of our understanding of experience. “[…] every kind of

experience corresponds to the kind of expression or language of a presence”. The

experience communicates the perception of a certain presence through an expression.

On that account it is an epistemology, but not any epistemology, but one of the real, of

the true existentialism, of the presence of the object.

There is therefore a peculiarity in the epistemological constitution which is proper of the

experience: to be before the presence, before what is existentially present. This marks

inexorably the expression of such epistemology. The experience expresses itself in such

way that it communicates adequately the concreteness of the presence, not concepts or

abstract and universal categories. The language derived from experience while form of

perception of the reality receives its outlines and limits from the delimitations of the

presence itself.

This delimitation of the presence is its proper way of unveiling. About this issue Lima

Vaz proposes three fundamental modes of presence or unveiling where the being comes

to be in our thinking: “[…] the presence of things, the presence of the other, the

presence of us to ourselves. Or still, granting to the terms subject and object a technical

connotation: the objective experience, the intersubjective experience, the subjective

experience”. Therefore reality unveils itself in a triple way, demanding from the human

being more than a simple and unidimensional perspective of knowledge, be it reason, be

it empiria. Due to the complexity of the presence revealing reality it is necessary an

epistemology equally complex and multidimensional which is able to articulate a

suitable language or expression for this complexity and multidimensionality.

It is true that these three circles of experience and language (things, the other, I)

penetrate mutually but they inexorably circumscribe man within an only

tridimensional space of the presence or a triple dimension of the language: the

language of things, the language of the other and the language of I.

What one can already deduce from the contributions by Lima Vaz to the constitution of

experience as epistemology are mainly the following questions: 1) the false opposition

between experience and thought; 2) the experience as face of the thought that turns to

the presence of the object; 3) the articulation between experience and its derivatives –


feelings, emotions and senses; 4) the experience as active way of relation between the

conscience and the phenomenon; 5) the plurality of kinds of expressions – language – of

experience; 6) and the fundamental modes of presence or unveiling where the being

comes to be in our thinking – things, the other, I.

These characteristics that constitute experience as a way of perception of reality, due to

their character of concreteness or focusing on a presence (of things, of the other or of I)

become an epistemology that cannot be reduced to a mere speculative abstraction. On

the contrary such epistemology is presented as a path, a way to-be-in-the-world. In

Lima Vaz‟s words: “[…] this path of experience is, in a way, the own path of language

as the path of man in the world. It is man‟s world as such. Outside it dominates just the

silence of things”.

After having articulated Lima Vaz‟s thinking in order to particularize philosophically

the outlines of the experience as epistemology, we are now going to explain Leonardo

Boff‟s reflection. In his work Experimentar Deus. A transparência de todas as coisas

[To experience God. The transparency of all things] L. Boff dedicates one chapter to the

discussion of the concept of experience and to answer the question “what is ex-peri-

ence?” To introduce the matter he proposes the following definition: “Ex-peri-ence is

the science or knowledge (ence) that the human being achieves when he goes outside

himself (ex) and tries to understand an object from all sides (peri)”. Thus, being a

knowledge, it is in a distinct perspective from the others. “Experience is not a theoretic

or bookish knowledge, but it is achieved in contact with the reality which is not easily

penetrated and that even opposes itself and resist to the human being. Therefore in every

experience there is a strong quotient of suffering and fight”.

Such fight and suffering that L. Boff perceives as integrating elements of knowledge

derived from experience happen precisely because this form of knowledge results “from

the meeting with the world, in a perpetual fluctuation, a meeting that allows us to build

and also to destroy representations that we had received from society and education”.

Once again we notice that such knowledge happens before a “presence”, that is why it

happens in a “meeting”, being inalienably “relational”. In L. Boff‟s perspective wisdom

derives from this kind of knowledge, “it is a veri-fiable wisdom that becomes real and

vital truth”.

L Boff applying the semantic tools – as it is his peculiarity – captures and interprets

experience as a kind of perception of reality. By the way, it is reality itself that

constitutes the proper topography of such epistemology. When L. Boff sections the ex-


peri-ence he does it to find again the depth of its meaning. Experience is not a mere “act

or effect of trying something”, but it is the “(science) that the human being achieves

when he goes outside himself (ex) and tries to understand an object from all its sides

(peri)”.

Assigning value to the density of the particles sectioned in ex-peri-ence, L. Boff

examines in depth the peculiarities of this science. Firstly he takes the particle peri. He

observes: “The science that results from ex-peri-ence is not mere sensation of an object.

It is the synthesis of a whole series of approaches of the object (peri “around it”, “about

it”). The experience as epistemology is characterized therefore for this relation with the

object, where one glimpses it from all sides. Experience has nothing of omniscient but

its action is holistic. All sides does not mean the absoluteness of the object, but its

constituent entireness, its complexity.

Peri in ex-peri-ence, constituting an approach that comprises the holism of reality,

develops consequently an approach to such reality that is capable of capturing its

holism. In other words: a complex reality demands a complex approach. It is thus

established a mutuality between subject and object. “Through experience the object

becomes more and more present in whom wishes to know as he opens himself

increasingly to the object and study it from different angles”.

After examining the scope of the particle peri, we still have to perceive the possibilities

of the particle ex. “Ex is a Latin pre-position that means, among other contents, „to be

oriented outwards‟, „open to‟”. After understanding ex, experience is coated by an

inalienable condition of meeting and relation. To know, at least in the perspective of

experience, is to relate with reality as a presence. Precisely for that all dimensions of our

existence are required, not just reason or senses comprised in opposition. A relation

with a presence demands the entireness of existence.

Here one finds the greatest peculiarity of the epistemology of experience: the entireness

of human being before the entireness of reality. Even if we are still in the subject/object

logic, we are inserted in a distinct way from that proposed by modern rationalism. As

observed by L. Boff: “With this meaning, ex expresses a fundamental feature of human

being as ex-istence. He is a being that ex-ists facing outwards (ex), in dialogue and

communion with the other and with the world. Thus ex-peri-ence is not just a science,

but a true cons-cience”.

Such cons-cience – science derived from ex-peri-ence – which is grounded on the

relation with a presence, realizes a way of being-in-the-world. Therefore, just the


development of a certain set of instruments for abstract and conceptual understanding

about objects is not enough, such science (cons-cience) demands an influx of life on the

reality that one wishes to know and from this reality on the life that opens up to know it.

This is a way of being-in-the-world founded upon the principle of affectation which

excludes any kind of exemption of the subject before the object. In the process of

knowledge directed by experience the two poles – subject and object – are mutually

affected and the resulting discourse from such epistemology cannot be confused with a

mere description of reality, but an interpretation of it.

In L. Boff‟s words “experience is the mode in which we interiorize reality and the way

that we discovered to situate ourselves in the world with the others”. In a nutshell:

experience comprises a cons-cience that generates a way of being-in-the-world, that is, a

horizon where existence can be realized.

From L. Boff‟s thinking we can then deduce the following features of experience as a

kind of perception of reality: 1) it is the science or the knowledge (science); 2) that the

human being achieves when he goes outside himself (ex); 3) and tries to understand an

object from all sides (peri); 4) it is a cons-cience, it is more than a set of instruments to

create concepts; 5) finally, it constitutes a horizon that demands a way of being-in-the-

world converging towards what constitutes it.

In the approaches of the theme “experience” done by Lima Vaz and L. Boff there is an

explicit convergence – even if the first starts from an ontological approach and the latter

chooses the existential approach – that allows us to conclude this stage of the

philosophical fundamentation of the epistemological condition of experience. We would

like now to improve our understanding on experience in the field of religious

expressions. For this we are will be guided by the theoretical instrumentation of the

phenomenology of religion.

Experience and religion: the perspective of the phenomenology of religion

Based on the reflection that we made about the epistemological condition of experience

– and for that a contribution by philosophy was necessary – we start in this topic to

understand the relations that experience maintains with religion in the sense of

“knowing” the sacred and the reality therewith. In order to do that we propose to take

the following path: we start from a brief conceptualization of phenomenology followed

by an explanation of the proper criteria of phenomenology as method, we make the


passage from phenomenology to phenomenology of religion, we establish a parallel

between human experience and experience of sacred and, finally, we propose a

synthesis of experience in the scope of phenomenology of religion.

The term phenomenon – from which phenomenology derives – comes from the Greek

fainomenon meaning what appears, what shows itself. Thus phenomenology is literally

the study of what appears. But of course as scientific method the term goes beyond its

literal meaning. Phenomenology is an attempt of understanding the essence of human

experience, be it psychological, social, cultural or religious, from the analysis of its

manifestations called phenomena. It is an attempt to understand not from the viewpoint

of the observer but from the viewpoint of the person that is doing the experience.

The method of phenomenology has two basic concepts that distinguish it from other

scientific methods, even those linked to human sciences: eidetic reduction and epoché.

These two concepts became the main differential of phenomenology for whereas other

scientific methods exclude subjectivity in favor of objectivity, Edmund Husserl

suggested that it is possible to understand the subjective, the essence, the eidos.

At the time of E. Husserl the psychologism was very popular and according to it the

religious experience was nothing more than a product of the human psyche.

Phenomenology changes the focus of the analysis when it states that, regardless of this

experience being a product of the psyche or a real meeting with the sacred, what matters

is to understand what it means for the Homo religiosus, who lives such experience. In E.

Husserl‟s own words, it is to return to things as such.

The eidetic reduction is the search for this essence of the phenomenon. It is the attempt

to view the phenomenon like the Homo religious views it. For this the epoché, the

suspension of judgment, of assumptions, is necessary. The classic sociologist

approaches the religious man already assuming that his experience results from the

social living. The classic psychologist assumes beforehand that it is a result of the

psyche. The phenomenologist will try not to assume anything. The epoché is, therefore,

a “necessary intellectual suspension in order to deal with the phenomena, leaving

parenthesized the assumptions and conditionings”.

It was after phenomenology with its method – as we saw previously –that the

phenomenology of religion was created. According to Professor Antonio Gouvea de

Mendonça, the phenomenology of religion can be viewed in a double sense: an

independent science, with its researches and publications, but also as a method that

applies its own principles. Here we assume the perspective of the phenomenology of


religion as a method of research and as such a “study of things in their observable

aspects in contraposition to their causality”. In other words: it is the study of the

religious causes through the observation of their manifestations.

Applying an analogy, the phenomenological analysis is like the archeologist‟s work.

From a little evidence that appears on the ground he digs until he finds big fossils

hidden under his feet. The phenomena or religious manifestations are just little evidence

that shows itself. It is for the phenomenologist to intuit through them until he reaches its

deepest meaning. Behind each phenomenon there is an idea, a meaning. It is this idea

that phenomenology tries to understand. In the case of the phenomenology of religion

what the religious phenomenon reveals and hides at the same time is the idea of sacred.

In a nutshell: the phenomenology of religion studies the religious phenomena from their

intentionality, it asks about the meaning of the religious fact for the Homo religiosus.

“Phenomenology starts necessarily from the religious phenomena (facts, testimonies,

documents) but it explores specifically its meaning, its meaning for the specific human

being that expressed or expresses these same religious phenomena”.

The base or staring point of the phenomenology of religion in its epistemological action

is the experience of sacred that can be communicated exclusively by the subject that did

it. Assuming experience as the basic kind of knowledge acquisition, nothing gets to our

intellect without causing a personal experience, be it empiricist, be it existential.

Therefore religiosity is closely related to experience. In this case, to the sacred. When

referring to a Christian context, Waldomiro Piazza states that “the essence of the

religious experience is the meeting of man with God”. Generalizing this reasoning, we

can say that the religious experience consists of the meeting of man with sacred and its

representations.

In the perspective of the phenomenology of religion the “irreducibility of the religious

phenomenon should be stated”. That is: “[…] it is not possible to reduce the religious

phenomenon to any other thing, it is not possible to state that religion „is nothing more

than…‟”. Aldo Natale Terrin makes explicit the concept of irreducibility of religion

within phenomenology stating its importance and necessity of preservation.

The autonomy and specificity of religion and religious experience which

supports it are a precious good that has to be preserved against all reductionist

tendencies and, at the same time, are an achievement reached through an effort


of identification and “empathy” with someone who believes, with whom lives a

certain religion.

Identification and empathy with the Homo religiosus are the features that guide the

phenomenologist of religion concerning the experience expression of the sacred

reported by him. The epistemology that arises accordingly is not confused with any

rationalist rubbish mainly with positivist theses that state the subject‟s neutrality

regarding his object. Empathy does not allow neutrality; on the contrary, it takes the

knowledge to the inalienable condition of circumscription and subsequent weakening

concerning the approaches which in the name of universal propositions surrender to the

existential and academic infertility of pure abstraction.

Up to now, we have already seen: 1) what is phenomenology as scientific method; 2)

the main elements that constitute it as such; 3) the affirmation of this method in the

study of the religious phenomenon; and 4) how much this phenomenology of religion

values the experience of sacred as irreducible focus of all its epistemological action.

Now, therefore, it is necessary to examine in depth the conception of religious

experience underlying the method and discourse of the phenomenology of religion. In

order to do that we will be guided by Jose Severino Croatto‟s reflection.

J. S. Croatto, in his work The languages of religious experience, dedicates the entire

second chapter to the discussion about the structures of the religious experience. At first

he states that “even if the purpose of the religious experience is transcendent […], it is a

human experience, proper to the human being and conditioned by his way of being and

his historical and cultural context”. Let‟s notice that it is not a reduction of the religious

experience to the condition of human experience of psychological nature, but to

perceive that the experience of sacred can only be realized by the human being as such,

circumscribed in his historic-cultural horizon.

J.S. Croatto proposes that in order to understand the experience of sacred reported by

the Homo religiosus it is necessary first of all to know the Homo sapiens e demens

where the human experience happens as such. They are not two – the Homo religiosus

and the Homo sapiens/demens, on the contrary it is just one being, capable of making

the multiplicity of the human experiences, among them that which is possibly the most

radical, the experience with the sacred. That is the very reason why prior to treating the

experience of sacred, J.S. Croatto deals with the “human experience as such”,


establishing a two-fold characterization of this experience: a) the human experience as

relational experience and b) the human experience as individual experience.

The experience that the human being has of the existence, of his condition of being-in-

the-world, not only concerning the natural horizon but also the supernatural, happens

within the proper structures of social life in its most diverse representations. This

indicates that such experiences are constituted indirectly, that is, mediated by the

relations that the human being establishes with the levels of reality and that ultimately

build up his humanity. As to what concerns specifically the experience of sacred the

indirect experience is the common path. Notwithstanding there is also the direct

experience, proper of the mystic or events derived from religions.

In the perspective of human experience in its condition of relational experience, we

restrict ourselves to the indirect experience mediated by the representations of reality

external to man himself. J.S. Croatto shows that such experience happens in a triple

dimension: “a) with the world (nature, life and what reality offers); b) with another

individual; and c) with a human group (every human being is socialized somehow or

other in different levels […])”.

However, besides the relational side of the human experience there is also an individual

side. “Each human being builds […] a project of life that he tries to realize during his

existence”. As proposed by J.S. Croatto:

In everything that he wants and does, the human being shows that he is not a

complete being: he should grow biologically, learn intellectually, be prepared for

everything, seek purposes, improve health, aspire a better life, begin again and

again new paths; even on the day before death he feels that he has to do

something to be what he is not yet. It is a being that is in search continuously.

This is the fundamental feature of the human being.

This condition of no plenitude in which the human being is unavoidably linked

generates in him a consciousness deeply marked by some treats: the first of them points

to the specific needs of life (physic, psychic, socio-cultural needs) that satisfied in a

greater or lesser degree have a direct influx on the experience that this or that person

will have of reality. The second treat is the awareness of limitation before life that

desolates any and every human being. Such awareness of limitation is manifested in a

triple way.


First of all the limitation of fragmentation: “goodness, happiness, rest, money etc one

can have only partially, in fragments, never in a completing totality”. In second place is

the limitation of finitude: “there are limits in everything, even in life itself […]. It seems

that the finitude of life opposes the infinitude of suffering. Hence the existential anxiety

generated and which the religious experience comes to help in”. In third place the

limitation of the meaningless of many vital experiences: “the alienating work […] is an

example, like death, pain or an „empty‟ life”.

What makes the human being feel so acutely these treats is his tendency to totality. In

the horizon is the infinite, but on the rocky ground of the path are the limitations. To

overcome the limits towards the horizon which insists on not closing in enough

constitutes the u-topia of every human being. A continuous tension sets in and it

ultimately makes appear the wish for “salvation”, as much in its religious

representations as the sociopolitical proposals. As observed by J.S. Croatto: “Therefore

a dialectic tension arises between wish and its satisfaction, which for never being

complete creates a new wish and a new tension. The human being is in fact „less‟ than

what he wishes to be; but it is always in the wish a „more‟ that is not fully

accomplished”.

It is precisely in this outline of the human experience as such that the experience of

sacred is realized. We will follow the application of the double characterization of the

human experience (as relational experience and as individual experience) proposed by

J.S. Croatto for the analysis of the experience of sacred – still human.

As regards the relational condition of experience, it has “a great influence on the

„socialization‟ of religious experience”. Insofar the human experience as such happens

in the outlines of relationality, the human experience with sacred can only occur within

the limits of such outline. J. S. Croatto, starting from the assumption that the human

experience as such comprises the relation with the world, with another individual and

with the human group, extends even more the relational dimension of the experience of

sacred stating that this “relates also the human reality with the transcendent.”

With regard to the individual condition of the human experience (with its two treats: the

awareness of the specific needs of life and the awareness of the limitation before

existence – the latter in its triple manifestation: limitation of fragmentation, limitation of

finitude, limitation of meaningless) its influx on the experience of sacred is also

unequivocal.


In the case of the awareness of the physical needs (physical, psychic and socio-cultural)

we can observe how are provided the answers in the experience of sacred. In the case of

physical needs, “miracles (healings, miraculous food or drink, resurrection…)”; for the

psychic needs, “peace, enjoyment of „glory‟ or vision of God, mystic states, fulfilling

love…”; satisfying socio-cultural needs, “a new social order, liberation as divine action

in history, outburst of a new world […].”

However, in respect of the awareness of limitation, “the human being had known to

„imagine‟ at all times ways to overcome his limitations appealing to the sacred”. The

Homo religiosus was able to pass from the fragmentary to the totalizing and this is very

much evident in several sacred writings. According to J.S. Croatto “[…] goodness,

happiness, rest are described in the religious texts as fulfilling, […]”. As to the

limitation of finitude, the best answer provided by the experience of sacred is the

promise of the eternal in its most diverse configurations. About the limitation placed by

the lack of meaning that invades human experience, the experience of sacred articulates

powerful answers: hope, providence, divine intervention are just some of them.

The human being – as way of being-in-the-world – and the sacred are known through

the mediated experience that the human being realizes as such. Human and sacred are to

experience as the two sides of a coin. Because and how the human experiences his

condition, he can also make experience with what or who is his fundament. This is one

of the most important contributions of the phenomenology of religion. Besides, the

movement made by the phenomenologist of religion bringing the Homo religiosus to

the center of his epistemological action confers at the same time the depth and extension

that this scientific method has concerning the problematic of the unveiling of the sacred

as well as the knowledge of the reality thence.

It is worth also pointing out about this depth and extension that the first is really

profund, that is, from the expression of whom makes the experience of sacred – Homo

religiosus – one can always dive more and more deeply in the ocean of Mystery. But it

is also necessary to say that in respect of extension the knowledge will always be

restricted to the many circumstances that translate the abstract name humanitas into the

actual name: the man (man and woman).

After having substantiated from the philosophical point of view the epistemological

condition of experience and advanced the proposition about its centrality in the

understanding of religious expressions from the phenomenology of religion, it is


necessary to go still further to face the relation between experience and theology in its

Christian matrix.

Experience and theology: the perspective of theology in face of Christian faith

“Please, please!”

a fish in the sea said to another fish:

“You who should have more experience

perhaps can help me… Then, tell me:

where can I find the huge thing

that is called Ocean? I have been seeking it everywhere

to no avail”.

“But you are swimming precisely

in the Ocean”, said the other fish.

“Oh… this? But it is purely and just water!”

Said the younger fish: “I seek the great Ocean!”.

And he went on swimming very much disappointed

seeking elsewhere.

When we start this reflection about experience in the limits of theology it is necessary to

be precise about what distinguishes the religious experience from the theological

experience. The main purpose of this task is to circumscribe what is proper of theology.

What we are saying is that there is a specific task that theology is inalienably

accountable for.

We state it briefly: the difference between the religious experience and the theological

experience is that the latter dares to name the sacred and its presence, calling it “God”.

This is, therefore, a substantial difference. The theological experience starts from a

datum placed by the religious experience: “[…] there is a presence to be experienced

[…]”. However, it does not stop at this datum, it names it, even if it has to dare saying

the inexpressible. To dare, therefore, means that theology tries to name the inexpressible

and it does it in the only possible way: in the dialectic recourse of language, of cultural

mediation.

Theology, and more specifically the theologian, is who, in face of a presence that

questions him (her), dares to ask its name not only to qualify his experience but also to

communicate it. From such daring result two attitudes or discursive strategies that


determine the conception itself that theology will have of its task. On one hand it may

arise a conceptual-univocal position which from speculative procedures arrogates to

itself the experience that it has of the sacred presence. This way there would be an

identification of the experience of the presence with the presence itself. The naming of

this experience would correspond exactly to it in its whole density.

Another possible attitude in face of the arising experience of such presence is symbolic-

polyphonic. Theology, and the theologian himself, know that they are before the

unveiled mystery, they dare naming it, notwithstanding they recognize that this is a task

that is always incompletely accomplished, it is fragile, open. That is: without sandals on

the feet. In this case both the experience itself and also its communication are carried

with the awareness of asymmetry that exists between the presence and the possible

experience with it. If the conceptual attitude generates discursive univocity, the

symbolic attitude is straightforward open to the polyphonic expressiveness.

Paying attention to the discussions about attitudes and discursive strategies in the

process of naming the original Judaic-Christian theological experiences, Paul Ricoeur,

in his article “Between philosophy and theology II: to name God”, makes the following

remark:

The denomination of God in the original expressions of faith is not simple, but

multiple. Or rather, it is not monochord, but polyphonic. The expressions

derived from faith are complex forms of discourse, they are as much diverse as

the narratives, prophecies, laws, proverbs, prayers, hymns, liturgical formula,

sapiential writings. These kinds of discourse name God all together, but they

name Him differently.

To name God from a symbolic-polyphonic discursive attitude first of all constitutes to

go back to the experience of God‟s presence as such, not so much to the fixed words

that result from that experience. P. Ricoeur states about this issue that “it is necessary to

say that to name God is first of all a moment of narrative confession. It is in the „thing‟

told that God is named. This is against the emphasis of theologies of the word that

observe only the occurrence of words”. Outlining further the precedence of experience

in the process of naming God, P. Ricoeur states:


A text is originally a link in a communication chain: first of all an experience of

life is taken to the language, it becomes discourse; then, the discourse

differentiates itself in speech and writing […] the writing is restituted to the live

speech through several acts of the discourse that update again the text. The

reading and preaching are updates of this kind when speaking the written. A text

is, under this viewpoint, like a musical score that asks to be played (some critics,

reacting against the excess of the text itself, even say that it is the „reader in the

text‟ that completes its meaning, for instance, when he fills up the gaps, solves

its ambiguities, even sometimes correcting its narrative or argumentative order).

The priority of facing the experience of God in the daring process of naming it

reinforces the symbolic-polyphonic theological discursive attitude in its state of

incompleteness and openness. P. Ricoeur observes again that “the reference „God‟ is not

only the indicator of mutual belonging of the original forms of the faith discourse, but it

is also its incompleteness. It is its common marking and what escapes from each of

them”.

Like in the epigraph by Anthony de Mello, what is proper of the theological task in face

of the possible experience of the unveiled presence of the Real is to say like the more

skilful fish: “But it is precisely in the Ocean that you are swimming”. This daring of

naming entrusts to the theological act its most radical task: to discern before the

community that asks, even with no precise words: “‟Please, please!‟ said a sea fish to

another: „You should have more experience, perhaps you can help me… Then, tell me:

where can I find the huge thing that is called Ocean?‟”

Therefore, once done a preliminary distinction between religious experience and

theological experience, mainly stating what is proper of the theological experience, as

well as the attitude or discursive strategy that guides our whole argumentation, it is

necessary to develop our theme. In order to do that we propose to cover an itinerary

from the universal revealed in the concept of sacred (proper of the phenomenology of

religion) to the particular of this sacred denominated God by theology within Christian

faith. We are going to take the following steps: 1) explanation of the centrality of the

experience for the theology of revelation; 2) the summit of the experience centrality for

the theology of revelation expressed in incarnation, as well as the relational

expressiveness that the top episode offers to theology of revelation.


Prior to starting the discussion about the centrality of experience for the theology of

revelation, it is necessary to show the close relation between God‟s presence – already

named within Christian theology – and the experience as expression of human

cognoscibility, a relation that is powerfully realized in the Postmodernism. For this we

are going to consider some contributions by Andres Torres Queiruga.

“In fact, God is present in the entire reality, open to man‟s religiously cognitive

experience”. A.T. Queiruga sums up therein the close relation that there is between God

and human. God is presence, and the human being, as being of openness, can experience

such presence. By the way – and this is the thesis of this work by A.T. Queiruga – this

human only will be full of his humanity when he accepts revelation, and such revelation

can only be fairly understood in the dynamics of the complete realization of human.

The perspective supported by A.T. Queiruga is extensive and profound. Its

extensiveness consists of saying that God is a presence in the “entire reality”. He states

about this: “Divine is always experienced as an „active transcendence‟ which arises – by

its own initiative – to meet man; and, for this, the whole religion is considered finally

revealed”. His depth is in the proposition that God “is open to the human experience”.

Here is an important issue to be worked: this God‟s openness to the experiential depth

of the human, present mainly in the religious experience, is not co-natural and

spontaneous anymore due to the ascension of the reflection critical movement to the

ultimate state of the evolution of human cognoscibility. Thus the distinction between the

God of philosophy and the God of religion was deepened. The first is “analyzed or

deduced as object of the critical thinking”. The second is “experienced spontaneously as

active subject”.

From the philosophical and theological viewpoint Martin Buber reflects about this same

question as follows:

Religion, even if the “uncreated” is not expressed by either the mouth or soul, is

founded upon the duality I-Thou; philosophy, even when the philosophical act

leads to a vision of unity, is founded upon the subject-object duality. The I-Thou

duality is completed in the religious relation; the subject-object duality is what

supports philosophy while one is doing philosophy […] I-Thou persist thanks to

the concreteness lived and within this concreteness; subject and object, the

products of power of abstraction, only exist while abstraction lasts.


To talk about experience with the unveiled presence of God is to talk about the “God of

religion”, of the relationality and concreteness of the I-Thou. A.T. Queiruga explains

clearly this emphasis on the experiential-relational-concrete of the relation with the

revelation in the following terms: “Whereas man experiences – in himself, as nature or

in history – God as coming to him, as manifesting Himself to him, he is having the

radical experience of revelation”. For A.T. Queiruga it is necessary to assume that “God

is really present in every man and he really reveals Himself to them […] reveals

Himself to them mainly in the experiences mediated by their religious traditions”.

We are arguing implicitly about the transfusion of the critic passage from the modern

instrumental reason to the postmodern rationality-relationality (ratiovitalism).

Reflecting specifically on such passage, A.T. Queiruga suggests the following

understanding of theology:

I do not conceive theology except as resolutely pos-illustrated. Which is not (I

must give a warning because sometimes I was interpreted in this direction) equal

to simply “illustrated”. If we pay attention, it is precisely the opposite! Because

to be pos means that one cannot retrocede challenges, questions and perspectives

opened by the Enlightenment; but, precisely for this, we have to go ahead, being

lucidly critical in respect of initial solutions which are mostly premature and full

of a polemic unilateralism.

Perceiving the “epoch revolution” or the “change of paradigm” that the pos represents

for theology, soon after appreciating G. Vattimo‟s thinking as representing a

“philosophical evolution”, A.T. Queiruga states: “For a responsible thinking all this

should mean foremost, and mainly, just one thing: the inescapable necessity of facing

lucidly the new situation seeking an updated balance”. Unfolding this necessary

confrontation of this “new situation” A.T. Queiruga engages in a critical contact with

postmodernism and makes the following consideration:

There is a […] positive valence that exists in the fact of having (the

postmodernism) propitiated the perception of new values. In approaching the

individual it roused, or at least activated, the revaluation of the small, the

tolerance with the different, the clearance of the established, the new

appreciation of the body, the revitalization of experience.


Making even more specific his considerations about postmodernism in its relation with

religion, mainly to assert the primacy of experience, A.T. Queiruga states that “the

„religious‟ postmodernism, starting from this openness, diffracts in multiple shapes in

search of an experience of fraternity that embraces the whole real and leads to an

updated experience of the Absolute”.

Facing the first step of the experience/theology relation, that is: centrality of the

experience for the theology of revelation, we will start from a discussion of fundamental

theology and experience in the postmodernist horizon, we will outline the experience in

face of God‟s revelation and, as transition to the second step already enunciated

(incarnation as the climax of experience centrality for the theology of revelation) we

will work the holistic and relational dimension so close to the experience/revelation

label.

“The crisis of reason is the awareness of the gigantic irrationality of reason itself”. João

Batista Libanio introduces like this an interesting reflection about the fundamental

theology in the challenging context of postmodernism. It was within Modernity as such,

with its tendency to extreme specialization, that the concept of strong reason started to

collapse. Instead of the strong reason appeared a principle of reason weakening that

upgraded experience to primary condition in relation to the theology of revelation.

J.B. Libanio states accordingly: “A feasible path suggests starting from the significant

experiences of people, making them explicit for them. And from within them show how

revelation can give concrete answers to them”. Thus theology finds itself facing an

inalienable task: to help men and women in the discernment of their experiences

contributing to name and explain a plural universe of fertile signs of God‟s presence.

Therefore the challenging theological task consists of contributing in the process of

discernment of the experiences effectively lived by men and women within their most

varied cultural places. However this contribution will not happen in its whole density if

it is not realized from within the worlds where are living those true protagonists who

receive the divine presence. J.B. Libanio describes the features of these postmodernist

cultural places where the reception of God‟s presence is experienced.

The path seems particularly more pertinent as one perceives that the interest,

sensibility and liking for symbols, signs, beauty and aesthetics are growing in

people […] Beauty and significant strength of signs touch much more in-depth


the postmodernist generation. A fundamental theology for this cultural moment

demands mental agility in which allusion, insinuation, symbolic game, beauty of

reflections overcome a logical rationality increasingly more inaccessible.

The necessary epistemological frame to outline this theological and existential scenery

has to be composed of an adequate sensibility to such scenery. Therefore it is time to

overcome frames that framed past sceneries very well but that now only distort the

perception of the new horizon that is appearing. A new rationality that enables theology

to read in the human experiences the experiences of God. J.B. Libanio makes an

important consideration about this. He states that: “when, however, one enters the field

of symbols, aesthetics, one is not renouncing to reason but one works with another

dimension of rationality whose access does not depend upon sophisticated rational and

inaccessible knowledge but from another source”.

The place where theology is thought and proposed suffers a radical shift. It and its

processes are shifted to the interior of communities where theoretical formulations of

faith do not matter as much but narratives of experiences of God‟s presence conveyed

by signs and proper symbols of such universes. To tell one‟s own experiences: this is

the adequate catechetic process of a postmodernist rationality. It is incumbent upon

theology, being the “older sister”, to contribute from the heritage of so many traditions

for the discernment of such catechetic dynamics in order that it is accordingly to

Christian faith in its multiple expressions.

This new place to which theology is invited to live has as atmosphere the experience as

such. It is from it and from within it that one wants to dare naming the presence of the

Real that involves everybody. In the experience of the presence of the Real we assume

the risk of calling it God. Such attitude constitutes a risk because the challenge of

naming God can degenerate in an attempt of defining it, thus incurring in the most

radical idolatry.

It is necessary to be more precise about the outlines of the experience when naming the

revelation of the Real. Once we have already established not only a philosophical

conceptualization about experience but also a description of its importance for

perceiving the presence of sacred in the approach of the phenomenology of religion, we

still have the task of drawing up the outlines of the experience within theology and what

belongs to it. For that we will refer to the discussion proposed by Gerald O‟Collins in


his work Fundamental Theology, particularly the second chapter entitled “The human

experience”.

G. O‟Collins when examining experience as such establishes a set of features proper to

their relation with theology. First of all every experience has a meaning, that is, there is

a communication of meaning to those who have an experience God. This first feature

points to the depth that such event produces in human life. Contrary to what sometimes

is said, the experience is not “epidermal”, or at least not only that. Because it happens in

close contact with our empiricist dimension, it is not doomed to evanescence. There is

in fact an intrinsic meaning given in depth in an experience of God.

Marking the deep and dense incidence that experience generates in human existence, G.

O‟Collins emphasizes its no reduction to the exclusively ephemeral, stating that “we can

expect that the world and our experiences make sense, provided that we do not insist on

a simple and immediate meaning”. It is as if the human experience of God echoed from

the innermost of who makes it by reverberating the action and influx to all dimensions

of the human existence. The meaning of such experience is asserted and perceived

insofar such dimensions of this experience are recognized and accepted.

This process of meaning assertion that arises from the experience of God made in the

outlines of human existence has teleology. G. O‟Collins identifies such purpose as the

second feature of the experience in its relation with theology. He states that “every

experience brings with it certain purpose or finality. It leads us to some direction”. In

the scope of the theology of revelation the finality of an experience of God should be

coherent with the experienced revealed as such. That is, teleology should find

consonance with theology receiving from the latter the elements for its discernment. G.

O‟Collins exemplifies this second feature as follows: “The experience of genuine love

becomes enriching for the other and personally enriching too”.

To experience love is to move in the dynamics of love itself. This grants weight and

concreteness to the experience and helps to correct possible evanescent and epidermal

reductions. G. O‟Collins identifies the third feature of experience in this dimension of

concreteness. “The experience is nothing if it is not concrete”. Its density and historicity

are highlighted precisely therein. There is no room for “pure” abstractions, aprioristic

rationalizations or appeals to axiomatic formula founded on metaphysical means. A

theology of revelation with this emphasis on experience cannot be thought generally

because “there are no general experiences”. “An experience of God […] only occurs in

particular moments, in particular places and with particular persons”.


In fourth place G. O‟Collins mentions as important characteristic of the experience an

opening to the new, uncommon, not the ordinary. He mentions how theorizers who deal

with this thematic use the resource of language to express the amazing that is shown in

an experience. Expressions such as “apex-experience”, “limit-situation” or “limit-

experience” reveal that “the experience readily suggests something new and unexpected

that leaves its mark on the subject and opens him up to other experiences in the future”.

Summing up: G. O‟Collins concludes that “the genuine experience transcends our

forecasts”.

Another author that can help to understand the importance of experience in relation to

the theology of revelation is Raimon Panikkar, specifically in his work Icons of Mistery.

The experience of God. In the scope of the reflection about the risk of naming the Real,

calling it God, intrinsically present in the act of experience, R. Panikkar starts warning

that ”everything that one can say with strict rationality about the experience of God is

idolatry”. The experience of God is an act by the human being, therefore it cannot be

understood in just one of his dimensions, even being it reason as such. It can only be

perceived in its density if placed in the integrality of the human, even for its mysterious

dimension.

It is precisely this amplitude of the density of Real that we name so particularly God

that enables us to be completely human. The experience of God claims our entire

humanity, that is why only before it we can assert ourselves as entirely human. “The

human being becomes fully human when he experiences his ultimate “fundament”, of

what really is”. For being an experience that demands the entirety of the human being, it

is constitutionally relational. R. Panikkar states very clearly that “without the links that

unite us with the whole reality we cannot experience God”.

The experience of God is the root of all experience. It is the experience in depth

of all and each one of the human experiences: of the friend, the word, the

conversation. It is the experience underlying every human experience: pain,

beauty, pleasure, kindness, anxiety, cold… underlying every experience to the

extent of discovering for us a dimension of infinite, not finite, but un-finished.

Underlying every experience and, therefore, not susceptible of being completely

expressed in any idea, sensation or feeling.


From the experience of God then arises the possibility of the full human experience.

Therein is the source for the relationality that is constitutive of the humanized human.

Even having sketched the outlines of the experience of God in the theological

perspective, it still remains an important task in the process of specification of our

thematic. It is necessary to ask about the criteria that may allow us to identify with some

clarity the differences between the theological experience and other forms of

experiences of the sacred. For that it is necessary to make explicit what until now has

been implicit throughout the explanation of this topic: we are talking about the Christian

theological experience.

The apical point of the centrality of experience for the theology of revelation in the

Christian perspective is expressed in incarnation. Therein the experience of God

acquires its inalienable topography: the concreteness of the existence of men and

women situated in their multiple and respective contexts. And further: such experience

finds its irreducible relational expressiveness that ultimately is who qualifies it as an

experience of God (assuming such naming from what we got to know from the life of

Jesus, the Christ).

The Christian experience of God is as much an experience of the incarnation as of

incarnation as such. This is what Jesus Christ‟s life can reveal to us. Being Him the

incarnated God, he lives in a condition radically marked by such incarnation: whether

from the geographic, religious, cultural or existential point of view. When God

incarnates He self-limits and limits us presenting the modus operandi for the theological

articulation of the Christian experience of God: the logic of incarnation. Here is the core

of the Mystery turned history and the pedagogy to live such history as the one and only

history. Reflecting about such specificity of the Christian experience of God L. Boff

states:

In Christianism the experience of the Mystery was articulated as the history of

the Mystery. The Meaning did not become di-ffused, pro-fused and con-fused

within reality. It “made his dwelling” among us and was called Jesus Christ (see

John 1,14). The Mystery is so radically Mystery that it can, without loosing its

identity, become flesh and history. It can fully subsist in the Other, different

from him. Were it otherwise, it would neither show its omnipotence nor its

character of Mystery. Then, being life, it can die. Becoming death, it can live. It


can, being intangible, become tangible; being invisible, become visible; being

Creator, become creature.

This no “di-ffusion, pro-fusion and con-fusion” of the Mystery present among us is

realized because there is a concrete existence that shelters such Mystery. Incarnation

provides the outlines, the concreteness of God‟s presence. And it is precisely this that

allows us to name it. If it possible for us to speak of God in a Christian perspective, we

only can do it in a Christic way. This means to say that “the Christian experience of

God is an experience of the presence of the radical Meaning in a certain historical

existence, the existence of Jesus, and in the word of revelation that is totally conditioned

by this historical existence insofar it arises from it and refers to it”.

From the dimension of concreteness bequeathed to the Christian experience of God

arises as “another side of the coin”: the relational dimension. If with the first the

Christian experience of God acquires its outline, with the second it gains its depth. It is

not possible to conceive the presence of God in Jesus, the Christ, without stating the

relational or inter-subjective logic. The Christian theology when proposes to name the

Real from Jesus cannot, under the penalty of loosing completely, backslide in a

rationalistic scheme of subject/object. Should it do it, the theology will treat revelation

as just a doctrinal agenda that should be accessed exclusively by the rules of reason,

both in the speculative and apologetic methodologies. However, both subjected to the

same principle of a narrow reason. In this case the Real named God is nothing more

than a describable object.

Roger Haight, when talking about a Christian theology of revelation as a meeting

between subjects, introduces important considerations about the relational dimension of

such event. He states: “It is not an inferential operation that argues based upon God‟s

personality, but a phenomenology of the experience of the Christian revelation that

accounts for the belief according to which God is personal”. Incarnation does not allow

anything less than that: it is the radicalization of the individuality of God. Thus, “the

Christian revelation does not resemble knowledge about God like an object, not even

knowledge of a transcendent person. On the contrary the Christian revelation assumes

the form of a personal meeting with a divine subject”.

Incarnation demands relationship and this in its turn asserts the experience as privileged

expression. The Real named courageously by the Christian theology as God, in its full

revelation that is Jesus, the Christ, does not allow theology less than inter-subjective


communication. God is not for theology as a concept to be perceived, but a subject that

challenges it to a relationship. “God is experienced as subject, in such way that the

contact or the human perception of God cannot be a knowledge about God as an

object”. “In the Christian revelation God is experienced as personal ego”.

In terms of Christian theology to speak about the experience of God is to assume the

risks of naming it and this constitutes an urgent understanding responsible and

amplified of the theology of revelation. To deal with the latter, without paying attention

to the Christic criteria placed by incarnation and the relationality derived from it, means

to fall into the trap of such naming: objectivation of the Real and resulting idolatry. To

speak of God from the Christian perspective has to be always a situated speech, like

required by incarnation, and inter-subjective, like proposed by the radical individuality

of the incarnated. In R. Haight‟s words “the positive contents of revelation is therefore

influenced and determined by the means that mediates the experience of the presence

and initiative of God. In the case of the Christian revelation Jesus is its central historical

means”.

Conclusion

The ratiovitalism, as expression of open rationality, integrates the human reality in its

entireness in the process of knowledge of reality. Undoubtedly that was the main issue

in this text. Only an all-encompassing epistemological paradigm like ratiovitalism is

able of embracing holistically the reality, thus breaking the narrowness of modern

reason mainly in its greatest radicalization: the rationalism.

However the affirmation of ratiovitalism as a supportive structure has been at the

service of the affirmation of experience as an adequate possibility of the perception of

reality in the postmodernist cultural horizon. Breaking the dualistic logic of res cogitans

and res extensa, the human being is reintegrated in its corporeity and spirituality and is

able to scrutinize the Real with the totality of what he is.

It was important also to perceive the different theoretical places that experience can

occupy as epistemological element and the several levels of discourse about Real

derived from each of them. Experiences in the philosophical, phenomenological and

teleological perspectives have complementary peculiarities – even if a complementarity

in tension – that examined in depth can help the perception of the transfusion of reality,

namely the Real


Translated by Cacilda R. Ferrante

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