CHAPTER III
A RELATIONAL METHODOLOGY FOR THE KNOWLEDGE OF VALUES
After
underlining certain methodological deficiencies in raising the issue of values,
it is necessary and indeed urgent to provide the bases for an adequate
methodology for the study of super-objective relationships and creative
phenomena as the prime place of birth for values. In fact, pointing out the
existence of values alongside being understood ecstatically stresses the
super-objective, ambital-dialogical or constellational aspect of reality.
The
elaboration of this relational or ludic methodology requires drawing upon all
the resources of contemporary research regarding "inobjective,"38
"atmospheric"39 and dialogical40 realities; the
events of play,41 encounter and participation;42
experiences of ecstasy and vertigo; the anthropology of sense and of the absurd;43
and other subjects linked to the realization of the person through creative
immerson in the real. At present it is not sufficient to compare or contrast the
notions of value and duty or value and human subjectivity; one must pursue the
genesis of value within the dynamism of the creative processes and ultimately of
reality.44
This
analysis can be carried out completely only if one possesses a style of thought
at once extraordinarily both flexible and rigorous in order to adhere faithfully
to the peculiar conditions of each object of knowledge. This implies not only
correspondence to objectively given realities, but also active collaboration or
co-creative immersion in realities which offer possibilities for interaction. In
order personally to realize what this collaboration demands, one must discover
the genetic nexus between meaning and the real experience of participation and
ecstasy which is the birth of meaning and value.
THE
EXPERIENCE OF INSTALLATION WITHIN THE REAL
A person is not automatically in union with the real; one must contribute to such union by co-creating ambits or fields of play. This creative activity depends basically upon the adjustment between man and his environment, and this creative dovetailing is possible only between ambits, not between objects. Only the former enters into the person, and vice versa, even though they be different and in principle distant. The question of whether the human environment is of an "ambital" nature has divided contemporary thinkers into two divergent paths which we could call the philosophy of meaning and thephilosophy of the absurd.
Those
thinkers according to whom man is "thrown" into the environment
understand it to be hostile, ineluctibly different, external and strange; hence
it does not offer a field of possibilities for play and for the birth of
meaning. To them existence seems nonsensical or "absurd." The distance
of perspective, which the person as spiritual may take with regard to one's
environment, is interpreted, e.g., by some vitalists as a distance of detachment
which annuls the "security" had by animal life--hence, their nostalgia
for fusional forms of unity with the real.
On
the contrary, if perspectival distance is a necessary condition for founding a
field of interplay with the real in which the distant becomes intimate and
creatively adjustable to man, one tends to see persons as "installed"
in the world and as gradually illuminating and thereby increasing the meaning of
any reality. In its basic position, the philosophy of meaning--the personalist,
dialogical, phenomenological and existential movements--points out that in the
man-world relationship all manner of unheard possibilities may arise. Where the
philosophy of the absurd limits human possibilities in principle by considering
from an objectivist perspective that these must be observable after the manner
of an object, in a philosophy of meaning one achieves authentic closeness to the
real when one founds a relationship of immediacy-at-a-distance or mediated
immediacy.
As
we have stressed repeatedly, rather than being interposed like a veil between
man and the real, mediation is the means by which one enters into a relationship
of presence with the most relevant realities. To achieve this form of encounter
is the goal of the experience of ecstasy at all levels and in all aspects of
human activity. According to the philosophy of the absurd, in contrast,
proximity with the real can occur only through fusion: this surrender of one's
self and clinging to the fascinatingly immediate is the experience of vertigo.45
The
philosophy of the absurd usually takes for granted that one is thrown into
existence. To be thrown means to be placed in a hostile environment to which one
cannot adjust creatively for it provides no possibilities for creative
interplay. By not adjusting, no play is founded; consequently the divisions
between here and there, the inside and outside, mine and yours, subject and
object are not overcome. The environment always remains external, distant and
strange to persons. As such it may either dominate them or be dominated by them,
it can either cling to them like lumps of wax or detach itself, it may collide
or remain indifferently at a distance. What it cannot do is blend with persons,
that is, create fields of interplay in which, without the need to fuse one with
another, all gain relevant modes of union. When a different and strange reality
becomes highly attractive to the absurd man, that is one for whom the detachment
between man and the environment is unsurmountable, one has only a single
alternative: to grant primacy either to the ego and dominate the attractive
reality, or to the attractive reality and be fused thereto. Though opposed, the
two solutions remain in the same objectivist, non-creative line.
Thus,
they respond to one and the same attitude of fascination or vertigo. The first
alternative is the vertigo of ambition or mastery; the second, the vertigo of
the dissolution of one's individual identity. One is carried away by desire
either for immediate mastery over the other as an object of possession, or for
dissolution in sensible reality seen as an amorphous ocean in which to lose
oneself. This selfish, two-sided attitude leads to the abandonment of oneself to
a process of vertigo.
What exactly is the inner nature of vertigo?
If
we look at the ground from a high tower, the void seems to suck us down: we feel
dizzy and unless we hold onto something firmly we run the risk of being
catapulted to the ground. There is a similar fearful form of vertigo in one's
personal life. When one polarizes one's existence around one's ego and focuses
upon immediate gains--whether mastery or diverse sense pleasures--one usually is
carried away by fascination when confronted by a powerfully attractive reality.
To
fascinate means to seduce, to suck away, to sweep away, to cling to. At first,
the sweeping away may inflame us and bring on a peculiar exaltation. But when
joined to clinging, this quickly becomes a devastating deception. By taking us
euphorically out of ourselves fascination seems to lead to experiences of
amazing richness, but this union or clinging does not leave the freedom which
derives from the distance found in a field of play. From the theory of
creativity we know that by entering into play with the realities of the
environment one sets up all manner of ambits. In proportion to their quality one
increases one's creative liberty to discover the overall meaning of the
realities and events which weave the pattern of one's existence. In fascination,
feeling taken out of oneself and at the mercy of the seduction of reality, one
becomes aware of being estranged or cut off from personal fulfillment and
asphyxiated in any ludic sense.
The
experience of fascination, however intense and moving it may be psychologically,
leaves one out of play and stripped of all that one needs to exercise one's
creative potentialities to shape one's personal reality and thus attain
fulfillment. Realizing that one is not on the path to fulfillment, one feels a
sadness which follows a sense of becoming impoverished and being no longer a
person. When this impoverishment reaches the stage of annulling one's personal
life, one experiences a lack of all meaning and, through this void experiences
the existential vertigo called anxiety.
When
one cannot overcome the attitude of passivity and self-surrender to which
vertigo draws us and to some extent recover one's creative capacity and
initiative, anxiety becomes despair. This is a mortal disease which, according
to Kierkegaard, blocks life in the spirit but does not extinguish the light of
consciousness, thereby enabling one indefinitely to suffer spiritual asphyxia.
This feeling of despair leads to one's own destruction in suicide or to that of
others in murder.
The
experience of ecstasy occurs when a valuable reality, that is, one which offers
possibilities for creative play, attracts a person who is sensitive to
values--and who is inclined not so much to master one's environment as to create
ambits of ludic interaction. The person who has no desire for immediate gain
usually does not turn attraction into fascination, but understands it rather as
an appeal to creative liberty--an invitation to enter into play with reality
that is valuable and thus actively to take up the ludic possibilities it offers.
To enter into play is to enter into a relationship of encounter with others,
blending the ambits of life, the possibilities of action and the initiatives
each possesses. These possibilities give impulse to one's own activity, so that
one feels impelled by a special inner dynamism or singular form of energy which
did not originate in one but nonetheless has become something intimate. In
principle, all the realities of the human environment are, with regard to
persons, different, distant, external and strange; it is through creative
contact that they become intimate, albeit still different.
This
is particularly manifest in the intercourse of friendship and in musical
interpretation. A musical work, which at first was unknown and strange,
gradually becomes a sort of "inner voice." By following its dictates
one does not leave oneself, become alienated or estranged, or lose one's power
of initiative or personal configuration; instead one is elevated to the best of
oneself and gradually achieves the ideal state of one's being. This progress
towards the goal of personal fulfillment causes in the human spirit a feeling of
joy which accompanies the awareness of having attained some fulfillment or of
being on the path thereto.
The
peak of joy is enthusiasm,
the feeling of overflowing fullness experienced when one is creatively immersed
in a reality which offers strong possibilities for personal fulfillment.
Etymologically, to be enthusiastic means to enter the ambit of the divine: more
accurately, to be immersed in, and welcomed by the divine. In its current sense,
enthusiasm could be said to arise when one actively takes on certain
possibilities of valuable interplay which elevate one or another aspect of one's
personality to a high point of maturity. If I interpret on the organ a Bach
chorale rich in peace and depth I feel enthusiasm because I see myself
internally impelled towards the dialogical configuration of a perfect world in
which I begin to participate creatively: I configure the chorale and the chorale
configures me. This type of reversible experience leads to fulfillment in one's
personal life and to the same extent arouses feelings of enthusiasm. The
enthusiasm of the ecstatic experience responds to an inner sensation of richness
totally opposed to the void brought by vertigo.
This
explains why enthusiasm inspires and impels the person to activities which lead
to the edification
of both one's own personality and that of others. This feeling of enthusiasm is
not a mere moving and fleeting overexcitement, but the blissful sensation of
founding an authentic overflowing personal life through a rich encounter. When
two fields of relational or ludic possibilities blend their potentialities they
give rise to a new ambit of greater scope, a field of free play. When this
occurs, time and space take on a festive character. Such an encounter is the
very root of the fiesta,
which because it implies the foundation of a field of play is luminous in
itself: its light shines from within. For this reason, it overflows with symbols
and is linked to the origins of peoples and cultures.
Let
us look once more at the two experiences of ecstasy and vertigo. The process of
fascination or vertigo does not pose any demands upon one, for it responds to an
easy attitude of surrender: it invites one merely to allow oneself be swept
away. Though it exalts, inflames, gives one a first euphoric impression of power
and seems to offer rapid fulfillment, in reality it puts one out of play and
asphyxiates any ludic-creative sensitivity.
Ecstasy,
on the other hand, is highly demanding; it places one in a night of long and
patient purifications which seem to void one of oneself--to annihilate one. By
losing the support of all one usually considers fundamental and indispensible in
life a person feels anxiety or a diffuse sense of existential crumbling. Yet
this anxious feeling of instability is finally exchanged for a supportive
impression of great security when, after overcoming fusional or reductive modes
of unity, the person creates higher forms of integration--outstandingly fruitful
ludic relations--with the realities one finds appealing.46 Vertigo is
the result of the fascination produced in one by the flattery of immediate gain,
whether intellectual or sensitive, whereas ecstasy results when primacy is
granted to the creation of something valuable over and above one's own selfish
indulgence.
Vertigo
is alienating because it surrenders one to a different, distant, external and
strange reality. To this extent, it leaves one outside oneself, dispersed and
lacking the unity which derives from a creative bond to the valuable. Pascal's
theory of "divertissement" should be borne in mind here. Ecstasy, for
its part, demands withdrawal or recollection in order for there to be awe before
that which entails value. To the extent that it creates links between persons
and relevant realities, ecstasy shapes one's personal identity. Experiences of
ecstasy are the stepping-stones along the course of human development;
experiences of vertigo are degenerative moments which block the unfolding of
personality. Ecstasy shelters persons by opening them to authentic forms of
encounter as risky as they are fruitful; vertigo, after the first moment of
exaltation, leaves persons spiritually dismantled.
Ecstasy
produces a healthy unrest in the human spirit, an inner tension which drives
one's action and enables one to unfold fully as a person. This unrest engenders
not uneasiness, but the peace of those who know themselves to be in truth and
are aware of being nourished continually by the reality they seek. On the
contrary, a passionate self-surrender to experiences of vertigo brings on an
unshakable restlessness, for it sweeps one along, sucks one down and places one
outside the play of an authentically personal life. Contrary to what might
appear at first glance, vertigo engenders not dynamism, but mere agitation. Once
abandoned to the frenzy of vertigo in any of its modalities, persons can only
spin on their own axis without advancing, and once aware that this agitation has
been merely a squandering of energy
such persons experience bitter disappointment.
Vertigo
engenders this disappointment and pessimism due to
the disproportion between the magnitude of the expectations it arouses
and the catastrophic results to which it leads. Ecstasy arouses joy through the
fulfillment it implies; it inspires realistic optimism because it opens horizons
full of meaning and values which, understood in their profound sense, depend
upon creativity and particularly upon the events of interplay and encounter.
Ecstasy
stirs up melancholy as a deep sense of valuable realities not as yet fully
attained, but merely glimpsed: the ecstatic person lives in hope. Vertigo
arouses passion, for it intoxicates with the ephemeral flattery of the present
moment. As a result persons are obsessed by immediate gain; they live in
expectation of a joyful moment and exclaim with Lamartine: "O temps,
suspends ton vol."
Vertigo
promotes resentment towards such realities as human love, religion and great
art. Not being easily reducible to objects to be possessed these do not provoke
an attitude of fascinated self-abandonment, but appeal rather to one's creative
freedom. Ecstasy, on the contrary, arouses gratitude, for the one who responds
creatively to the appeal of realities which produce enthusiasm tends to welcome
them as a gift.
Ecstasy
promotes attitudes of generosity and respect. Ecstatic persons open up and offer
others creative possibilities in a common field of play. This is a gift to the
creative power of others which one acknowledges and accepts. Vertigo, on the
other hand, is a source of both sadism and masochism, for it sweeps along those
who suffer from these as if they were mere objects and induces them to see
others as no more than manipulable objects. Prisoners of vertigo tend also to
dominate and let themselves be dominated: on the one hand, by absorbing into
themselves surrounding realities they deny those realities any independence; on
the other hand, by losing themselves in such realities they nip in the bud their
own capacity for personal initiative. Vertigo makes a person both dominating and
indolent: the vertigo of totalitarianism and gregariousness are really two
aspects of the same basic error, namely, the adoption of a reductionist
attitude. To feel safe and even in charge because up-to-date or because
"everybody thinks alike" is the radical ingenuity of the gregarious
person, who interprets his vertigo as personal energy.
As
a result of reductionism, in many works of literature and films eroticism and
violence follow one upon another, linking apparent tenderness with insane
cruelty. I say apparent, because eroticism implies the reduction of a person to
a mere object of fleeting satisfaction and to this extent is a violent
mode of inter-relation. In contrast one who experiences ecstasy respects the
condition of each reality, both one's own and those who make up one's
existential environment. Fundamentally, this is because one begins from the
conviction that personal life is creative; such creativity is possible only
between realities which are not mere objects but centers of initiative offering
possibilities of interplay with whomever is able to take them up. Persons
reduced to objects can no longer participate in play.
Because
it is reductionist and does not found authentic encounter, the experience of
vertigo does not give birth to meaning, but blinds people to values and orients
them towards the absurd. As the source of authentic forms of interplay and
encounter, the experience of ecstasy sheds light, places people in truth and is
a source of deepest beauty. Since antiquity this has been defined as the
splendor of order, understood positively as coordinating or blending diverse
aspects of reality. In contrast, by preventing the foundation of fields of play,
vertigo dislocates one from one's true setting, plunges one into darkness and
submerges one in ugliness--thereby engendering disorder.
POLAR OPPOSITION BETWEEN THE EXPERIENCES OF VERTIGO AND ECSTASY
In
order to clarify these concepts it is useful to compare such phenomena as the
vertigo of pure competition to ecstasy in sports, the vertigo of electrifying
rhythmic intoxication to the ecstasy of immersion in a musical work of value,
the vertigo of eroticism to the ecstasy of oblative love, the vertigo of
ambition to the ecstasy of generosity, and the vertigo of giving oneself up to
destructive forces to the ecstasy of personal union with the Foundation of all
reality. Careful comparison enables us to discover, beyond any apparent
affinity, a sharp qualitative difference between the phenomena of fascination or
vertigo and those of creative play or ecstasy. To a greater or lesser extent the
former bring about the collapse of one's creative capacity, whereas the latter
lead to diverse peaks of achievement. Vertigo and ecstasy are comparable in
taking one out of oneself, but where the former alienates by leavings one at the
mercy of different, distant, external and strange realities or forces, the
latter--ecstasy--elevates to what is best in oneself, to the state of
fulfillment attained by relating to valuable realities which, through creative
play or intercourse, become intimate while remaining distinct.
The
opposition between vertigo and ecstasy seems to be refuted by the fact that such
a significant phenomenon as married love displays both sexual attraction, which
at first sight implies a movement of vertigo, and personal encounter, which is
an ecstatic event. Certainly, married love may entail a moment of fascination,
but this should be taken up by the creative dynamism of a personal friendship
which is both generous and lucid. The sexual instinct produces vertigo when one
decides to treat it as an autonomous, autarchic, dis-solute power detached from
one's integral dynamism. This instinctive energy, which can threaten to sweep
people along and launch them over the precipice of sexual frenzy, takes on a
peculiar value and a serene equilibrium when consciously undertaken and
integrated within the foundation of an amorous field of play as a space of
encounter. That which when left to itself bespeaks vertigo, in this creative
context acquires a dimension of ecstasy. This transformation responds to a
radical change of attitude by humans from fascinated surrender of oneself to the
free and deliberate foundation of ambits.
Viewed
accurately, the experiences of vertigo and ecstasy display opposite natures,
respond to totally diverse human attitudes and lead to quite disparate
consequences. Lately, however, both types of experience have been confused
either unwittingly --doubtless on account of a faulty appreciation of the true
essence of both phenomena--or deliberately and for far-reaching strategic
reasons which we must submit to rigorous analysis.
Examples
of possibly involuntary confusion are the approaches of Unamuno, Ortega and
Sartre.47 In other cases, the confusion of the experiences of vertigo
and ecstasy seems to entail a deliberate attempt to subvert the values which are
the backbone and give meaning to western culture. Radical subversion of values
occurs when people become cut off from the real. Cultures as the foundation of
relevant modes of union with reality are erased by experiences of vertigo which
diminish or annul in certain cases any creative capacity in humans and leave
them existentially uprooted. This disconnection from the real narrows human
beings and prevents the total development of personality.
The
installation of the person within the real is achieved through experiences of
ecstasy, for these are the bases for creative interplay, that is, for encounter
between humans and the realities of the environment which offer creative
possibilities. People attain true unity with the real when they relate, not to
objects, but to realities with which they are able to enter into play. If I
touch the piano as an object or piece of furniture I have a superficial
immediacy with it. If I play the piano, if I run my fingers along the black and
white keys and, in unison with both instrument and score, bring forth certain
well-tempered musical forms the mode of immediacy I establish with the piano is
much deeper and quite different in quality.
One
challenging task for current philosophy is to study the diverse modes of unity
which people can establish with the different realities of the environment seen,
not only as objects, but above all as fields of possibilities for creative
interplay. Modes of high unity structure the human being, give energy and root
one in the real. This structuring and shaping foundation is a source of joy and
optimism in life because it increases one's sensitivity to values, that is, to
all those realities which offer persons possibilities for creative play. On the
contrary, giving oneself to vertigo blinds one to values for it polarizes the
attention of the one who is fascinated by immediate satisfaction.
To
induce people to think that the orgiastic exaltation of vertigo is to be
identified with the serene exultation of ecstatic enthusiasm is the worst snare
could be set for unwary persons today. This colossal fraud, this gigantic
philosophical trick, leaves people, particularly the young, disoriented forever
in the ambiguous play of life where, if one is not alert, it is easy to consider
these two opposite phenomena to be identical, or at least to be of the same
type.
A
person or human group is considered civilized when they are able to enjoy the
products of culture. They are cultured when they know how to found qualitatively
higher modes of union with the different realities of the environment, which in
turn gives birth to profound knowledge of beings. In vertigo, being left outside
of play one is displaced from one's culture, even though one may be evolved as
regards civilization. The current crisis of culture has its roots in the loss of
the relevant forms of unity with the real which are created through ecstatic
experiences. Thus, one attempts to substitute integrative modes of unity by
fusional modes of vertigo through fascination in which one clings to seductive
things unable to achieve the necessary distance of perspective required to
develop fields of play.
To
a great extent present-day nostalgia for fusional modes of unity and
consequently for infra-creative forms of existence determines the current course
of culture, particularly its artistic and literary creation. Often it is
stressed that current artists hardly relate to the general public. The two lack
a common language, doubtless because the artist often tends to individualistic
withdrawal and shuns spontaneous participation in the community's fields of
play, that is, in valuable realities which nourish people's spirit and open rich
humanistic horizons. This lack of communication is reflected in an absence of
emotion which corresponds to a distance from the valuable, even though at times
this tendentiously may be interpreted as a return to a serene, anti-romantic
objectivity.
To
encourage experiences of vertigo is the most efficient--and most sinister--way
of reducing people's creativity to a minimum, of distorting language and thus of
facilitating the massive manipulation of people. The most dangerous form of this
is fraudulently and artfully to confuse the purpose of experiences of vertigo
and ecstasy. With this apparently harmless distortion, values which lie at the
roots of the best of western culture are subverted leaving people and human
groups helpless in the face of those who desire power.
There
is no other solution to this subtle form of manipulation than to be alert, to
know in detail the resource of language and to encourage creativity. A people
which is not very creative and has scant knowledge is easily manipulable,
whereas one that is creative and well informed knows how to confront
successfully the tide of manipulation. To encourage creativity means to promote
experiences of ecstasy in all its aspects and to disregard the voices of those
sirens which incite one to vertigo. This is a broad, difficult and fertile
program for an educational undertaking with vision for the future.
All
forms of experience of ecstasy serve to clarify the logic of creativity and,
consequently of participation, but on account of its accessibility and clarity
the aesthetic experience of musical interpretation stands out. If one can grasp
from within the dynamic nexus established between interpreter, instrument, work,
composer and the cultural atmosphere of his/her time, one is in position to
offer a clear-sighted genetic reading of the profound works of diverse
contemporary authors on the subject of participation and values.
The
interpreter enters the work to the extent that it becomes present in him as a
principle of musical performance shaping the activity of interpretation. The
work is the goal and principle of the activity of the interpreter, who gains in
freedom by mastering the work. Paradoxically, this is done by allowing oneself
to be mastered by that work, for at the level of genuinely human activity the
only suitable form of mastery is interactional or dialogical. The interpreter's
participation in the work is active-receptive so that the performance is an
encounter or blending, not of two things, but of two ambits. As involving
and nourishing, the work does not submerge the individual who is actively
immersed in it. It does not annul one's power of initiative and liberty, but
encourages these in direct proportion to its own perfection.
In
order for such an encounter to take place at the deepest levels both of the work
and of the artist a series of "media" are needed to channel this
encounter. The score as an ensemble of signs which refer, not only to the
meaning latent within it, but to the instrument which enables one to give sound
to these musical ideas, and to the muscular and nervous resources of the
interpreter's body as a physiological basis for performance. When one begins the
study of an unknown work these mediational elements come to the fore, while the
work seems to remain at a distance beyond the signs of the score. As the
performer masters these expressive media he/she gradually makes the work emerge
or flower out of notes which at first appeared as amorphous foliage. In this
process the means--without disappearing or at any moment being neglected--become
a discrete background enabling the artist and the work to enter into a
relationship of immediate-indirect presence with each other. The interpreter who
"masters" a work is in direct contact with its forms through an
eminently immediate dialogue projected by the technical expressive means which
have become fully transparent and docile to artistic creation. This docility and
transparency engender the gracefulness of the performance, that is, the peculiar
lightness or transcendence of the one who, as in a trance, is attentive to the
objective expressive means in the very act of transcending them towards that
which they express.
This
experience of artistic participation has been reconstructed at the metaphysical
level by several thinkers, notably L. Lavelle. With the same intensity with
which interpreters actively give themselves to participating in a musical work
which nourishes their artistic impulse, Lavelle felt that at all times the life
of a person is sustained, supported and encouraged by the Being which, like a
nourishing atmosphere, surrounds one. This implies flexibility and dynamism that
is absent when things are seen as rigid, delimited and interrelated only
externally in empirical spatio-temporal terms. The musical work, mastered by the
interpreter, is no longer exterior but becomes the intimate principle of the
interpreter's actions. Similarly, human participation in Being consists in
becoming intimate with it through personal actions committed to the creation of
ambits of reality through which being is "interiorized" and turned
into a principle of life at the spiritual level.48
The
logic of this experience of participation displays a surprising similarity to
the logic of the experience of value. It would be easy to show this in detail,
but let us stress merely one fundamental point. The aesthetic transfiguration of
an expressive media is carried out by the creative impulse which stamps upon the
interpreter a work which he/she had glimpsed from the beginning through the
foliage, as it were, of the signs on the score.
This
reversible relationship between seeking and finding, between being appealed to
and responding, explains the possibility of moving from a one-sided, objectivist
attitude concerned with manipulating objects to a ludic attitude creative of
ambits. Once installed on this plane and entering into play, all the realities
of one's human environment are transfigured, acquire an unsuspected dimension,
gain a new power of intercommunication and increase their significance by
blending with others. Life thus becomes a place of encounter, and takes on a
sense of exultation, festiveness and luminosity. In this light, one discovers
progressively the value of unity, which arouses one's creative enthusiasm, until
finally the realization of higher modes of unity emerges as a goal which must be
achieved at all cost.49
Hence,
through ecstatic participation we discover the profound reason why there is a
strong sense that love and the word, understood strictly as vehicles of
creativity, are the nuclei of all value.
There
are two facts, no more, in spiritual life, two facts which occur between the I
and the you: the word and love. In them lies man's salvation, the liberation of
his ego from its self-reclusion. The word without love: What an abuse of the
gift of language this is! Here the word struggles against its own meaning,
spiritually annuls itself and puts an end to its own existence.50
All
moral values have their very touchstone in the love of charity or
"agape" which corresponds to the experience of ecstasy.51
Analysis of the implications of this essential nexus between participation,
ecstasy, unity, value and language opens up a hermeneutic horizon which enables
one to clarify several decisive points with regard to values:
1.
It is not mere chance, but according to a perfectly sinister logic that there
now exists an attempt to subvert values of all kinds: moral, aesthetic and
religious, by a massive encouragement of experiences of vertigo, that is, by
ambition for power, drugs, intoxication, gambling and eroticism.
2.
Training in values and the attainment of authentic humanism can be achieved only
through the cultivation of experiences of ecstasy.
3.
The ontological status of values cannot be stated in terms of an objectivist
mentality which takes as a model the reality of objective beings. One needs an
ontology of the "between," the relational and constellational.
4. The characteristics of values and the diverse possibilities of ecstatic participation can be made clear if they are carried out authentically and studied with a proper methodology.