EXPERIENCE — SYMBOL — CONCEPT 1 

Both the language and the meaning of all that we say is connected to human experience, individual or collective. This is true also, and in a special way, of religious language.

Many aspects of the problem of the actual dependence of linguistic meaning on human experience can be left to psychology and philosophical anthropology. There is however a concrete dependence of conceptual knowledge on experience that is especially important for us: that which is necessarily mediated by symbols.

As instances of human experience which are of interest to us here let us take the following examples which are simple, very common, yet fundamental:

to be hungry and to eat food, for example, bread;

to be thirsty and to drink water;

to experience darkness and to see light;

to be cold and to feel the warmth of a fire;

to be dirty and to bathe.

These are ‘total’ experiences, in the sense that they involve the human psychophysical unity as such. Hunger, thirst, darkness, warmth, are corporally experienced through our senses. But since hunger, thirst, cold, are experiences, the human being is conscious of them, even if in diversified ways.

These are specifically human experiences, not only because they are generally conscious, but also by virtue of their content. To be sure, they are found in many animals — not in all! — but in the human being they form part of a behavior which is not only natural but also cultural. The preparation of food and drink, the cultural diversity in farming methods, cooking, dwelling and clothing, even in the use of fire. In other words, even the most simple and fundamental experiences that we human beings have, we have learned to have within an ‘ensemble’ of human behaviors, that are only in part determined by natural biological and psychological factors. Indeed, insofar as they are human experiences they depend all the more on cultural factors. Thus these experiences are integrated in a structure of meanings, which constitute, so to speak, a ‘text’.

The experiences of thirst, hunger, light, etc., can be particularly strong: after a long journey without water, thirst can be acute, and the first glass of water is delicious. After a day of fasting, hunger can be acute, and in eating a morsel of bread one discovers the special flavor of bread; after a demanding walk one is particularly tired and dirty, such that upn showering or better: taking a dip in the sea, one knows the freshness and softness of water, and dressing in clean clothes one feels renewed.

Notwithstanding, however, that human experiences are determined by cultural factors, they cannot be communicated, especially when one is dealing with strong and profound experiences. One can only recount a personal experience. An experience is had in the first person, even if it can be made in a group. The personal experience in itself is not communicable.2 

When I listen to another’s account of his experience, I can myself experience something which is for me strong and profound, but it will always be a different experience from the one recounted to me.3

On the other hand what can be done (and in religious and also moral education should be done, especially with young children and youth) is to create the conditions and situations in which others can have their own experience.

A deep experience of hunger, thirst, darkness can acquire a profundity that surpasses the ordinary aspect of this experience, especially if my powers are reduced to the point where I am afraid, where I understand that if I do not eat and drink something I will die. Then my whole existence depends on water, bread, fire. I can also be so utterly filthy and stink so badly that I become repulsive to myself, and I regain my human dignity only by bathing and donning fresh clothing. In such situations it is not a matter of this hunger, this thirst, this filth; of this bread, this water, this fire, but of something total, absolute: this hunger, thirst, etc., comes to represent all hunger, even all desire. This bread, this water source, this fire represent life, happiness, and so on. My hunger and thirst is for life, I want to be free, I seek to recover youth.

In this way my powerful experiences acquire a symbolic value. Thirst, hunger, no longer refer only to this thirst, this hunger. They refer to something larger, more profound and total: the experiences have a meaning that transcends them, even if this meaning is not yet apprehended precisely and reflectively.

If, moreover, this powerful experience is accompanied by words or by a gesture which is explicit and conscious, an authentic and specific symbol is born. Coming at last upon a spring, for example, I can refrain from drinking first so as to offer the opportunity to another. Or the last piece of bread is shared by all in the group. In such cases the source of water, the piece of bread, the fire, are used in a conscious way to express something more, something other than itself. "This water is an expression of my friendship", "this bread we share is a sign of our community".

The difference between the meaning-value of the kind of powerful experience of which we have been speaking, and that of an authentic and specific symbol does not depend on the greater awareness and precision of the latter, but lies in the fact that the symbol is accompanied by a gesture, and by means of this gesture is part of what can be called a rite.4 

This placement within a rite confers a repeatability on the symbol, guaranteeing it a preliminary communicability, or better: the possibility of being shared. By its nature a symbol is communitarian and intersubjective. It lives not in the mind of an individual, as an experience does, but in a constituted group, even if only a small one. Indeed, there are family symbols, even symbols between a pair of lovers, or friends.

But for a symbol to be intersubjective it must be intersubjective from the beginning. As our examples show, the birth of a symbol, however powerful the experience behind it, always requires the intervention of another, even if only one other individual. But he/she doesn’t intervene as simply another individual, as simply ‘subjectivity’, with his or her ‘personal experience’, but as a member of a group within which a rite is constituted — we might say: within which the rules of a ‘game’ are determined.

For this reason, "I" do not count by virtue of my experience in my subjectivity, but by virtue of my being the ‘other’ to another. Nor does this deprive the other of his subjectivity — his being a subject, an "I"; indeed his being an "I" for me, and my being an "I" for him, are the conditions of possibility for any intersubjective communication. Without a common and commonly lived world of language and symbols5 another cannot be another "I" for me, and I cannot be one for him. In different terms: only when together we begin to play according to the rules are we constituted as subjects and able to communicate intersubjectively. Edmund Husserl elaborated this in his famous Fifth Cartesian Meditation.6 The constitution of a world for consciousness is the condition of possibility for the constitution of another "I" for this consciousness. It follows then that an immediate relation between subjects is not possible and that the mediation between subjects as such cannot be itself subjective but is, above all symbolically objective.

Without the words which express it an experience, however profound, cannot be confronted. Only the words that conceptualize and generalize the experience render it really communicable and permit an encounter.7 Without a concept, therefore, my experience cannot even have a meaning for me; it vanishes and I immediately forget it. Thus I have no possibility of verifying it. Without a concept I can have no fear of darkness, for example; nor can I be hungry for something — indeed, there isn’t even any hunger, but only a kind of suffering.

A symbol then without a concept is not understood, and loses its symbolic power. This is to say that symbols have need of explication. Only the words that impart a determinate significance to them integrate them in a clear context of communication.

In this way a symbol born of experience acquires a universal value and can be repeated. We divide bread among ourselves even when we are not hungry, and we do it every time we come together.

"An experience without a concept is blind; a concept without an experience is empty."8 This is especially true in the domain of religion, and particularly so for the Christian faith, insofar as it is a revealed faith. But given that we can never have a direct experience of God in this life, nor of all that is expressed in the literal meaning of religious language, only the kind of profound experience described above can in some way give a content to the concepts of Christian language. Precisely because the specific content of religious and Christian language cannot be experienced directly, the recognition and the meaningfulness of the symbol for religious language in general and Christian language in particular becomes utterly essential.

We should recall however that already at the ordinary level of the consciousness and meaningfulness of language, the necessary order is: experience à symbol à concept, and not: experience à concept (idea) à (which is then expressed by means of a) symbol. The symbol is not the expression of an idea or a concept by means of an abstraction from the concreteness of an experience, but is the mediation from the experience to the concept.

At this point a diagram similar to the one given earlier for the three levels of meaning, will be helpful:

a deepening within consciousness of ordinary experience:

2. SYMBOLIC MOMENT

the significance of an experience which has been undergone is expressed:

3. CONCEPTUAL MOMENT

the meaning of the symbol and of the experience becomes determinate.

(This thus includes an initial reflection upon the experience by way of ascertaining it)

strong hunger9 piece of bread sharing it with another,

saying: "This is a sign of our love."

In the case of Christian language the mediation between experience and concept-word is not a mediation from experience to concept, but rather a ‘re-mediation’ from the concept-word to the experience! The specific meanings of the Christian faith are given to us by way of a message, a revelation, a Word — that of the Sacred Scriptures and tradition.10 

Precisely for this reason the function of the symbol for the comprehension of the specific significance of Christian language becomes even more important and indispensable; one can think here of the sacraments, the various rites and the whole liturgy. What occurs by means of these symbols is that the message of the faith is linked to and placed within human experience. One needs though to keep in mind the double mediating function of the symbol: that which begins with the Word, and that which begins from experience.

The function of the symbol for human intelligence is essential. The symbolizing capacity of the human intellect frees thought from its reputed11 total dependence on experience and confers upon thought its creativity, whether in art or in mathematics. Only through the mediation of the symbol is human thought open to the infinite and to transcendence – which is to say, one can think even that which is not experiential. It is precisely through the mediation of the symbol that thought is really open to the infinite and to transcendence.12 It follows then that one can think God and speak about Him. But it also follows that thinking God and speaking about Him necessitates the mediation of the symbol.

1. Cfr. Carlo Huber, Critica del Sapere, 20.5, pp. 331-336.

2. Cfr.. Huber, Critica del Sapere, pp. 114-118 and 137-141.

3. This last observation is critically important in the acceptance of religious and moral truths — for example: in the comprehension and reception of an episode form the Gospels. To listen to the Gospel proclamation, especially when it is proclaimed as the "Word of God", can in certain circumstances constitute a strong and profound religious experience, but not necessarily. In no case however will the listener’s experience be that of the Apostles when, for instance, they encountered the risen Lord. As its foundation faith has not our experience, but rather a testimony, a witness, that becomes accepted as true. On the other hand, every acceptance of a religious faith, and even every authentic acceptance of an ethical value, needs to be personally experienced — this is called a ‘religious experience’, a ‘faith experience’, a ‘moral experience’, but it remains forever a personal experience, incommunicable as such, similar to a profound sense experience.

4. Note that here we are not so much concerned with significance or with specifically religious symbols. Powerfulness, profundity and breadth of meaning are found also at the profane and ‘lay’ level; indeed, in a certain sense they are found here in the first place.

5. This not only does not cast doubt upon the reality of the world, but presupposes it.

6. Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, vol. 1 (Haag: Husserliana, 1963).

7. The communicability of the symbol is merely an preliminary communicability.

8. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 51.

9. In this conceptual moment the originary experience can be quite distant. Where the symbol is a symbolical action ("dividing the last piece of bread", etc.) the conceptual clarification is often given by the situation and has no need of words.

10. Conc.Trid. sesssion IV (Denz. 1501) : "hanc veritatem et disciplinam contineri in libris scriptis et sine scripto traditionibus".

11. In this consists the radical error of every empiricist theory of consciousness, especially the conception of language put forth by Locke. Cfr. Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book III, "Of Words".

12. Perhaps the limit of Kant’s thought consists precisely in this, that he has not seen the symbolizing function of the sensible ‘schematism’. Cfr. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 177ff.