Philosophy is not, like temporality, a constitutive structure of the human being, nor, like the faculty of understanding, is it a property of that being. Rather, it is historical: Its history is the very process of its progressive institution or realization, which, at the same time, is an act of intelligence and will. This has to do not only with knowledge and understanding, but also with a questioning, proper to the human being, concerning its being and engaging responsibility toward oneself. It is inspired and oriented by an aim, which philosophical thinking has assigned deliberately to itself and conceived as the attainment of wisdom. In a first phase, wisdom has been understood as an existentiel state of harmony with the world, such as it is really in itself, beyond all the illusions that prevent us from living our lives authentically. That aim is, of course, of great generality, and different ways have been proposed to attain it. The particular way of philosophy has been that of knowledge. The fundamental problem, in that perspective, is thus to discover the method that can lead to authentic knowledge. Philosophy began with the idea that the knowledge of the world such as it is really is not a simple description of what is given, in the appearance. Instead this knowledge starts from what is given and succeeds in finding, in the appearances, indications leading to an invisible realm from which the appearance has originated. This is the idea of principle: wisdom is a knowing of the principles and through the principles.

In a second phase, that undertaking itself has been submitted to critical examination and questions of the second order have arisen. The presumed authentic knowledge is expressed in discourses. What are the resources of discourse; what kind of relation do they have with reality; and what guarantee do we have that what is said in discourse is in agreement with reality? This last question gave way to the introduction of the concept of truth and to the problematic connected with that idea. Those questions inaugurated a moment of reflectivity in philosophical discourse. With that reflectivity the philosophical enterprise began to call into question the human being himself and, more precisely, his action. There is a concern about authentic knowledge, but also about authentic action; there is a search for truth, but also for justice. On both sides, what is at stake is the quality of life, what makes of life a "good life." There is, in the human being, a desire for the good life, which is constitutive, but remains obscure for itself. It is the duty of thought to clarify that desire and thereby the very idea of the good life. That reflection has the virtue of totalizing existence, that is to say, of apprehending it in the plenitude of its unfolding, and thus of understanding it as bearing in its present state a constitutive relation with its accomplishment. In each particular moment of its becoming, it decides what it will be and the measure in which it will be faithful to what it is called to be. In this perspective, existence understands itself as bearing in itself the promise of a fulfilment of itself, which involves the indication of a destination. What is at stake, finally, in philosophical discourse is existence as destiny.

This signifies that the constitutive project of philosophy is much more than the working out of an overall picture of the world, and much more also than a theoretical interpretation of human existence. It is a tentative answer to an existentiel preoccupation, the search for the path leading to the authentic life. Such a life involves existence in its totality: it is a concrete way of existing. Philosophy can understand its task in two ways. It can be conceived as that enterprise of the spirit that opens access to the authentic life and sets existence on the way, which is only a preparatory endeavour. But it can be conceived also, more radically, as being itself the authentic form of life. It can even, in its more daring expressions, see itself as giving access to the highest object of desire, the blessed life. In both cases, philosophy is deeply concerned with existence, not only in its structure but also in its destiny. The destinal character of existence is reflected in the philosophical project, giving thus to philosophy a destinal character also. As inscribing itself in the fate of existence, philosophy has a strong affinity with religion, at least with that aspect of religious life that presents itself as an answer to the expectation of salvation.

In order to perceive more clearly the destinal character of philosophy, the most appropriate step is to make reference to the concept in which philosophy itself has tried to express its project, namely, that of reason. That concept comes from the Greek idea of logos, referring back first to discourse that is able to justify itself, but enlarged to an ontological meaning according to which it refers to the most intimate constitution of things. Today, we see primarily in reason that capacity of understanding and of judging which is able to give account of what is said (in terms of assertions or of estimations). But there is also an expansion of that concept, which comes to designate (a) that internal law which makes the world understandable, (b) the new artificial world which appears as the objectification of the reason in us, and (c) finally the whole of reality as containing that universal principle of which the reason in us participates. Seen in that perspective, reason as power of the mind appears as called to build an objective world, made up of concepts, expressive works and institutions, capable of reflecting, in the framework of human existence, that reason which is the internal texture of things. The term "reason" comes thus to designate primarily that constructed world. Authentic life is then understood as a life according to the demands inscribed in that world. Philosophy, in its turn, becomes the project of the self-understanding of reason, which besides itself is a part of the construction of reason.

In a sense, that construction is a re-effectuation : reason is in search of itself. But it is not given to itself as an object that it would have only to describe. Reason discovers itself in its manifestations, which lend themselves to be interpreted as partial moments in its total structure. Those manifestations are forms of practices which present themselves as partial figures of reason: there are the different kinds of science, technology, and political and juridical institutions. Philosophy takes as its own task to bring to light what is at stake in those figures and through that reflective inquiry becomes able to give its content of reality to the idea of reason.

That task of understanding comprises the reconstitution of a genesis and the evocation of teleology. The genesis refers back to what constitutes the originary ground of the enterprise, that is, experience. Reason is the elucidating unfolding of experience, but oriented toward the institution of an original world which has value by itself and not as a simple review of a given field of reality. Now experience is the flow of a life, which prolongs and overcomes the biological life and which is lived in an environment of sense. The self-understanding of experience is also a reflection on the institutions of sense, that is to say, on the different dimensions of culture. We could say that it is the reflective moment of the life of sense, or, in equivalent terms, of culture.

On the other hand, the teleological aspect of the task of understanding concerns the structure of the temporality of the progression of reason. That progression is sustained by an immanent tension that refers the present state of reflection to a horizon that gives it its sense. That horizon is the accomplishment of reason, that is to say the final term of the construction of the objectified reason. Its full manifestation has to be brought progressively to light by the work of reflection, and, thus, also the complete self understanding of reason. That ultimate moment in the destiny of reason would be the attainment of the authentic life, the fulfillment of what was, since the beginning, the aim toward which philosophy was tending. But that moment is not given in a representation, nor is it homogeneous with the particular moments of a process. Rather, it is that immanent force of inspiration that gives to philosophy its spirit and calls its endeavour from the remoteness of its future. It is, to be sure, present already in the actuality of the effective work of reason, but only as horizon. As such, it remains indeterminate, but reason can understand itself only in the attractiveness of that constitutive horizon. As indicating a direction and implying a reference to an advent of reason which is always to come, it can be understood as the telos of the becoming of reason and of philosophy itself.

In the context indicated by the title of this paper, we have to question ourselves about the present situation of that enterprise. Two kinds of conditioning determine that situation: the internal constraints which philosophy imposes on itself due to the logic of its development, and the questions which come from the general evolution of the culture and which are new challenges. The constraints concern essentially the determination of the specific point of view of philosophy in the historical context created by the rise and successful development of modern science, and, correlatively, the kind of discourse corresponding to that point of view. As claiming to be the highest form of the authentic discourse, philosophy, until the advent of "modern times," presented itself as giving the most adequate understanding of the two components of the visible world, nature and human beings. Modern science has succeeded in building a method, completely different from the classical method of philosophy, which has revealed itself as a very powerful tool, capable of suscitating an extraordinarily accurate image of the world. That method proved its efficacy for the knowledge of nature and was rapidly recognized as fruitful also for the study of the human being. The method of interpretation and of conceptual analysis worked out by philosophy seemed, in contrast, to be henceforth devoid of relevance. It was apparently condemned or to disappear or at best to become a kind of super-science, proposing a synthesis of the results of scientific research or a simple epistemology of science. The answer to that challenge was the introduction of the transcendental point of view. That manoeuvre displaced the question: The specific task of philosophy was no longer to propose directly a knowledge of the world and its content, but to bring to the fore the conditions of possibility of an adequate knowledge of the world. In the philosophy of Kant, that point of view is introduced in the context of a theory of the "transcendental Ego." This is also the case in the first phase of phenomenology. In its radicalization phenomenology succeeded in separating the essential idea of the transcendental from its subjectivist version. The transcendental is now conceived as the field of constitution of experience, independent as such from the classical dichotomy between subject and object. It is thus a neutral field, understood as providing the speculative place where the philosophical project of a reconstruction of experience, in all its forms and modalities, can be carried off.

That field is the place where the life of sense is able to appear to itself. The analysis of the internal constitution of that field is the heart of an understanding that goes beyond any compartmentalisation. Thanks its description it becomes possible to give a systematic expression to the feeling according to which every particular figure of experience, every kind of practice, including science, every form of objectivity refers one back to something which is not objectifiable and which can be said only with the aid of a language making use of the power of suggestion of ordinary language. The traditional project of philosophy becomes able, as project of a transcendental doctrine, to discover the point of view at which it was aiming since the beginning, and in which it finds its own definition.

The understanding of experience becomes, thus, its reconstruction, undertaken from the point of view of the transcendental. This reconstruction is, in proper terms, a reflection which can be conceived in two different ways. In one it is able to reach an ultimate, a kind of saturation of the speculative task, a complete return of reflection to its point of departure, that is to experience. In the other it is a process of thought following the movement of transcendence which is the very unfolding of experience, but without being able to totalize it in the form of a reflective circle. In that second possibility reflection recognizes that there is a non-saturation in the self-reflection, not simply as a matter of fact, but for reasons of principle. As far as reflection can arrive, there are always nonthematised presuppositions. That recognition induces a style of philosophizing in which the thought is always making its way, following a path which it has to open itself. This style includes a pluralism of methods and even of objectives. Contemporary philosophy, in the line of the particular tradition coming from Greek culture, is divided in different trends: analytic philosophy (in its various versions), phenomenology, hermeneutics, critical rationalism, dialectics, and classical metaphysics. There is, thus, an ambiguity in the project of philosophy, of which Christian thought in its valuation of philosophical thinking, has to take account.

The present situation of philosophy is also partially determined by the questions coming from culture at large, which it recognizes as relevant from its own point of view. Without entering into a detailed analysis of those questions, we can limit ourselves to simply evoking them, because they are objects of a universal concern. A first question comes from scientific practice. There are, of course, epistemological problems, which belong not only to a metascientific inquiry, but also in part to a specific sector of philosophy. But the question which is taken into consideration pertains to the very meaning of the phenomenon "science" from the point of view of the tasks of existence, or, equivalently, of the life of meaning. The same is true for what concerns the universal phenomenon of the construction of a technological world. There also are specific methodological problems. But what is decisive from the point of view of the fundamental concern of philosophy is the meaning of that phenomenon, or more precisely its impact upon the destiny of existence. A third question concerns also a universal phenomenon, the encounter between cultural traditions. That question pertains not only to the concrete modes of expression of the different cultures, but also to the way in which they understand themselves and in which they contemplate their own fate in the context of the universalisation created by contemporary science and technology. The very important task of comparative philosophy belongs evidently to that questioning and is probably called to play a decisive role in its exploration, not only as a theoretical project but also as capable of inspiring practical attitudes and initiatives. A fourth question concerns ethics, not only as a part of a comparative program, but also as a field of creative research in its own right and as presenting challenges of fundamental meaning for all of us, independently of the particular traditions to which we belong. We think here especially to the possibilities that are now appearing of operating on the biological basis of human life, with all the potential consequences of such a practice for the future of human existence. A fifth question concerns the forms of political life, and mainly the form of the State. To that question are attached more specific problematics, which determine the meaning of the State today: democracy, human rights, citizenship, solidarity, justice.

We come now to Christian thought to try to see how it questions philosophy from its own perspective. Christian thought is the intellectual expression of Christian faith. This one can be understood in two ways: either as the spiritual attitude by which a Christian believer adheres in his thought and way of life to the person of Jesus Christ and to his teaching, or as the very content of that teaching as an object of that adhesion. That duality of meaning is reflected in the proclamation of the Credo in the context of a liturgical celebration. That proclamation is, in one sense, assent to the content of what is said; in another sense, connected to the first one, it is a real participation of the faithful in the reality described in what one is confessing, that is, to the process of edification of the Kingdom of God, or equivalently of the Mystical Body of Christ. The language of the Credo is the expression in human terms of the very language in which the Kingdom of God announces itself. It is the language of the Good News, which is the fundamental landmark of the Christian faith. But that faith, in its two meanings, contains a need for understanding, which in order to explain itself to itself appeals to the resources of human intelligence. The discourse that aims at giving an answer to that demand is theology as the self-understanding of the Christian experience, that is to say, of life in faith. Thus, theology takes into consideration faith as spiritual attitude, but only in function of faith as the content of what is said in the proclamation. This is the norm to which theology, in its endeavour of clarification, refers constantly.

The reality to which the language of proclamation refers is not accessible as an object of direct experience, but gives itself only through the signs in which it announces itself. That announcement contains in itself as its proper light, the light of faith. But, as St. Paul said, faith sees only "in enigmate," which aspect of faith is designated by the term "mystery." What is brought by theology is an element of relative clarity; this does not dissolve the mystery but provides its intelligibility as mystery. To do this it has recourse to the instrument of the concept. The concepts of philosophy appear as appropriate, because what theology is trying to say concerns an invisible reality; the philosophical concepts are able to refer to that domain of the nonvisible as the key to the visible. The Fathers of the Church have used concepts coming from the Greek philosophical tradition in order to give a precise expression to the most central dogmas of the Church, the dogma of the Holy Trinity and the dogma of the Incarnation of the eternal Word. Thus, the concepts of person and nature have been used to express the fact that Jesus Christ is, as unique person, at the same time God and man.

In such a context, the role of philosophy has been to help the theologians in their concern for the adequate formulation of the content of Christian faith. This was the role of an auxiliary as an instrument of clarification. But the real question concerning the relations between Christian faith and philosophy is about the kind of interaction that can occur between theology, as expression of the Christian faith, and philosophy considered in itself, with its proper constraints and strict criteria of rationality. That general question can be detailed in the form of three kinds of interrogation. (1) What, for theology, is the meaning of philosophy considered as one of the great dimensions of culture? (2) What are the questions which theology suggests to philosophy and which, nevertheless, fall within the scope of philosophy as such? (3) What are the questions which are treated by philosophy and which come across the theological problematic, suggesting some analogies between the intellectual processes on the two sides and a possible mutual enlightenment?

The question of the meaning of philosophy from the point of view of theology evidently concerns philosophy in its highest pretensions. There are forms of philosophising that are apparently very modest; They intend only to clarify some concepts, to dissipate misunderstandings and illusions, and perhaps to collect some minor truths about the situation of man. This is the case of some of the trends of analytic philosophy. But behind those apparent self-limitations, we have to do effectively, as in the case of the great philosophical systems, with the search for authentic life. The work of clarification of thought or of language must lead to a state of liberty of mind and of internal peace. By delivering the mind from the different kinds of parasites that deprive it of its self-possession, analysis has the value of a spiritual discipline, giving access to a form of life really worthy of the human vocation. But if philosophy, in all its forms, is in essence an endeavour to attain a fully authentic life, by its own resources, it seems that it is also in essence sustained by a claim of radical autonomy. In those conditions it must be considered by theology as incompatible with the Christian form of life, or at least as a possibility of the human spirit radically other than the realm of faith.
Such a judgment would, however, be much too superficial and would be based on a misunderstanding about the meaning of philosophy. To be sure philosophy being in all its forms directly or indirectly an endeavour of self-understanding of existence, is fundamentally preoccupied by the fate of existence; it considers its duty to contribute to the effort of existence itself in order to become faithful to the appeal inscribed in its very being. But it is one thing to describe the way in which a path can be followed and another thing to follow effectively a given path. Existence lives itself according to potentialities that belong to its proper being. The discovering and analysis of those potentialities are intellectual operations that can help existence in its march toward itself, but they are not yet that process itself.
Philosophy presents itself, in its history as well as in its present state, under a great variety of forms representing different traditions. But in those different forms there is the same project of understanding existence. That understanding is supposed capable of leading to a state of existence which would be an accomplishment, which would be the truth of existence, its access to its authentic being .We could express that project in a condensed way by saying that the philosophical research is borne by aiming at an existentiel stake. Starting from the question which existence is for itself, philosophy endeavours to assume it in a process of reflection whose sense is to enable existence to accede to its truth. In a sense, by opening that reflection philosophical thought places itself outside existence, in an order of discourse which apparently is not really affected by what happens to existence. In another sense, at the same time it inscribes itself inside the movement of existence, reduplicating, so to say, what is lived by a word in which a destiny is saying itself. Its status situates it thus in a kind of in-between, made of the bracketing of the lived and, at the same time, of that sort of magnification that the discourse gives to the lived. Reflection is not a simple description. It can be reflecting but by taking upon itself what is happening in the concreteness of existence, by inscribing itself in that stake, which for it is both risk and promise.

But in reflection there is, inevitably, the institution of a distance. The return to itself of existence is to be sure the search for a coincidence, but it necessarily creates a gap which is precisely the possibility of discourse. The necessary noncoincidence between the reflecting existence and existence as immediately present to itself gives reflection the autonomy that makes it capable of understanding. But this does not detach it thereby from what it gives itself to understand. Reflection, in the distance, remains adherent to the movement of existence and to its destiny. That ambiguity that inhabits reflection opens onto a double possibility, which could be designated by the terms "form" and "content." In as much as it is a question for itself, existence is a concrete occurrence: it is such or such existence, qualified by its modes of inrootedness and by the possibilities which open themselves for it. It is the search of its truth, but we have to do there not with a theory of itself, but with the singular way according to which it could really assume its being. What it is aiming at is a form of life. Now we can distinguish in a form of life a specifically formal dimension and a dimension of effectivity. The dynamic of existence can be interrogated about its conditions of possibility, but also about its concrete substance.

The structure of reflection appeals to that double possibility. In the measure, indeed, in which it places itself at a distance with respect to existence as lived, it makes itself capable of bringing out its structure and thus to bring to the fore its constituent dimensions, like temporality, corporality, language and being-with. Because they are constitutive, those dimensions belong to existence as such, and they have the status of universal determinations. Their analysis does not yet involve the concrete modalities according to which this or that existence is going to decide about its destiny. As free with respect to those modalities, the reflective discourse concerning the structures of existence is of an aprioristic and thus formal nature, and it can be called the "logic of existence." That formal character involves a self-limitation which makes of reflection an intellectual process at the same time really illuminating and neutral with respect to the concrete stakes of existence. As any undertaking of thought, that process implies a commitment of a certain type. It is borne by aiming at truth and imposes on itself methodological criteria that must ensure its epistemic value.

But that type of commitment is not fundamentally different from the commitment of scientific discourse. From the point of view of a theological judgment, not only would it appear as quite compatible with the type of commitment proper to the life of faith, but the deep understanding which it provides about the status of human existence could be considered a basic datum which a theological anthropology would take into account with great benefit.

The situation is apparently quite different when the self-reflection of existence understands itself as an undertaking which, while developing authentic knowledge, constitutes a form of life in which existence is reaching its authentic figure. We could usefully make appeal here to the famous distinction between the point of view of the existential and the point of view of the existentiel, which, in a sense, brings a precision to the significance of the distinction between form and content. The point of view of the existential takes into consideration the constitutive structures of existence. In as much as those structures have an aprioristic character, they have, with respect to existence in its concrete reality, the status of a formal condition whose analysis can be called a "logic of existence." As, in such an analysis, existence calls itself into question, the logic of existence is actually a reflective return of existence upon itself. But the reflection is borne by an intention, which aims at exhaustivity, that is, to a state in which existence would have really come back to itself. The reflection may thus not come to a halt with an analysis of the forms. It aims, indeed, at existence in its concrete reality, that is to say, in its effectivity. As the concretization of the form, this is the content which existence gives to itself when an existing being brings itself resolutely into play in concrete determinations that have an impact on the destiny of that existing being. The point of view of the content is also the point of view of the existentiel, that is to say, of that commitment in which existence decides about its very being.

A discourse taking, as its objective, existence in its existentiel content cannot be itself but the reflective moment of that existentiel dimension of existence; thus it must be itself an existentiel discourse. As this implies a commitment of existence with respect to its very being, and thus a commitment that concerns it in totality, an existentiel discourse is also apparently exclusive. If existence aims at the authentic life then the existentiel discourse, which is the reflective moment of existence, by itself aims at the authentic life and is already its partial realization. According to such an understanding of the existentiel, there would thus be an incompatibility between an existentiel philosophy and an engagement in a life according to faith. A possible theological judgment would have to take note of that incompatibility.

However, we have to take account of the fact that there are two ways in which an existentiel philosophy can be conceived, according to the way in which the status of reflection is understood. It is true that the very idea of understanding, which is at the root of the project of a self-reflection of existence, implies aiming at exhaustivity. Reflection is a movement of return, and its significance is to come back effectively to existence in its concrete reality, thus to existence in its effective content. But, as already recalled, any reflective process entails presuppositions, and the return of existence on itself is a process that aims at bringing to the fore the presuppositions, of what, in existence, shows effectively itself and in particular its own presuppositions. There is a philosophical position that is guided by the idea that reflection can effectively come to an end, that is to say that the return of existence on itself can effectively lead back to its point of departure; in one word, that reflection is also a totalization of existence. But a totalization of existence is the retaking in the movement of reflection of all its presuppositions. It is thus a process that must close up in itself, in a moment which cannot but be the seizing of the ultimate, and which will have to understand itself as the seizing of the ultimate by itself. Totalization is necessarily circular. A philosophy of total reflection is a philosophy of the absolute.

But there is another philosophical position, which is guided by the idea that reflection, on principle, cannot come to an end, because it is not possible, for a finite mind, to put itself in the point of view of the absolute and to assume in a moment of full integration the totality of the presuppositions that are contained in the most elementary reflective step. But effective existence is always, under such or such figure, a commitment which calls itself into question and brings itself into play in its very being, thus in its totality. If reflection is considered as a process which, by essence, remains always in suspense, we must admit that between effective existence and the reflection which transposes it into a discourse, there is necessarily a distance which, on principle, cannot be overcome. In that perspective, the discourse will never be able to be, by itself, authentic life. It remains, however, that the existentiel dimension is not opaque for the endeavour of thought. If there is, in the effectivity of existence, an aspect of radical singularity in which what makes the unicity of a destiny entrenches itself, there are also in it concrete modalities in which we could recognize what could be called "styles of life." These have some character of generality that are liable to be brought to the fore and lend themselves to understanding. Thus, categories like those of authenticity and inauthenticity are qualifying not structural constitutive determinations, but the style according to which a concrete existing being brings effectively into play the quality of his/her being. As those determinations, relative to what existence makes of itself, still have a formal and thus aprioristic character with respect to the quite singular determinations which do not belong to philosophical discourse, they can be considered as belonging also, like the constitutive categories, to a logic of existence. This implies naturally that this logic covers not only what, in existence, comes under the existential point of view, but also what comes under the existentiel point of view. From the point of view of theological judgment, it will be possible to adopt, concerning the logic of existence in the enlarged sense, the same attitude as concerning the logic of existence in the narrow sense of the discourse of the existentiel.

But we could think that this interpretation would not be valid any more for a philosophy of integral reflection, constituting itself as a discourse of the absolute. Such a philosophy it seems, could not but be considered incompatible with the Christian faith. We cannot forget, however, that philosophy expresses itself in discourse and that there is always a distance between existence and the discourse which speaks of it. A philosophy of the absolute can present itself, to be sure, as a discourse ascending from presuppositions to presuppositions toward an ultimate which cannot but be the absolute itself. But what is thus presented is not the absolute in its reality, but a form of thought in which reference is made to a reality which has the characters of the absolute, such as finite reflection is able to represent them for itself in an appropriate type of argumentation ascending from condition to condition up to an ultimate condition. Such a philosophy can effectively inspire a spiritual attitude that would consist in some way in projecting in the existentizl the discourse of the absolute, in making of the meditation of that discourse the effective realization of an authentic life. According to such an interpretation, there would be no more place, indeed, for a religious faith.

But the discourse, by itself, does not appeal necessarily to such a transposition of what is said in a word into what is lived in an engagement. It is possible to give to the discourse of the absolute another interpretation, which makes it not only perfectly compatible with faith, but which is even positively inspiring. That other interpretation consists in understanding the discourse of the absolute as a symbolic representation of what is lived in the attitude of faith. We have to do here not with a kind of schematisation of the theological discourse, but with a presentation in a conceptual apparatus of the structure of process which can be considered as some analogon of the life of faith, contemplated in some of its aspects.

That analogon "represents," in a sense that we could tentatively clarify by following a suggestion that comes from the metaphysics of nature of Kant. What Kant calls "metaphysics" is a "knowledge by pure concepts," that is to say, by means of concepts which are entirely a priori. The objective which he assigns to the metaphysics of nature is to work out the purely conceptual framework in which nature can be a priori determined. That objective is achieved by the application of the principles of pure understanding (which are transcendental propositions) to the datum which characterizes nature the most radically, namely, movement. By that application the principles of pure understanding become metaphysical principles. In the conception of Kant, those metaphysical principles constitute the conceptual content of the science of nature, more exactly of the a priori part of that science, namely, theoretical physics. But in order to pass from the metaphysics of nature to theoretical physics, it is necessary to take a supplementary step which consists in "constructing the concept." The means of that construction are the transposition of the concepts in a mathematical representation. The virtue of that representation is to be, so to say, halfway between the pure concept and the empirical intuition. Mathematical objects have the character of purely intelligible determinations that can be found in the concepts, but at the same time, they are appearing under forms which have certain similarities to concrete objects which can be met in intuition. They establish a relation between the evidence which is provided by intuition and the potential of intelligibility which is brought by the concept. It could be said that the "construction of the concept" is the construction of a representation which gives to see what the concept expresses abstractly.

Evidently, that suggestion cannot be used literally. In the Kantian context, the representation connects a concept and a mediating object which is a mathematical entity. What is represented is a concept, what is representing is a pure object (in the Kantian sense). In the present case, according to the suggestion proposed, what is represented is a spiritual process, and what is representing is a logic of existence of a radical character, that is to say, a certain conceptual system that presents itself as a doctrine of the absolute. What can be retained from the suggestion is essentially the idea of the representation, understood as a mediation which enables understanding while making showing an analogon .

According to its content, Christian faith is entirely the participation in an immense spiritual process described in Christian preaching as the advent and progressive construction of the Kingdom of God, or, in quite equivalent terms, as the progressive constitution of the Mystical Body of Christ. That process is historic, but according to its own historicity, which is essentially of an eschatological character. The Kingdom of God is already present among us, but that presence is lived as expectation of the full realization of what is announced, that is to say, of the full manifestation of the salvation in Jesus Christ. The present is thus essentially related to an ultimate term, an eschaton, which is described in the Credo as the glorious return of Christ at the end of times. The time of salvation is thus the time of a progression toward a final state which is the object of the Christian hope, according to the words of the Credo, "I am expecting the world to come."

The life according to faith is also, for every believer in his/her individuality, a process whose sense is the progressive deepening of the meaning of the content of faith in an active understanding. This brings into play all the powers of the spirit, unifying them in the hope that is "expectation of eternal life." That spiritual process realizes the inscription of what is lived in the believing existence in the great process of the construction of the Kingdom of God. The hope which animates it is that very hope which is included in the process of the salvation. And the object of the expectation that inhabits it is what constitutes the very term of the work of salvation, the eschaton of the recapitulation of all things in Jesus Christ.

A philosophy which would have the form of a logic of existence of radical character, and thus would be a discourse of the absolute, can construct itself only while justifying itself by its very construction, in a progressive undertaking from a still confused preunderstanding of existence by itself toward a more and more radical explicitation of its conditions of possibility. Such an undertaking proceeds by successive steps, each new step calling for an ulterior deepening and preparing thus its own overcoming. The whole process is directional towards a final moment in which the movement of the reflection finds its completion. That ultimate moment must be able to reveal itself by itself as effectively ultimate. It is ultimate because it is the last condition of all the conditions, the universal conditioning, absolutely conditioning without depending from another condition, and in this sense the absolute condition. The reconstitution of the whole system of conditionings up to its last moment, which is also the description of the whole process in which the manifestation of the absolute as absolute event is progressively carried out, is not a simple description. It is the re-accomplishment of a fundamental process in which philosophical thinking engages itself, while recognizing itself as that singular place where that re-accomplishment can be performed. In this sense, the construction of such a philosophy receives the value for the one proposing it of a truly spiritual progression in which experience tries to seize itself again in all the profundity of what it implies. It has the value for the one receiving it, while re-accomplishing in turn the progression proposed, of an "itinerary of the spirit." Here the spirit reveals itself to itself and by the very virtue of that self-revelation collects itself in the truth of its being, while opening a path toward the supreme condition of thought.

It is a long way from the spiritual experience of thought which can be evoked by such a philosophy, to the spiritual experience of faith as it expresses itself in the words on which it is feeding itself. On the one hand, we have to do with a work of thought, leaning upon the force of concepts and in which the potentialities of thought, such as they are by virtue of its constitution, make themselves manifest. On the other hand, we have to do with an engagement of the person in his/her entirety, bringing his/her consent to what is proposed to him/her by a word in which the grace of salvation is announced, as a gift, which proceeds from a pure gratuity. Nevertheless, we cannot forget that the grace of salvation is offered to the human being, such as it is by essence, and that the reception of grace brings into play the powers of the human being according to what they are by essence.
A philosophy of radical reflection reconstitutes the progression of the spirit towards its truth and brings into play such concepts as logos, reason, word, absolute, will, thought, or substance, in order to think that supreme condition which is, according to the terms of Aristotle, the object of universal desire. The thinking of that supreme condition is the eschaton of reason, and the reconstitution of the itinerary of the spirit is the evocation of the progression that must lead it unto that ultimate of thought. Understood in that way, the discourse of the absolute may be considered as a representation of the itinerary of the believing soul towards the object of its hope. It is representation, in this sense, that it duplicates the self-presentation by which the spiritual engagement is attesting itself simply in what it is, while suggesting an analogy between that engagement and the progression of the thought in search of its truth. That analogy is not a reproduction, but the presentation of a scheme which can guide the understanding. That scheme displays only a structure in which the life of the spirit shows itself in its effectivity, and thereby it enables seeing those powers that are like the supports of the spiritual experience proper to the life of faith. It is precisely because the life of faith is leaning on the powers of the spirit that the analogy is relevant. By showing the life of the spirit it makes manifest by analogy the life of faith. If the discourse of the absolute has that capacity of "giving to see," it is because it presents its content in a mode that shares in some measure the status of intuition, not as mathematical representation but as displaying a conceptual structure that the thought can discover step after step and, at the end of its progression, grasp at a glance, in the evidence of the conceptual linkage which makes up its armature.

Those considerations allow us to recognize the compatibility between faith and philosophy, even if we consider it in its radical forms. More positively, they suggest a mode of understanding the philosophical discourse in such a way as to make it illuminating for theology itself, without, for all that, placing it under a theological judgment. We may take a step forward by leaning on that interpretation in order to try to answer the question raised concerning the sense that philosophical discourse may have from the point of view of theology, and thus in function of properly theological categories. The Credo, which expresses the essential content of faith, is articulated in three moments, corresponding to the three hypostases of the Trinitarian structure, the Father, the Son and the Spirit. The general meaning of the Credo is to proclaim the great work of salvation, while connecting it to the first institution which is presupposed by it, and announcing its accomplishment in the ultimate and definitive institution of the Kingdom of God. The Credo attributes to each of the divine Persons his proper role in that immense process. The first moment is the creation, which is the proper work of the Father. The second moment is the assumption by the eternal Word of the human condition and the proper redemptive mission of Christ. The third moment is the sanctification of the souls, which is also the constitution of the Body of Christ, and which is the proper work of the Holy Spirit. Those three moments define three perspectives.

The meaning of philosophy, considered in all its varieties, from the point of view of theology, is its mode of inscription in each one of those three perspectives. Considered from the point of view of the creation, philosophy, in as much as it is an endeavour to understand experience and through it the whole of reality, may itself be understood as a celebration of the creative act. Considered from the point of view of the Incarnation, philosophy, in as much as it brings into play in a radical way the illuminating power that is in the human spirit, may be understood as a testimony offered to the eternal Word who "illuminates every man coming in this world." He himself has entered this world, in order to be among us the very presence of the Truth. Considered from the point of view of the sanctification and of the life of the Church, philosophy, in as much as it is animated by the aiming at the authentic life, may be understood as a parable of that transfiguring action which the gifts of the Holy Spirit exert in souls. Though all this could be said of science in all generality, philosophy is entitled to support the interpretation that has just been proposed in an eminent way, in as much as by its radicality, it is science on a fundamental account, but at the same time more than knowledge it is a quest of authenticity, engaging existence in a decisive way with respect to its being.

We come now to our second interrogation: What are the questions which theology suggests to philosophy and which are nevertheless properly philosophical questions? We could cite here a certain number of themes that are suggested to philosophical research by the conceptuality of theology, for example the themes of language, word, sign, symbol, presence, temporality, corporality, otherness, community, evil, salvation, universality, and even of faith considered as an attitude of the spirit distinct from the simple knowing or willing. Those concepts, used by theology, have in a way their harmonics in human experience as it appears to itself and gives way to philosophical questioning. The very possibility of those correspondences raises a fundamental problem of which the themes just mentioned are actually but particular aspects. If there is a correspondence, it is because life according to faith is supported by the powers which existence (understood here as the mode of reality proper to the human being) has at its disposal by virtue of its constitution. Faith, as a disposition of the spirit, does not belong to the structure of existence but is a gift, in theological terms a grace. The content to which it refers is not a moment of the manifestation of the created order, but an event-like reality founding a new historicity and instituting an "economy" which assumes in itself the created order, while inserting it in the dynamics of salvation which both transcends it and fulfils it. Concretely, that institution is the announcement and the presence already of the Kingdom of God among us, in the life, preaching, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is thus, in a sense, an exteriority of faith, as attitude as much as historical reality, with respect to existence. But on the other hand, while proposing itself, it addresses a liberty that it places before a decision, which brings into play existence in its most profound being. The word which is calling existence touches it in totality and according to the modality of a radical peripeteia, which theological language calls conversion.

The first question which is posed thereby to philosophical reflection concerns the possibility of conversion and of a life according to faith, to which it gives access and which it accompanies always. In order to make possible the reception of the gift of faith, existence itself must comprise, by virtue of its constitution, a receptivity capable of opening itself to what is proposed, capable of understanding the word in which the salvation in Jesus Christ is announced, and capable of coming to a decision with respect to what is thus announced. Existence must also possess in itself the necessary resources to support that form of life according to faith. It must in a way lend its proper life—what it is by essence—to the dynamics of salvation in order to become itself, in its being, not only witness but bearer, for its part, of what institutes itself in that dynamics. It could be said, in a word, that in order to be capable of the faith, existence must be itself already inhabited by a spiritual dynamism.

That question of the receptivity of existence with respect to faith has, to be sure, a motivation in a theological concern about the subjective conditions of faith, but it is a question addressed to philosophy, and this one may receive it as having value for itself, independently of its theological motivation. The question is to know if the philosophical endeavour to understand existence is able to show that existence is, in its very structure, expectation of a salvation, openness to alterity, and thus capable of being affected by an encounter and resonant to what reveals itself in the encounter. That it is capable of seizing through the signs proposed to it the nondirectly perceptible reality to which they refer; that it is borne by a desire which carries it along always beyond itself and in which a hope could be discovered. Would the philosophical analysis of existence be able to show that the very structure of existence implies the possibility of a destiny, without claiming to be able to determine the effective content of that destiny?

A second fundamental question for philosophy is suggested by the structure of the Credo, corresponding to the internal constitution of the Trinity, as the presentation in words of the whole dynamics of salvation. The reality of that dynamics derives in some way from the reality of the Trinitarian life. It consists in a double procession, the generation of the Son from the Father and the procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son. Those two processes determine four relations, which are going from the principle of the process toward what proceeds from it or inversely. The procession of the Word determines the relations of "fatherhood" and of "filiation," and the procession of the Spirit determines the relations of "spiration" and "procession." In his treatise on the Trinity, St. Thomas explains the status of the divine Persons from those relations, while starting from an argumentation according to which the person is the relation as subsisting. He demonstrates then that three only of the four relations, "fatherhood," "filiation," and "procession", subsist as persons, the relation of "spiration" which belongs simultaneously to the Father and to the Son not being constitutive of a distinct person. What is remarkable in that analysis is that it goes from the relations to the persons and not inversely. This gives the priority to the relation, which has only the task of expressing the structure of a twofold process. Theology thus presents for contemplation a reality which is an ultimate founding and which at the same time is in itself process-like order.

This addresses a properly metaphysical question to philosophy. The concept of foundation has played an essential role in metaphysical reflection, connoting primordially the ideas of support, of base, and of stability. That concept is narrowly linked to the concepts of substance and of subject, in which the same connotations are found again. Now the Trinitarian theology evokes a reality that has the role of giving ultimate foundation and which is of a processual nature. This suggests the following question: How could we think anew the concept of foundation, while connecting it not to a reality-support conceived after the metaphor of construction, but to a process-like reality which is essentially of the order of relation and which evokes the dynamics of an occurring always arriving and not the permanency of what is established?

That question immediately evokes another closely related one. The Credo speaks to us essentially about the salvation in Jesus-Christ, but begins by recalling as its first condition the institution of finite reality. The announcement of salvation is addressed to the human being as a created reality, inscribed in the universal created order. Now creation is presented as a first event, which has no other source than the power of God and which distinguishes itself radically thereby from the events which occur inside the created world and have their source in other events of that world. The event-creation is a transition between the total absence of all reality outside God and the existence of the created order. It is thus a pure sudden appearance, as the formula "ex nihilo," "from nothing", expresses. On the other hand, what follows in the Credo describes the advent of the Kingdom of God as occurring in a world already there. It has the nature of a becoming consisting of events, all of which have at the same time a finite face and a meaning in the invisible order to whose institution they contribute. Those events are the life and the death of Jesus-Christ, the coming of the Holy Spirit and the historical development of the life of the Church. The Credo relates all that event-Iike reality to a terminal moment presented as an event to come. We could try to characterize the reality to which the Credo refers as a reality of an historical order, the historicity of salvation. But we have to make clear that it has a quite specific type of historicity, in that it is essentially constituted by events articulated with each other between the originary event of the incarnation of the Word, and the event to come and expected in hope, the glorious return of Christ. It must be made clear also that it constitutes itself while assuming in its proper historicity the historicity of what could be called "human history", which presupposes itself the historicity of the history of the cosmos.

Those theological data suggest three questions:

(I) How is it possible to think the status of event?

(2) How could we think the status of a reality which is essentially of an event-like order ?

(3) How could we think the difference between what is of the order of the constituted and what is of the order of the instituted?

The first question brings into play radically the status of the classical concept of substance, and consequently it demands a complete re-interpretation of the concept of subsistence. An event is a transition from one state of affairs toward another. It introduces true discontinuity in the becoming, which occurs not in virtue of a law or of any necessity, but as a pure happening that institutes a new state of affairs and implies thus an emergence. It has its reality as relation: it links together a "before" and an "after." But itself it is neither the "before" nor the "after," but the "in-between." This introduces the break, but ensures at the same time the connection. In some way it is nothing as subsisting, but it is fully real precisely of the reality of the transition. To think the event in its radicality is thus to call into question radically the concept of substance. It is clear that this question is in close connection with the preceding one, inspired by Trinitarian theology.

The second question brings into play the classical concept of historicity, not by eliminating it but by specifying it. It refers, indeed, to a type of historicity marked by discontinuity, surprise, and contingency. Actually, what is at stake here is the status of a reality inhabited by contingency.

The third question is suggested by the distinction introduced by the structure of the Credo between, on the one hand, what is posed by the creative event or institution of the created order, with its constitutive laws, structural constraints, and apparent regularity , and, on the other hand, is what happens in human history, with the events in which the history of salvation is instituted. Those events do not modify human nature as constituted, but open it to another order of reality in the form of a calling addressed to the human being in his/her freedom and which induces to a conversion. From the theological point of view, that question rejoins the theme of the gratuitousness of the supernatural. From the philosophical point of view it invites a reflection on the plurality of the orders, in the Pascalian sense, as well as on the meaning in existentiel terms of what the language of faith calls "conversion" and on its conditions of possibility.

Theology

 

Those last questions are in a way on the borders of theology and philosophy. They lead us quite naturally to our third interrogation, which concerns the philosophical questions which encounter theological ones, and the analogies which they uncover. Three questions, which are a matter for that interrogation, will be retained here. The first concerns the conditions of the rootedness of theology in culture. Being an effort of understanding faith, theology must depend on the concrete forms in which the search for understanding has found its explicitation. Those forms are multiple; they appear in history and are modified continuously in the course of history. That general principle leads theology to look for its means of expression in the existing cultures. But there is a process of differentiation in the cultural field: does the cultural rootedness lead, inevitably, toward a generalized relativism? In the content of faith, which is normative for theology, there is as a matter of principle a transcendence with respect to the cultures. But, on the other hand, the rootedness must bring about a certain theological pluralism. What is the adequate balance between rootedness and its overcoming which must make possible that pluralism without jeopardizing the faithfulness to the word of faith? That question must be enlarged. The plurality of cultures is also the plurality of religions. The rootedness in culture implies, thus, for Christian theology, the question of its relation with the other religions. And that question itself reverts to a theological question of great import: What is the meaning of Incarnation with respect to cultural plurality and religious plurality? That question is theological, but it comes across a question which is purely philosophical in nature; this concerns the meaning of cultural pluralism and the concrete conditions of possibility of the encounter between cultures. This is the theme of alterity, of difference, of the sense of universality. Between those two registers of questioning there are analogies which can be illuminating for the one as for the other.

A second question of the same type alongside concerns the major challenge posed today to all the cultural traditions by the development of science and its corollaries in the domain of action. This is a form of practice which seems to be independent of the cultural rootedness and the diversity it implies, which institutes the concrete universality of an artificial world; this autonomous superstructure imposes a massive and rapid erosion of all cultural traditions. That form of practice entails a critical rigorously self-justified type of knowledge, claiming to be the obligatory model of reference whose criteria of validity are absolutely universal. Its diffusion and growth entail consequently a disqualification of religions and by reaction a deviation of the religious consciousness toward irrational forms of pseudo-religious expression.

There is finally a third question which includes the two preceding ones. Christian faith is linked to a particular historicity. It is supported by the powers of the human spirit, which constitute the conditions of possibility of faith on the subjective side. But as it is essentially event-like, to accept it demands a conversion: it announces a "kingdom which is not of this world." With respect to the great cultural traditions of humankind, and to the human culture as such, it is radically different. If we take that difference into consideration in a quite extreme and radical way, all expounded above completely loses its relevance. We are then simply in the presence of two spiritual powers, faith and culture, exterior to each other and without communication or even the possibility of encounter.

But there is another way of understanding the relation between faith and culture, which takes account also of the distinctiveness of faith and of its radicality, but understands this in a sense opposite to that of reciprocal exteriority. Christian faith expresses itself in its proper language, but it says something of this world. From the originary event of the Incarnation, it recognizes the positive meaning of the presence of Christ in the world and sees in Christian practice the visible expression of that presence. In particular, it understands the sense of the Eucharist as the perceptible sign of that presence in the most eminent way and as participation in its efficacy. That presence has an eschatological meaning: it remains among us, but while going toward its accomplishment as the plenitude of its manifestation. The telos of the Christian experience is not the suppression of nature , of what the human being is by its very constitution, but is its integral unfolding. There is a continuity between the order of creation and the order of Redemption in this sense that "the spiritual dynamism posed by creation has, by destination, to be assumed in the dynamism of salvation. This obliterates neither the presence of sin in human achievements nor the necessity of conversion. But it belongs to the judgment of God to discriminate between what came from evil and what can be incorporated in the eternal life" [From "Philosophy and Existence," in The Question of Christian Philosophy Today, edited by Francis J. Ambrosio, Fordham University Press, 1999, p. 290].

That indicates that there must be a presence in the world as it evolves of the virtues of Redemption. The world is such as it constructs itself under the dynamism placed in it by the creating energy. The hidden reality of the new world is the presence, already, of the Kingdom of God within it. What is at work in the institutions of thought and action is the progression towards an advent: There is an eschaton (an ultimate moment of manifestation) of human reason. But the Credo suggests that the dynamics instituted by creation is absorbed in the dynamics instituted by Redemption. The meaning of the historical work is thus not only given by the telos (the term) inscribed in its constitution, but it is also to have to prepare the assumption of that telos in the one of Redemption. This is the Christic sense of the world. All that is positive, that is, all that can be integrated in the Kingdom, is already therein.

Philosophy

 

All that has just been said was theological. What could we say about philosophy? Its specific telos is to contribute to bringing about the construction of a world according to reason. It thinks that telos by searching for self-understanding, as can be seen explicitly for example in the great work of Husserl, The crisis of the European sciences and the transcendental phenomenology. Under what forms is it capable of contributing to the proper tasks of Christian thought? As Christian, this is the self-understanding of the Christian faith; as thought, it has a responsibility with respect to that faith. The question is thus: What can be the contribution of philosophy, as such, to that responsibility? Its proper sense is in the expectation of what is already present in it as bearing its effort of understanding, that is to say of the Kingdom of God. It would be also, at the same time, to help faith to say that its proper sense is, in part, to assume the sense that is brought out by philosophical reflection.

The world is searching for itself in uncertainty and violence. Does that process have a sense, that is to say, is it able to integrate itself in a perspective that would have the character of an "ultimate" (which does not mean an "all-including totality")? The ultimate is the inverse of the principle: the principle is the provenance, the ultimate is the destination. The task of philosophy is to enlighten that process about itself, while enlightening itself about itself. It is commanded by a teleology, which we can think only under a formal concept, not according to its potential content. Its telos itself is not yet the ultimate, but it must be integrated in an ultimate. Christian faith, on its side, is relative to an ultimate, and has thereby the amplitude and the instituting force to give the plenitude of its expression to the sense which is presently in suspense.

Between the teleology of the present world and the teleology of faith there is a correspondence that makes possible a reciprocal articulation. The becoming of the world is borne by a hope: Christian faith is itself hope. Hope is an active expectation, the setting in motion of existence. Philosophy, for its part, follows a path on which it has confidence. It is ready for any encounter, for it knows already that the path on which it is progressing does not lead nowhere.