The title of this chapter expresses a philosophical position in relation to the problem of historicity and values. The focus of the chapter will be in large part phenomenological, although often this requires that one enter the fields of sociology, anthropology and theology. I shall seek to contribute my own reflections from a religious point of view in the broader sense of that term.

The focal point of this chapter is man as the subject of his/her history. It will survey this history, proceeding from the immanent to the transcendent, in a manner both personalized and personalizing. I shall draw upon such classical works as The Phenomenology of Religion by Gerard van der Leeuw, The Holy by Rudolph Otto, and The Sacred and the Profane by Mircea Eliade. To these will be added the very important contributions of such modern and contemporary authors as Brede Kirstensen, Jacques Maritain, Ludwig Feuerbach, Frederich Schleiermacher, Paul Tillich and Bronislaw Malinovski.

The first part of the chapter will treat the more universal facets of the theme, describing the human phenomenon in its multiple and complementary dimensions. Man as "being-in-relation" projects himself, progressively opening to nature, to his peers, and even to the Transcendent. Throughout the work the Transcendent will be referred to indifferently as: Power, The Holy, The Sacred and The Transcendent. However, without hiding my point of view as a believer which is an aspect of my own historicity, the chapter is written in an attitude of openness in the painful search for truth.

The second part will undertake a description of some experiences whose ultimate meaning is absolutely different from other values. This will bring forward diverse ways of understanding the meaning of existence which lead in turn to very different ways of defining ethics.

The last part will concentrate upon the family, understood as the specific place where man realizes his historicity. In and through this dimension the human being comes gradually and fully to realize his/her radical relatedness.

In sum, our philosophical reflection will follow the concrete route of the human effort at self-realization. Since a question about the human person requires a response for the person in the concrete, if we follow the pattern of human rationality we should discover the historical forms taken by this basic human dimension.

MAN: A CONSCIOUS PRESENCE IN THE WORLD, WITH THE OTHERS AND OPEN TO THE TRANSCENDENT

Man, A Conscious Presence

This section will reflect the psychological focus of Richard Knowles' chapters in The Psychological Foundations of Moral Education and Character Development, and his usage of the terms body, ego and self.¹ This reflects, in turn, the work of Erik Erickson in his Childhood and Society. "A human being, thus, is at all times an organism, an ego, and a member of a society and is involved in all three processes of organization: . . . somatic, psychological and social."² These three processes need to be developed also in relation to their original and more Freudian conception.

The original process, to which we allude in this part, will be understood in the sense of Sebastian Samay as affectivity "to signify the fundamental orientation, propensity, adherence or tendency by which individuals attend to their ambience."³ However, we will attend more to the human experience of openness in the concrete circumstances which surround us.

From Aristotle's definition of man as a "political being" to the Sartrean vision of the person as a "useless passion," there has been a continuing search for the sense or meaning of human beings. Innumerable philosophical and humanistic currents of thought have tried by many means to discover the philosophical stone, the key to the destiny of man. This "stone" has often transformed itself into a Pandora's box or Alladin's lamp, the wings of Icarus, a sword of Damocles, or the Cross of the Nazarine; into number, speech or idea; or even into the "Whole."

Men of every epic who have questioned themselves profoundly have asked "Is it possible that all has lost its meaning?" Paul Tillich recounts this search for the ultimate meaning of things through religion.

Religion comes to fulfill a moral function; it knocks at the door, and is well received, not rejected. But the moment religion makes claims of its own, it is either silenced or thrown out as superfluous or dangerous for morals.⁴

The religious sense is welcomed by an ethics which is always trying to form good citizens, good spouses, good workers, good governors, good military men, good everything--understanding by "good" all that is in agreement or functional for the system. When this does not succeed, there occurs what Tillich describes as follows: "Religion must look around for another function of man's spiritual life, and it is attracted by the cognitive function. Again religion is admitted, but as subordinate to pure knowledge and only for a brief time."⁵

As soon as reason through scientific knowledge feels itself sufficiently capable it demotes the religion to a pre-scientific stage. By that very fact religion becomes obsolete for all who wish to be part of the scientific and technological process. "Once more religion is without a home within man's spiritual life. It looks around for another spiritual function to join. And it finds one, namely, the aesthetic function."⁶

However, when religion is reduced to a mere contemplative state it seeks a new refuge by centering itself upon feeling. As a result, rather than being a critical and rational reality, it is subjected to the whims of emotion. Man thus converts himself into a "useless passion," without meaning or direction. In this state we fall to the depths of subjectivism, as stated by Feuerbach. "If feeling is the essential organ of religion, the nature of God is nothing else than an expression of the nature of feeling; . . . it is already clear from this that where feeling is held to be the organ of the infinite, the subjective essence of religion, the actual data of religion lose their objective value."⁷

At this point, having made historicity our only mode of transcendence, we are trapped in the immanence of time and space. This is the platform which, in conjunction with the dialectical conception of Hegel, would serve as the foundation for Marx's dialectical materialism for which religion would be "the cry of the appeased creature, the opium of the people."

How can we escape from this intricate labyrinth in which the positive sciences have entrapped us in order to obtain meaning and direction for human existence? On the one hand, we must try to rescue the value of human experience in its incessant search for new horizons, avoiding all absolutization of partial aspects, however important they may seem. On the other hand, we must return to the subject of this experience as historical, limited, situated in time and place without losing sight of his limitations. We cannot close our eyes to the frontiers of human knowledge and experience if man is a concrete subject; as situated he must keep his external frontiers. The critical point is to know the form in which man assumes these frontiers.

Turning to the very center of this experience we note that man, being distinguished through his historicity from the other beings about him, perceives himself in different ways without thereby losing his identity or absorbing identities other than his own. Man perceives himself as a body with spatio-temporal dimensions which is the meeting place with surrounding extended and temporal beings. This level of experience is shared with other living beings who are able to perceive their individuality in nature. Here man, along with the animals, senses that it is his individuality that is affected by an external body in a pleasurable or painful manner. What is more, the surrounding bodies influence his feelings of proximity or distance. Man, along with the animals, enjoys or suffers the presence or absence of others of his species. This is the level of primary feelings.

My body marks out the situations in which hope is entertained and nurtured. I am a sentient creature insofar as I am embodied. Further, the body is the locus of my action. Through my body I appropriate the world as a field of activity. My body is whenever there is a task to be performed or project to be carried through.⁸

In addition, among those things which move themselves, man distinguishes himself through his reflective ability to perceive his individuality. His "ego" senses that it senses, thinks that it thinks, and knows that it knows. One's ontological differentiation from other living beings begins here. Thanks to this level of perception man has a greater capacity for satisfaction or frustration. Though both a man and a beast can be satisfied, only the man can be frustrated because his expectations have not been realized and he knows this to be so. It is here that the good of the valuable--or better, the good of value--begins to stand out, for man begins to make his own valuations and to know when his satisfaction can be increased.

The perception of one's self does not stop here, but continues in the direction of individualization as one perceives him/her self as an individual among other realities and other humans. This experience includes and gives meaning to previous experiences so that one perceives oneself as entirely unique and irrepeatable, even though submerged or challenged by a determined situation. It is then that one perceives what Ortega y Gasset calls "I and my circumstances" to be the proper being of man; Knowles calls this the "self." Appreciation of this does not require an academic preparation or a superior level of abstraction; it is a primordial act, indivisible from self-consciousness itself. Existential philosophers have directed a great part of their reflection to this aspect of human life.

We have described in this part the different phases of an individual's perception, while attempting to avoid an individualistic rationalism. The social dimension of man implies that the ego and self be contemporaneous with the perception of others. In relation to reality, it is thus more appropriate to speak of ourselves (nosotros), rather than of a solitary "self." On this point we share the more communitary focus of Max Scheler and Gabriel Marcel who, in general, refer more to the experience of ourselves.

This is what makes it possible to perceive `us' (nosotros) when one describes or evaluates a personal project. The I is contained in the `us', although in the ecological perspective the sphere of `us' is supposed and not made explicit in its referential significance when the monodic `ego' has been constituted.⁹

As regards values one perceives not only what befits himself, but also what is fitting for others; thus one perceives that much of what seems suitable enters into conflict with what seems suitable to other human beings and, even more, to beings on lower levels of consciousness. This introduces responsibility: one knows that one's conduct must respond to his/her desires without contradicting or negating the desires of others. Simple adaptation to the environment is at the first level of awareness, but it is necessary to go beyond that in a continual effort to readjust the balance between one's individuality and the whole: from this stems the work of ethics.

Man: A Conscious Presence in the World

Moving ahead in our reflection we arrive at the first experience of man: awareness of distance and of proximity in relation to our surrounding universe. We limit ourselves here to the human experience of the physical and biological world which lacks self-reflection. Man senses himself to be part of this spatio-temporal reality of which he is aware through his own bodiliness. From the first moments of life the human being reacts as an individual to nature; from the fetal state he reacts, though in a limited manner, to the exterior space which is the womb of the mother. Along with one's fetal development comes an increasing interdependence, or better, differentiation.

Many studies and experiences in the field of biology provide significant data on this, but who more than the pregnant mother can witness this as she senses the many diverse signs of life on the part of her child. The umbilical cord is both an active and a passive means of communication with the mother and the external world. With birth, direct interaction with the environment begins: the first cry is the first symbolic and meaningful articulation of this dialogue with one's environment. From then on a human being senses him or herself as both surrounded by, and at the same time distant from, things in a process of increasing communication. For this the role of the family is most important, especially the role of the mother during the first months of existence.

Following the analysis of Richard Knowles, which in turn paraphrases the work of Erickson, it seems appropriate to note that the basic relation of the person with his/her environment is in terms of proximity-distance creating in the subject a sensation of security or of threat. "The bodily experience of this stage is one of vulnerability and helplessness, an almost complete dependence on one's caretakers, and the gradual establishment of feeding and caring patterns."¹⁰

What Erickson has articulated for this stage of life can be extended to the whole of his bodily existence. One always seeks a refuge (proximity) in the world, while at the same time sensing its strangeness (distance). This paradoxical experience accompanies one through one's whole life in different forms and circumstances.

One's "being-in-the-world" (Gegenheit) as a vital experience of the human being is perceived also on the second or "ego" level of the person. Here one senses oneself as distinct and at the same time dependent upon the surrounding reality. This is the stage of taking positions; "yes" and "no" are the paradigms of a sense of freedom by which one is searching to differentiate oneself from the environment. The physical world which surrounds one is not definitive because the human being has passed the threshold which differentiates him or her from nature. This is the stage of the will, of wanting or not wanting; it is also the level of reflective reason which "knows" and "knows that it knows." The physical world is perceived as a workshop or showcase. One knows that he/she has influence on the environment and, in turn, is influenced by it. One's "yes" or "no" will be either transforming action, constructing or destroying nature, or passive contemplation, admiring and praising nature. Obviously, there are means between these two extremes, but the "yes" or "no" are generally in function of one's "ego," and hence affirm oneself. Thus, the person takes an active role here; one is no longer limited to passively "feeling" or "perceiving" what is distant or proximate, but enters actively into relation with one's world. This is the dominion of one's will for power and by power which can submit the other to the ego.

As regards values, in contrast to the bodily level where the valuable was what pleased, here the valuable is what is useful. One attempts to instrumentalize nature and relate to objects by means of instruments. One studies, investigates and analyzes reality in order to know it by means of science so as to be able to treat it instrumentally and technically. Here what is good and what is not is decided according to the functional criteria of instrumentalization: nature is good inasmuch as it serves the purposes of the human "ego."

After the evolution theories, nature cannot be conceived any more as a machine ruled by its internal laws and principles, nor as an object totally external to man but as a process of continuous development. Organismic wholeness is thus the indispensable presupposition of evolution. We consider nature as a dynamic organismic system comprising a continuous range of wholes at levels of progressively increasing complexity and integration.¹¹

This text brings us to the third level of the relation of man with nature, that of the conscious and responsible self, inasmuch as the person is aware of being both part of, and apart from, nature. Here the human being is fully conscious of the proximity and distance. Through the sense of proximity, as "the conscious vortex of evolution" in the words of Teilhard de Chardin, one perceives belonging to nature with which one feels a solidarity. The human being experiences him/herself as part of that "protension" of reality which tends toward love in its fullness.

Many mystics and philosophers have elaborated their experience in terms of living this proximity with nature. However, one also has a feeling of distance and contemplates nature as an indecipherable world which confronts him. One experiences the reality of the "boundary" (Paul Tillich) which separates and differentiates him/her from nature, which questions and implores, which attracts and repels, and which unites and separates. This is the full weight of "the other"; nonetheless it is perceived as part of oneself, relating more to the ambit of one's spatial and or quantitative character. One's bodiliness is thus the point of union with the measurable and the point of interconnection with the world of objects. One begins thereby to perceive the implications of historicity and of one's own temporality, sensing oneself as involved in an interactive dialogue with the physical environment.

As this is the level of responsibility, one develops what can be called a "response" to nature by which one is challenged. One's will to dominate is transformed into a search for significance, direction and meaning.

In hoping I open myself to the many perspectives of life situations; in willing I take a stand in the phase of this ambiguity; in imagining, I begin to move in certain directions. I imagine myself doing something and this image invites action which is smooth, integrated and purposeful.¹²

Hope, will and creative imagination are man's progressive responses in his dialogue with nature. At this level value includes a sense of the future inasmuch as man is aware, not only of the partial realizations in the present, but also of the possible fullness of the future. His action must have meaning and direction; value will consist in the progressive realization of one's interaction of nature.

Man: A Conscious Presence in the World with Others

The experience of distance and proximity is sharpened through one's relation to one's peers. One gives continuous and dramatic witness to this from the time of infancy when one feeds anxiously at the breast of one's mother until in old age the sick person presses with desperation the hands of loved ones. (In contrast, and from his existential perception of distance, John Paul Sartre would say that "others" are "hell," for their stare reduces me to an object of scrutiny. This experience of alienation has been a dominant theme of existential philosophy).

One experiences "others" at different levels of proximity and distance as one's bodiliness differentiates and limits one in the world with others. Spatio-temporal characteristics are a permanent sign of this limitation. At the same time, however, thanks to this bodiliness one has access to others. Without my body I would be nowhere; bodiliness constantly summons me to the world of other physical beings. The danger is that I might remain at this level of "being-with-others" at which others are a "solitary multitude" and I an "anonymous" being among and before them.

Bodiliness is lived most strongly in a sexual relation. If there is no "ego" or "responsible and conscious self" here the other is greatly estranged or distant, even in the act of greatest physical proximity. In legal codes such a relation would be considered a violation or a mere commercial transaction.

When the "ego" is involved in our relations with others we pass from simple pleasure or sorrow to the level of rationality and the field of logic; our actions are oriented functionally according to our role. This is the case of professional physical contact in which there is a fulfillment of roles according to certain norms. The patient accepts the doctor being cold, efficient and manipulative during an operation.

As an "ego" I have a certain distance from others.

My ego functions primarily in terms of reflective thinking and willing. I reflect rationally on a situation, think about it, and then make a decision. I attack reality in terms of a problem-solving situation and I am in control of what I am doing.¹³

Being thus "in the situation" I see others also as "situated."

At this level my conduct is basically that of accommodating or rejecting. I produce things because I want to have them without any personal commitment. My relations with the others are managed within the limits of politeness, courtesy, convenience or laws. With conduct that reflects all these I will be an honorable member of the society; if not I will be a misfit, a dangerous delinquent, and penalized as such.

It is when the "conscious self" enters one's relations with "others," that we are really in the world of interpersonal relations with its classical dimensions of presence and distance, of immanence and transcendence. At this level one becomes conscious of belonging to the human community and assumes attitudes of responsibility, autonomy and obedience, of solicitude and love.

I as self have a respectful reverence for another person. I have the propensity to give to, and to be one with, him. I have no need to manipulate or dominate him, nor do I need to reduce him to satisfy my own needs. I am not reduced by his sensuality, nor do I analyze him. I feel a spontaneous and centrifugal inclination to accept, affirm and understand this person.

In love, the most fundamental and highest form of self-interaction, I reveal and offer the most intimate dimension of my being-my self, . . . I take off my everyday masks to be-myself-for-the-other.¹⁴

At this level one has an authentic experience of the distance/proximity of others and the "protension" is almost totally completed. I say "almost" because what is significant does not stop here; one looks for meaning "beyond" this encounter.

The Person: A Conscious Presence in the World of Others and Open to the Transcendent

Such disparate expressions as potension, vital impulse, opening, living spirit, collective unconscious, spirit of the nations, dialectical materialism, ultimate meaning, society without classes, nirvana, transcendence, samsara, history, eschaton, pleroma and God all bring us to man's great existential question: "What is all of this for"? The final sense of the history of humanity presents itself to us partially in its vivid historicity as the continual search for plenitude.

The human person's experience of transcendence is realized on the same basis as one's immanence, namely, in one's circumstances and at the very center of one's historicity. One experiences one's bodiliness through those who are external. Similarly, sensing an "openness" beyond bodiliness does not choke off one's existential being, but enables one to transcend their corporality. Through one's ego one is open, not only to others who are similar, but much more to that which transcends.

The same thing happens with one's experience of the "conscious self." This experience of transcendence implies being both something and nothing at the same time, being in the extended world but not simply a part of it, being with others but not totally submerged in them. One senses one's existence constantly as menaced by nothingness and at the same time as attracted or protended toward a greater plenitude of one's "existent non-existence." This "thinking reed" (Blaise Pascal) tries to affirm him/herself despite the fact that one's supports drift before the winds and torments of nothingness.

Religious writers have written graphically and artistically of this experience of the boundary of being and nothingness, between "being" and "Being." The book of Wisdom places in the mouth of the impious his permanent captivation with the bodily dimension of reality and his resultant loss of "relationality" and "transcendence."

Brief and troublous is our lifetime: neither is there any remedy for man's dying, nor is anyone known to have come back from the nether world.

For haphazard were we born, and hereafter we shall be as though we had not been; because the breath in our nostrils is a smoke and reason is a spark at the beating of our hearts, and when this is quenched, our body will be ashes and our spirit will be poured abroad like unresisting air. Even our name will be forgotten in time and no one will recall our deeds. So our life will pass away like the traces of a cloud and will be dispensed like a mist . . . for our lifetime is the passing of a shadow.¹⁵

Without a sense of transcendence, the relation of the person to the whole would lead to a merely bodily ethic--one of pleasure--as in the text cited. Its logical conclusion is: "Come, therefore, let us enjoy the good things that are real and use the freshness of creation avidly."¹⁶ Stoics, Epicureans, materialists and positivists all pursue philosophic reflection with the same attitude.

Taking up once again the pattern of phenomenological reasoning let us turn to Rudolph Otto, Gerard van der Leeuw and Mircea Eliade who have devoted special attention to the human experience of transcendence. The religious experience of openness to transcendence and to the Transcendent is described particularly well by religious authors on the basis of their own experience.

When I behold your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you set in place, what is man that you should be mindful of him, or the son of man that you should care for him? You have made him little less than the angels, and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him rule over the works of your hands, putting all things under his feet.¹⁷

In a parallel vision of totality and the quest for meaning, Taoism, for example, sees this unity in the person's belonging or proximity to the Whole.

Obtaining the One, Heaven was made clear.

Obtaining the One, Earth was made stable.

Obtaining the One, the Gods were made spiritual.

Obtaining the One, the valley was made full.

Obtaining the One, all things lived and grew.¹⁸

In some manner human beings grasp a relation which transcends the limits of themselves, of nature and of others. Having gone beyond the level of bodiliness, without suppressing it, they move to the level of the Ego and of the Conscious Self where they perceive a "presence" which no longer leaves space for "absence." Non-rational beings are not capable of this experience; only persons, as standard-bearers of this open search for the fullness of reality, can experience the presence of the Other, which is "totally different" from any experience cited above. The perception of this Other is highly complex and ambiguous; one feels both strongly attracted and in turn repulsed for it is perceived at the same time as both "fascinating" and "tremendous." These two primary facets of the perceived object are categorized by Rudolph Otto as "The Numenal," a concept which, in any case, seeks to express sharing in something radically different from the rest of reality.

The proximity of the Other is felt as a sense of "fascination" which impels one to a total ecstasy in what we sense as "the ground of our own existence" (John Robinson) or as "the ultimate concern of my own being" (Paul Tillich). This was the experience narrated by one of the evangelists regarding the transfiguration when the disciple Simon exclaimed: "Rabbi, it is wonderful for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah" (Mc. 9,5).

Simon Peter was hardly thinking of himself or of his companions, but was fully absorbed in the vision which he contemplated. In this field of religious experience it is difficult to distinguish the participation of the "ego" and of the "conscious self" inasmuch as all these sentiments experienced by the human person in contact with the "Totally Other" are by nature totally enveloping. Religious experience is an experience of wholeness in which one perceives nature and him/herself as surrounded by a "nouminal" reality which gives meaning to all that has been said above. This does not signify that the totally distinct or "Other" is only the sum and conjunction of the parts. Some religions which have experienced self-transcendence in the sense of Absolute Transcendence seem to run the risk of canceling the individuality of the Other in my own subjectivity or of submerging my subjectivity in the great Whole.

Religious experience, further, is that experience whose significance refers to the whole, it can therefore never be understood from the standpoint merely of the moment, but only and always from that of eternity. Its meaning is an ultimate meaning and is conceived with the `last things,' its nature is eschatological, and transcends itself; while for man it implies an ultimate, a boundary.

Like all experience, nonetheless, religious experience is related to the object, and this indeed in a pre-eminent sense. . . . In religious experience, however, this orientation is a presence, subsequently an encounter, and finally a union. And in this presence not he who experiences is primary, but He who is present; for He is the holy, the transcendently Powerful.¹⁹

The awe which man feels before "the sacred" (Mircea Eliade) is a clear indication that what is experienced is distinguished and distanced from the experience itself as well as from the one who experiences. "The Holy" (Rudolph Otto) is not therefore a projection of my own subjectivity, as Ludwig Feuerbach would have us think: "In the object which he contemplates, man becomes acquainted with himself; consciousness of the objective is the self-consciousness of man."²⁰

^Much less is it a projection of one's frustration in relation to possible and future possibilities, as Marx held in his Communist Manifesto, cataloging all religion as "the groan of an oppressed creature, the opium of the people." Nor is it a "collective obsession" derived from an "original traumatizing frustration" as Sigmund Freud would suggest. Finally, "The Holy" is not, as Edward Taylor projected, the self-projection of an "animist" experience by man as "soul" or the "idealization" of existing social structures as Emile Durkheim suggested in his work, Elemental Forms of Religious Life.

The Holy is perceived as "totally distinct" from the subjectivity of man, from nature and from other human beings. The ambiguity arises when this "Transcendence" is perceived through immanence. This leads many to see themselves as "The Other," to perceive nature as sacred, or finally to sacralize some social system as absolute. This rationalization of the religious experience through the "ego" transforms religion into a "mechanical domination," a matter of "Power" by means of fetishism and magic. Often this is in conjunction with a "sacred mandate" which sacralizes the political power or in ritual practices for purification or for the propitiation of evil powers. We will return to this point with greater detail in the third section of this chapter.

When a person in one's totality as a "conscious self," places oneself before the "Other" as the fullness of being and meaning, one comes to a better understanding one's situation of total dependence and creatureliness, on the one hand, and the completion of all value, on the other. Spontaneously there arises the supplication: "You alone are Holy; You alone are Lord; You are alone the most high." Adoration is one's spontaneous response, which transforms itself into prayer rather than mere evocation or ceremony.

The `Holy' will then be recognized as that which commands our respect, as that whose real value is to be acknowledged inwardly. It is not that the awe of holiness is itself simple `fear' in the face of what is absolutely overpowering, before which there is no alternative to blind, awe-struck obedience. `Thou alone art holy' is rather a paean of praise, which, so far from being merely a faltering confession of the divine supremacy, recognizes and extols a value, precious beyond all conceiving.²¹

Thus, we have come to the point of attributing the highest possible value to reality through the immanent experience of the

"Transcendent" as absolute value which gives full meaning to all the other values of reality. Through historicity one sees value manifested in its totality. It is the "openness" of reality or its "protention" that makes this epiphany possible. Thus, Mircea Eliade dedicates a large part of his reflection to the human experience of "sacred time" and "sacred place" which is expressed synthetically in the celebration of the religious "fiesta" and even more in the "sacred banquet," all of which are symbols which express at least partially man's living the sacred. The symbols of sacred time and sacred place draw us to a comprehension of "The Holy" in history, while at the same time its radical distinction from profane time and place puts us on guard before any immanentist reductionism of the religious phenomenon. Thus, what is manifest simply as present should not be taken as an "epiphany." The sacred is perceived historically, but without being identified with history. (The category of sacralization will be utilized to signify any absolutization of the relative.) Authentic religious experience surpasses the categorizations of the "ego" and is located in the context of the personal and social communication of man with "the Transcendent."

In the categories of Knowles, not hope or will, but love will be the basis of the true encounter of man with The Other, and through that with nature. (This is the theological principle of "sacramentality" or "mediation" clearly explained by Edward Schilebeeckx in his work Christ, Sacrament of Encounter with God.) Mircea Eliade concludes:

The non-religious person rejects transcendence, accepts the relativity of `reality', and comes to doubt even the meaningfulness of existence. The modern non-religious person assumes a new existential situation: he sees himself as the sole subject and agent of history and rejects all appeal to transcendence. . . . Man makes himself, and he can make himself completely only to the degree that he desacralizes himself and his world. The sacred is the major obstacle to his freedom and he will not become himself until the moment he is radically demystified: he will not be truly free until he has killed the last god.²²

The God of Israel defines himself to Moses as: "I am who will be being" (Ex 3,4), understanding by this that the Israelite people will experience his presence in the history to follow.

From the Consciousness of "the Other"

to the Existence of "the Other"

In the above sections we have perceived the form in which the person's consciousness is made present to himself and open to the presence of others.

There is danger of a subjective relativism in the move from thought to existence found in the well known Anselmian argument to prove the existence of Being Itself on the basis of the convergence of possibility with reality. Some of the above quotes might give the impression that we take the existence of the Transcendent as proven. In fact, such biblical citations have been used from an anthropological perspective without either engaging our personal religious option or negating other forms of religious experience.

The dialectic of Hegel refers fundamentally to the relation of the subject with the object, or to a dialogue between consciousness and any existent external to that consciousness. Feuerbach limited this dialogue to subjects and their projections, and thus to a monologue of the person with oneself. On this basis religion would be but a gigantic projection of the being of the human person. Only thus can one understand the process of secularism which believes it has definitely uprooted God from the ambit of existence and reduced Him to an illusion in order that man might achieve his/her proper autonomy. This is the solemn announcement of Thomas Altizer who proclaims: "We must realize that the death of God is an historical event, that God has died in our cosmos, in our history, in our existenz."²³ (We will not argue here with the theology of the "death of God" because it assumes to conclude where we started. Besides, Harvey Cox's Secular City would end in postulating a secular God very similar to the Transcendent.)

The traditional arguments of causality, order and justice have been used for centuries to prove the existence of God by those who accept them as valid. But we do not seek here to prove the real existence of The Other with the same scientific criteria as positive sciences. The only thing that we have sought to establish has been the reality of our experience of the other and of The Other. We have not tried to demonstrate the objective existence of each of the objects of our perception, although to treat of The Other it seems necessary to affirm once again the essentially "relational" character of our being. However, this directionality to others would not make sense if it did not have an existing and inclusive goal or object. Our epistemological position is that with the human type of reality comes a disjunction: either men and existing ontological reality have a sense, direction, and meaning or, on the contrary, everything is without sense, direction and meaning: all is absurd.

Jean Paul Sartre opts for the second alternative and, coherent with that option, affirms that "man is a useless passion." Nothing could convince Sartre of the contrary because he had already assumed the existential posture that all is meaningless.

However, this posture does not seem correct for most humans; the absurd does not appear to be the permanent result of our experience, for which--against Sartre's "No Exist"--there should be a way out. Paul Tillich assumes in his work, The Courage to Be, this "existential anguish" through which the being is conscious of the possibility of not being. This is "the expression of finitude from within" in its ultimate consequence which pushes one to the very boundary between being and non-being. On the basis of facing this anguish of senselessness and meaningless, and acting despite it, Tillich postulates the existence of an "ultimate sense of our existence." The very consciousness of fault projects "the courage to accept oneself as accepted despite being unacceptable."

Contemporary man, no longer impressed by causal proofs of the existence of the transcendent, searches rather for the meaning of life than for its cause. He looks more for an ultimate meaning than for an explicative principle, more for foundation than for exaltation, more for an experience of mystery than for its comprehension. Thus John Robinson speaks of God as "the ground of our own existence" and St. Augustine defined the divine as "interior to myself." "Creation is not a description of an event which took place sometime before, but the basic description of the relation between God and the world."²⁴

Thus we have returned to the beginning of the chapter where we established man's experience of relatedness. Here we have added the ontological foundation of this relationality as the analogical participation of beings in Transcendent Being. If beings are, it is because they are in an analogous manner to "He Who Is." "Relation is a basic ontological category. . . . God as being-in-itself is the ground of every relation, in whose life all relations are present beyond the distinctions between potentiality and actuality."²⁵

SACRALIZATION OF VALUE

Value and the Absolute

The first part of this chapter was essentially phenomenological, the second part was principally descriptive and historical regarding what happens when any of the poles of human relation--ego - world - society - the Sacred--is taken as the sole value in terms of which all the others have their meaning. Now we shall describe different "scales of values" which can be given by fixing serially upon one of these as the fundamental value of life.

We have spoken of sacralization in the etymological sense of "secare" with its sense of separating, breaking off, or differentiation. Thus "the sacred" becomes the different, the transcendent, or the valuable, which by right separates itself from every other value as the most important--as the first and ultimate value which founds all others. This makes one value absolute in contrast to the relativity of all the rest. We refer to value in terms of "valuable" on the basis of its having a significance in itself and on this basis being perceived by us as attractive and worthy of our possessing and holding it. Our attitude and conduct will be determined by the object we have valued, by the specific form in which it has been valued, and by us who perceive something or someone to be of value.

Value as "Myself"

The selection of the individual as the central and absolute value basically will be at the level of body and of ego inasmuch as the conscious and responsible self by definition does not restrict the ultimate sense of reality to the conscious subject. The assumption, with the philosopher Protagoras, of "man as center of all things"--the pivotal point of existence--has generated results that are at once fascinating and deceptive. From mythic man, who rejected all heteronomy in order to concentrate in himself, up to the contemporary military-industrial complex, which rejects the other as a pole for human relations, we have examples of the absolutization of man as individual above all other values. Religions see this situation as "sin"; philosophers make different qualifications, generally positive; while science or technology are employed to provide such an individual with a sense of security in the face of the menacing realities which surround it.

Where corporality is the focus of one's values, innumerable types of thinking and practice exalt the body as the absolute: from the tantric cults and practices to contemporary grotesque sexual orgies, from mystical valuations of the body to its commercialization as merchandise, from beauty contests to the glorification of physical force in boxing. "Therapy" groups practice "letting go" and "turning on"--"whatever might help reawaken the life you are capable of living, in yourself, with others.²⁶

It is not surprising that in contrast to these exaggerations of the body there should develop contrary movements which tend to castigate the body as something evil in order to elevate, redeem or liberate one from the bonds of space and time, and so to float in a mystical ecstasis of spirituality. Here one finds some ascetical schools which see the body as the first enemy in the search for "transcendental unity" and employ fasts, flagella

tions, and pain in the attempt to force the body under the dominion of the spirit. Thomas a Kempis warns us regarding corporeality:

Truly it is a misery to live upon the earth. The more spiritual a man desires to be the more bitter this present life becomes to him. . . . For to eat and to drink, to sleep and to wake, to labor and to rest, and to be subject to the other necessities of nature is truly a great misery.²⁷

From focusing upon oneself as the center of one's universe of values and reducing all the rest of reality to one's unconditional service there arises a series of individualist currents of thought: subjectivist, idealist, emotivist, voluntarist, nihilist, existentialist or relativist.

In his encounter with nature those centered in themselves submit to their whims all resources and all the laws and forces of nature, creating of themselves a demiurgic and omnipotent image. Lacking an ethics of responsibility they subject to their ego all persons beyond themselves. Others are good or evil inasmuch as they serve or do not serve their interests. This leads to the creation of individualistic social structures where the competency and survival of the strongest is the sole law of life. Consumption begins to be for the sake of consumption, art for arts sake, and science for the sake of science: these among others are the slogans with which the search for self-realization without limit is undertaken. "Time is money" and "space is where I live well" are the slogans of such a vision (Alan Touraine). This is the "one dimensional man" of Herbert Marcuse who works out his life in a gigantic structure that ends by flattening him: he is the solitary man in the lonely crowd.

In these terms one admits the existence of the Transcendent only in order to search one's own favor and utility through magical practices and rituals which submit "the power of the gods" to one's personal will and benefit. Any intention on the part of nature, of others or of the holy to retrieve their autonomy would be strongly repressed, simply ignored or, in the best of cases, borne stoically. The proclamation of the death of God is the final recourse of this pretended absolute autonomy. Such are the persons who set themselves up as the supreme value of existence.

St. Augustine depicted with magisterial lines the construction of two worlds centered on distinct values. "Two loves give birth to two cities: the earthly city, developed the love of itself at the cost of the love of God; in the celestial city its God was

developed at the cost of the love of self."²⁸ These are two absolutely different positions regarding the ultimate values of existence and they call for entirely different conduct on the part of persons. "This city called Babylon has also those who hoped only for an earthly peace, imagining all their happiness in its terms and working indefatigably for the realization of this earthly republic."²⁹ "Those who search the true peace, obedient to God, and reconciled with men, live by faith which works by love."³⁰

A common characteristic of all the ethics which arise from a vision of the world ultimately grounded in humans is their phrenetic race for happiness in any and every form provided it does not imply the loss of their individual enjoyment and possessions.

Value as Nature

In the search for knowledge the attitude of contemporary scientists with their positivist and pragmatic roots is not a new posture, for hedonism and empiricism have always based all upon a physical and tangible encounter with the world of things. For the scientist, whatever cannot be tested by the instruments of positive science cannot be considered real. Dialectical materialism follows another systematic method in searching for truth. At the root of all these approaches, however, there lies a radical and exclusive option for matter as the sole developing reality. In the last analysis they consider nature to be the axis of the whole of reality.

When one subjects metaphysics to economy and to politics one follows the praxis of all such theories according to which progress is the ultimate objective of human activity. Well-being and development are the goals which modern man pursues by whatever means, convinced that the greater the benefits extracted from nature the greater the well-being of the human race. This pragmatic vision of progress is bound intimately to blind credence in the power of science and technology.

Paradoxically, the belief in the capacity of the "Homo Faber" concludes by submitting mankind entirely to the superhuman power of technology. A dramatic example of that affirmation is the disturbing and absurd possibility of the destruction of the planet through the uncontrolled function of the mechanisms of nuclear strategy. Persons need not even take part in the fatal act of "pushing the button"; the machine itself could initiate the lightening process of world holocaust. "In the past it was possible to destroy a village, a town, a region and even a country. Now it is the whole planet that has come under threat." With these words Pope John Paul II at Hiroshima summarized the anguished worry of the contemporary world.

In this way we have paradigmatically come to the same situation as that of the primitive peoples who sacrificed innumerable victims to mountains, rivers, animals, woods and nature. Now, however, one sacrifices millions of men and women to Industry, Progress, Security, the Balance of Power, Western Christian Civilization, Society without Classes, Science and Technology. The temples of the new gods are the impressive highways, supermarkets, sky scrapers and nuclear plants among others built upon the deterioration of nature and the submission of humankind to a permanent insecurity psychosis.

We are a society without ideas, and a society without ideas is a society without hope and imagination. We have fallen into the trap of violence, militarism and competitiveness, which is the world that people without ideas have to resort to because it is the world where there is no freedom.³¹

Sacralizing and absolutizing nature leads to a loss or diminution of other dimensions of human rationality, of one's own person, of others and of transcendence.

Value as Society

The theme: "Values and Myself" developed above should be extended. There we noted the implications for the individual of making the human absolute. Here we shall consider briefly its socio-political dimension, namely, when society in any of its structures sets itself up as absolute in human existence.

With reason the first Christians were considered the "atheists" of their time because they refused to render cult to the emperor of the Roman world. "Imperium was originally the unlimited power possessed by the divinely approved early kings, who fulfilled a number of roles: lawgiver, priest, military commander, judge. The emperor was a living law on earth.^"32

Although the Romans lived in a political dualism between absolutism and constitutionalism, they remain paradigmatic for Western history in that they placed political power above all. Their political model of the theocratic order repeats itself in the twenty centuries of history which follow. It has as its common characteristics: the absolute and unquestioned power of authority, the divine character of its origin, a capacity for absorbing all other aspects of society, a pyramid structure of power, an invarying pressure to orient the changes of persons, and imperialist and conquistador tendencies.

It was a wise politician of the sixteenth century, Nicholas Machiavelli, who counseled the princes to note that "reasons of state" were above all moral or religious considerations, but that both of these could be used in order to make their rule more efficacious and lasting. The Prince might not be religious, but it was best for him to seem to be so if it helped to strengthen his authority. "One does not govern men by the power of `Our Fathers'," counsels Machiavelli; the church counsels only resignation and humility. Political value was for him virtue par excellence; it was nothing other than the possession of all the qualities leading to political success. "It is therefore the duty of princes and heads of republics to uphold the foundation of the religion of their countries, for then it is easy to keep their people religious, and consequently well conducted and united."³³

This mode of utilizing religion in politics conforms to the golden rule of all theocratic governments: "Whose kingdom, his religion." That is, the governor does not take into account the religion of the people, but imposes his own. The wars of religion and the religious separation of England would be only corollaries to the general sacralization of political power, as well as a reaction to the politicization of the Catholic hierarchy.

Many politicians who seek political power, do so in the name of "others," but when they attain power their altruistic horizon often disappears--if indeed it had even really existed--and a Machiavellian egocentricity of power for power's sake shows through. This critique is equally valid for the socio-economic political systems, both individualist and collective. In the first system political power is generally at the service of the dominant class; in the second system it is in the hands of a bureaucratic minority which claims for itself a transitory power which in reality is interminable, namely, until the proletariat is installed in power.

The law is another idol of a sacralizing and sacralized politics. It is claimed to be "the sovereign will of the people": "voice of the people, voice of God." The great offenses against such a god-state are rebellion, disobedience, robbery and conflict. The good is agreement with the law; evil is all that is against the law: "A hard law, but a law" is the supreme reason for all authoritarian imposition and the will of power becomes the fundamental principle of all human social life.

Life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtusion of peculiar focus, incorporation and, to put it most mildly, exploitation . . . because life is precisely Will to Power. . . . Exploitation does not belong to a depraved, or imperfect and primitive society: it belongs to the nature of the living being as a primary organic function; it is a consequence of the intrinsic Will to Power, which is precisely Will to Life.³⁴

In this way the apparent altruism of the political order is in reality enthroned and idealized power as such. Hence, every means is valid for achieving and maintaining it (Machiavelli): all reality is fundamentally nothing other than the "will to power" (Nietzsche).

The "other" human being, which in principle was taken as the absolute value and final purpose of political action, turns into the "valued." One is valuable to the degree that one is functional and useful within the structure of power. "The value or worth of a man, as of all other things, is his price, that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his power; therefore it is not absolute, but a thing dependent on the need and judgment of another."³⁵

Once again the human has become a simple object, a thing at the service of power. One seeks to subject the other to one's own goal of satisfying one's anxiety for power, thereby converting man into "a wolf for man," according to Hobbes' expression.

The Other as Absolute

This last part of our second section will focus upon the absolutization of any form of the Transcendent to the exclusion and elimination of all other values. Later we will return again to this theme, though with a more inclusive and integrating focus.

At times the search for The Other as the Totally Distinct, Power, Holy, Sacred, Foundation of Being, Subsistent, Highest, All Powerful, Creator, etc., wrongly tends to annul all the rest of reality by omitting all immanence, and hence all relative existence. Historically, this tendency is had whenever one sacrifices the human person, nature or society "in the name of God." Every pantheistic vision of reality absorbs all into the One, of which all is the necessary manifestation or "unfolding" in history.

In distinction from the "historical absolutes" previously noted (the ego, the world and society), the Transcendent as absolute is above and beyond all reality and nonetheless is the principle of all that historicity signifies. Gerard Van de Leeuw in his work Phenomenology of Religion develops a characterization of the different religions according to the criteria of the object of their beliefs. Thus, he classifies religions into: "Religions of detachment and flight, combat, repose, uneasiness, infinity, nothingness, majesty, will and love."³⁶

These religious forms follow the underlying image of the absolute. A brief look at such forms brings us to the conclusion that the major part of these assume a distance or abyss between man and the Absolute. In some this distance is totally annulled by transformation in mystical identity. Once again we draw upon the theories developed by Otto of the "fascinating" or "awesome" and the "tremendous" in the sense explained above.

Islam is in the first, second and third place a religio-social complex, in which equal emphasis is due to each factor of this combination. . . . It develops a colossal power which is rooted in its faith in God, or, in other words, it takes God's sovereignty in absolute seriousness.³⁷

Religious forms which stress the total distance of the Absolute conclude to an existential nothingness for man. In contrast to such religions of distance are those which stress total "proximity" as do certain religions of India. "The mainstream of Hindu religious sentiment . . . directs itself towards the infinite and attempts to attain it by asceticism."³⁸

The various forms of religious nominalism ultimately include either the absolute in the relative or the relative in the absolute, while the forms of religious dualism separate the two irreconcilably as disparate and even contradictory existences. On the one hand, religious practice that is entirely separated and distanced from socio-political life divides human life, binding it to idols in a sanctuary--which ultimately will turn into a prison. This either renders religion entirely innocuous and obsolete or puts it at the service of mere human caprice. On the other hand, socio-political practice socializes these idols and converts them into demigods which are then manipulated for any purpose: holy wars, sacrificial deaths or the elimination of subjected groups.

FAMILY: THE CENTER OF COMMUNION AND PARTICIPATION

Foundations

The title of this last section appears to diverge from what has preceded. The first section was a sociological analysis of the relational dimension of the human person, leading to a phenomenological analysis of the distinct levels of relationships. Later, we showed the real effects of the absolutization and exclusive polarization of any one factor in human relations. By way of conclusion, we will seek now to recover the identity of the person through life in the family as the most distinctive expression of one's "relatedness" and "sociality."

Recent scientific experiments in the field of embryology and human genetics could lead one to the false conclusion that human life is created in a laboratory. In reality there exists no such "creation," for what takes place there is but genetic manipulation. Should a new synthesis of amino acids or a posterior manipulation of already existing human genes be called a recreation of life? Will the family remain the "natural context" for the reproduction and development of the human species? These and other questions will be answered only in the future.

In any case, the ontological and ethical principles will remain the same, though perhaps with different formulations. One principle which arises from the experience of mankind is its "relational being"; another is the "gradual" or progressive character of its realization through history. In the last section of this chapter, beginning with and through family life, we will discuss the relations with one's self, with the world, with others and with the transcendent.

The Family Dimension of Human Beings

The individual cannot become human by oneself; self-identity is real only in communication with another self. Alone, I sink into gloomy isolation; only in community with others in the act of mutual discovery do I emerge. (Karl Jaspers, On My Philosophy.)³⁹

What Jaspers affirms regarding the human being as "a relational being" we assert by the term `family dimension', namely, that the fullness of one's being as human is achieved through intimate relations with other human beings. These relations are first on a biological level, for one's individual life does not begin abruptly, but is part of a process already begun; one's ontological existence is related to prior existences as effect to cause. Thus, references to mythical "first parents" or "progenitor" point to human beings who are the sources of other lives. In turn, this new existence is potentially linked through the same order of cause and effect to subsequent existences. This gives real strength to the term "human family" which, in turn, is "related" to the rest of the cosmos in intimate existential relations.

Beyond this cosmic human meaning there is the family in its literal sense. In it we distinguish such constitutive and complementary relations as those of "paternity," "spouse," "child to parent" and "child to child." No human being is outside these relations, for all are offsprings with relations to parents and vice versa. Of the four relations cited the relation of child to parent appears the most universal both in biological and in ontological terms. Though the others might not have their biological counterpart, they remain ontologically possible.

When we say that we are all sons or daughters we affirm the radical and universal character of filiation as actualized within the family. This is the result of a previous union of human beings who, for different motives, shared their generative powers: one's ability to generate can be realized only in cooperation with another. In turn, this implies two relationships: no one is a child without parents, nor a parent without a child. Like an umbilical cord, this genetic biological line ties us to space and time and, in turn, makes us historical. Thus the "family" dimension of the person is a constitutive factor in one's essence, for all "rational beings" are born from flesh and blood: even the mythic cosmogonies image the origins of all realities through divine births.

The family dimension of the person is so proximate and therefore obvious that at times it is displaced by a desire for existential solitude. This, however, is not done without catastrophic effects. Kafka, (The Castle), Dostoyevsky (The Brothers Karamazov), Camus, (The Plague), Malraux, (Human Destiny), Sartre (Nausea), and Auden (The Age of Anxiety) all attempt to acknowledge tacitly or expressly a great truth about human beings and a great value of existence, namely, that "it is not good that man should be alone. . . . God made man to his own image, made him in the image of God. Man and woman both he created them." (Genesis 1,27-2,18).

Sexuality: A Foundational Human Endeavor

All human beings are sexually differentiated. Like the rest of reality, humans are divided into two basic types: masculine and feminine. Being consubstantial to one's nature, our personal being is characterized in an exclusive and complementary manner by one of these two existential forms--we are man or woman, not both at the same time.

Nevertheless, masculinity does not counterpoise itself to femininity: the two are complementary so that one cannot be realized without its counterpart. Ultimately sexuality is defined not by genitality, but by the very being of the person. For this reason sexual complementarity does not necessarily include genital action. Further, when one aspect is separated from the other there arise in our society such common practices as prostitution, free love and commercial pornography. Placing the masculine and feminine in irreconcilible counterposition gives rise to reductionist views and practices which ultimately sacrifice either the person at the altar of society or one's nature at the altar of egoism. "We need to think of ourselves no longer as exclusively `masculine' or exclusively `feminine', but rather as whole beings in whom the opposite qualities are ever-present."⁴⁰

Independently of their role in society human beings perceive themselves as either man or woman, thereby promoting their heterosexual complementarity. Thus, the family is the place where the person initially meets him or herself, the world beyond and "the Other." Because these characteristic forms of interrelation are determined by one's being as masculine or feminine, these relations reflect one's individuality and nature and lead to one's progressive human realization.

The Family: A Systemic Unity of Intimacy and Participation

Finally, the family is the priviledged place for the historical realization of the human being. It is in the family and on its basis that one actuates one's "relational being" on its different planes.

As lonliness and solitude are respectively destructive and creative ways of being alone, so conformity and community are destructive and creative ways of being with others. In conformity and community there is an orientation toward the other, rather than toward oneself in loneliness and solitude. This orientation toward the other can take one of two forms. It can take the form of a self-oriented submission to the look of the other, or it can posture a situation of creative participation. . . . Community is the positive expression and existential fulfillment of the we-experience.⁴¹

The family makes concrete the possibility for a real encounter of "I" with "thou." This is projected in a "we" that is generative of "others" within a spatio-temporal context. As the priviledged space of personal intimacy the family makes it possible for a person to encounter themselves and others. Other human groups, different from the family, participate in this in a complementary manner, but only in the family does genitality find its full sexual dimension.

The social and religious sanction of family ties is posterior to the family itself, not constitutive of its nature. For this reason there can be integral families which are not recognized as such by the law which attends only to its own formalities. But the contrary can be true as well: a society can sanction positively a determined form of family life which in reality is not a family or a home. Even if recognized by the law as legitimate, homosexual unions can never constitute a family nucleus. The same can be said of certain forms of sexual promiscuity such as "group marriages" or "open families." Monogomy appears to offer the best possibilities for personal self realization. Without qualification we hold that this judgment, though drawn from cultural experience, has universal value. We respect other forms of family organization without, however, considering them to be absolute norms for human self-realization.

In the family one learns to differentiate oneself from the surrounding world. Space and time, the foundational axes of our historicity, find their full meaning in the family. For this reason it is most important to provide physical space sufficient to facilitate family communication, to respect the intimacy of the family and at the same time to provide for its social life: overcrowded lodging, in contrast, is direly prejudicial. Similarly, families need to share their time in a creative manner; without time for itself a family soon disintegrates.

Just as things are at the service of persons, goods are a means for family happiness. As in the animal world, adults strive to nourish their offspring, and this work brings all closer together. Within the family work, whether paid or not, achieves its authentic meaning, whereas salary without a family context is money without value. When these means are transformed into ends, however, the family suffers. Thus, by placing man at the service of progress industrial society has a traumatic negative impact upon family values. It turns recreation, work, vacations, free time and the means of communication into so many sources of enrichment for the few, despoiling the family of its time and space and falsifying its authentic relationship with nature.

I should like to feel the full force of the sun again, making the skin hot and the whole body glow, and reminding me that I am a corporeal being. I should like to be tired by the sun, instead of my books and thoughts. I should like to have it awaken my animal existence. I should like, not just to see the sun and sip it a little, but to experience it bodily.⁴²

This dramatic cry of a prisoner expresses a feeling of being forceably distanced from reality; it reflects a generalized recognition of the "one dimensional man" (Marcuse) in the present industrial era.

As the family is the place of personal meeting with others, the process of socialization takes place in the home. Relations between parents and offspring, spouses and siblings transcend biological dimensions as they project outward in a series of concentric circles each with its distinctive mode and accent. Just as the family is not imprisoned in a biological circle, it need not submit itself to models created by specific social systems. David Cooper, in his work The Death of the Family, proclaims the death of a determined model of family due to the deficiencies of the system:

The burgeois nuclear family unit has become, in this century, the ultimate perfected form of non-meeting, and therefore the ultimate denial of mourning, death, birth and the experiential realm that precedes birth and conception.⁴³

The family is not coming to an end, but it is bound up with others in the development of the human being. Though not the final stage of human realization, it is a permanent mode of the unfolding of human existence. Hence, to call the family the nucleus of human society is not to say that other parts of society are unrelated to this nucleaus, but only that our mode of being social beings is by means of the family.

The "relational" or social dimension of the person does not end here; it opens to an immense number of possibilities. One experiences one's transcendence in the presence of an "Other" which is totally distinct from oneself and from the surrounding social and natural reality to which one is intimately related. Ultimately, the family offers the greatest assurance of openness to this Transcendent by cultivating values in an appropriate hierarchy. Thus, "The unity between man and wife becomes a personal community that embraces the whole of life and that is an example of every relationship between the I and the thou."⁴⁴

Just as individual humans express in their own language their needs and relations to reality, each family has its own language according to its situation "in" and "before" reality. In the family, through the example and teaching of the parents, the child learns the nature and meaning of life. The cultivation of religious feeling in a family and its integration with other aspects of family life enables its members to have concrete religious experience. In this manner the I-Thou encounter with the Holy is not a solely personal matter, but a communitary experience.

The child who feels sufficiently secure among those who surround him/her does not need to create idols in order to overcome weakness. If no object or person in the surroundings has attempted to elevate itself to the category of the Absolute, the child will know how to distinguish clearly between others and "The Other." Love as the norm of family life establishes equity, plants the commandments and assures the moral dimension of personal growth. If parents live what they believe and manifest happiness subsequent generations probably will follow in their footsteps.

Only an ethic of openness to others makes possible the positive development of the family and its members. Permanent and progressive openness to the mystery of the other person opens the possibilities of revelation in "the other," "others" and "The Other." Education in the family opens up the potentialities for the full realization of its members.

In turn, only those who have experienced fully the reality of being a son or daughter will be capable of being mature fathers or mothers, responsible brothers or sisters, and of realizing a lasting marriage. The human family is the privileged nucleus of intimacy and of participation in these complementary forces which rule the life of a person: possession and gift, solitude and community, persons and society, I and Thou, unity and multiplicity, and intimacy and participation.

Only an affirmation which reaches far beyond all empirical and objectively discernible ways of living can gain for us a sense of life's fullness and place the seal of eternity upon the perpetually renewed act of creation, enabling thereby the family to maintain its awesome power to complete or repudiate it.⁴⁵

This dialectic of family life continually unfolds in complementary moments of love as giving and receiving, of communion and participation. A family which is continually sustained and fed by love, interrelation and personal communion cannot but project itself in participative and liberating action within its natural and social context. Open and interpersonal relations in the family generate increasing growth beyond the frontiers of one's personal being through participation and openness. This reaches intimate communication with the Transcendent in, and beyond, history.

Paul Claudel confirms that every `thou' which one encounters becomes an unrealized and unrealizable promise, that every human `thou' is fundamentally a delusion. No human encounter can escape ultimate solitude; nor can any human person exhaust the infinite capacity of another person.

When one loves a person, one loves more than a person; one loves the secret that it hides and reveals, and which surpasses one. Love is connected to all and always, that is, to the infinite, the eternal, the absolute . . . to God.⁴⁶

Immanence as historicity is the concrete place of the meeting of man with the transcendent. It is in the human being basically as a family member that immanence transcends itself in that experience of wholeness which is the full encounter with the Transcendent.

Universidad Catolica del Ecuador

Quito, Ecuador

1. (Washington: The University Press of America and The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1986).

2. (New York: Norton, 1964).

3. Sebastian Samay, "Affectivity: The Power Base of Moral Behavior," Act and Agent, eds., G. McLean, F. Ellrod, et al. Washington: The University Press of America and The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1986), Ch. III.

4. Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture (New York: OUP, 1964), p. 10.

5. Ibid., p. 12.

6. Ibid., p. 16.

7. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper & Row, 1957).

8. Calvin Schrag, Experience and Being (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969), p. 134.

9. Ibid., p. 188.

10. Richard Knowles, "The Active Person as Moral Agent" in Psychological Foundations of Moral Education and Character Development: An Integrated Theory of Moral Development (Washington: The University Press of America and The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1986), p. 248.

11. Errol E. Harris, "Science and Nature" in Man and Nature, G. McLean, ed. (Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1978, p. 28 ff.

12. Richard Knowles, op. cit., p. 258.

13. William Kraft, The Search for the Holy (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1971), p. 28.

14. Ibid., p. 19.

15. Wisdom 2,1-5.

16. Ibid., 2,6.

17. Psalms 8,4-7.

18. Tao Tzu, "Tao Te Ching" quoted by Chang Chung Yuan in "The Nature of Man as Tao," in Man and Nature, p. 109.

19. Geraidus van der Leeuw, Phenomenologie del Religion in the translation of J. E. Tumer, Religion in Essence and Manifestation (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), v. 2, p. 462.

20. Ludwig Feuerbach, op. cit., p. 119.

21. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of Holy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. 51-52.

22. Mircea Eliade, Le sacreé et le profane (Coll. "Idéées," 76; Paris: Gallimaud, 1965), p. 172.

23. Thomas Altizer, Radical Theology and the Death of God (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merril, 1966), p. 11.

24. This and previous quotes are taken from: George McLean, "Paul Tillich's Existential Philosophy and Protestantism," The Thomist, XXVII (1964), passim.

25. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (Chicago: The University Press, 1956), I, 271.

26. Frederick Steng, others, Ways of Being Religious (Edgewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice Hall, 1973), p. 552.

27. Thomas Kempis, The Imitation of Christ.

28. St. Augustine, Civitas Dei, XIV; 26.

29. Ibid. and In Psalmis, CXXXVI, 2.

30. Civitas Dei, XIX, 23.

31. Mathew Fox, Family Spirituality (Santa Fe: Besi, 1981) recorded conference.

32. Michael Curtis, The Great Political Theories (New York: Avon Books, 1970), V.I, I 218.

33. Michael Curtis, op. cit., p. 224.

34. Oliver A. Johnston, Ethics (San Francisco: Holt-Rinehard and Winston, Inc., 1978), p. 362 (quoting Frederick Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil).

35. Ibid. (quoting a text from Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan), p. 175.

36. Geraidus van der Leeuw, op. cit., passim.

37. Ibid., passim.

38. Ibid., passim.

39. Cited by Calvin O. Schrag in Experience of Being (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969), p. 185.

40. June Singer, Androgyny (New York: Anchor Press, 1976), p. 275.

41. Schrag, ibid, p. 203.

42. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers From Prison (New York: Macmillan, 1972).

43. David Cooper, The Death of the Family (New York: Pantheon Books, 1970), p. 4.

44. Wolfhart Pannenberg, What is Man? (Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1975), p. 93.

45. Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator (Chicago: Harper and Row, 1962), p. 97.

46. Stalo Gastaldi, Il hombre, un misterio (Quito: Ediciones de la Universidad Catolica, 1983), p. 129.