Chapter 3: The Impact of Morality on the Dynamic of Knowing

A certain young woman is very good at math. One day she has a test in class. She has a bad stomachache and, on that morning, she does not do well on the exam. Has she suddenly become ignorant? No, she simply has a stomachache. (23)

Reason is inescapably linked with all the aspects of our humanity, including the mental and the emotional, or affective, parts. Reason is wrapped up in the unity of the human person, it cannot be disconnected like some mechanical component. Therefore, our ability to reason can be impaired by the distress of illness, intimidation, a broken friendship, and so on. Reason can also be heightened and clarified through our feelings too, as we shall see later.

The next section starts off with a few illustrations: A man awakes inside a hospital to the horrible pain of a broken bone; an author with writer's block suddenly begins to scribble away after an idea pops into his head; someone tries to get a woman's attention by hissing "psst, psst!" behind her, making her feel annoyed or worried since she has an idea of who it might be.

The point to these vignettes is that in all of them there is a reaction to something that enters our perception. Whether the reaction is physical, cognitive, or emotional, a "state of soul" (25) or feeling is stirred up within us.

Depending upon the measure of the individual's human vivacity, anything whatsoever that enters his personal horizon (even a single blade of grass, or a pebble that you kick with your foot) moves him, touches him, provokes a reaction: this reaction can differ in its nature of type, but it is always a certain specific feeling. (25)

Everything we perceive or come into contact with touches us somehow. The person who is insular, tough, and mean still has reactions to the world around him, but finds much less value in it. It does not interest him very much, compared to the man who is aware and alive - powerfully human as Giussani might say - who finds value in things both great and small. Value then is "known reality in as much as it interests us, as it has worth" (25). The more value something has the more intense the feeling or "state of soul" is, which affects how we know it.

The philosophies of the enlightenment that subtly underpin much of our current culture, the same philosophies that have constrained reason to mean only logical or scientific studies, claim that nothing should interfere with reason's study of objective knowledge. Feeling is treated as an obstacle that distorts unbiased knowledge.

Rationalism says:

Objective certainty cannot be reached when dealing with these types of phenomena because the factor of feeling plays too large a role. All questions concerning destiny, love, social, and political life and its ideals are a matter of opinion because one's personal position... and feeling plays too large a role. (26)

The problem with this statement is that only in science and mathematics can we eliminate feeling from reason. In our quest to know things that concern the meaning of things this concept, when taken to its logical conclusion, says that the more I want to know something the more I am prevented from knowing it. Instead of trying to suppress feeling from the ways in which we reason, would it not be better to integrate reason, feeling, and objectivity? Perhaps there is a way that does not require us to sacrifice part of our humanity to the Enlightenment.

Let us consider, for a moment, that our beloved Luigi is hiking in the Alps. He lifts his binoculars to his eyes to survey the gorgeous peaks and valleys, but all he sees are fuzzy blobs of green and brown. Luigi focuses the lens and now can make out the finest details of his surroundings, even individual skiers far off. The lenses of the binoculars, when properly focused, are not obstacles to seeing, but actually aid visual perception. The lenses in our eyes perform the same task.

Similarly, the feeling we have when something enters our plane of perception is not automatically an obstacle, but can act as a lens so we can know that thing more easily and more completely. "Feeling is an essential factor for seeing" (28). By incorporating feeling with reason and value we accept the reality that all these things are present and interconnected in ourselves. Feeling can impair our ability to reason, as we saw in the example of the woman with the stomachache, however I doubt the woman would decide to have her stomach removed. To go back to the lens analogy:

If an individual has a cataract in his eye... or if the lens of the eye is too flat or too convex and no longer sees properly... the point is not to rip the lens from the eye but for the lens to be focused! Feeling, then, must not be eliminated, but it must be in its proper place. (28)

How do we ensure our feelings are appropriate and properly ordered? Finally our answer brings us to the title of this chapter. Morality is "the sincere desire to know the object in question in a true way, beyond our attachment to our own opinions or those inculcated upon us" (31). In so many ways we cling to our preconceived notions rather than strive for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The problem is not so much because we lack adequate means to find the truth, but because we simply do not care enough to detach ourselves from our comfortable castles of preconceptions.

Giussani says that this is one of the main reasons why many people err when facing problems of faith and religion. Everyone has an opinion on these matters but few people value the issues enough to make an informed judgment in full command of their reason. We have all been in a conversation where you are fully engaged about a topic at hand and the other person is listening half-heartedly, obviously distracted and occasionally verbalizing a "mm-hmm" or "yea" in order to keep you talking. Your friend responds at the end of your dissertation, "Yea, well, I still disagree," all the while staring into the sky. The frustration you feel probably does not stem from your own shortcomings of persuasion, but rather from the futility of speaking to someone who has no desire to accompany you in the journey towards knowledge.

We are inclined to remain bound to the opinions we already have about the meaning of things and to attempt to justify our attachment to them. (31)

It takes hard work to break away from old ways of thinking. It is strenuous to hold the attitude that truth is more important than oneself. Giussani points out that we all have preconceptions in life by nature of being impressed upon by friends, family, school, and media. The goal is not to rid ourselves of every preconception, but to understand that we should strive for a clarity of attitude (morality) that allows us to have knowledge in the full light of truth.

In order to love the truth more than we love ourselves, in order to love the truth of the objet more than the image that we have formed of it, to acquire a poverty of spirit, to have eyes that confront reality and truth wide open, like the eyes of children, there must be a process and work. (33)

This work is termed ascesis. What can motivate us to engage in this process?

Man is, in fact, moved solely by love and affection... the love of ourselves as destiny... can convince us to undertake this work to become habitually detached from our own opinions and our own imaginations... so that all of our cognitive energy will be focused upon a search for the truth of the object, no matter what it should be. This love is the ultimate inner movement, the supreme emotion that persuades us to seek true virtue. (33)

Chapter 2: The Second Premise: Reasonableness

How do we know if something is reasonable? Say I go to a party wearing a flak jacket and a helmet. In response to my strange attire my friends ask why I am dressed like a soldier. If I reply that it is for my safety, in case anyone at the party should shoot me with a rifle, I would be called either a silly jester or a lunatic. My attitude would be unreasonable.

The second premise for understanding the religious sense is reasonableness, "the capacity to become aware of reality" (12). Reality, as described in Chapter 1, must be imposed by the object onto man. Reason, continuing with reality hand and hand, is man's unique capability to take in reality and find certainty.

We must beware, however, because like many other seemingly straightforward words, the definition of reason has been constricted and devalued from its real meaning. Reason is often thought to be synonymous with demonstrable. If I can show through an experiment, through a demonstration, that adding nutrients to soil makes plants grow taller, then I am said to have reasoned it. Surely, this process of scientific inquiry and demonstration is part of reason, but it does not encompass all of it.

Much of reality cannot be known by demonstration. For example, I can prove that the desk I work at is made of wood, but I could never go back and show all of the steps that brought this table into existence. Even if I could demonstrate the very beginnings of my desk, from its construction by the carpenter back to the development of the tree it came from, I would eventually come to a point where I could not demonstrate how matter came into existence at some point.

Another way reason is constrained is to equate it with logic. Logic is concerned with consistency; I can develop a logical outcome given any set of assumptions. If I assume that the strongest houses are built with straw, then it is logical to conclude that houses should be built from straw as much as possible. When the wind blows and knocks the roof onto my head it becomes apparent that when "the premises are wrong, perfect logic will produce an erroneous result" (14).

Reason contains different methods for knowing different types of things. It is flexible and agile. For things that can be demonstrated, scientific and empirical analysis are great tools of reason. To reach a rational conclusion for a set of givens, logic is another fine tool of reason. But there is another facet of reason, one which tells us about human behavior, about moral certainties. It is hardwired into our nature as humans; it lets us be certain about the most important things around us - our relationships with others. Does he care about me? Can I trust him? Am I intruding?

To arrive at certainties about relationships we have been given the fastest of methods almost more like an intuition than a process... man needs it to live in the instant. (19)

I cannot demonstrate that my mother loves me, but I can intuit it through many signs that converge on only one reasonable answer: my mother indeed loves me.

Giussani makes two interesting points about this existential human certainty. First, the more I share someone's life, the more I am certain about him and his identity. Secondly, the more "powerfully one is human" (20), the more he can be certain about another person based only a few signs or indications. People who are alive and aware in their humanity can trust others because they understand "the reasons for believing in another" (20).

One who has a "knack" for a certain subject needs only a clue to intuit the solution to the problem, while everyone else has to work labouriously through every step. The knack for being human entails possessing much humanity. (20)

We speak about the same thing in my therapy classes here at University; therapists who have a great awareness of every part of their identity and who have plumbed the depths of their unconscious can more easily detect subtle signals in other people. There is the nervous smile that betrays a hidden fear, there is the word choice that shows a denial: "I guess I'm worried a little bit," there is the darting of the eye which manifests a deep emotion. We all have the ability to sense these things through our elementary experience, but it takes refinement and practice to have a deeper perception.

One application of reason's method of moral certainty is faith. Faith is "an adhesion to what another affirms" (21):

If I have reached the certainty that another person knows what he says and does not mislead me, then to repeat with certainty what he has affirmed with certainty, is to be consistent with myself. (21)

The Christian has faith, but so does the atheist scientist. The experiment he performs is grounded in past research and in principles that are assumed to be true. To go back and sequentially verify everything that his predecessors have concluded would be tedious and unreasonable. If we acted like this in our use of reason we would be forever stuck in the stone age.

To return to the fundamental discussion of the premises regarding how we know the religious sense, or any object, let us remember that the object of study dictates the method for how it is known (I need to look at something on my desk to know it, I cannot know it by "thinking" up its existence). Intertwined with this notion is the fact that reasonableness is essential for applying our method of gaining knowledge, about either scientific fact or human moral certainties; reasonableness is our ability to become aware of reality.

Chapter 1: The First Premise: Realism

To examine what the religious sense is there must first be a proper method to use. This method is based on three premises: Realism, reasonableness, and the impact of morality on the dynamic of knowing. Chapter 1 deals with realism.

What is realism? It is not simply having a practical outlook on day to day live. Instead, it is the ability to observe a real event or thing, without surrendering my own experience of it to pre-formulated schemes or theories in my mind. Modern man is often trapped in unrealism, where he projects what he thinks is true onto an object. His ideas about the object and the object itself are entangled, thereby distorting reality.

Realism is essential for knowing anything, including the religious sense. The religious experience is the most universal human activity. It is present in all times and ages, across the continents, the lifespan, and civilization as a whole. Essentially the religious sense asks the question, "What is the meaning of everything?", a question which has pervaded history.

What makes up this religious sense? How do we know it, and know it well? The method with which we investigate it is crucial. Empirical research studies can yield fascinating results, but they are ultimately useless if the methodology is flawed.

One method to studying the religious sense would be to subscribe to the opinions of prestigious or widely-published people, such as Plato, Marx, Nietzsche, or Kant. Although this may seem academic and scholarly at first, this method is incorrect; the fundamental question of the religious sense, the meaning of everything and man's existence, is too important to "abandon ourselves to the opinions of others" (5).

Realism, and the method of knowing what something is, cannot come from the subject; it must be imposed by the object. Giussani uses this example:

Suppose I were to find myself before an audience with my notebook on a table and, if while speaking, I were to notice it out of the corner of my eye and were to wonder what that white object might be. I could think of many possibilities: ice cream spread out over the table, or even a rag. But the method for knowing what it truly is, is imposed by the object itself; I cannot contemplate a red object at the back of the room or a person's eyes in the front row in order to know the white object. if I wish to truly know it, I have no choice but to look down and fix my eyes on the object itself. (5)

But the religious sense is not observable in the same way that a mountain or a stream is. Since it occurs inside of me and pertains to my self, I must engage in existential inquiry. I am required to inquire into my self and my consciousness. Only after this can I compare my findings to other thinkers and philosophers. If I were to blindly make someone else's opinion my own beforehand I would be inauthentic and would "be uncritically adopting from others a conception regarding a problem important for my life and my destiny" (6).

After my self-examination I still need to judge the results. It is in judging and evaluation that man really lives out his experience. Experience is this context does not refer to simply a series of accumulated sensations and events; experience is understanding the meaning of things. The criterion for judging could come from outside or from inside myself, however the former criterion again falls into the trap of placing external methods and ideas before our own experience. The latter criterion, the one that lay inside me, does not alienate me. "The criterion for judging this reflection on our own humanity must emerge from within the inherent structure of the human being, the structure at the origin of the person" (7).

This inner criterion is what Giussani, and probably others, calls the elementary experience, which is a universally-present part of each person's identity. Through it my experiences of humanity and of reality are filtered. It is how I face the world and how I evaluate every proposal and idea. This original, or elementary, experience is made up of "needs" and "evidences." Needs are things like the need for happiness or the need for justice or the need for truth. They are the driving force of our existence, without which man has "no movement or human dynamism" (7). Evidences are a bit harder to describe. They seem to concern a level of understanding that we share about reality. For example, if you were sitting on a chair, and a man approached you and asked if you were sitting on a chair, you might chuckle and say yes, of course. If the man continued to say "and what if it is not a chair? are you sure?" you may grow worried for his sanity. Giussani remarks that no one can level sanely at the level of these questions, and that Aristotle "used to remark acutely that it is foolish to seek the reason for what evidence shows to be a fact" (7). These universal needs and evidences, apparent in our day to day living, show that we have an elementary experience. From it we can draw our criterion for judging our self-inquiry.

But, if this criterion comes from within me, if it is to be deeply personal, then how can I avoid endorsing anarchy? Would not everything turn into subjectivism? Does every individual hold the definition of his own meaning and exist as his own judge? Anarchy, although an attractive fascination, ultimately limits man. The anarchist affirms his existence by asserting his self against everything and anything. He will forever be frustrated in his struggle against reality, and let us not forget that one day he will die, proving that he, in fact, is unable to fight all he faces in life. "Man truly affirms himself only by accepting reality" (10). In accepting reality he accepts himself and his existence. He is more whole, not less, because he actually gains a reality that otherwise he would have to struggle against at least in part.

So, the criterion for judging things is an objective one, where the universal traits are the needs and evidences we all share. "The need for goodness, justice, truth, and happiness constitutes man's ultimate identity, the profound energy with which men in all ages and of all races approach everything" (10). Even if the elementary experience is lived uniquely in each person, it is still essentially the same for every individual. Elementary experience spans the centuries, connecting the feelings and longings of ancient peoples to modern ones. This is why we can read ancient poems that are thousands of years old and still feel a deep connection to the past and an application to the present.

The chapter closes by concluding that to truly know things is to use reason based on our elementary experience. This is very difficult in an age and culture that prefers to compare experience on the basis of knee-jerk reactions and pre-formulated opinions and doctrines about man and the world. "It is necessary... to come down and grasp our own original needs and "evidences" and to judge and evaluate accordingly every proposal, every existential suggestion" (11).

"Let us begin to judge. This is the beginning of liberation" (11).