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  • “The Essence of Discourse is Prayer”:Emmanuel Levinas, the Structure of Human Communication and Its Religious and Ethical Implications
  • Diego Fonti

To Professor Bemhard Casper, theologian and philosopher, a friend of great heart and lofty thought1

Is it still possible to pray? Does the word and experience named “prayer” still make sense? The process of “secularization” or “de-theologization” of the image of the world operated by Modernity and science has meant that the all-encompassing religious “grand narratives” about origin, meaning and goal of the world—personal human life included—have lost much of their power of conviction and their capacity for unifying the different levels of life. Sociologists tell us that a main trait of Modernity has been that social relationships and legitimacy do not depend anymore on charismatic or symbolic relationships, but on mere procedures, functions and bureaucratic institutions. Finally we have the experience of how words have lost ancient meanings which depended on their original contexts. To these epistemological and scientific changes we must add the contributions of Analytic Philosophy, which have cast a mantle of doubt on the references of religious language, and the studies undertaken under Marxist or Nietzschean influence, which have revealed the social, economical and power influences within religion.

Here is where we must ask ourselves again (with Freud) if religious experience is merely an illusion which, because of the advance of modern knowledge, has now become unnecessary. This is no new question. Throughout the history of Christianity we find the concern of how religious life and meanings relate to historical experiences, particularly those coming from philosophy, science and society. In our effort to articulate a meaningful approach to religious experience we could choose to evade the hard questions and take flight into some individualistic, emotivist or spiritualized version of such experience; this, however would mean remaining only at the surface of the modern situation and of the spiritual life. On the other hand, we could choose to look at the problem more directly and honestly. This is what I intend to do here, asking whether it [End Page 19] is indeed still possible for us to pray, whether this form of communication is still meaningful.

In particular, I want to consider the contribution philosophy, with its distinctive way of exposing problems and phenomena, making sense of them, and finding their practical implications, can make in helping us respond to these questions. I will follow the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas and his phenomenology of a basic anthropological experience: We are communicative beings endowed with language. Levinas finds in this experience a structure and meanings which I consider useful and worthwhile for our current situation. This is, of course, no “evidence”—for example of the “reference” of the language involved in prayer—but a way of showing how a concrete experience, communication and language, can help to create a new understanding and more meaningful practice of prayer and religious spiritual life.

But why approach this fundamental theological and religious question philosophically? What are the possible benefits of such an approach? One possible answer, perhaps the most simple and direct one, is: because in a way we are all thinking philosophically often enough in trying to make sense of our experiences and language in an understandable way. Despite the truth of this, such a response neglects to add that philosophical thinking is always demanding. Like any game, it has its own rules, and to enjoy the game you have to respect those rules. Learning to enjoy this game means (for some of us anyway) confronting a cliché, often expressed in relation to philosophical discourse, that these rules always mean abstract and lifeless thought. In fact it is the opposite, at least as I am approaching philosophy here. If there are difficult concepts or abstract thinking, which in fact there are, they are always aiming at understanding and clarifying lived experience. The particular lived experience at the center of this discussion is prayer—understood as the “locus” where language and religious experience come together. My argument is that prayer as religious relationship can be better understood—and hopefully more deeply lived—by means of a critical philosophical examination of its distinctive approach to communication...

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