Francesco Tomatis: «Filosofia come Ascolto della Trascendenza»

Prof. Francesco Tomatis (Salerno) reflects on Philosophy as Listening to Transcen¬dence. It is a fact that in the «globalizing civilization» of today philosophy has been increasingly marginalized and so a cultural situation is emerging that is dominated by severe forms of reductionism of the human experience of transcendence. At stake is mainly the superficiality with which the question about death disappears from the horizon of our lives. The danger is serious, and is this: transcendence disappears from among the dimensions of human existence in the world! Whenever a particular reality becomes an absolute, the result is idolatry. Hence the need for a Philosophy understood in terms of Search, one that remains faithful to its original meaning of «love of wisdom». What does it mean to acquire or possess wisdom? The «possession» of wisdom, or truth, must not be understood in a subjectivist sense since the search for wisdom, or truth, must not intend a final possession, but rather a truth and wisdom that comes, whenever we allow it, to possess and inhabit us. The point, in other words, is this: truth always transcends us and as such cannot be possessed by us; on the contrary, if we let it be, it comes to take possession of us. Socrates, one of the most important paradigmatic figures of what it means to be a philosopher, portrays the meaning and the significance of the realization that true knowledge is inseparable from the personal acknowledgement of ignorance. To learn how to recognize the movements of transcendence is to overcome the limitations that keep the human being away from the point of achieving wisdom. The affirmation of transcendence goes together with the recognition of the apophatic tradition. Whenever philosophy recognizes its own limits, it becomes able to truly remain open to the transcendent dimension of being and, hence, to the importance of researching and debating issues such as self and non-self, nature and life, freedom and the power of the unconscious, suffering and evil, etc. It is only when it recognizes its own limits that human knowledge truly achieves fulfilment and so becomes capable of an authentic dialogue with others. Hence the philosophical importance of listening and the awareness that human beings are destined to be possessed by truth. More so, as only a personal relation with Truth can enable us to enter into an authentic dialogue with others.

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