My dear friend,

I know how dangerous it is to claim to present the major stages of a philosophical inquiry in roughly one hundred and fifty pages, especially in the twentieth century where we are so accustomed to philosophizing by means of dialogue with other philosophers; that is, by situating our thought with respect to theirs, be it in agreement or disagreement. Such an approach, however, interesting as it may be, is not the one I have chosen. Dialogue with other philosophers is only a disposition to true philosophical inquiry which requires returning to the immediate experience of existing realities.

Nevertheless, this return to experience constantly requires purification. Such a purification comes about slowly. Our intellect, in its life, is, as it were, "entangled" in imaginary things, and only with difficulty attains to reality in its "untamed" and native state.

Hence it seemed good to me-and it is indeed what you asked of me - to present a sort of itinerary specifying the major stages of philosophical reflection, following an order of research (Aristotle would say: according to the genetic order, or an order of generation). I know that I risk all sorts of criticism in doing this, but what would I not do for a friend, who, in reading this book with the desire to seek truth, will understand, thanks to the bond of friendship, everything that can remain implicit and virtual in such a summary? Let nobody claim that we are thus falling into affective subjectivity, reserving the intelligibility of this itinerary for a select few. In reality, what unites us and what constitutes our friendship is the search for truth. I am writing this book for someone who, in seeking truth, is a friend, a philosopher friend, and wishes to be so even more. Therefore, this itinerary, although presupposing a friendly understanding, remains a philosophical itinerary, for it is determined by reality itself - which everyone can experience.

.

Introduction

The search for wisdom of life has always been something rare and difficult. Man, by the very fact of his complexity and richness, always runs the risk of being distracted, of becoming lost in the immediate problems and forgetting the essential, of forgetting that for which he was made, of losing the profound significance of his human life.

The search for wisdom is particularly difficult in our era. Contemporary man's cultural environment does not favor the search for this wisdom, a wisdom that is considered as being useless, as a nostalgia that no longer makes any sense, as having been completely outdated. Man's contemporary cultural environment is really completely oriented towards the development of science and technology. People are concerned with efficiency above all else, and often risk forgetting man in his profound destiny. This development of science and technology certainly affords man new-and even surprising-possibilities, in the development of his ability to transform and use matter, in his dominion over the physical and biological universe. But doesn't this development, so prodigious and rapid, often become for man, in his human life, a type of overdevelopment that unbalances him, that deprives him of his profound harmony? This development, to be truly authentic, "humane", requires in man-to use an expression of Bergson-a "supplement of soul", new capacities to love, to think, to contemplate. Then this development can be truly at the service of the human person; instead-alas!-it very often risks enslaving him, materializing him. For we must acknowledge that as soon as this development becomes man's dominant, paramount-if not exclusive-preoccupation, it imposes itself upon man and enslaves him. In imposing itself as the essential of man's life, doesn't it inevitably engender a certain skepticism about philosophy, and especially about first philosophy: the philosophy of being, metaphysics? Thanks to this development, the "outward facade" of our universe is now being so quickly transformed that we might be tempted to recall Heraclitus' great assertion: everything changes, everything is relative. In this climate of incessant and very tangible transformations, it is very difficult to discover in the human reality anything else than that which is subject to change, than that which is relative; it is very difficult to discern that the human intelligence is made, at its deepest level, to go beyond such scientific and technical knowledge, that it is made to discover another kind of truth. In short, it is very difficult to discern that the human intelligence, in that in which it is most "itself", is made to attain that-which-is, the existing reality in its most profound aspect and that, thanks to this, it can discover in the most radical and final manner that what is man: a spirit bound to a body in the sensible world, and at the same time capable of transcendence since he has a personal destiny that is proper to him.

Moreover, the ideologies of progress-the Hegelian dialectic, the materialist dialectic of Marxism, the Freudian psychoanalytic method-have impacted the sensibility and the realm of imagination of modern man in such a direct and forceful manner that any search for true wisdom seems superfluous and well-nigh impossible, condemned at the outset.

It is evident to everyone that everything is in upheaval, put into question, at every level. We can then ask the question: are we witnessing the end of one world and the birth of a new world? Or are we witnessing the end of our universe? We cannot know; but that which seems certain, and of which many are convinced, is that the various transformations that we see today-economic transformations linked to technical ones, themselves rooted in an accelerated progress of science-must necessarily result in a transformation of the sociological environment in which man lives and flourishes. And in this climate, many people, wanting to be prophets, claim that we are witnessing the birth of a new type of man, that we are faced with a new manner of thought and life. Briefly, calling upon the various transformations of human conditioning-transformations that intensify and perpetuate themselves with such great acceleration-some declare that man is not the same being today as during the Middle Ages, as during the time of Christ, as during the time of Aristotle or Socrates. They claim that "modern man" must be understood for himself in his "modernity"- a position that often only considers man in his conditioning, at all levels, in other words, at all levels of his becoming: they only consider man's becoming. From this perspective, they elaborate a psycho-sociological anthropology which claims to be exhaustive and claims to be philosophical; man, in his proper reality, is only considered in his psychological and sociological aspects. Thus, in the name of a psycho-sociological anthropology that only considers man's behavior and existential situation, they reject all philosophy of the real, and especially consider the metaphysic of that-which-is considered from the point of view of being as outdated. They forget that this philosophy of that-which-is allows us to discover the various levels of man's life, his complexity, his true person, his substantial autonomy in being and his orientation towards a personal good, his spiritual dimension, a dimension that remains veiled as long as man is only considered in his conditioning and his psycho-sociological behavior [1].

Shouldn't we distinguish between that which gives rise to economic, political, scientific, and technical transformations transformations that must be recognized as such, and that are neither good nor bad in themselves-and the various ideologies which are admittedly born in this climate yet are distinct from it, since all of them imply a concept of man, of his person, of his destiny?

Aren't we very often confronted today with a terrible confusion between the evident fact of this economic, technical, and scientific transformation of the human community, and a value judgement about man and his destiny, a judgement that implies an entire philosophical vision which is more-or-less explicit? They extrapolate from the economic, scientific, and social transformation to a complete transformation of man, of that which is most profound in him; and hence ultimately turn man into a robot, a cog in the wheel of economic development, of a cosmic transformation....

Such confusion hasn't suddenly appeared. Isn't it the fruit of all idealist philosophies, of all the ideologies that are descendents of Hegelian philosophy?

If today we are rightly concerned with the pollution of the air, the sea, and soon of the earth, if we take the urgency of this problem seriously-for it is really the biological survival of the human species that is at stake-we should, if we are the least bit lucid, be much more profoundly concerned about the pollution of the cultural environment in which youth must develop their minds and hearts. For if environmental pollution can favor the formation of all types of cancers, the pollution of the cultural environment can favor the birth of all types of false ideologies, an evil even more frightening at the level of the development of the intelligence and the heart of man.

Confronted by this danger, we cannot remain indifferent; neutrality is not possible, for neutrality would already be a type of compromise. Isn't our intelligence made to discover the truth? Isn't our heart primarily made to love a human person, to love him as a friend? If man no longer wants to struggle for the conquest of truth-and considers that it is impossible to reach truth-no longer wants to seek a true love of friendship between men, and considers that love of friendship is no longer possible, wouldn't he be driven to grave skepticism and anguished despair?

Man usually seeks to fortify himself for battle when faced by a menacing danger in order to save himself and those near him. We don't have the right to let ourselves sink without struggling with all our might to save our mind, our capacity to reach the truth and for love, and for saving the mind, intelligence, and the heart of those who follow us, who are our "cadets" in humanity.

Really, we must recognize that we are in a very privileged position to return to this search for the truth. For we have sunk very low; and if we are in the "trough of the wave", we can hardly sink very much further! When we think about the various ideologies that have arisen during the last hundred years, and when we look at the latest of these-analytic philosophy-we are obliged to recognize that metaphysics has been reduced by them to nothingness, to the point where not only God's existence is rejected, but that man himself, in that which he is as a person, at the core of his being, is not considered at all. We can hardly go much further in abandoning the profound significance of philosophy. Hasn't philosophy always been at the service of man, allowing him to discover his true finality? In analytic philosophy, where man disappears, we no longer consider his works, his effects as man's effects, but in themselves, as facts, as data from which we grasp the consequences and the antecedents.

But, to use a citation from Hölderlin that Heidegger loved to quote, "Where there is danger, there always arises that which saves." Isn't the moment at which we reach the greatest degradation the closest to a new élan? Doesn't every resurrection require a cadaver? For a cadaver to resurrect, however, a new spirit is needed in order to restore it to a new life. Isn't it our obligation to do our utmost to provide this new spirit, to restore human intelligence to its true life, to return to what is most profound, most radical, in the intelligence-I would almost say to its first breath?

I know that people will raise the objection that returning to a metaphysic is a return to the past, fixes someone in immobility, isolates someone from the modern world, and sets someone in opposition to evolution, since metaphysics immediately situates us beyond the directly measurable.... But if we understand what a realistic philosophy is, and, at its summit, a metaphysics of that-which-is, these objections disappear, since, as we will see, the point of departure of a realistic philosophy is our experience of the current real world, man such as he is, only all his dimensions. A true philosophy, and a true metaphysic, do not settle themselves in the realm of ideas, of immutable principles: they search to know the real, man as he is, just as he is, in his complexity as a living being and in his unity of being and spirit. It's clear that philosophy cannot be satisfied with describing that which we can see, that which we can notice; it cannot be satisfied with measuring observable realities. It seeks-and this is its proper task-to analyze an experienced reality by coming to grips with it in all its dimensions, especially man, who cannot be a "one-dimensional being". This is what I would like to show, beyond the objections that I have mentioned and which come from ideologies which, no longer distinguishing between idea and reality, can no longer know the real, man as he is, such as he is: they make him relative because of an a priori.

Note
1. We add that what is true today for philosophical reflection is also true at the level of theological reflection. Today, people would often like to develop a new theology by using only a psycho-sociological anthropology. Moreover, they are no longer interested in anything but man's "modernity", and forget to consider him in his true spiritual dimension, his capacity to discover the transcendent Reality.

.