of being does not resolve the human drama or silence every question. On the contrary, it allows the encounter of the divine and human freedoms—this encounter is what we call drama—to take place anew by fleshing out in history the dialogue with the Father in the Spirit that constitutes him as the eternal, beloved Son. From this place, the concrete singular can contemplate the mysterious inexhaustible wholeness of God, can become like him in affirming its radical otherness, and can let everything that is called into existence be and remain in the communion for which it was created. This new place, as we shall see, endlessly intensifies and deepens our questioning and contemplation of the whole.
A brief presentation of what follows is now in order. In order to justify looking at the unity of being in terms of gift, the first chapter examines the structure of man’s originary experience. Originary experience represents the most comprehensive and concrete approach to the reality of gift. This approach permits an elucidation, in the second chapter, of the structure of the singular being in terms of gift. Benefitting from the Aristotelian and Thomistic tradition, we will attempt to show how, in contrast to Derrida’s thought, the Entity of a concrete singular participates in its being given. This ontology of gift and a non-technological perception of causality enables chapter 3 to inquire into the adequate response to the original giving. A foray into the meaning of reciprocity results in an exploration of the irruption of nothingness introduced into history by the free rejection of the gift. Chapter 4 turns to the archetypal role that the hypostatic union of the two natures in the person of the Logos plays in an adequate understanding of the nature of gift. The christological illumination of the unity of gift enables us to see the continuity and discontinuity between philosophy and theology. The question of Christ’s human experience of his divine filiation guides the attempt in chapter 5 to approach the mystery of the person of the Father as the origin of all giving. The chapter goes on to consider in what sense (in contrast to Hegel) the Father’s giving is an absolute donation: he is the unpreceded giver, the source of the communion of love that is the triune God. To look at the unity of the gift in God requires seeing in what sense the giving and the receiving are one in him and, furthermore, what it means for the gift of God to be gratuitous. The pneumatological reflection of chapter 6 takes up these two questions. The last chapter considers God’s unexpected response to the original rejection of the gift. Giving anew the gift of being, forgiving, the triune God communicates unexpectedly the permanence of the gift of being, and thus the permanence of his union with the concrete singular. The eternal permanence of the gift renews from within the original donation and causes the concrete singular to be.
While this book is born from a dialogue with many authors of diverse and sometimes contrasting philosophical and theological positions, I owe special thanks to Luigi Giussani (1922–2005). Although what follows is not a systematic presentation of his thought and the responsibility for this book’s content and flaws is mine, this attempt to ponder the unity of being in terms of gift could not have taken place without his immensely rich and profound work.
1. John Paul II, Fides et ratio, nos. 73–74, (AAS 91 [1999], 61–62).
I. Gift’s Originary Experience
Originary experience opens up a seldom pursued but uniquely fruitful path for pondering the form of the unity of being. In part because of the troubled history of the concept, and partly because of the contemporary use of the term “experience,” originary experience may seem a doubtful starting point. “Experience,” in fact, has been described as the “most deceitful” and “most obscure” of terms.1 Nevertheless, if by originary experience we mean the engagement of the whole of our being with the whole of reality and with God, who is their innermost and transcendent center, originary experience, despite its difficulties, can help us perceive from within life itself the unity of the concrete singular and its dynamic unity with and difference from God. Originary experience represents an encounter with truth that takes place beyond the dualism between subject and object. It involves, as John Paul II illustrated, objectively informed subjectivity.2 The person knows himself in knowing finite beings and their respective link with God. Experience therefore opens up access to the truth of self, world, and God without abstracting the person from what gives itself to be known or the act itself of knowing, and without the knower absorbing or being fully measured by what is known.
Originary experience also allows us to see that the unity and difference within the concrete singular and its intrinsic relation with God is a gift. In this sense, originary experience grants access not only to the truth of the unity of being but also to the perception of its goodness as gift. The singular being is not only good in itself; it is a gift. Its goodness, in other words, bears the memory of its origin from another and also the intimations of its destiny, its being for someone other than itself. The term “gift” offers a synthesis of what we learn through our originary experience: first, that our origin lies permanently with another, and so in a certain sense we belong to that other; second, that we can enjoy our own being and give of ourselves because, within that prior having been given, we are truly our own; third, that the relation with the permanent origin of our being is constitutive of our nature. Finally, since it is primarily through our own originary experience that we learn what gift means, this knowledge is not an abstract reflection; it is rather a lived awareness of oneself, the world, and God that involves all of our history.3 As historical lived awareness, originary experience allows us to savor the beauty of being given since the truth and goodness of being are radiated through one’s own concrete existence.
This approach to the nature of what is by way of man’s originary experience rests on a crucial methodological decision: rather than an analysis of being that considers all singular beings equally (meta-physics), we begin here with an exploration of the human person. Anthropology will lead to ontology. A note on a difference introduced since the advent of modern science can serve to justify this anthropological starting point: for modern man, physics is no longer what the Greeks intended by the term but is rather the science of the material world. Contemporary science, with its technological understanding of reason, relates to the world, that is, considers and manipulates it, in a way that presupposes a thorough reconfiguration of the world’s own nature. If at first early modern thinkers reinterpreted “nature” to mean blank, finite matter, sheer data that was open to manipulation, it is now the case that the “restlessness” of science, as Hans Jonas shows, understands matter as “an always reopened challenge for further penetration,” a theoretical and practical pursuit that can only be accomplished if science generates “an increasingly sophisticated and physically formidable technology as its tool.”4 The concept of nature (physis) as having an intrinsic, non-manipulable goodness in itself must be dispensed with if humanity is to progress ever onward. Since this scientific worldview deeply informs our thinking inasmuch as it has transformed thinking itself into a way of making, we cannot retrieve an adequate concept of nature and being without reexamining the grounds for our mastery over nature. This is not an easy task. On the one hand, the justification of our mastery simply through an unreflective appeal to evolution is merely another expression of our contemporary view informed by science. On the other hand, the issues raised by the scientific mastery of the world cannot be dismissed by a facile rejection of the role played by speculation and the human spirit in the constitution of singular beings. Clearly we cannot attempt to examine the nature of being as though contemporary science had nothing to offer here; that way leads to anachronisms and simply false conclusions. While the claim of modern science and philosophy needs not to be embraced acritically, it still raises a legitimate issue. In our current cultural context, reflection on the nature and unity of what is seems doomed if it halts at considering the human being as just one being among others. The human being, unlike other concrete singulars, has a unique mastery over being.
To take up and understand this mastery over nature depends on the human being’s attention to his own enigmatic makeup and his centrality
