Segni della destinazione. L'ethos occidentale e il sacramento

RIVA F, SEQUERI P, Segni della destinazione. L’ethos occidentale e il sacramento, Cittadella, Assisi 2009, pp. 465. The individual and the community no longer understand each other. The theme, with all its variations in terms of the “sacred”, in many ways harries Europe’s contemporary existence. This applies in particular to European civilisation, overwhelmed as it is in its historical vocation as a “bridge” and “corridor” by the new tensions between East and West. The dialectic that derives from it, a source of repeated conflict, also contains many paradoxes. The individual complains daily about a society that ignores him, but he takes on board all its invitations to individualism. Society calls for participation and the consideration of common values, but politics yields ground every day to the imperatives of rights without obligations and of loveless bureaucracy. This book, written jointly by a philosopher and a theologian, attempts to teach the terms of this complex situation also from the viewpoint of the elements through which the Christian sacrament – in first place the Eucharist – allows individuals to put the meaning and the destination of the shared human experience into perspective. On the one hand, the larger part of the book describes and analyses in terms of philosophy and ethics the corresponding anthropological and symbolic functions in the context of today’s Western European culture. On the other hand it combines this with the specifically theological interest in the hypothesis of an effective sacramental concentration (and simplification) of the religious community. This dual process allows an ambivalence to be dealt with that is valid both for human cohabitation and religion. Against this background and on this basis, the invisible and unheeded “anthropological community” in homes and on the streets – the vast core of common humanity – can reclaim the visibility and the weight it is due, in order to define a common human ethos. In more explicitly religious terms, however, triggered by the rediscovered “enchantment” of the ceremony, and strengthened by the “dissemination” of infinite micro-icons from the original evangelical setting (the Lord, the disciples, the multitudes), a similar interpositional role would reopen the way for the evangelisation of Western cohabitation. Iit would also allow common humanity to become a “critical mass”, in other words a turning point in terms of the pathological Western link between the narcissism of the individual and collective bureaucracy. Parti redatte da Riva F PARTE I, COMUNITÀ, RELIGIONE 2. Dialettiche dell’esclusione pp. 49-76 Fenomenologie dell’esclusione Il male e l’indisponibile al pensiero 3. Figure dell’inclusione pp. 77-114 Solidarietà Ospitalità PARTE II, AMBIVALENZA DEL SACRO 6. Ordo e communitas: rito pp. 153-238 Le sfide del rito Il rito, la vita, i legami L’animale cerimoniale Il rito, il logos, l’etica 7. Ordo e communitas: sacrificio pp. 239-296 Il sacrificio tra scomparsa e persistenza Sacrificare e sacrificarsi. Fenomenologie del sacrificio Narrazioni della fine 8. Ordo e communitas: festa pp. 297-353 La festa L’otium