FORGIVENESS

What is forgiveness? The definition that is commonly given asserts that forgiveness is the act by which a person forgets the hurt received, and renounces to hatred and revenge. But if it was really a forgetfulness (whether voluntary or effect of the passage of time) then forgiveness would be reduced to ignorance, that is, to an incomplete knowledge of the forgiven person and of reality, which instead should always be approached with an open mind and never avoided. Therefore forgiveness must be the result of a deep understanding of the person, of his actions and of the motivations and dynamics that led him to take an action that has hurt us or procured harm.

A "deep understanding", that is an act that involves both the intellect and the heart. As human beings we are not always able to see all the reasons that underlie an action and we are even less able to understand those reasons when the thinking is transported by rage and pain; because of this, a man is incapable of always forgiving. However, because it is an act that involves the heart, forgiving can be facilitated by a sincere repentance of the one who harms, and especially by the love for this person. Infact, forgiveness belongs to love because of the essence of the latter: love is the answer to the overall beauty of a person which shines for the one who loves despite the flaws of the beloved.

Because it is a voluntary act of understanding and not just simple forgetfulness, the remembrance of the tort comes back to the memory even with the passage of time, accompanied by the feeling of pain caused by it; therefore forgiveness will never be a once-for-all effort, but an act that needs to be constantly renewed.

THE EUROPEAN CASE AND THE RECOVERY OF THE OTHER'S FACE

In recent years the Italian people often found themselves thinking about illegal immigration, especially after the numerous deaths that took place off the island of Lampedusa. The south of Italy, in most cases, has shown great empathic capacities giving shelter and helping those men and women; but in the rest of Europe we have witnessed a continuous indifference, if not hostility as in the case of Malta that shot at those men in order to keep them far from the shores. This leaves us dismayed especially if we pause to reflect that the western countries are the ones that take advantage of the poverty of the third world countries and that also they often are the cause of this poverty.

A similar phenomenon is becoming a reality even for Italy. For various reasons, infact, this nation was slowly sold off to several foreign countries (directly or through third parties), starting from public services and ending nowadays with the sale of the manufacturing companies that in the past have made ​​the 'Made in Italy' famous all over the world. After 150 anniversary of its unification, Italy today is divided into several pieces and owned by other nations as before the Risorgimento. This situation has given rise to waves of Italian emigration to those countries that are taking advantage of the poverty of Italy (and in part are also the cause of it) and to a consequent increase in hostility towards Italians as demonstrated by the recent killing of a young Italian in Great Britain.

What kind of society is this that takes pleasure in the indigence of others and disregards the human being?! Is this the kind of well-being we are running after?!

We have lost sight of the human being, the other, the neighbor: to borrow the words of the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, we have stopped looking at the Other's face. It is the face in its nakedness and irreducibility that recalls us, remind us that the other cannot be cut out or reduced to ourselves. The Other's face makes a demand and puts us in front of the responsibility we have towards each other.

It is the relationship with the other in his dignity as a human being that we need to recover . We live in a system where everything has become 'Economy' : the politics in which the State has become a big company rather than the institution that safeguards the welfare of all the people; the happiness, which has been turned into material well-being; the relationships looking often for an economic advantage; the person become a consumer, customer, and even a product. Let us be builders of a new society that is able to look at the face of the other. We do not need everything that is sold to us in order to be happy: the consumerism has nothing to do with happiness. We work tirelessly to pay for things that we do not really need and doing so, life escapes us. Let us build a society that is able to look at the essential, at what really enriches the life of man : human relationships , nature , family, friends and love. A society with respect for the dignity of every human being. Utopia? As Margaret Mead said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has!”.

DOES TRUTH EXIST?

In the contemporary society there is often the tendency to doubt of the truth's existence  and to affirm that truth is relative because it is linked to one's own opinion or to the one of others and to the historical circumstances where it is stated. This is the result of some philosophical currents of the last two centuries  that, instead of denying the truth's existence as the skeptics did, decided to redefine the truth as something relative depriving it of its essence.

Therefore it is right to ask first of all what the truth is. Man has always had the tendency to  transform a doctrine or external theory (that is not coming from the subject's experience) into the truth and, starting from it, to judge the reality. This attitude make us state the truth's relativity because in it the subject accept other's opinion without verifying the factual reality, so as a person can accept a doctrine he could as well accept the opposite one. Therefore one needs to start from the personal experience of reality. But if this experience is based only on the observation of the things and even more if it is not compared with other's experience,  it ends up becoming the simple opinion of a person which has nothing in common with the objective truth. Even in the case of scientific knowledge, which is based upon a series of observations that are experimented through math's objectivity, subsist a certain 'relativity' which makes the scientists doubt of a theory as soon as it has been stated as true.

This doesn't mean that in all these types of knowledge there is no truth, but it means that it is necessary a critical spirit that tries to anchor these knowledges to the reality as it truly is, that is the essence of the things. The latter can be known through an intuitive process  which requires not only particular intellective capacities, but also a respectful attitude towards the being, sincerity, scrupulosity and thirst for the truth. Only an essential knowledge can get us to the truth. Therefore we define the truth as adaequatio rei et intellectus (adequation of the intellect to the thing)  because are the things in themselves, as expressed in their essences, that determine the truth or not of a knowledge.

A knowledge which is based on the essence of a thing will always be valid, because the essence never changes (if this had to happen, the thing would stop existing); so it brings to a universal truth which is valid in every place and time. Examples of universal truth are the aristotelian difference between the efficient cause and the final cause, and the fact that the human being was born to love and to be loved  because of his essence as 'being in relation' (as alredy said in the article "Because of love you will live eternally").

Instead we call particular 'truth' that knowledge which is relative because it is not based on the essences of the things but it is linked to a specific condition and historical period. This is for example the case of homosexuality, both in the opinion of the gay movement and in the one of the different religions, because none of those cases is based on the essence of the homosexuality which remains still unknown. In spite of this, both opinions on  homosexuality are sold as universal truth. The same thing has happened many times in history and an example is that of slavery considered right and advocated as true by many, included Aristotle, but considered unacceptable nowadays because freedom is part od the essential dignity of the person. So it is necessary to doubt of what is offered as true and to ask oneself if it is really based on the essence of the object.

BECAUSE OF LOVE YOU WILL LIVE ETERNALLY

In the times we live in, it often happens to wonder what is the point of carrying on living, if still exist something to live for, something that can be the reason of one's own existence. Often we answer these questions by clinging on to the things that have more meaning in life: family, love, friends, career and helping others. But the events of this historical time show that none of those elements can be the ultimate reason of one's life, the 'quid' that can give meaning to the rest: when all the things that have been giving meaning to our lives come face to face with death, they lose their capacity of offering meaning. What can ever be the point of loving, of being good to others, of career when sooner or later everything ends?

This doesn't have to leave us dismayed because the reality that we experience and observe shows us also something more. In goodness, in beauty, in truth, in love we can notice the existence and the promise of eternity. A sensitive soul feels eternity inside itself every time it has the possibility of contemplating the beauty of nature or of helping another human being. And to every person that truly loves someone else is given to feel that it belongs to the essence of that particular love to last eternally. Therefore if it is true that reality shows us a limit, it also gives us a glimpse of the infinity. This means that only eternity and the human struggle to reach it can really give meaning to the human life.

It is right at this point of our reflection to wonder how can one reach this eternity. Here comes back that same love that on its own was unable to give meaning to the life of the individual. Every real phenomenologist (and every good observer) will see infact that the human being seems naturally born to love and to be loved: a well-fed man that has got everything necessary to him but who has nobody to love him will look like a walking dead. So it is by loving that a human being fulfill his own essence, that a man becomes Man. It follows that love has a primary importance for the human being in comparison to the other elements (the good, beauty an truth).

This is not sufficient to make of love the mean to reach eternity: it must have as its essential characteristic the capacity to save. The good has got salvific value which is however connected to an external entity who awards the good man with salvation; this would bring up one more dilemma: the demonstration of the real existence of this external entity. Beauty has got only the capacity to elevate us to a pure contemplation of eternity, it leaves nothing to man but this vision. Tha same can be said about the truth which gives to the intellect the light of a certain knowledge but which doesn't save the human being (even if it is very helpful). Love instead has got salvific value in itself: when a person loves another one, he makes the experience of coming back to life, of paradoxically being saved from his own life. And this is true for every kind of love (spousal, of friends, parental etc...), but in different degrees where the spousal love holds the greater degree.

For those reasons, ultimately, love in all its kinds constitutes the one and only reason for living because it is tightly tied up to eternity and to the essence of the human being, becoming a bridge between the two.