CRISE, LE NIHILISME ET LA CONFIANCE

Abstract

The current crisis of confidence in our societies is linked to the diagnosis of a generalized nihilistic condition that would lead not to a crisis but to real decadence. It is a crisis determined by the transition from the dimension of critical consciousness to the idolatry of object possession, at every level. A crisis that would force us to take a position and require us to make a decision: decadence, on the contrary, makes all this impossible, paralyzing us in a condition from which it will only be possible to emerge by moving - as individuals and as community - to the paradigm of the free and disinterested gift. The gift received and given authorizes the experience of justice, of law, of the nation, of a certain equality and political freedom, and even of a kind of fraternity. Conceiving the gift and wanting it as a higher good desirable in itself requires us to move on to
the third level of the common good: the good of communion. This last good consists in communion, which I alone cannot experience or attain, because it can never be possessed, but
must always first be received ("gift received ") and given back ("gift returned ").