Il toccare della grazia

Abstract

The multiple meanings of “grace” have always implied a relation between two subjects – a relation that is reciprocal, positive, and concerning the whole of our being. Such a relation has to do with (physical and transcendental) “touching.” Cultures have become unaware of this. The essay investigates “grace” in its relation to a form of touching that operates in a corporeal, sensible, and natural way. The tradition of incarnation has handed down to us precisely such a thought, albeit in an inactive form. Eckhart has come close to these themes but without acknowledging the “flesh” as the best recipient and channel of grace. In the absence of carnal mediation, grace captures rather than restores ourselves to ourselves. Submission to absolute supersensibles is the consequence of forgetting the sensible, especially tactile, dimension. We need to overturn metaphysics through touching and rediscover the sensibility of flesh and touching not as ways to grasp but rather as communion and thereby as vehicles of grace, as transmission of vital energy among the living. Hierarchization, fusion, and annihilation have foreclosed grace for us. We must retrieve the potentialities for life and transcendence as they exist in newborns, that is, we must retrieve the receptivity of sensory perceptions and thinking. The disclosure of the transcendental potentialities of touching, that is, of a sensible transcendental, opens a path of grace toward a more fulfilled human becoming. Touching aims at reaching individualization and sharing among different individualities. The natural qualitative difference (already marked by sex) preserves the desire to exit from oneself toward the other. Relinquishing all modes of seizure, touching enables a grace that awakens and sets into motion.