Land of Conversion

“To the question ‘What is Europe?’, I propose the following answer: it’s world region, it’s human association where ‘conversion’ is viewed as the highest deed, the most decisive and the most humane action performed by a human being; conversion to or towards the truth. It’s the founding act of philosophy, the act through which man becomes a philosopher, and is capable of theoretical perception, of ‘seeing that which is’. It’s the first movement of Christian religion, where the soul discovers the disease and the healer, bewilderment and salvation. Other religions imply obedience to the law or the quest for enlightenment”. In the latest issue of the review “Vita e Pensiero”, published by the ‘Cattolica’ University, Pierre Manent, directeur d’études all’École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, reflects on the relationship between truth and conversion in the Old Continent. “Serious atheists understand the significance of conversion just like the honest faithful do. The atheist underwent a conversion when, at the conclusion of his personal quest, that no man can escape, he concluded that God doesn’t exist”. Broken balance. Conversion, the philosopher explained, is a concept that “binds truth to freedom, a specific bond pertaining to Old Europe, that risks breaking apart in Europe” and that at the same time recalls the “objectivity of truth which is sought freely, which we turn to in freedom, that can be found, but could never be encountered, that could be lost leading to our self-loss. Since what remains of us if we are distant from the truth?” For Manent, the balance between freedom and truth is “always on the rim of breakage”. “It was once broken to the benefit of the truth, whose ‘objective’ nature made it become part of political laws” while today, this balance “has been broken to the benefit of freedom” and differently from our fathers, who “at the peak of their tyrannical impulses claimed that in principle, an act of faith must be free in order to be worthy, we completely relinquished our quest for the truth. Our freedom implies no more choices to be made. There is no truth we can turn to, there is no longer a truth to be found or lost”. With our glance directed towards the human world, “a city that is open to visitors”, the scholar remarked, “Terrorists kill tourists. The circle is closed. Two vanities have come together. The eyeless glance of the one who fully receives the iridescent reflection of human appearance and the glance-less eyes of those who are blinded by their indignation before the violations to the Law, cross each other for an instance but don’t meet. How can those who have stopped seeking find one another?” On the wake of the following claim, Manet continues: “Let’s relinquish the terrorists. We confide in our police. But we are the tourists. Even if we don’t move. We have learned, we have become masters in the art of transforming the life of the soul in a performance that we are the spectator of. We possess the science of man: we are the man-who-knows that is looking at the-man-who-assesses. What is the meaning of our scientific progress? That the one who knows has no relationship with what is, that the one who looks is not transformed by what he sees”. A crucial requirement is that of a “good governance“. “In order to be well-governed, we ought to know ourselves. We learn more about one another by means of better governance; before the presence of truth and freedom, with the adjustments required by ordinary life. We are bound to each other but we don’t share the same truth”. New Europe. “Who created the nations?”, Manent asks: “Europe. Europe is the result of conversions – conversions to philosophy, to the Christian religion; the Bible and the Enciclopedia, Luther and Goethe, Pascal and Voltaire. The tone of the conversation among those who seek the truth has matured in each nation, where the chemistry of conversions has developed. Those who seek the truth can find it in each one of our nations, that provide the freedom to seek it. But the major Tourist Agency has published its new catalogue. The Old Nations that were marked by thousands of real choices have been relinquished, rejected and ridiculed. Their new destination is the desert, where we admire the freedoms despite the lack of living beings. A place where there is just one commandment: to forget real Europe, marked by centuries-long quest for truth”. The new Europe, concludes the philosopher, intends to cross the border of real Europe, both in spiritual and geographic terms”. “The freedom that has relinquished its quest for truth wishes to embrace the religion where there is no space for freedom. In order to claim the rejection of philosophy, and finally the rejection of Christianity! But in the midst of the tourists there is a young man, “standing in the middle of the crowd, near the second pillar at the entry of the Choir, on the right hand side, near the Sacristy”.