Abstract

The article reflects on the need for an independent philosophy in relation to faith. After the assimilation of Plato and Aristotle, the official Church tended to attack attempts at independent philosophy as modes of unbelief. But it was precisely independent developments in modern thought that led to the transformation of the ordinary magisterium on certain key questions. Following von Balthasar, the article attempts to make Heidegger’s project our own: to think the ground of metaphysics, and thus of intellect and will, in “the heart” by making use of the seed parables in the Gospels. Taking its point of departure from an analysis of the basic structural features of the field of experience, the text argues for a sympathetic study of the philosophical classics in order to establish a set of critical epicenters in oneself. This furnishes the basis for a dialogical pluralism that will aid in ecumenical dialogue and in the development of the ordinary magisterium.