Avant-propos - Studia Moralia

DIALOGICAL PERSONALISM REVISITED 219
words, which are the condition needed for human language and
dialogue to be possible. Because the human person has the
Word, he can speak. It is God, always the true Thou of the true
I in man, who ultimately addresses man in and through the
word, which, “in the ultimate ground of its being-given-to-man,
is from God.” 34
The I-Thou relation, which arises in man from the divinely
originated word, expressed as language, does not occur at some
point after the I has existed for itself in aloneness. Rather, the I-
Thou relation is the pre-condition: for the existence of the I, “is
objectively identical with the fact that man ‘has the word.’” 35
While some evolutionary theories claim that language is a
process of imitating animal sounds, Ebner insists that language
itself is what separates man from the animals. It is not the simple
process of the brain getting larger that causes consciousness.
There must be a “leap” which animals will never make. “The animal
screeches, howls, roars, etc., but nonetheless remains
mute… Man, on the other hand, ‘has the word.’ And only because
he has the word can he also be silent.” 36 Conversely, animals
have no I because they lack word and language: “It is characteristic
for man that he can express something, and also has
something to express. The animal can express nothing precisely
because it ‘does not have the word.’ But it also has nothing to
express – and for the same reason.” 37
The word makes man free. Animals must obey instincts, but
man, because he can name or concretize his experience in word,
can gain a distance of perspective and then choose in freedom.
In this sense, Jesus the Word frees man in the word.
Word and Love: The Spiritual Realities
Having the word is that leap from animal to man, and it is a
miracle, yet invisible to science, for God becomes visible only in
the eyes of faith, in the interiority of prayer. God is grasped in
34 GREEN, 17; WR, Schriften 1:90.
35 GREEN, 18; WR, Schriften 1:90.
36 EBNER, Aphorismen, in Schriften 1:914.
37 GREEN, 18n.; WR, Schriften 1:90n.