Avant-propos - Studia Moralia

222 JOSEPH CHAPEL
thou, to stay closed in my thoughts, closed to the world and others,
to let thought remain mere abstract thinking, unconnected
in relation with others. In this sense, the word can be abused using
it idly for chatter, instead of speaking only those words born
of interior silence animated by the mystery of the spirit.
Sin: Failure to Open to the Thou
For Ebner, the dialogical word gives life to relationship, so
that even in silence the word is authentic and directed to a dialogue
partner. We can retreat from this encounter into “I-aloneness”
(Icheinsamkeit), an inauthentic world of idea or “dream of
the spirit” (Traum vom Geist), a kind of slumber from which
modern culture cannot awake on its own – but only by waiting
for and responding to God’s call. Such a “closing of oneself to the
Thou” (Duverschlossenheit) is the heart of sin.
This has a bearing on how good and evil will be understood.
“The fundamental error of idealist ethics: that good and evil
have to do with the individual founded in himself. But all good
and all evil have to do with the I with respect to the thou. One is
good or bad only in relation to another.” 41 Sin, then, is not an
“idea,” but is in the realm of broken relation:
Every experience convinces that the full realization of the I is
in the vital discovery of the authentic Thou, the dialogue partner
that makes all the richness of his own being resound and that
shows the true sickness of closure, of isolation; the seriousness of
a spiritual sickness that can weaken the I to the point of death
without having found the Thou. The Light calls this darkness by its
true name: sin. 42
In Jesus darkness is overcome. In the Word made flesh,
“contempt for man” (Menschenverachtung) is definitively elimi-
41
EBNER, La parola è la via, 196.
42
DUCCI & ROSSANO, introduction to Parola e Amore, 30, citing Ebner
without further reference.