Avant-propos - Studia Moralia

228 JOSEPH CHAPEL
relations. Here, Ebner breaks some new ground. He accepts the
view of the eighteenth century Sturm und Drang philosopher, Johann
Georg Hamann, that logos is reason, and thus to be human
is to speak. 52 Language philosophers take up this theme as well,
trying to explain the workings of language in human interaction,
but Ebner asks instead: why, and from where, does man have the
word?
This is Ebner at his most original and his key contribution
to this study: God spoke creation into existence, for His Word is
action. Man’s “forgetfulness” of God in the Fall and his concomitant
“dream of the spirit” are remedied in the same creative
Word, who was in the beginning and is God. Jesus, the Word
made Flesh, is God’s self-revelation as eternal Thou, the Word
spoken to man to “re-awaken” him from his “dream of the spirit,”
from his state of I-aloneness (Icheinsamkeit) which is isolation
and monologue. The Word breaks through such that man
discovers the Other, the eternal Thou, and in so discovering, his
isolation ends; monologue becomes dialogue in man’s discovery
of his own “I” necessarily reflected by the discovery of the Thou.
In the same discovery, man’s relation with human “thous” is redefined
by the very same Word.
For Ebner, while the word is clearly foundational for human
identity, the question of how language operates as such remains
pending. The relationships between word and language and between
word and sacrament provide fruitful avenues for study in
dialogue with language philosophy and sacramental theology.
Implications
Having examined the thought of Ferdinand Ebner in some
detail, it is worthwhile to briefly highlight a few ways in which
52 The Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) movement of 1770’s Germany
proposed that for life to be meaningful, it had to be lived with one’s
full energies applied to religion, poetry and discourse, at the same time embracing
nature, feelings and mystery. The movement has echoes in later
19th century romanticism and 20th century existential and language
philosophies.