The Religious Sense

By Luigi Giussani and John E. Zucchi

Book Overview

Giussani challenges us to penetrate the deepest levels of experience to discover our essential selves, breaking through the layers of opinions and judgments that have obscured our true needs. Asserting that all the tools necessary for self-discovery are inherent within us, he focuses primarily on reason, not as narrowly defined by modern philosophers, but as an openness to existence, a capacity to comprehend and affirm reality in all of its dimensions. Part of the so-called new religious revival, The Religious Sense avoids any sentimental or irrational reduction of the religious experience. It is a forthright and refreshing call to reassess our lives.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0773516263
• ISBN13: 9780773516267
• Release Date: October 1997
• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Third time a charm

I read this book 3 times. The first 2 times I read it too quickly to fully appreciate it. So the third time, I took my time and compared what I was reading to my honest experience... not as someone bought into a Catholic idealogy, but someone open to his experience... Now, I want everyone I meet to read this book. If you take your time, and not read it already claiming which side you are on, the book can take you on a wrenching spirtual journey... 1 that you'll be glad to take. In fact, it makes you happier to be a human.... If you read this book, spend time with it, otherwise the points seem too intellectual, when really it is about the experience of the whole person. Good luck.

Surprising and familiar at the same time

Overwhelmingly natural, I'd call this book. You get pleasantly surprised at the description of yourself in such a relieving (really liberating) way. That is a mighty surprise in these days! And, however, since it does describe you, it's... wholly natural, as if somehow you've always had known it. Well, but could it be any other way?Exploring a "religious sense" in us, such as our olfactory, visual or auditive sense, it starts by making methodological clarifications, concerning realism, reason, and the pertinence of morality in the use of reason. And then it plunges into you.For these reasons, it's something to be read by any kind of folks: whether religious or not, christian, jew, muslim, agnostic, whatever! I've known people of all of these beliefs who've read it and loved it.Magnificent!

A Masterpiece

A guidebook to life. Explains the basic religious nature of man's interaction with reality and calls on the reader to examine his/her experience to see if it coincides with his observations. This book has changed many lives, mine included, and hopefully will continue to explain to many of the deep longing, indeed the 'great question', that lies at the foundations of each human heart. One of the handful of 'essential books' in existence.

Finally! A Realistic Guide to Being *Human*!

In this book Giussani goes to the core of the question "What does it mean to be human?" better than does anyone else I've read or heard. He shows us how to live in a way that corresponds to our true needs for beauty, truth, happiness and justice..., and not according to the ideals of the common mentality.

A book worth reading and discussing with friends.

Luigi Giussani, founder of the Catholic lay movement "Communion and Liberation, explores that aspect of human ity that cries out for meaning, with an insight that has not been seen in the later part of this century. He addresses the question of Man's inherent need for meaning. Why are we not satisfied with the answer that there is no meaning to life other than that we are born, we live, and we die. Luigi Giussani shows us that in every person, there is something that cries out for meaning, a question that cannot be answered, but through the intervention of something that transends earthly reality