Zitate von Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Geburtstag: 1. Mai 1881
Todesdatum: 10. April 1955
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin [pjɛʁ tejaʁ də ʃaʁdɛ̃] war ein französischer Jesuit, Paläontologe, Anthropologe und Philosoph. Er war Teilnehmer mehrerer Forschungsreisen nach Asien und Afrika und beteiligte sich in China an der Ausgrabung und Auswertung des Peking-Menschen. In seinem philosophischen Hauptwerk Der Mensch im Kosmos unternahm er den Versuch einer Synthese von naturwissenschaftlicher Evolutionstheorie und christlicher Heilsgeschichte. Er sah die göttliche Schöpfung, den Kosmos, als evolutionären Prozess an, in dessen Verlauf sich Materie und Geist von Beginn an als zwei Zustände des einen „Weltenstoffes“ in wechselseitiger Beziehung gegenüberstünden, um schließlich im Omegapunkt Identität zu erlangen, indem sich die Materie im Menschen ihrer selbst bewusst wird.
Nach seinem Tod wurde das bis dahin größtenteils ungedruckte Gesamtwerk, das von der Kirche lange Zeit abgelehnt wurde, herausgegeben.
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US-amerikanischer Anthropologe und SchriftstellerZitate Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
„We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.“
— Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
This is attributed to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in The Joy of Kindness (1993), by Robert J. Furey, p. 138; but it is attributed to G. I. Gurdjieff in Beyond Prophecies and Predictions: Everyone's Guide To The Coming Changes (1993) by Moira Timms, p. 62; neither cite a source. It was widely popularized by Wayne Dyer, who often quotes it in his presentations, crediting it to Chardin, as does Stephen Covey in Living the 7 Habits : Stories of Courage and Inspiration (2000), p. 47
I spent a lot of time looking for this quote in all of Chardin' books and did not find it. That is the problem with the Internet, people simply copy and paste, therefore, it is our responsibility to keep an eye on errors of this kind. Be always careful to verify quotations that do not show a source (book/magazine, and page number, etc.)
Variant: We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.
The above "quotation" can be considered a paraphrase of Hegel's dictum that matter is spirit fallen into a state of self-otherness.
„Biologists or philosophers cannot conceive a biosphere or noosphere because they are unwilling to abandon a certain narrow conception of individuality. Nevertheless, the step must be taken.“
— Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
Context: There is neither spirit nor matter in the world; the stuff of the universe is spirit-matter. No other substance but this could produce the human molecule. I know very well that this idea of spirit-matter is regarded as a hybrid monster, a verbal exorcism of a duality which remains unresolved in its terms. But I remain convinced that the objections made to it arise from the mere fact that few people can make up their minds to abandon an old point of view and take the risk of a new idea. … Biologists or philosophers cannot conceive a biosphere or noosphere because they are unwilling to abandon a certain narrow conception of individuality. Nevertheless, the step must be taken. For in fact, pure spirituality is as unconceivable as pure materiality. Just as, in a sense, there is no geometrical point, but as many structurally different points as there are methods of deriving them from different figures, so every spirit derives its reality and nature from a particular type of universal synthesis.
A Sketch of a Personalistic Universe (1936)
„What paralyzes life is lack of faith and lack of audacity. The difficulty lies not in solving problems but expressing them.“
— Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
Context: What paralyzes life is lack of faith and lack of audacity. The difficulty lies not in solving problems but expressing them. And so we cannot avoid this conclusion: it is biologically evident that to gain control of passion and so make it serve spirit must be a condition of progress. Sooner or later, then, the world will brush aside our incredulity and take this step : because whatever is the more true comes out into the open, and whatever is better is ultimately realized. The day will come when, after harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
"The Evolution of Chastity" (February 1934), as translated in Toward the Future (1975) edited by by René Hague, who also suggests "space" as an alternate translation of "the ether."
Variants:
"One day after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity" — after all the scientific and technological achievements — "we shall harness for God the energies of love. And then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."
As quoted by R. Sargent Shriver, Jr. in his speech accepting the nomination as the Democratic candidate for vice president, in Washington, D. C. (8 August 1972); this has sometimes been published as if Shriver's interjection "after all the scientific and technological achievements" were part of the original statement, as in The New York Times (9 August 1972), p. 18
What paralyzes life is lack of faith and lack of audacity. The difficulty lies not in solving problems but identifying them.
As translated in The The Ignatian Tradition (2009) edited by Kevin F. Burke, Eileen Burke-Sullivan and Phyllis Zagano, p. 86
Love is the only force which can make things one without destroying them. … Some day, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
As quoted in Seed Sown : Theme and Reflections on the Sunday Lectionary Reading (1996) by Jay Cormier, p. 33
The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, humanity will have discovered fire.
As quoted in Fire of Love : Encountering the Holy Spirit (2006) by Donald Goergen, p. 92
The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
As quoted in Read for the Cure (2007) by Eileen Fanning, p. v
„Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come into being.“
— Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
Context: If there were no internal propensity to unite, even at a prodigiously rudimentary level — indeed in the molecule itself — it would be physically impossible for love to appear higher up, with us, in hominized form.... Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come into being.
„We only have to look around us to see how complexity and psychic temperature are still rising: and rising no longer on the scale of the individual but now on that of the planet.“
— Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
Context: We only have to look around us to see how complexity and psychic temperature are still rising: and rising no longer on the scale of the individual but now on that of the planet. This indication is so familiar to us that we cannot but recognize the objective, experiential, reality of a transformation of the planet as a whole.
The Heart of Matter (1950)
„There is neither spirit nor matter in the world; the stuff of the universe is spirit-matter. No other substance but this could produce the human molecule.“
— Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
Context: There is neither spirit nor matter in the world; the stuff of the universe is spirit-matter. No other substance but this could produce the human molecule. I know very well that this idea of spirit-matter is regarded as a hybrid monster, a verbal exorcism of a duality which remains unresolved in its terms. But I remain convinced that the objections made to it arise from the mere fact that few people can make up their minds to abandon an old point of view and take the risk of a new idea. … Biologists or philosophers cannot conceive a biosphere or noosphere because they are unwilling to abandon a certain narrow conception of individuality. Nevertheless, the step must be taken. For in fact, pure spirituality is as unconceivable as pure materiality. Just as, in a sense, there is no geometrical point, but as many structurally different points as there are methods of deriving them from different figures, so every spirit derives its reality and nature from a particular type of universal synthesis.
A Sketch of a Personalistic Universe (1936)
„Since once again, O Lord, in the steppes of Asia, I have no bread, no wine, no altar, I will raise myself above those symbols to the pure majesty of reality, and I will offer to you, I, your priest, upon the altar of the entire earth, the labor and the suffering of the world. Receive, O Lord, in its totality the Host which creation, drawn by your magnetism, presents to you at the dawn of a new day.“
— Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
Context: Since once again, O Lord, in the steppes of Asia, I have no bread, no wine, no altar, I will raise myself above those symbols to the pure majesty of reality, and I will offer to you, I, your priest, upon the altar of the entire earth, the labor and the suffering of the world.
Receive, O Lord, in its totality the Host which creation, drawn by your magnetism, presents to you at the dawn of a new day. This bread, our effort, is in itself, I know, nothing but an immense disintegration. This wine, our anguish, as yet, alas! is only an evaporating beverage. But in the depths of this inchoate Mass you have placed — I am certain, for I feel it — an irresistible and holy desire that moves us all, the impious as well as the faithful to cry out: "O Lord, make us one!"
Prayer for Easter Sunday in the Ordos Desert of Inner Mongolia published in article “The Priest Who Haunts the Catholic World” Saturday Evening Post (12 October 1963)
„Peace cannot mean anything but a HIGHER PROCESS OF CONQUEST. … The world is bound to belong to its most active elements.“
— Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
Context: Personally, I stick to my idea that we are watching the birth, more than the death, of a World. The scandal for you, is that England and France should have come to this tragedy because they have sincerely tried the road of peace. But did they not precisely make a mistake on the true meaning of "peace"? Peace cannot mean anything but a HIGHER PROCESS OF CONQUEST. … The world is bound to belong to its most active elements. … Just now, the Germans deserve to win because, however bad or mixed is their spirit, they have more spirit than the rest of the world. It is easy to criticize and despise the fifth column. But no spiritual aims or energy will ever succeed, or even deserve to succeed, unless it is able to spread and keep spreading a fifth column.
Letter from Peking (Summer 1940), quoted in The Last European War : September 1939/December 1941 (1976) by John Lukacs, p. 515
„Personally, I stick to my idea that we are watching the birth, more than the death, of a World.“
— Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
Context: Personally, I stick to my idea that we are watching the birth, more than the death, of a World. The scandal for you, is that England and France should have come to this tragedy because they have sincerely tried the road of peace. But did they not precisely make a mistake on the true meaning of "peace"? Peace cannot mean anything but a HIGHER PROCESS OF CONQUEST. … The world is bound to belong to its most active elements. … Just now, the Germans deserve to win because, however bad or mixed is their spirit, they have more spirit than the rest of the world. It is easy to criticize and despise the fifth column. But no spiritual aims or energy will ever succeed, or even deserve to succeed, unless it is able to spread and keep spreading a fifth column.
Letter from Peking (Summer 1940), quoted in The Last European War : September 1939/December 1941 (1976) by John Lukacs, p. 515
„The feminine is the most formidable of the forces of matter.“
— Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
Context: I am far from denying the destructive and disintegrating forces of passion. I will go so far as to agree that apart from the reproductive function, men have hitherto used love, on the whole, as an instrument of self-corruption and intoxication. But what do these excesses prove? Because fire consumes and electricity can kill are we to stop using them? The feminine is the most formidable of the forces of matter. True enough. "Very well, then," say the moralists, "we must avoid it." "Not at all," I reply, "we take hold of it." In every domain of the real (physical, affective, intellectual) "danger" is a sign of power. Only a mountain can create a terrifying drop. The customary education of the Christian conscience tends to make us confuse tutiorism with prudence, safety with truth. Avoiding the risk of transgression has become more important to us than carrying a difficult position for God. And it is this that is killing us. "The more dangerous a thing, the more is its conquest ordained by life": it is from that conviction that the modern world has emerged; and from that our religion, too, must be reborn.
"The Evolution of Chastity" (1934), as translated by René Hague in Toward the Future (1975)
„The truth is, indeed, that love is the threshold of another universe.“
— Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
Context: The truth is, indeed, that love is the threshold of another universe. Beyond the vibrations with which we are familiar, the rainbow-like range of its colours is still in full growth. But, for all the fascination that the lower shades have for us, it is only towards the "ultra" that the creation of light advances. It is in these invisible and, we might almost say, immaterial zones that we can look for true initiation into unity. The depths we attribute to matter are no more than the reflection of the peaks of spirit.
"The Evolution of Chastity" (1934), as translated by René Hague in Toward the Future (1975)
