Marcello La Matina

The Orthodox-Catholic schism is an evident breakdown in the map of the Una Sancta. Understanding its causes, so that reconcile the separated churches unifying them in just one body, is a matter for mostly historical, theological, ecclesiological inquiries. What might the philosopher of language contribute to this topic? Almost nothing if he remains within standard academic boundaries; something more perhaps if he is willing to step outside of such limits and engage in some experimentation. This is what happens in the present paper. For instance, Lacan’s optical scheme (the so-called ‘mirror-stage’) might be a good metaphor to start by. Schisms could be accordingly considered as a special class of events in a given form of life. My thesis is that both in the life of every man and in the life of a community of men, the birth of the rational Subject is achieved by means of schism-events. Through the Catholic-Orthodox schism, new forms of subjectivity emerged as the splitting point of the ecclesial Signifier. If this is the case, the emergence of a split might have something to do with some mirroring phenomena capable of perturbing the reciprocity of the gaze in the accounted ecclesial forms of life. In my analysis a special role—and a theoretical differentiation—is given to the mirrored content of this gaze, now taking the form of an Image and now of an Icon.

As a scholar of the philosophy of language, I got to the point where, after listening to each of your competent talks, I would be tempted to dismiss my concluding re- flections and say ‘goodbye’. The reason is that, as represented by the papers offered in this conference, the obstacles to ecclesial unity seem to involve contingent, historical, theological-philosophical, linguistic and ecclesiological, or political notions, rather than reasons stricto sensu amenable to the usual notions of a standard philosophy of language. Of course, philosophy of language is included in many of the topics treated here; and this occurs because most theological controversies are based on so-called tacit knowledge, whose nature is a matter for philosophical discussions about how language is used both by people in their everyday life and by philosophers in their speculations about the nature and essence of the Church. Moreover, your