And that’s where the heart of the matter lies—not just in how we read a story, but in how we engage the world itself. Do we approach the world to live with it—or to take it apart in order to dominate it?
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Guardini on the Loss of the Old Plane and Engagement on the New
On the older plane the battle for living culture has been lost, and we feel the profound helplessness of those who are old. The battle must now be joined on a new plane. Totally technical events and unleashed forces can be mastered only by a new human attitude that is a match for them. We must put mind, spirit, and freedom to work afresh. But we must relate this new effort to the new events, the new manner and style and inner orientation. It must have its living starting point, its fulcrum, where the process itself begins.
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Guardini on the Dividing Point Between the Ages
Here in Italy I have seen the dividing point between the ages. I did so when I saw, along with the sailing vessel, a motorboat on the lake, floating, streamlined, but still a machine. I saw this dividing point also when in Padua I went through the streets with their houses that were so full of vitality. In almost all of them the second story rested on pillars and the first floor was set back. The spaces were conjoined, so that on both sides of the streets we had covered walkways. Each house was built individually and yet in such a way as to create a feeling that they all…
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Guardini on the Anticipation of Returning
Do you think of the afternoon on the edge of the forest where the buzzards had their nest? They glided off into the blue distance. The eye focused on their circlings. The inner life was concentrated upon the eye and crarried aloft by the force of the clear and soaring power; our whole being had a vision of the fullness of space. In the far distance the mountain ranges rose up in clear outline, and behind them the land that I had not seen for twenty years was waiting. I realized that if I now went back there as a man it would mean a great deal for me.
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Guardini on True Education
True education is rooted in being, not in knowledge … The educated person is the one who has been shaped by the inward law of form, whose being and action and thinking and deeds and person and environment conform to an inner image. Such persons thus have unity in great diversity.
