“Starting from Unity”: Klaus Hemmerle's Insights on a New “Way of Thinking”

Abstract

Living and together thinking from Unity: this is the mature message developed by Hemmerle in his final, posthumously published book, Starting from Unity. What strikes us most forcefully in examining the picture that Hemmerle paints for us, with rapid but precise brushstrokes of watercolor – his favorite painting technique –, are not so much the nouns nor even the verbs. Rather what strikes are the prepositions and adverbs, those determinations of the noun and the verb that delineate the style, direction, breath and movement. The synthesis of Hemmerle’s message in the first chapter of Leben aus der Einheit pivots around a preposition: “from” (aus) and an adverb: “together reciprocally” (Miteinander). These focus our attention upon the center that gives rise to and nurtures the thought and life that Hemmerle qualifies as “trinitarian”. Aus refers to the starting point of a journey (Weg) and to the space (Raum) in which it resides: such that the journey is also a dwelling and the time of the journey pulsating from within that space. Miteinander refers to the relational quality of the life and thought that occurs there and provides the rhythm of its timing. The aus thus recalls the theological precedence of the event with respect to the time and space that are derived from it; the miteinander describes the personal and inter-personal dynamics of the relations that mark its rhythm and space.