The sacred emptiness of the soul. Interview with philosopher Robert Redeker

“There is a void, a hole in our culture. Something that has been there for thousands of years and is no longer there. Something that we took for granted. Something we got used to, a faithful and demanding companion of the our life. What word to use: a thing, an entity, a being? Something that we considered part of ourselves, the most important part. The most intimate part. The real treasure that we are, was her, it was not us, it was not I! We even confused it with our intimacy. With our identity. Has this thing disappeared, has it flown away like a bird? It has dissolved, this thing, like a corpse decomposing in the ground, delivered to the tenacious voracity of parasites? Was this thing killed, as, in Nietzsche’s words, was God killed by us? Was it imprisoned in some forgotten prison, never to be heard again? May it never return! we feel: something or some being that was as it were related to us has been taken away from us, something whose very word is gradually fading away. The soul”.