ABSTRACT
Lacoste makes Christian spirituality correspond to the existential mit-Befindlichkeit of faith, a mood of “temporal becoming” realized in conjunction with others in a community of faith. Influenced by Carmelite spirituality, then, Lacoste understands faith to induce a liturgical vocation of peace. A space of contemplative peace should be what the church protects. Lacoste highlights that the San Juanist paradigm of “stripping down” of certainty operates, in sharp contrast to Cartesianism, as a way of living humility. Contrary to Lacoste’s reduction, the world’s temporal horizon and spatial boundaries constitute the opening through which a spiritual life, properly conceived as existential, must realize itself. A pragmatics of spiritual self-deprivation therefore cultivates a “night” whereby self-empowerment recedes and thereby surrenders to bodily passivity and enfeeblement, even fatigue. The tension between passive and active states of subjectivity is a tension in Lacoste that certainly calls for greater clarification, and one that can be achieved through an analysis of love.
