Israel Centeno

Language is not a tool; it is a threshold. A fracture between silence and presence, between being that has no need to speak and being that cries out for meaning. What we have discussed today revolves around this tension: the word as eternity and the word as a sign worn down by time, crucified in repetition, emptied by postmodernity.

The scholastic tradition, with Thomas Aquinas as its beacon, understood that being precedes all speech. Being is not defined; it reveals itself. And this revelation occurs in language when it does not impose itself but opens, like a flower to the sun. Edith Stein, inheriting and renewing this line of thought, intuited that phenomenology was insufficient unless oriented toward the eternal. Being is not only given; it is given to be loved, and that gift demands a language that is also an act of love.

Yet we inhabit a time in which words are regarded with suspicion. “Woman,” “freedom,” “truth,” “love”—these are signs that no longer signify, having been hijacked by rhetoric or cynicism. As Barthes observed, the discourse of love has been eroded by soap opera stereotypes and commercial sentimentality. The sign no longer connects with the real but with its caricature. Simone Weil saw it too: language is profaned when used for power rather than for truth.

And still, we speak. Like Adam in Genesis, we continue the sacred task of naming—of seeking the true names of things. The word must not possess reality; it must reveal it. In this sense, language becomes a sacrament—not liturgically, but as an efficacious sign of being.

Heidegger intuited as much when he said that language is the house of being, though he stopped short of embracing the Person who speaks. Nietzsche pushed language to its scream but did not find the silent God. Only Simone Weil and Edith Stein, in their hunger and fire, dared to empty themselves enough for the word to become luminous again. And Thomas, centuries before them, knew: only one who is empty can receive the pure act.

Throughout our extended and fervent conversation, we have seen that thinking is not hoarding concepts, but caring for signs. Writing is not embellishment but unveiling. Freedom is not absolute self-assertion but the truthful response to the gift of existence.

This is not about defining being, but allowing it to manifest. Not about using language, but serving it. For in the end, all is gift—and every gift expresses itself in words that burn without consuming, like the bush of Moses.

In the aftermath of the devastation of metaphysical confidence by the Enlightenment and later by the horrors of the 20th century, existentialist philosophers emerged, seeking to restore human freedom amid absurdity. Yet their answers often trembled on the edge of despair. Sartre, refusing God, tried to anchor dignity in the radical autonomy of the self, only to find himself attracted to political idols—Stalin, Mao, Fidel—who embodied the very tyranny he feared. Camus, nobler in silence, explored rebellion without revelation. The self became absolute—but adrift. “Freedom” was no longer grace, but burden.

In parallel, the analytic precision of the Vienna Circle sought to strip philosophy of metaphysical excess, reducing meaning to verifiability. For them, only statements grounded in logic or empirical observation were meaningful; all else—God, ethics, beauty—was dismissed as pseudo-problems. Language became a scalpel, not a chalice. Yet in their zeal for clarity, they risked amputating the very mystery that gives speech its soul. Wittgenstein, born from that same milieu, would later retreat from their austerity. In his Tractatus, he confined language to the limits of what can be said—but ended with a mystical silence: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” And yet, in his Philosophical Investigations, he turned again—toward the everyday, toward the forms of life where language lives and breathes beyond rules.

Meanwhile, in Munich, Edmund Husserl sought not to eliminate subjectivity, but to refine it. His phenomenology aimed to return “to the things themselves”—not as atoms or predicates, but as lived realities, appearing to consciousness in their givenness. It was a reverent philosophy, one that trusted in the power of intentionality to bridge inner life and outer world. From this vision, thinkers like Edith Stein would carry phenomenology toward a metaphysics of the person, and Heidegger would diverge into a more ontological path. But already in Husserl, the seed was planted: meaning is not constructed, but unveiled.

We stand now, amid noise and fragmentation, faced with the task of speaking meaningfully. The postmodern world, armed with thick dictionaries and thin convictions, has reduced language to performance, irony, or powerplay. But the soul cannot live on irony. We need sacredness, reverence, weight. We need the kind of speech that listens as it names.

Let us recover the lost grammar of Being—not to dominate it, but to dwell in it. Let us name again, like Adam, not with grasping hands but with open palms. Let us guard the Word, not because it is fragile, but because it is holy.

This is not a conclusion, but an invocation: that the sign may again be sacred. That the word may again be threshold. That thought may again be praise

La Palabra como Umbral del Ser

El lenguaje no es una herramienta, es una epifanía. Un límite delicado entre el silencio que antecede y el sentido que se revela. La palabra —cuando no se degrada— es umbral, tránsito entre el Ser que se da y la conciencia que lo acoge. A lo largo de esta meditación, hemos intentado cruzar ese umbral sin profanarlo, con la reverencia de quien pisa tierra sagrada.

Desde Aristóteles hasta Tomás de Aquino, el pensamiento occidental supo que el ser no se define: se contempla. No se construye, se recibe. Y si bien Heidegger intuyó que el lenguaje es la casa del ser, su visión se volvió intransitiva: contempló, pero no adoró. Edith Stein, en cambio, supo que el ser no solo habla: llama. Y que el lenguaje puede ser oración si se deja habitar por la verdad.

Hoy vivimos en el desgaste. En una posmodernidad que tiene gruesos diccionarios, pero poco que decir. Donde palabras como “mujer”, “amor”, “verdad”, “Dios” ya no significan, porque fueron despedazadas entre el cinismo y la banalidad. Roland Barthes lo advirtió con su “Discurso amoroso”, donde el signo se ha vuelto eco de sí mismo, agotado en la telenovela o el algoritmo. Simone Weil, más radical aún, vio en este deterioro una violencia: el lenguaje, usado para manipular, deja de ser verdad y se vuelve opresión.

La Escuela de Viena creyó que podía purificar el lenguaje a fuerza de lógica. Los existencialistas, con Sartre y Camus, lo usaron para gritar su angustia ante un mundo sin Dios. Pero ni la precisión matemática ni la rebeldía romántica lograron salvar la palabra. Porque sin un horizonte trascendente, el signo se cierra sobre sí mismo. Muere.

Y sin embargo, nombramos. Como Adán, seguimos intentando poner nombre a lo que existe. No para poseerlo, sino para entender que todo es don. En la tradición bíblica, nombrar no era dominar, era descubrir el sentido oculto de las cosas. Cada palabra verdadera era un acto de humildad y de creación. El lenguaje como liturgia.

La palabra puede desgastarse, sí. Pero también puede ser encendida. Si vuelve al silencio que la funda, si se deja habitar por el Espíritu. Si se reconoce no como construcción humana, sino como reflejo —aunque torpe— del Logos eterno. Esa fue la apuesta de Tomás, de Weil, de Stein. No usaron el lenguaje para lucirse, sino para vaciarse. Para que en el hueco de sus palabras, Dios dijera algo.

En tiempos donde el nihilismo se disfraza de ironía y el sentimentalismo de espiritualidad, urge recuperar la sacralidad del enunciado. Volver a pensar como quien reza. Escribir como quien ofrece. Hablar como quien canta lo que no entiende, pero lo ama.

Existir, entonces, no es solo estar. Es participar. Ser en respuesta. Y el lenguaje es esa respuesta en forma de alabanza. Como diría Simone Weil, “la atención pura es oración”. Y podríamos añadir: la palabra pura, también.

Porque el mundo no puede ser ciego si ha sido creado por el Dios que ve. Y nosotros no podemos quedarnos mudos si hemos sido hechos a imagen del Verbo.

Que la palabra vuelva a ser umbral. Que el pensamiento sea lámpara. Que el ser vuelva a ser asombro.