Sicut In Caelo Et In Terra

We have that sentiment for heaven, even though we may not be conscious of it. The memories of our past, that nostalgic feel. Then a thought is evoked: 'How I wish it could be like before? What joy we had in times past! Why can't I turn back the time?'

I propose that this longing for the past is, in fact, a longing for the future. What future? the hope of heaven perhaps. Our telos, our real destiny; the longing for our true home. Heaven is where all our genuine friendships will be relived; where the sense of intersubjectivity, the sense of love, care and affection that we gave and felt, would come alive.

This longing for the past, from an existentialist point of view, is a form of hope, that one day all that was true, good and beautiful will not be caught up in the past and will be in the eternal present of heaven. The hope of heaven is the antidote to nihilism, a nihilism, as Allan Bloom puts it 'that enjoys itself on the way to oblivion convinced that all of this - the world, us, relationships, beauty, history - is really a cosmic joke.'

Nihilism encourages an extreme form of individualism. Since there is no objective meaning in life, then I create my own values, a sort of Nietzschean experiment of transvaluation. I would be, myself, the 'Superman' of Zarathustra. This chaotic freedom would be the deathblow to all societies, in the sense that in would go contrary to the communal aspect of society. The political question of 'how ought we live together?' is replaced by 'how ought I impose my will on others?' Such ideas breed tyrants.

The above then can be summarized into the following points:

• Man has a longing for heaven;
• A heaven that has an intersubjective dimension;
• This intersubjectivity must permeate society;
• to avoid 'atomism', an overtly individualist and self-sufficient perception of self;
• of which may give rise to oppression and tyranny.