Contents -- Foreword -- Introduction -- Preface -- 1 The First Premise: Realism -- Our Subject -- The Method of Research Is Imposed by the Object: A Reflection on One's Own Experience -- Experience Implies an Evaluation -- Criterion for the Evaluation -- Elementary Experience -- Man, the Ultimate Judge? -- Ascesis for Liberation -- 2 The Second Premise: Reasonableness -- Reasonableness: A Structural Requirement of Man -- Reductive Use of Reason -- Diversity of Procedures -- A Particularly Important Procedure -- An Application of the Method of Moral Certainty: Faith -- 3 The Third Premise: The Impact of Morality on the Dynamic of Knowing -- Reason Inseparable from the Unity of the "I" -- Reason Bound to Feeling -- The Hypothesis of Reason Without Interference -- An Existential Question and a Question of Method -- Another Point of View -- The Morality of Knowing -- Preconception -- 4 The Religious Sense: The Starting Point -- Premise -- How to Proceed -- The "I"-in-Action -- Involvement with Life -- Aspects of the Involvement -- A Double Reality -- Corollary -- The Materialistic Reduction -- 5 The Religious Sense: Its Nature -- Premise -- The Level of Certain Questions -- At the Core of Our Being -- The Need for a Total Answer -- Disproportion Before the Total Answer -- Structural Disproportion -- Sadness -- The Nature of the "I" as Promise -- The Religious Sense as a Dimension -- Conclusion -- 6 Unreasonable Positions Before the Ultimate Question: Emptying the Question -- Premise -- The Theoretical Denial of the Questions -- The Voluntaristic Substitution of Questions -- Personal Praxis -- Utopianism -- The Social Project -- The Practical Denial of the Questions -- 7 Unreasonable Positions Before the Ultimate Question: Reduction of the Question -- The Aesthetic or Sentimental Evasion -- The Desperate Negation.

The Impossible Aspiration ("The Impotent Hope") -- Reality as Illusion -- Nothingness as Essence -- Alienation -- 8 Consequences of the Unreasonable Positions Before the Ultimate Question -- The Break with the Past -- Incommunicativeness and Solitude -- Loss of Freedom -- 9 Preconception, Ideology, Rationality, and the Religious Sense -- Preconceptions: Clarifications -- Ideology -- Reason -- The Religious Sense and Rationality -- 10 How the Ultimate Questions Arise: The Way of the Religious Sense -- Awe of the "Presence" -- The Cosmos -- "Providential" Reality -- The Dependent "I" -- The Law of the Heart -- Conclusion -- 11 The Experience of the Sign -- Provocation -- The Sign -- Irrational Denial -- Life as Need -- You, the Supreme Sign -- The Discovery of Reason -- Openings -- 12 The Adventure of Interpretation -- The Factor of Freedom Before the Ultimate Enigma -- The World as Parable -- 13 An Education in Freedom -- Education in Freedom as Responsibility -- An Education in Learning How to Ask -- The Experience of Risk -- 14 Reason's Energy Seeks to Penetrate the Unknown -- Reason's Driving Force -- A Vertiginous Position -- Reason's Impatience -- A Distorting Point of View -- Idols -- A Consequence -- Dynamics of the Identification of the Idol -- Conclusion -- 15 The Hypothesis of Revelation: Conditions for Its Acceptability -- Notes -- Subject Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Author Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- P -- R -- S -- T -- W -- Y -- Permissions.