The Catholic Media Group will be hosting a public talk by Senator Barnaby Joyce on "Philosophies and Ethics in Politics" on Monday 19th May 2008 at 6pm in the Library. The talk will be followed by a light supper and drinks.
The cost of the evening will be $10 and those intending attending should RSVP by Sunday 16th May to cclibrarybookmarks@gmail.com
The Catholic Media Group is an informal network of journalists established in April 2007 to provide a forum to discuss ethical and work-related issues, and create a network of Catholic professionals in the journalistic field. Though it exists to serve its members, talks held by the Group are open to general public and all members of the Library are most welcome to attend.
Showing posts with label Philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philosophy. Show all posts
08 May 2008
26 April 2008
Off the Shelves 8
For our next extract we are pleased to introduce Hilda Graef (1907-1970), best known for her translations of the Church Father and works on Christian mysticism. In Modern Gloom and Christian Hope (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1959) she examines the literature of those who "portray the dark sides of life and stress the meaninglessness of existence" such as Kierkegaard, de Beauvoir, Osborne and Mauriac. This extract is taken from the final chapter, contains some thought provoking lines on reason and human existence.
We are living in an age of wars and rumours of wars, under the threat of H-bombs, horrifying dictatorships, and general uncertainty. Yet, except for the wider technical powers for destruction, is our time so very much more insecure than other ages, do we have more reason for gloom and despair that former generations? There have always been wars, and they have by no means always been restricted only to the actual combatants- rape and arosn, murder of women and children, famine and disease have always been their horrible accompaniments. Even in he Europ of the Middle Ages, so often regarded as a paradise of Christian life and virtue, the daily life of the citizen was most insecure, the traveling merchant was always in dagner of being robbed and murdered, and the absence of medical knowledge made epidemics far more dangerous and widespread than they are now: In the midst of life we are surrounde by death," says the author of a medieval hymn. So it has always been and so it wil remain to the Last Day.
It is not therefore the greater insecurity of modern life that produces the pessimistic outlook of contemporary thinkers- and we must remember that the "Father" of existentialism and all its melancholy offspring lived in the extraordinarily secure atmosphere of nineteenth century Denmark. No. Political circumstances have little to do with it, and not even personal material circumstances- for nearly all the outstanding exponents of gloom are highly successful authors. The spiritual situation of these writers is similar to that of the ancient pagans before their conversion to Christianity, of whom St. Paul says in his Letter to the Ephesians that they had no hope and were without God in the world. For hope is inseperable from God; if we have lost belief in God, there is nothing left to sustain us in the trials and difficulties of our life. Yet it is true that there have at all times been many unbelievers who have not held the utterly black, despairing view of life which is prevalent in our own times, and, on the other hand, some of the pessimistic authors analyzed in thes epages such as Kierkegaard, Mauriac, Graham Greene, are believing Christians. There must be something that custs across even the demarcation line that separates believers from unbelievers. Here, too, we can trace the roots of "modern" pessimism back to Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard had been disappointed in reason, which he more or less equated with the system of Hegel, and he had also been disappoined in love, in his broken engagement with Regine Olsen. Besides, his relationship with his stern, unbending father had had a very unhappy influence on his own life. That is to say the principal factors in human existence had gone wrong for him. Human Fatherhood is a reflection of the divine Fatherhood, human reason the created image of the Word of God, the Logos, Himself the image of the Father, and human love the earthly image of the Holy Spirit, the divine Person who is the bond of love between the Father and the Son. If all these become distorted in one way or another, the human mirror which was meant to reflect the divine life is broken, and what it reflects is not an image, but a caricature.
Perhaps the most serious distortion was brough about by Kierkegaard's depreciation of reason. Man is traditionally defined as the "rational animal", for his reason is the trait that distinguishes him most radically from all other living things. True, reason can be overestimated, as was done in the so-called Enlightenment of the eighteenth century which resulted in the dethronement of the "goddess reason" in the French Revolution of 1789. In this case God will be denied, because He can never be fully comprehended by reason. But the human being will still be respected and the world will be seen as subject to man, this part of the creation account in Genesis will at least still appear to be valid. Nevertheless, rationalism carries the germ of its own destruction, because this is a fallen world, its subjection to man is no longer complete, and man himself is subject to death and suffering. This is why existentialism is so horribly plausible to our contemporaries, especially as the fallacy of an optimistic rationalism stands out very forcefully against a background of suffering and irrational destruction brought about by the social and political upheavals of our time. For, as Camus and Sartre have rightly seen, man's reason revolts against death and suffering, and as life necessarily ends in one, and contains a goodly amount of the other, they feel that it is governed by absurdity- as indeed is only to be expected if human existence is a "being thrown" from nought to nought, as Heidegger has it.
But man cannot deny reason with impunity. When he drives it out by the front door, it will return by the backdoor and play havoc with his most cherished beliefs- or unbeliefs. For the Genesis story about Adam, who was told by God to give names to the animals He had created, contains a profound truth. The earth was made for man, man can understand and use it, because he has been given reason; if he could not do so, if the world were wholly absurd and closed to all reasoning, man would long have perished, for he could never have subjected it as he has actually done. But there is, indeed, an irrational element in the world, there are powers that play havoc with man's labours, though far less so than our professional pessmists would have us believe. Christianity has never denied this- quite the contrary. The reason for this element of "absurdity", for man's very incomplete mastery of nature, for suffering and death, is Original Sin; that is man's failure to submit to God. Ma's revolt is the cause of nature's revolt and of death itself, of all the "dread " which henceforth is part and parcel of human life; precisely because man was not originally made for death and decay, but for eternal happiness.
The Christian is far from denying thes enegative elements in human existence; they are there, and they have their own part to play. But this does not invalidte reason nor does it permit us to consider human life and the world in which it is lived as absurd. And if the existentialists call for engagement, if they try to better the lot of the human race- however mistaken the means they may often adopt towards this end- does not just this make nonsense of all their assumptions? Sartre says "Hell is the others" (L'enfer, c'est les autres), and proceeds straighaway to join the communist party which has no room for the self-sufficient isolation expressed in this dictum. The old pagans, who, in St. Paul's words, knoew not God and were without hope in the world, would not have dreamt of engagement, and devotion to the betterment of the human lot. For how can despair and the belief in total absurdity lead to such an engagement, except to prove that the cult of the absurd is itself absurd; that man simply cannot live without a meaning to his life? We can deny reason on paper, in "clever" books and novels and plays- we cannot deny it in our own lives. Reason belongs inescapably to our human existence.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born of Jewish and Protestant ancestry, she abandoned her faith as a child and became immersed in the political and social upheaval of her native Germany. At seventeen she visited a Catholic church, where she felt an immediate attraction to its ceremonies and devotions but she was still very much an unbeliever. After finishing school she studied English and religion at the University of Berlin, with hopes of becoming a fashion journalist, but her mother did not approve and she settled on becoming a teacher. The ascendancy of the Nazi party forced her to emigrate to England, where she was employed at a private school until offered a bursary to study Anglican theology. In her second year while studying the teachings of the Church Fathers she discovered the reasonableness of Christianity and absurdity of her German Lutheran teachers.
Taking her examination in 1940, she graduated with a first class degree, conferred by the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, but owing to her nationality could not find any work. Forced to live off charity, she found plenty of time to immersed herself in the works of St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John of the Cross, GK Chesterton and RH Benson, interspersed with the Spiritual Exercises. Naturally such reading led her to accept the Catholic faith and she was received into the Church in 1941. To support herself she began writing articles on mysticism in Blackfriars and on German affairs in The Tablet. Her knowledge of Greek also led to an appointment as assistant to the editor of a lexicon of Patristic Greek.
Approached by Mercier Press to submit a manuscript for publication, she edited and expanded her articles in Blackfriars, which was published as The Way of the Mystics. This was followed by yet another request to write on the stigmatist, Therese Neumann, who had recently been in the news. At first sceptial about Neumann, she agredd to the work and to assist in her research made a trip to Konnersreuth. There she interviewed her but was unable to observe the stigmata owing to the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Returning to Oxford she worked on her first translation from the Church Fathers, St. Gregory of Nyssa's sermons on the Beatitudes and Lord's prayer. While working on the translation she received two letters, one from a Dominican nun, the other a Capuchin priest, enquiring if she knew of Edith Stein. This led to yet another pilgrimage to places associated with the future saint and the result was The Scholar and the Cross.
At the prompting of her mother, who had joined her in England, she wrote her autobiography, From Fashions to the Fathers, and a few years later her monumental two volume history of Marian doctrine and devotion. However her greatest interest continued to be mysticism and she explored it in greater depth in her works Mystics of Our Times, The Light and the Rainbow, and The Story of Mysticism.
We are living in an age of wars and rumours of wars, under the threat of H-bombs, horrifying dictatorships, and general uncertainty. Yet, except for the wider technical powers for destruction, is our time so very much more insecure than other ages, do we have more reason for gloom and despair that former generations? There have always been wars, and they have by no means always been restricted only to the actual combatants- rape and arosn, murder of women and children, famine and disease have always been their horrible accompaniments. Even in he Europ of the Middle Ages, so often regarded as a paradise of Christian life and virtue, the daily life of the citizen was most insecure, the traveling merchant was always in dagner of being robbed and murdered, and the absence of medical knowledge made epidemics far more dangerous and widespread than they are now: In the midst of life we are surrounde by death," says the author of a medieval hymn. So it has always been and so it wil remain to the Last Day.
It is not therefore the greater insecurity of modern life that produces the pessimistic outlook of contemporary thinkers- and we must remember that the "Father" of existentialism and all its melancholy offspring lived in the extraordinarily secure atmosphere of nineteenth century Denmark. No. Political circumstances have little to do with it, and not even personal material circumstances- for nearly all the outstanding exponents of gloom are highly successful authors. The spiritual situation of these writers is similar to that of the ancient pagans before their conversion to Christianity, of whom St. Paul says in his Letter to the Ephesians that they had no hope and were without God in the world. For hope is inseperable from God; if we have lost belief in God, there is nothing left to sustain us in the trials and difficulties of our life. Yet it is true that there have at all times been many unbelievers who have not held the utterly black, despairing view of life which is prevalent in our own times, and, on the other hand, some of the pessimistic authors analyzed in thes epages such as Kierkegaard, Mauriac, Graham Greene, are believing Christians. There must be something that custs across even the demarcation line that separates believers from unbelievers. Here, too, we can trace the roots of "modern" pessimism back to Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard had been disappointed in reason, which he more or less equated with the system of Hegel, and he had also been disappoined in love, in his broken engagement with Regine Olsen. Besides, his relationship with his stern, unbending father had had a very unhappy influence on his own life. That is to say the principal factors in human existence had gone wrong for him. Human Fatherhood is a reflection of the divine Fatherhood, human reason the created image of the Word of God, the Logos, Himself the image of the Father, and human love the earthly image of the Holy Spirit, the divine Person who is the bond of love between the Father and the Son. If all these become distorted in one way or another, the human mirror which was meant to reflect the divine life is broken, and what it reflects is not an image, but a caricature.
Perhaps the most serious distortion was brough about by Kierkegaard's depreciation of reason. Man is traditionally defined as the "rational animal", for his reason is the trait that distinguishes him most radically from all other living things. True, reason can be overestimated, as was done in the so-called Enlightenment of the eighteenth century which resulted in the dethronement of the "goddess reason" in the French Revolution of 1789. In this case God will be denied, because He can never be fully comprehended by reason. But the human being will still be respected and the world will be seen as subject to man, this part of the creation account in Genesis will at least still appear to be valid. Nevertheless, rationalism carries the germ of its own destruction, because this is a fallen world, its subjection to man is no longer complete, and man himself is subject to death and suffering. This is why existentialism is so horribly plausible to our contemporaries, especially as the fallacy of an optimistic rationalism stands out very forcefully against a background of suffering and irrational destruction brought about by the social and political upheavals of our time. For, as Camus and Sartre have rightly seen, man's reason revolts against death and suffering, and as life necessarily ends in one, and contains a goodly amount of the other, they feel that it is governed by absurdity- as indeed is only to be expected if human existence is a "being thrown" from nought to nought, as Heidegger has it.
But man cannot deny reason with impunity. When he drives it out by the front door, it will return by the backdoor and play havoc with his most cherished beliefs- or unbeliefs. For the Genesis story about Adam, who was told by God to give names to the animals He had created, contains a profound truth. The earth was made for man, man can understand and use it, because he has been given reason; if he could not do so, if the world were wholly absurd and closed to all reasoning, man would long have perished, for he could never have subjected it as he has actually done. But there is, indeed, an irrational element in the world, there are powers that play havoc with man's labours, though far less so than our professional pessmists would have us believe. Christianity has never denied this- quite the contrary. The reason for this element of "absurdity", for man's very incomplete mastery of nature, for suffering and death, is Original Sin; that is man's failure to submit to God. Ma's revolt is the cause of nature's revolt and of death itself, of all the "dread " which henceforth is part and parcel of human life; precisely because man was not originally made for death and decay, but for eternal happiness.
The Christian is far from denying thes enegative elements in human existence; they are there, and they have their own part to play. But this does not invalidte reason nor does it permit us to consider human life and the world in which it is lived as absurd. And if the existentialists call for engagement, if they try to better the lot of the human race- however mistaken the means they may often adopt towards this end- does not just this make nonsense of all their assumptions? Sartre says "Hell is the others" (L'enfer, c'est les autres), and proceeds straighaway to join the communist party which has no room for the self-sufficient isolation expressed in this dictum. The old pagans, who, in St. Paul's words, knoew not God and were without hope in the world, would not have dreamt of engagement, and devotion to the betterment of the human lot. For how can despair and the belief in total absurdity lead to such an engagement, except to prove that the cult of the absurd is itself absurd; that man simply cannot live without a meaning to his life? We can deny reason on paper, in "clever" books and novels and plays- we cannot deny it in our own lives. Reason belongs inescapably to our human existence.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born of Jewish and Protestant ancestry, she abandoned her faith as a child and became immersed in the political and social upheaval of her native Germany. At seventeen she visited a Catholic church, where she felt an immediate attraction to its ceremonies and devotions but she was still very much an unbeliever. After finishing school she studied English and religion at the University of Berlin, with hopes of becoming a fashion journalist, but her mother did not approve and she settled on becoming a teacher. The ascendancy of the Nazi party forced her to emigrate to England, where she was employed at a private school until offered a bursary to study Anglican theology. In her second year while studying the teachings of the Church Fathers she discovered the reasonableness of Christianity and absurdity of her German Lutheran teachers.
Taking her examination in 1940, she graduated with a first class degree, conferred by the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, but owing to her nationality could not find any work. Forced to live off charity, she found plenty of time to immersed herself in the works of St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John of the Cross, GK Chesterton and RH Benson, interspersed with the Spiritual Exercises. Naturally such reading led her to accept the Catholic faith and she was received into the Church in 1941. To support herself she began writing articles on mysticism in Blackfriars and on German affairs in The Tablet. Her knowledge of Greek also led to an appointment as assistant to the editor of a lexicon of Patristic Greek.
Approached by Mercier Press to submit a manuscript for publication, she edited and expanded her articles in Blackfriars, which was published as The Way of the Mystics. This was followed by yet another request to write on the stigmatist, Therese Neumann, who had recently been in the news. At first sceptial about Neumann, she agredd to the work and to assist in her research made a trip to Konnersreuth. There she interviewed her but was unable to observe the stigmata owing to the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Returning to Oxford she worked on her first translation from the Church Fathers, St. Gregory of Nyssa's sermons on the Beatitudes and Lord's prayer. While working on the translation she received two letters, one from a Dominican nun, the other a Capuchin priest, enquiring if she knew of Edith Stein. This led to yet another pilgrimage to places associated with the future saint and the result was The Scholar and the Cross.
At the prompting of her mother, who had joined her in England, she wrote her autobiography, From Fashions to the Fathers, and a few years later her monumental two volume history of Marian doctrine and devotion. However her greatest interest continued to be mysticism and she explored it in greater depth in her works Mystics of Our Times, The Light and the Rainbow, and The Story of Mysticism.
Off the Shelves 7
Continuing with the theme of contemporary philosophers we present Fr. Stanley Jaki OSB.
Fr. Jaki is a Hungarian-born priest of the Benedictine Order, member of the Pontifical Academy for Science and receipient of the Templeton Prize in 1987. Holding doctorates in both physics and theology, his publications have covered such diverse subjects as the Bible, clerical celibacy, Pierre Duhem, John Henry Newman, papacy, history and philosophy of science. In Means to Message: A Treatise on Truth (Grand Rapids: William B Eerdmans, 1999) he provides a "rigorous, highly original presentation of the claim that any consistent philosophy must be steeped in a realist epistemology that is fully open to metaphysics." The folowing is from chapter 1.
A book with the subtitle, "a treatise on truth", must, from its inception on, convey its author's resolve to face up to the question: What is truth? The question evokes Pilate's skepticism as well as Francis Bacon's observation: "'What is truth? said jesting Pilate and would not stay for an answer.'" The reader is asked to stay for the length of a few paragraphs to see the first intimaitons of the answer to be unfolded in this treatise which is emphatically meant to be on truth and not on a set of opinions about it. Those who find ths dogmatic may very well reflect for a moment whether it is not the same dogmatism that motivates their reaction. An apparently detached but actually unswerving, that is, dogmatic adherence to this or that "opinion" or even to one's "considered view" should seem less commednable than an undisguised presentation of this or that statement of truth, even if this presses for dogmatism.
Opinions about truth are legion and invariably have a dogmatic touch to them. All the hundred and fifty or so dicta on truth in Mencken's New Dictionary of Quotations lay down something very definite. It is affirmed that th value of truth is priceless, that truth is universal, that ultimately truth would triumph, that children and fools are alike prompt with it, that truth and roses are equally endowed with thorns, that truth is naked as well as tough. AMong these dicta there is, however, only one that would qualify as an answer to the question, What is Truth? Even Shakespeare's answer, "Truth is truth, until the end of reckoning", is in part an apparent tautology and in part an assertion of truth's exacting nature. Shakespeare, to whom we owe many pithy statements, full of philosophical depth, could, of course, very well suggest that truth was tuth because it was irreducible to anything else and the reckoning merely separated truth from falsehood.
In Mencken's list, which is chronological, three scores of names are from antiquity, Tertullian being the last of them. The next in the list is Wyclif. The two are separated by twelve centuries, most of them medieval centuries, all apparently void of quotable remarks about truth. Yet to that age belongs a definition of truth which would certainly pass for a straight answer to the plain question, What is Truth. The answer, "adequatio rei ad intellectum", is Aquinas' definition of truth. It often turns up in modern reflections on philosophy in proof of the universally shared conviction that truth somehow be connected with reality. [1]
Instead of relaity it may be better to speak of objects. The immediate and pressing reason for speaking of objects rather than of reality, does not lie in the incredibly vast extent and variety of meanings that can and have been attached to the word truth. The reason relates to the title of this book, "means to message". Whenever a philosopher offers the kind of message which is philosophy, it must contain, at the very minimum, a justification of the means used to convey the message to beings no less real than the author himself. The means therefore is not a medium, or a tool contrived for the purpose of making the message indistinguishable from its packaging or even subordinate to it. Whereas Marshall McLuhan of "the medium is the message" fame helped focus on this widespread abuse in communications, he did not care to disentangle the means from the medium. As a result he unwittingly fueled an abuse already reaching crisis proportions in public discourse, where what counts is no longer the message but the manner in which it is perceived. This sinister trend has not spared discourse about philosophy. In the "publish or perish" syndrome the book counts more than its message, which, to make all this worse, hardly ever contains even a fleeting reflection of the truth of the book itself.
[1] "Adequatio rei ad intellectum" is translated "the conformity of what is conceived in the mind with what actually exists outside the mind."
Off the Shelves 6
From philosophers of the past, we turn to one from the present, Professor Peter Kreeft.
Peter Kreeft is a convert from Calvinism, professor of philosophy at Boston College, author of more than 45 books and one of the best known Catholic apologists today. He has also been an influential figure among younger Catholics with his ability to present and refute relativism, secularism and scepticism in an engaging and entertaining style, calling to mind another great apologist, GK Chesterton. In A Refutation of Moral Relativism (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999) Kreeft uses a dialogue between Isa, a "Muslim fundamentalist" absolutist, and Libby, a "Black feminist" reporter to decide if there are any moral absolutes in the world. The following extract is from chapter 2.
Libby: So can you define relativism for us, Professor?
Isa: Yes. Relativisim is the philosophy that denies absolutes. Any absolutes. Everyone believes there are many relativities, that some things are relative; but relativism claims that all things are relative.
Libby: That seems very clear.
Isa: Except that there a different kinds of relativism. I cna think of at least four important kinds that we have to distinguish: metaphysical relativism, epistemological relativism, moral relativism, and religious relativism. You can claim there are no absolutes anywhere in reality- that's metaphysical relativism. Or anywhere in human knowledge- that's epistemological relativism. Or anywhere in morality- that's moral relativism. Or anywhere in religion- that's religious relativism.
Libby: So is religious relativism the same as atheisim?
Isa: No. Metaphysical relativism is the same as atheism (assuming "God" means the "Absolute Being"). Metaphysics is about being. Religion is about relationships with the Absolute Being. So religious relativism says there's no absolute religion, no absolutely best or truests religious relationship with God. Atheism says there's no God, no Absolute Being, no absolute anywhere in reality.
Libby: What's epistemological relativism?
Isa: It says, "Perhaps there is a metaphysical absolute, an Absolute Being, somewhere; but it can't be known. There's no absolute in human knowledge.
Libby: So epistemological relativism means scepticism.
Isa: Scepticism about the Absolute, at least, or agnosticism. Or it could be total scepticism, scepticism about all reality.
Libby: And now where does moral relativism fit in?
Isa: Well, metaphysical relativism says, "No absolute in reality", and epistemologicla relativism says, "Perhaps in reality but not in knowledge", and then moral relativism says, "Perhaps there are absolutes in nonmoral knowledge, like 'two plus two makes four', but not in moral knowledge: we know no moral absolutes. And then, finally, religious relativism says, "Perhaps in moral knowledge but no in religious knowledge. Perhaps love, or the Golden Rule, or justice can be known to be absolute, but no religion can."
Libby: And why do we need to define these three relativisms to talk about moral relativism?
Isa: So we can distinguish it from them and confine ourselves to it.
Libby: All right. So now let's focus more exactly on what you mean by moral relativism and moral absolutism.
Isa: We need to define the two words moral and absolute. Let's take moral first. How do we use the word? It's used to refer to a quality of people and their deeds, interior and exterior, hat we express by the words good and bad, or good and evil. But not all good is moral good: a good car, for instance. So more specifically, moral good and bad means right and wrong. Even there, we have to be more specific, since something can be "right" without being morally right: the right answer to a puzzle, for instance. So let's say morality is about what we ought to do and ought not to do. Another word for ought is n imperative, or an obligation. I think everyone understand what moral mens, from ordinary language usage, so I'd rather not go any deeper into questions philosophers have about defing that term now. I'd like to stick to ordinary language and talk to ordinary people.
Libby: That you, Professor Extraordinaire. And now what about defining absolutism and relativism?
Isa: As I said, relativism says there are no absolutes. Absolutely no absolutes. Absolutism says there are some absolutes. At least one absolute. Absolutism is relatively absolutistic, and relativism is absolutely relativistic.
Libby: Ah, we're going to refute relativism by a brilliant word juggling trick, I see.
Isa: No, we're not. We're going to give ordinary language meanings, that's all.
Libby: Then what does relative mean, and what does absolute mean?
Isa: Relative is always "relative to something else", contingent upon something else, conditional upon something else. Absolute means "not relative", not contingent but necessary, not conditioned but unconditioned. No ifs, ands, or buts.
Libby: Could you give eaxmples?
Isa: Certainly. "Don't steal if it hurts anybody" is a relative moral imperative. "Don't steal, period" is an absolute one.
Libby: What Kant called a "Categorical Imperative".
Isa: Yes. But "Be good to others if and when you want them to be good to you" is not a moral absolute. "Be good to others always" is.
Libby: So absolutes are unchangeable.
Isa: Yes, and universal, and objective. Those are the three characteristics that distinguish an absolute. It is not relative to time, so it doesn't change. And it's not relative to place or nation or class or culture or race or gender or any group - it's universal. Third, it's not relative to opinion or thought or belief o desire or feeling or any subjective consciousness. It's objectively real, objectively true, whether I or you or anyone else knows it, or believes it, or likes it, or cares bout it, or obeys it.
Libby: So personal opinions and beliefs and feelings and motivations and intentions- they don't change morality.
Isa: No ...
Libby: So intentions aren't important, only the rules?
Isa: No, that's not right. Some moral rules are about intentions. Others are about external deeds. For instance, "don't be greedy" is about intentions, and "don't steal" is about deeds. But both are absolute. Greed and theft are both wrong- always wrong, for everyone. No exceptions.
Libby: So a good intention doesn't make a deed good?
Isa: It doesn't make a bad deed good.
Libby: So love isn't enough? A sincere, loving intention isn't enough? Is that what you're saying?
Isa: That's what I am saying. If I kill you because I'm sincerely trying to help the poor but killing the rich, that's still a bad deed.
Libby: So only deeds count, not intentions?
Isa: No, both count. You need good deeds and good intentions. Neither one can substitute for the other. A good deed doesn't change a bad intention into a good one, so a good intention doesn't change a bad deed into a good one either.
Libby: And what about situations? Changing situations don't change morality either, according to your absolutism?
Isa: No, they change how you should apply the rules, but they don't change the rules.
Libby: So its just as wrong for Jean Valjean in Les Miserables to steal a loaf of bread to feed his starving family as it is for Blackbeard the Pirate to steal the King's gold to make himself rich? Is that what you're saying?
Isa: No, I say Jean Valjean did not steal at all. He had a right to that food. Blackbeard had no right to the gold.
Libby: I see. So the situation doesn't ever change stealing from wrong to right, but it sometimes changes taking from stealing to not stealing.
Isa: Very well put, Libby.
Libby: I'm not your student, Professor, I'm your interviewer.
Isa: Oh. Sorry.
Libby: Let's be sure I understand this. You're a moral absolutist, but you'd say it was morally right for a Dutch family who were hiding Jews from the Nazis to lie to the Nazis when they came to search the house, right? I mean yu'd say that wasn't lying at all, because the Nazis had no right to know. Is that right?
Isa: Yes. The Nazis had no right to know that truth, and the Jews had a right to conceal it, and the Dutch had a right to deceive the Nazis about it- an obligation, even. So it wasn't wrong. Lying is always wrong, and that wasn't wrong, so that wasn't a lie, just as Jean Valjean stealing the bread wasn't a theft. So the absolutes remain: never lie, never steal.
Peter Kreeft is a convert from Calvinism, professor of philosophy at Boston College, author of more than 45 books and one of the best known Catholic apologists today. He has also been an influential figure among younger Catholics with his ability to present and refute relativism, secularism and scepticism in an engaging and entertaining style, calling to mind another great apologist, GK Chesterton. In A Refutation of Moral Relativism (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999) Kreeft uses a dialogue between Isa, a "Muslim fundamentalist" absolutist, and Libby, a "Black feminist" reporter to decide if there are any moral absolutes in the world. The following extract is from chapter 2.
Libby: So can you define relativism for us, Professor?
Isa: Yes. Relativisim is the philosophy that denies absolutes. Any absolutes. Everyone believes there are many relativities, that some things are relative; but relativism claims that all things are relative.
Libby: That seems very clear.
Isa: Except that there a different kinds of relativism. I cna think of at least four important kinds that we have to distinguish: metaphysical relativism, epistemological relativism, moral relativism, and religious relativism. You can claim there are no absolutes anywhere in reality- that's metaphysical relativism. Or anywhere in human knowledge- that's epistemological relativism. Or anywhere in morality- that's moral relativism. Or anywhere in religion- that's religious relativism.
Libby: So is religious relativism the same as atheisim?
Isa: No. Metaphysical relativism is the same as atheism (assuming "God" means the "Absolute Being"). Metaphysics is about being. Religion is about relationships with the Absolute Being. So religious relativism says there's no absolute religion, no absolutely best or truests religious relationship with God. Atheism says there's no God, no Absolute Being, no absolute anywhere in reality.
Libby: What's epistemological relativism?
Isa: It says, "Perhaps there is a metaphysical absolute, an Absolute Being, somewhere; but it can't be known. There's no absolute in human knowledge.
Libby: So epistemological relativism means scepticism.
Isa: Scepticism about the Absolute, at least, or agnosticism. Or it could be total scepticism, scepticism about all reality.
Libby: And now where does moral relativism fit in?
Isa: Well, metaphysical relativism says, "No absolute in reality", and epistemologicla relativism says, "Perhaps in reality but not in knowledge", and then moral relativism says, "Perhaps there are absolutes in nonmoral knowledge, like 'two plus two makes four', but not in moral knowledge: we know no moral absolutes. And then, finally, religious relativism says, "Perhaps in moral knowledge but no in religious knowledge. Perhaps love, or the Golden Rule, or justice can be known to be absolute, but no religion can."
Libby: And why do we need to define these three relativisms to talk about moral relativism?
Isa: So we can distinguish it from them and confine ourselves to it.
Libby: All right. So now let's focus more exactly on what you mean by moral relativism and moral absolutism.
Isa: We need to define the two words moral and absolute. Let's take moral first. How do we use the word? It's used to refer to a quality of people and their deeds, interior and exterior, hat we express by the words good and bad, or good and evil. But not all good is moral good: a good car, for instance. So more specifically, moral good and bad means right and wrong. Even there, we have to be more specific, since something can be "right" without being morally right: the right answer to a puzzle, for instance. So let's say morality is about what we ought to do and ought not to do. Another word for ought is n imperative, or an obligation. I think everyone understand what moral mens, from ordinary language usage, so I'd rather not go any deeper into questions philosophers have about defing that term now. I'd like to stick to ordinary language and talk to ordinary people.
Libby: That you, Professor Extraordinaire. And now what about defining absolutism and relativism?
Isa: As I said, relativism says there are no absolutes. Absolutely no absolutes. Absolutism says there are some absolutes. At least one absolute. Absolutism is relatively absolutistic, and relativism is absolutely relativistic.
Libby: Ah, we're going to refute relativism by a brilliant word juggling trick, I see.
Isa: No, we're not. We're going to give ordinary language meanings, that's all.
Libby: Then what does relative mean, and what does absolute mean?
Isa: Relative is always "relative to something else", contingent upon something else, conditional upon something else. Absolute means "not relative", not contingent but necessary, not conditioned but unconditioned. No ifs, ands, or buts.
Libby: Could you give eaxmples?
Isa: Certainly. "Don't steal if it hurts anybody" is a relative moral imperative. "Don't steal, period" is an absolute one.
Libby: What Kant called a "Categorical Imperative".
Isa: Yes. But "Be good to others if and when you want them to be good to you" is not a moral absolute. "Be good to others always" is.
Libby: So absolutes are unchangeable.
Isa: Yes, and universal, and objective. Those are the three characteristics that distinguish an absolute. It is not relative to time, so it doesn't change. And it's not relative to place or nation or class or culture or race or gender or any group - it's universal. Third, it's not relative to opinion or thought or belief o desire or feeling or any subjective consciousness. It's objectively real, objectively true, whether I or you or anyone else knows it, or believes it, or likes it, or cares bout it, or obeys it.
Libby: So personal opinions and beliefs and feelings and motivations and intentions- they don't change morality.
Isa: No ...
Libby: So intentions aren't important, only the rules?
Isa: No, that's not right. Some moral rules are about intentions. Others are about external deeds. For instance, "don't be greedy" is about intentions, and "don't steal" is about deeds. But both are absolute. Greed and theft are both wrong- always wrong, for everyone. No exceptions.
Libby: So a good intention doesn't make a deed good?
Isa: It doesn't make a bad deed good.
Libby: So love isn't enough? A sincere, loving intention isn't enough? Is that what you're saying?
Isa: That's what I am saying. If I kill you because I'm sincerely trying to help the poor but killing the rich, that's still a bad deed.
Libby: So only deeds count, not intentions?
Isa: No, both count. You need good deeds and good intentions. Neither one can substitute for the other. A good deed doesn't change a bad intention into a good one, so a good intention doesn't change a bad deed into a good one either.
Libby: And what about situations? Changing situations don't change morality either, according to your absolutism?
Isa: No, they change how you should apply the rules, but they don't change the rules.
Libby: So its just as wrong for Jean Valjean in Les Miserables to steal a loaf of bread to feed his starving family as it is for Blackbeard the Pirate to steal the King's gold to make himself rich? Is that what you're saying?
Isa: No, I say Jean Valjean did not steal at all. He had a right to that food. Blackbeard had no right to the gold.
Libby: I see. So the situation doesn't ever change stealing from wrong to right, but it sometimes changes taking from stealing to not stealing.
Isa: Very well put, Libby.
Libby: I'm not your student, Professor, I'm your interviewer.
Isa: Oh. Sorry.
Libby: Let's be sure I understand this. You're a moral absolutist, but you'd say it was morally right for a Dutch family who were hiding Jews from the Nazis to lie to the Nazis when they came to search the house, right? I mean yu'd say that wasn't lying at all, because the Nazis had no right to know. Is that right?
Isa: Yes. The Nazis had no right to know that truth, and the Jews had a right to conceal it, and the Dutch had a right to deceive the Nazis about it- an obligation, even. So it wasn't wrong. Lying is always wrong, and that wasn't wrong, so that wasn't a lie, just as Jean Valjean stealing the bread wasn't a theft. So the absolutes remain: never lie, never steal.
19 April 2008
Off the Shelves 4
From two Frenchmen we now consider three Englishmen: an artist, a philosopher and a historian.
Eric Gill (1882-1940) was an engraver, illustrator, sculptor and typographer. He was also an influential member of the Distributist movement and founder of a community of Catholic workmen, which combine the poverty of St. Francis and the rule of St. Dominic. In his book The Necessity of Belief (London: Faber & Faber, 1936) Gill gathers together "an impressive body of convergencies" to lead the reader "to admit the necessity of belief."
We can now proceed to argue the necessity of belief. And the necessity is a double one. It is not only necessary that men should be able to believe; it is also necessary that the should have something to believe in. Let us attack the first thing first. It is necessary to men that they should be able to believe.
We call a person 'matter of fact' when we mean that he accepts nothing except upon proof. It is rightly a term of reproach. Such a person is wanting in a faculty which other persons possess. But it is probable that no one is wholly incredulous. It is impossible for anyone to prove everything. Some people are more cautious than others, but no one can prove everything and believe nothing. On the lowest ground of human life such a state of mind would be impossible.
And when we come to examine the matter we find that even the evidence of our sense involves belief at the last. For I am not capable of proving with certain proof that the evidence of my sense is trustworthy. To see, to hear, to touch, to taste, to smell. How can I prove that what we seem to see, to hear, to touch, to taste, to smell is really what it seems to be, or is really there or anywhere at all? I am not asking anyone to deny the evidence of sense impressions or even to deny the validity of conclusions argued from that evidence. I am simply pointing out that it is ultimately by a kind of faith, by the use of the faculty of believing, that we accept the evidence of our senses, and that it is by another act of faith that we accept the conclusions of our arguments.
For it is not possible to prove the laws of thought, the law of contradiction and all the rest. Either thos elaws are true laws or they are not; we cannot prove them positively. And when we say that we are so constituted that we cannot doubt the laws of thought, we are saying that at least that elementary belief is a necessity. We must at least be able to believe that much. To be unable to accept the self-evident is absurd. We believe it to be absurd. We cannot prove it to be absurd, we can only believe it. It is no use arguing that unless a man accepts the self-evident he cannot hope to 'get on' and make money, or to live a decent life and see good days. For in such a case all argument is absurd and there is no meaning in meaning. Therefore, to start with, we start with an act of faith: belief in the self-evident is a necssity to man, and it is a necessity that he should have the ability to believe. The very ground of thought is unprovable, therefore, it we are to think, we must start by believing. The ability to believe is a necessity in the sense - sine qua nihil.
Fr. Martin D'Arcy (1888-1976) entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1906 and was ordained in 1921, having completed his studies at Oxford. Sent to teach at Stonyhurst, he returned to Oxford as Rector and Master of Campion Hall, before being appointed Provincial for England in 1945. Dismissed from the post five years later, he returned to a life of teaching and writing. Fr. D'Arcy is perhaps best known as one of the leading Catholic philosophers of his day and as an art collector. As a complement to Gill's work we present an extract from D'Arcy's The Nature of Belief (London: Sheed & Ward, 1931)
Eric Gill (1882-1940) was an engraver, illustrator, sculptor and typographer. He was also an influential member of the Distributist movement and founder of a community of Catholic workmen, which combine the poverty of St. Francis and the rule of St. Dominic. In his book The Necessity of Belief (London: Faber & Faber, 1936) Gill gathers together "an impressive body of convergencies" to lead the reader "to admit the necessity of belief."
We can now proceed to argue the necessity of belief. And the necessity is a double one. It is not only necessary that men should be able to believe; it is also necessary that the should have something to believe in. Let us attack the first thing first. It is necessary to men that they should be able to believe.
We call a person 'matter of fact' when we mean that he accepts nothing except upon proof. It is rightly a term of reproach. Such a person is wanting in a faculty which other persons possess. But it is probable that no one is wholly incredulous. It is impossible for anyone to prove everything. Some people are more cautious than others, but no one can prove everything and believe nothing. On the lowest ground of human life such a state of mind would be impossible.
And when we come to examine the matter we find that even the evidence of our sense involves belief at the last. For I am not capable of proving with certain proof that the evidence of my sense is trustworthy. To see, to hear, to touch, to taste, to smell. How can I prove that what we seem to see, to hear, to touch, to taste, to smell is really what it seems to be, or is really there or anywhere at all? I am not asking anyone to deny the evidence of sense impressions or even to deny the validity of conclusions argued from that evidence. I am simply pointing out that it is ultimately by a kind of faith, by the use of the faculty of believing, that we accept the evidence of our senses, and that it is by another act of faith that we accept the conclusions of our arguments.
For it is not possible to prove the laws of thought, the law of contradiction and all the rest. Either thos elaws are true laws or they are not; we cannot prove them positively. And when we say that we are so constituted that we cannot doubt the laws of thought, we are saying that at least that elementary belief is a necessity. We must at least be able to believe that much. To be unable to accept the self-evident is absurd. We believe it to be absurd. We cannot prove it to be absurd, we can only believe it. It is no use arguing that unless a man accepts the self-evident he cannot hope to 'get on' and make money, or to live a decent life and see good days. For in such a case all argument is absurd and there is no meaning in meaning. Therefore, to start with, we start with an act of faith: belief in the self-evident is a necssity to man, and it is a necessity that he should have the ability to believe. The very ground of thought is unprovable, therefore, it we are to think, we must start by believing. The ability to believe is a necessity in the sense - sine qua nihil.
Fr. Martin D'Arcy (1888-1976) entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1906 and was ordained in 1921, having completed his studies at Oxford. Sent to teach at Stonyhurst, he returned to Oxford as Rector and Master of Campion Hall, before being appointed Provincial for England in 1945. Dismissed from the post five years later, he returned to a life of teaching and writing. Fr. D'Arcy is perhaps best known as one of the leading Catholic philosophers of his day and as an art collector. As a complement to Gill's work we present an extract from D'Arcy's The Nature of Belief (London: Sheed & Ward, 1931)
From belief through interpretation we can pass to another use of the term "belief", as something distinct from "vision"- this will be used from now onward, unless the context makes another sense clear: fides ex auditu; belief on another's word, on authority and written testimony. This implies that we have not the evidence directly before us, that we are not compelled by what we see. I do not say that this distinction is free from ambiguity- there are some who would maintain that an assertion about the future must be a belief, and that communicated information may, if the medium be pure, deserve the name "direct- but it will serve. We shall never be in a position to see the correct solution to the problems involved, if we prejudge the matter and assume that belief is necessarily a form of knowledge inferior to vision. It has been the fashion for some time to extol experience and decry belief, and the result, as we shall see, has been unfortunate. To counteract the effect of this fashion it is necessary to begin with an apologia for belief.
In any community of men and women, large or small, both belief and experience are necessary for the continuation of life. The well-being of civilization depends on a well-adjusted balance between these two; and therefore the plea for belief which follows must not be understood as an attack on experience as such. Obviously the end and consummation of human activity is vision and enjoyment, and Christianity with its promise of the Beatific Vision in the hereafter has no other purpose than to prepare man for that beatitude. It comes into conflict, indeed, with secular ambitions, but this conflict is caused not by a denial of experience, but in its teaching that, so far as the supreme ideal is concerned, we must live by faith in this present life. This faith is, of course, religious and supernatural, but what is said of the highest can be applied also to mundane beliefs. The majority of men have always lived under authority and taken their belief from others. It is their right and duty at times to question customs, laws, authority and beliefs, but it certainly is not normal or wholesome to question everything. There may be a few who in the full vigor of their extraordinary powers are capable of doing this, but the average man and woman have neither the capacity nor the time. The danger is that we may feed them false hopes of so doing. Two results generally follow, conceit and cheap sophistry, with an aftermath of skepticism. The false hopes are encouraged by those in responsible positions, with the best of intentions and the vaguest of principles. Whereas, it is their part to have clear conceptions of the end in view, its possibilities and consequences, they trust to a good will and the shibboleths of the day. The policy and outlook of men who are otherwise level-headed have been weakened by a romantic conception of human nature, a conception dangerous in its consequences and apt to foster a spirit of unreality and even hypocrisy at meetings and conferences where the welfare and destiny of civilization are discussed. I say "unreality" because the weaknesses of human nature are slurred over or ignored, and it is taken for granted that a modicum of education and freedom are a divinely discovered means of rescuing man from the temptation to do wrong, to pursue selfishly ambitions and to judge intemperately and foolishly. The unreality of this cannot, however, be hidden altogether, and that is why hypocrisy enters in. The gibe intended for the church-going businessman, that he kept his piety for Sundays and his impiety for weekdays, recoils on those who having excited undue expectations have to spend most of their time frustrating them.
The truth surely is that men are a compound of strength and weakness, and so various in character and talents that it is madness to demand of them all the same critical judgment on the questions which have troubled even the greatest intellects. We all start life with beliefs which we have learnt from others, and we all need a discipline to mould our character and our thought. Nor does this cease at some adult stage. We never cease to rely on community life and to lean on good friends, to give of the one talent which may be ours and to gain by the gifts and talents of others which we do not possess ourselves. We stand on the shoulders of the past and learn to the end of our lives from the accumulated experience of mankind. Socrates discovered wherein he was wise when he looked into himself and said that at least he knew he was ignorant. Such wisdom is allied with modesty, and if he did question all it was in no spirit of self-assertion, no joy of eristics. The sophists, on the other hand, show a love of questioning for its own sake, and take a pride in their own astuteness. They represent an extreme, no doubt; but the constant encouragement to all members of a community to think for themselves, to regard personal opinion and not truth as the end of education, to consider their own right to judge as equal to that of no matter whom- this has for result the production of a type which is not far removed from that of the sophist.
E I Watkin (1888-1981) was a convert and close associate of Eric Gill, with whom he founded the pacifist movement, Pax. He is best known for his historical, philosophical and religious writings, in particular on mysticism. The following is from The Balance of Truth (London: Hollis & Carter, 1943) a study of modern errors and the search for the triune Godhead.
The decline and fall of metaphysics since the Middle Ages has been due to a false epistemology, and its falsity has consisted in its partiality, in the refusal to admit as valid knowledge what does not belong to a favoured category of knowledge, what has not passed an epistemological tests imposed a priori. What is evident has been rejected because it cannot be provd by the sole criterion the critic will acept. The result has been philosophies true only to a portion of the total experience it is the province of philosophy to interpret. Consciousness has been declared the sole relaity. Matter- that is to say, the reality existing in time and space and quantitively measurable- has been declared the sole reality with equal confidence. Finally, when no evidence is accepted save the unit consciousness of the moment, isolated from its context, a complete scepticism is reached which denies the possibility of knowledge.
Against these and all other partialities we must accept the testimony of all forms of experience- that is, of all human contacts with reality, of every category and at every level. On examination these contacts are found to be intuitions of truth. Some are clear but abstract- pre-eminently the clearest and most abstract intuitions, the apprehensions of measurable quantity of which the positive sciences rest. Others are concrete but obscure. Such as intuitions of moral value, of beauty, and fater a different fashion of God.
Others, again, are both abstract and obscure. Such are the metaphysical intuitions of being, visions of an intelligence focused on the remote depths of what is at once closest and most distant; closest on its surface, most distant in its centre- namely, being as such. It is, in fact, impossible to establish a rigid line of demarcation between dim and concrete intuitions of truth and those clear and abstract intuitions to which belong the conclusions of scientific demonstration. I term these intuitions dim or obscure because they cannot be rigorously defined and their content demonstrated in terms of the definite apprehensions proper to the positive sciences. But they can be equally cogent and powerful. Their obscurity is neither weakness nor uncertainty.
This is shown by the correlation between aesthetic beauty perceived by aesthetic intuition and embodied in works of art, and harmonious mathematical forms and relations. The mass-and-line analysis of pictures as undertaken, for example, in Mr Harold Speed's "The Practice and Science of Drawing", reveals as the skeleton of the masterpieces analysed such mathematical forms and relations. The perception of these is intermediate between the pure aesthetic intuition which is expressed by the unanalysed pciture and functions in its appreciation and the clear intuitions of the mathematician. Indeed, a mathematical demonstration is often invested over and above its strictly mathemtical evidence with an aesthetic quality It is apprehended as beautiful.
Music is essentially an harmonious arrangement of sounds, the dance of motions. Poetry depends for its beauty on correlations of accent, quantity, tone, pitch and verbal quality. The mathematical substratum of architecture is obvious.
17 April 2008
Off the Shelves 3
Today we present two French Thomists, Fr. A.D. Sertillanges OP and Jacques Maritain. The first extract is from the formers’ book The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods (Cork: The Mercier Press, 1948)
Contact with genius is one of the choice graces that God grants to humble thinkers; we should prepare for it as according to the Scripture we should prepare for prayer, as we pull ourselves together and assume an attitude of respect when we are to meet a great personage or a saint.
We think too little of the privilege of this bond with the greatest minds. It multiplies joy and profit for living, it enlarges the world and makes it a nobler and more precious place to live in, it renews for each man the glory of being a man, of having his mind open on the same horizons as the greatest, of living on high levels and of forming with his fellows, with those who afford him inspiration, a society in God. “Next after men of genius come those who recognize their worth,” said Therese Brunswick, speaking of Beethoven.
To recall from time to time the names of those who shine with special brilliance in the firmament o the intelligence is to dip into the record of our titles to nobility; and this pride has the same beauty and efficacy as the pride that a son takes in an illustrious father or a great ancestry.
If you are a man of letters, do you not appreciate the advantage o having behind you Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Corneille, Racine, La Fontaine, Pascal? If you are a philosopher, would you be without Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, St. Thomas of Aquin, Descartes, Leibnitz, Kant, Bergson? As a scientist, do you realize all that you owe to Archimedes, Euclid, Aristotle again, Galileo, Kepler, Lavoisier, Darwin, Pasteur? As a religious man think how much poorer all souls would be if they had not, along with St. Paul, saints Augustine, Bernard, Bonaventure, the author of the Imitation; St. Catherine of Siena, St. Teresa, Bousset, St. Francis of Sales, Newman.
The Communion of Saints is the support of the mystical life; the Banquet of the Sages, perpetuated by our assiduous cult, is the invigoration of our intellectual life. To cultivate the faculty of admiration and because of it to keep constantly in familiar touch with illustrious thinkers, is the means, not of equaling those whom we honor, but of equaling our own best self; and that, I repeat, is the objective to be visualized and pursued.
Contact with writers of genius procures us the immediate advantage of lifting us to a higher plane; by their superiority alone they confer a benefit on us even before teaching is anything. They set the tone for us; they accustom us to the air of the mountain-tops. We were moving in a lower region; they bring us at one stroke into their own atmosphere. In that world of lofty thought, the face of truth seems to be unveiled; beauty shines forth; the fact that we follow and understand these seers makes us reflect that we are after all of the same race, that the universal Soul is in us, the Soul of souls, the Spirit to whom we have only to adapt ourselves in order to burst into divine speech, since at the source of all inspiration, always prophetic, there is “God the first and supreme author of all one writes.”
Our second extract comes from Maritain's essay "God and Science" in On the Use of Philosophy (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1961) .
To conclude, let us remark that our knowledge of the created world naturally reverberates in the very reverence and awe with which our reason knows the Creator, and on the very notion, deficient as it is and will ever be, that we have of His ways.
By the very fact that science enlarges our horizons with respect to this world, and makes us know better - though in an oblique way - that created reality which is the mirror in which God's perfections are analogically known, science helps our minds to pay tribute to God's grandeur.
A number of the most basic notions and explanatory theories of modern science, especially of modern physics, recoil from being translated into natural language, or from being represented in terms of the imagination. Nevertheless a certain picture of the world emerges from modern science; and this picture (unification of matter and energy, physical indeterminism, a space-time continuum which implies that space and times are not empty pre-existing forms but come into existence with things and through things; gravitational fields which by reason of the curvation of space exempt gravitation from requiring any particular force, and outwit ether and attraction; a cosmos of electrons and stars in which the stars are the heavenly laboratories of elements, a universe which is finite but whose limits cannot be attained, and which dynamically evolves toward higher forms of individuation and concentration) constitutes a kind of framework or imagery more suited to many positions of a sound philosophy of nature than that which was provided by Newtonian science.
Furthermore, at the core of this imagery there are a few fundamental concepts which, inherent in modern science and essential to it, have a direct impact on our philosophical view of nature.
In the first place I shall mention all the complex regularities (presupposed by statistical laws themselves) and the mixture of organisation and chance, resulting in a kind of elusive, imperfectly knowable, and still more striking order, that matter reveals in the world of micro physics. It makes our idea of the order of nature exceedingly more refined and more astonishing. And it makes us look at the author of this order with still more admiration and natural reverence. In the Book of Job, Behemoth and Leviathan were called to witness to divine omnipotence. One single atom may be called o witness too, as well as the hippopotamus and the crocodile. If the heavens declare the glory of God, so does the world of micro particles and microwaves.
In the second place comes the notion of evolution: evolution of the whole universe of matter, and, in particular, evolution of living organisms. Like certain most general tenets of science, evolutions is less a demonstrated conclusion that a kind of primary concept which has such power in making phenomena decipherable that once expressed it becomes almost impossible for the scientific mind to do without it. Now if it is true that in opposition to the immobile archetypes and ever-recurrent cycles of pagan antiquity, Christianity taught men to conceive history both as irreversible and as running in a definite direction, then it may be said that by integrating in science the dimension of time and history, the idea of evolution has given to our knowledge of nature a certain affinity with what the Christian view of things is on a quite different plane. In any case, the genesis of elements and the various phases of the history of the heavens, and, in the realm of life, the historical development of an immense diversity of evolutive branches ("phyla"), all this, if it is understood in the proper philosophical perspective, presupposes the transcendent God as the prime cause of evolution - preserving in existence created things and the impetus present in them, moving them from above so that superior forms may emerge from inferior ones, and, when man is to appear at the peak of the series of vertebrates, intervening in a special way and creating ex nihilo the spiritual and immortal soul of the first man and of every individual of the new species. Thus evolution correctly understood offers us a spectacle whose greatness and universality make the activating omnipresence of God only more tellingly sensed by our minds.
Contact with genius is one of the choice graces that God grants to humble thinkers; we should prepare for it as according to the Scripture we should prepare for prayer, as we pull ourselves together and assume an attitude of respect when we are to meet a great personage or a saint.
We think too little of the privilege of this bond with the greatest minds. It multiplies joy and profit for living, it enlarges the world and makes it a nobler and more precious place to live in, it renews for each man the glory of being a man, of having his mind open on the same horizons as the greatest, of living on high levels and of forming with his fellows, with those who afford him inspiration, a society in God. “Next after men of genius come those who recognize their worth,” said Therese Brunswick, speaking of Beethoven.
To recall from time to time the names of those who shine with special brilliance in the firmament o the intelligence is to dip into the record of our titles to nobility; and this pride has the same beauty and efficacy as the pride that a son takes in an illustrious father or a great ancestry.
If you are a man of letters, do you not appreciate the advantage o having behind you Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Corneille, Racine, La Fontaine, Pascal? If you are a philosopher, would you be without Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, St. Thomas of Aquin, Descartes, Leibnitz, Kant, Bergson? As a scientist, do you realize all that you owe to Archimedes, Euclid, Aristotle again, Galileo, Kepler, Lavoisier, Darwin, Pasteur? As a religious man think how much poorer all souls would be if they had not, along with St. Paul, saints Augustine, Bernard, Bonaventure, the author of the Imitation; St. Catherine of Siena, St. Teresa, Bousset, St. Francis of Sales, Newman.
The Communion of Saints is the support of the mystical life; the Banquet of the Sages, perpetuated by our assiduous cult, is the invigoration of our intellectual life. To cultivate the faculty of admiration and because of it to keep constantly in familiar touch with illustrious thinkers, is the means, not of equaling those whom we honor, but of equaling our own best self; and that, I repeat, is the objective to be visualized and pursued.
Contact with writers of genius procures us the immediate advantage of lifting us to a higher plane; by their superiority alone they confer a benefit on us even before teaching is anything. They set the tone for us; they accustom us to the air of the mountain-tops. We were moving in a lower region; they bring us at one stroke into their own atmosphere. In that world of lofty thought, the face of truth seems to be unveiled; beauty shines forth; the fact that we follow and understand these seers makes us reflect that we are after all of the same race, that the universal Soul is in us, the Soul of souls, the Spirit to whom we have only to adapt ourselves in order to burst into divine speech, since at the source of all inspiration, always prophetic, there is “God the first and supreme author of all one writes.”
Our second extract comes from Maritain's essay "God and Science" in On the Use of Philosophy (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1961) .
To conclude, let us remark that our knowledge of the created world naturally reverberates in the very reverence and awe with which our reason knows the Creator, and on the very notion, deficient as it is and will ever be, that we have of His ways.
By the very fact that science enlarges our horizons with respect to this world, and makes us know better - though in an oblique way - that created reality which is the mirror in which God's perfections are analogically known, science helps our minds to pay tribute to God's grandeur.
A number of the most basic notions and explanatory theories of modern science, especially of modern physics, recoil from being translated into natural language, or from being represented in terms of the imagination. Nevertheless a certain picture of the world emerges from modern science; and this picture (unification of matter and energy, physical indeterminism, a space-time continuum which implies that space and times are not empty pre-existing forms but come into existence with things and through things; gravitational fields which by reason of the curvation of space exempt gravitation from requiring any particular force, and outwit ether and attraction; a cosmos of electrons and stars in which the stars are the heavenly laboratories of elements, a universe which is finite but whose limits cannot be attained, and which dynamically evolves toward higher forms of individuation and concentration) constitutes a kind of framework or imagery more suited to many positions of a sound philosophy of nature than that which was provided by Newtonian science.
Furthermore, at the core of this imagery there are a few fundamental concepts which, inherent in modern science and essential to it, have a direct impact on our philosophical view of nature.
In the first place I shall mention all the complex regularities (presupposed by statistical laws themselves) and the mixture of organisation and chance, resulting in a kind of elusive, imperfectly knowable, and still more striking order, that matter reveals in the world of micro physics. It makes our idea of the order of nature exceedingly more refined and more astonishing. And it makes us look at the author of this order with still more admiration and natural reverence. In the Book of Job, Behemoth and Leviathan were called to witness to divine omnipotence. One single atom may be called o witness too, as well as the hippopotamus and the crocodile. If the heavens declare the glory of God, so does the world of micro particles and microwaves.
In the second place comes the notion of evolution: evolution of the whole universe of matter, and, in particular, evolution of living organisms. Like certain most general tenets of science, evolutions is less a demonstrated conclusion that a kind of primary concept which has such power in making phenomena decipherable that once expressed it becomes almost impossible for the scientific mind to do without it. Now if it is true that in opposition to the immobile archetypes and ever-recurrent cycles of pagan antiquity, Christianity taught men to conceive history both as irreversible and as running in a definite direction, then it may be said that by integrating in science the dimension of time and history, the idea of evolution has given to our knowledge of nature a certain affinity with what the Christian view of things is on a quite different plane. In any case, the genesis of elements and the various phases of the history of the heavens, and, in the realm of life, the historical development of an immense diversity of evolutive branches ("phyla"), all this, if it is understood in the proper philosophical perspective, presupposes the transcendent God as the prime cause of evolution - preserving in existence created things and the impetus present in them, moving them from above so that superior forms may emerge from inferior ones, and, when man is to appear at the peak of the series of vertebrates, intervening in a special way and creating ex nihilo the spiritual and immortal soul of the first man and of every individual of the new species. Thus evolution correctly understood offers us a spectacle whose greatness and universality make the activating omnipresence of God only more tellingly sensed by our minds.
Off the Shelves 2
In our second selection from the Library’s collection we present the conclusion of Fr. Bernard Lonergan’s essay “The Absence of God in Modern Culture” from A Second Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan S.J. edited by William F.J. Ryan SJ and Bernard J. Tyrell SJ (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1974)
Today the pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme. Whatever is old, is out. Whatever is new, is in. But a mere swing of the pendulum, while it involves plenty of novelty, falls far short of aggiornamento. For aggiornamento is not simple-minded rejection of all that is old and some breezy acceptance of everything new. Rather it is a disengagement from a culture that no longer exists and an involvement in a distinct culture that has replaced it. Christians have been depicted as utterly other-worldly, as idly standing about waiting for the second coming of Christ without any interest or concern or commitment for the things of this life of ours on earth. But the fact of the matter is that the ancient Church set about transforming Greek and Roman culture, that the medieval Church was a principal agent in the formation of medieval culture, that the Renaissance Church was scandalously involved in Renaissance culture. If the modern Church has stood aloof from the modern world, the fact is not too hard to explain. On the one hand, the Church’s involvement in classicist culture was an involvement in a very limited view that totally underestimated the possibilities of cultural change and so precluded advertence to the need for adaptation and zeal to effect it. On the other hand, modern culture with its many excellencies and its unprecedented achievements nonetheless is not just a realm of sweetness and light. The suffering, the sins, the crimes, the destructive power, the sustained blindness of the twentieth century has disenchanted us with progress and made us suspicious of development and advance. Aggiornamento is not desertion of the past but only a discerning and discriminating disengagement from its limitations. Aggiornamento is not just acceptance of the present; it is acknowledgement of its evils as well as of its good; and, as acknowledgement alone is not enough, it also is, by the power of the cross, that meeting of evil with good which transforms evil into good.
Besides its interpretation of man in his world, modern culture transforms man’s control over nature and in consequence involves a reordering of society. The new scene is one of technology, automation, built-in obsolescence, a population explosion, increasing longevity, urbanism, mobility, detached and functional relations between persons, universal, prolonged and continuing education, increasing leisure and travel, instantaneous information, and perpetually available entertainment. In this ever changing scene God, when not totally absent, appears an intruder. To mention him, if not meaningless, seems to be irrelevant. The greatest of financial powers, the power to increase gross national income by taxing and spending for worthy purposes, is restricted to non-religious ends, so that pluralism is given lip-service while secularism is the religion – or, perhaps, the anti-religion – by law established. At the same time, a rigorously codified religious organization finds itself ever less capable of moving with ever fluid situations, to enter meaningfully into people’s lives, significantly to further all good causes, effectively to help the weak, heal the hurt, restore and reinvigorate the disheartened …
Besides a reinterpretation of man in this world, a transformation of man’s control over nature, and consequent reordering society, modern culture has generated a new sense of power and responsibility. Superficially the sense of power might be illustrated by space-exploration, and the sense of responsibility by concern over nuclear bombs. But the matter goes far deeper. Modern culture is the culture that knows about itself and other cultures. It is aware that they are man-made. It is aware that the cultural may sustain or destroy or refashion the social. So it is that modern man not only individually is responsible for the life he leads but also collectively is responsible for the world in which he leads it. So modern culture is culture on the move. It is not dedicated to perpetuating the wisdom of ancestors, to handing on the traditions it has inherited. The past is just the springboard to the future. It is the set of good things to be improved and of evils to be eliminated. The future will belong to those who think about it, who grasp real possibilities, who project a coherent sequence of cumulative realizations, who speak to man’s longing for achievement more wisely than the liberal apostles of automatic progress and more humanly that the liquidating Marxists.
Now this concern with the future of humanity is a concern for humanity in this world; so it has been thought to be purely secular. Such a conclusion is, I believe, mistaken. It is true that concern for the future is incompatible with a blind traditionalism, but a blind traditionalism is not the essence of religion. It is true that concern for the future will work itself out by human means, by drawing on human experience, human intelligence, human judgment, human decision, but again this is quite compatible with a profoundly religious attitude. It was St. Ignatius Loyola who gave the advise: act as though results depended exclusively on you, but await the results as though the depended entirely on God. What is false is that human concern for the future can generate a better future on the basis of individual and group egoism. For to know what is truly good and to effect it calls for a self-transcendence that seeks to benefit not self at the cost of the group, not the group at the cost of mankind, not present mankind at the cost of mankind’s future. Concern for the future, if it is not just high-sounding hypocrisy, supposes rare moral attainment. It calls for what Christians name heroic charity. In the measure that Christians practice and radiate heroic charity they need not fear they will be superfluous either in the task of discerning man’s true good in this life or in the task of bring it about.
Today the pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme. Whatever is old, is out. Whatever is new, is in. But a mere swing of the pendulum, while it involves plenty of novelty, falls far short of aggiornamento. For aggiornamento is not simple-minded rejection of all that is old and some breezy acceptance of everything new. Rather it is a disengagement from a culture that no longer exists and an involvement in a distinct culture that has replaced it. Christians have been depicted as utterly other-worldly, as idly standing about waiting for the second coming of Christ without any interest or concern or commitment for the things of this life of ours on earth. But the fact of the matter is that the ancient Church set about transforming Greek and Roman culture, that the medieval Church was a principal agent in the formation of medieval culture, that the Renaissance Church was scandalously involved in Renaissance culture. If the modern Church has stood aloof from the modern world, the fact is not too hard to explain. On the one hand, the Church’s involvement in classicist culture was an involvement in a very limited view that totally underestimated the possibilities of cultural change and so precluded advertence to the need for adaptation and zeal to effect it. On the other hand, modern culture with its many excellencies and its unprecedented achievements nonetheless is not just a realm of sweetness and light. The suffering, the sins, the crimes, the destructive power, the sustained blindness of the twentieth century has disenchanted us with progress and made us suspicious of development and advance. Aggiornamento is not desertion of the past but only a discerning and discriminating disengagement from its limitations. Aggiornamento is not just acceptance of the present; it is acknowledgement of its evils as well as of its good; and, as acknowledgement alone is not enough, it also is, by the power of the cross, that meeting of evil with good which transforms evil into good.
Besides its interpretation of man in his world, modern culture transforms man’s control over nature and in consequence involves a reordering of society. The new scene is one of technology, automation, built-in obsolescence, a population explosion, increasing longevity, urbanism, mobility, detached and functional relations between persons, universal, prolonged and continuing education, increasing leisure and travel, instantaneous information, and perpetually available entertainment. In this ever changing scene God, when not totally absent, appears an intruder. To mention him, if not meaningless, seems to be irrelevant. The greatest of financial powers, the power to increase gross national income by taxing and spending for worthy purposes, is restricted to non-religious ends, so that pluralism is given lip-service while secularism is the religion – or, perhaps, the anti-religion – by law established. At the same time, a rigorously codified religious organization finds itself ever less capable of moving with ever fluid situations, to enter meaningfully into people’s lives, significantly to further all good causes, effectively to help the weak, heal the hurt, restore and reinvigorate the disheartened …
Besides a reinterpretation of man in this world, a transformation of man’s control over nature, and consequent reordering society, modern culture has generated a new sense of power and responsibility. Superficially the sense of power might be illustrated by space-exploration, and the sense of responsibility by concern over nuclear bombs. But the matter goes far deeper. Modern culture is the culture that knows about itself and other cultures. It is aware that they are man-made. It is aware that the cultural may sustain or destroy or refashion the social. So it is that modern man not only individually is responsible for the life he leads but also collectively is responsible for the world in which he leads it. So modern culture is culture on the move. It is not dedicated to perpetuating the wisdom of ancestors, to handing on the traditions it has inherited. The past is just the springboard to the future. It is the set of good things to be improved and of evils to be eliminated. The future will belong to those who think about it, who grasp real possibilities, who project a coherent sequence of cumulative realizations, who speak to man’s longing for achievement more wisely than the liberal apostles of automatic progress and more humanly that the liquidating Marxists.
Now this concern with the future of humanity is a concern for humanity in this world; so it has been thought to be purely secular. Such a conclusion is, I believe, mistaken. It is true that concern for the future is incompatible with a blind traditionalism, but a blind traditionalism is not the essence of religion. It is true that concern for the future will work itself out by human means, by drawing on human experience, human intelligence, human judgment, human decision, but again this is quite compatible with a profoundly religious attitude. It was St. Ignatius Loyola who gave the advise: act as though results depended exclusively on you, but await the results as though the depended entirely on God. What is false is that human concern for the future can generate a better future on the basis of individual and group egoism. For to know what is truly good and to effect it calls for a self-transcendence that seeks to benefit not self at the cost of the group, not the group at the cost of mankind, not present mankind at the cost of mankind’s future. Concern for the future, if it is not just high-sounding hypocrisy, supposes rare moral attainment. It calls for what Christians name heroic charity. In the measure that Christians practice and radiate heroic charity they need not fear they will be superfluous either in the task of discerning man’s true good in this life or in the task of bring it about.
03 April 2008
Off the Shelves 1
Our first stop in the collection is works on philosophy and psychology. This extract comes from Fr. Aegidius Doolan's Philosophy for the Layman (Dublin: Dominican Publications, 1954) and is taken from the introduction, an essay on St. Thomas Aquinas. It is particularly appropriate since it points to the end of all knowledge, which is God.
St. Thomas insists that there is an order - and consequently a law - founded on nature itself, which no power on earth can alter or affect. Such is the relationship between effects and their cause - for instance between the world and God, or between children and their parents; or again between means and ends, between body and soul, between functions and their objects, between property and human life. Over and above, but not dissociated from, this natural order or these natural relationships there is the order of grace, the mysterious relationship established between men and God, so intimate that they may call Him "Father" and may look on one another as his children. The union established by this relationship between all men - however different from one another in race or colour or social station - St. Thomas conceived to be the very bond of peace in what Our Lord called the "kingdom of the children" - because those who belong to it are born again, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of men but of God.
It is at this point that for St. Thomas as for St. John the Evangelist "the last heaven opened" and he discerned what he so gloriously sung in his hymn Verbum Supernum, of which the conclusion O Salutaris is familiar to all Catholics. He saw the Supernal Word of Truth coming into this world, yet never ceasing to be at His Father's side. He saw Him hanging on the Cross. He saw Him in the triumph of the first Easter morning. And he saw Him again during the whole course of ages, and from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof, offering Himself as a victim of that Love of Truth which is His very Life, poured forth in the chalice of His Blood.
It is St. Thomas' realization of all this that is expressed throughout his writings. Everything spoke to him of the glory of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, which is the very end and meaning of all creation, and especially of human life. "Every creature," he writes, "as it is a created substance represents the cause and principle, and shows forth the Father. As it has form and species it represents the Word .. According as it bears the relation of order, it represents the Holy Ghost inasmuch as He is love."
St. Thomas insists that there is an order - and consequently a law - founded on nature itself, which no power on earth can alter or affect. Such is the relationship between effects and their cause - for instance between the world and God, or between children and their parents; or again between means and ends, between body and soul, between functions and their objects, between property and human life. Over and above, but not dissociated from, this natural order or these natural relationships there is the order of grace, the mysterious relationship established between men and God, so intimate that they may call Him "Father" and may look on one another as his children. The union established by this relationship between all men - however different from one another in race or colour or social station - St. Thomas conceived to be the very bond of peace in what Our Lord called the "kingdom of the children" - because those who belong to it are born again, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of men but of God.
It is at this point that for St. Thomas as for St. John the Evangelist "the last heaven opened" and he discerned what he so gloriously sung in his hymn Verbum Supernum, of which the conclusion O Salutaris is familiar to all Catholics. He saw the Supernal Word of Truth coming into this world, yet never ceasing to be at His Father's side. He saw Him hanging on the Cross. He saw Him in the triumph of the first Easter morning. And he saw Him again during the whole course of ages, and from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof, offering Himself as a victim of that Love of Truth which is His very Life, poured forth in the chalice of His Blood.
It is St. Thomas' realization of all this that is expressed throughout his writings. Everything spoke to him of the glory of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, which is the very end and meaning of all creation, and especially of human life. "Every creature," he writes, "as it is a created substance represents the cause and principle, and shows forth the Father. As it has form and species it represents the Word .. According as it bears the relation of order, it represents the Holy Ghost inasmuch as He is love."
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