THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EDITORS: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS oF THE PROVINCE OF ST. JosEPH Publishers: The Thomist Press, Washington, D. C. VoL. XXXIV JULY, 1970 METAPHYSICS No.3 AS CREATIVITY T HE QUESTION to which the author addresses himself is the following: is there an analogical sense in which metaphysics is creative? The answer given to the question is orchestrated by the conviction that metaphysical conclusions are truly synthetic and not analytic; novel and not tautological. To make out of nothing is an act finding no analogue within the created order. Creation, properly speaking, is the effect of God whose divine fiat makes things to be out of nothing. Secondary causes determine being in the order of specification. They do not cause to be where before there was nothing at all. The analogy between God's creative act and what we shall call here human creativity emerges when we take account of creation as existential novelty. God's creative act is so novel that paradoxically enough it adds nothing new. God plus creation does not make "two." "Before" God creates there are no beings (entia): there is only lpsum Esse Subsistens. " After " God creates there is no new esse but only an order 369 370 FREDERICK D. WILHELMSEN of entia which " previously " had not been at alP This strikingly Christian metaphysics of creation does away with every classical dualism. There is only one world, not two. 2 Analogically, novelty within the immanent order of being is the contrary to the analytic order. As an intellectual operation, analytic reasoning is Aristotle's" resolution back to the causes" of a reality given the mind for scientific penetration or critical evaluation. The mind takes the given, the object, and reduces it or breaks it down to its constituent causal principles. In so doing, the intelligence traces backward that which unfolds " forward" dynamically within the real. 3 This dynamic thrust must rigorously hold in check all of those contingent factors that disturb the ordered finality of the cosmos. Wherever contingency significantly alters the actualizing of finalities potentially present within a nature, that nature escapes-to the degree to which it is subject to finality-a perfect analytical resolution within the mind. In a word, the classical Aristotelian ideal of science insists upon the necessity of its object. The analytic order, therefore, is ultimately tautological, but only ultimately so. Novelty here belongs to the understanding which comes to penetrate that which is given whole and complete to itself. But there is no true novelty in the reality subsequently understood. There is only the fulfillment of ontological expectations. For these reasons predictable reality is capable of being dominated by demiurgical science. Technical power over the real is identified with the predictability of future univocal instances of a type which has already been penetrated analytically, resolved to its causes and-especially-to its final cause. Scientific mastery over the cosmos proceeds through understanding models or types of realities whose individual instances 1 The issue is argued cogently in Gerald Phelan, " The Being of Creatures," Selected Papers, (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies), pp. 83-94. 2 The classic study on pagan dualism Yersus Christian creationism is Christianity and Classical Culture, by Charles Norris Cochrane (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957), esp. pp. 399-456. a Cf. my The Paradoxical Structure of Existence (Dallas: University of Dallas Press, 1969). METAPHYSICS AS CREATIVITY 871 can be expected, all things being equal, to conform to their norm. Although every being is novel as being, natures which merely unfold their potentialities analytically are not novel as natures. By novelty in this essay we mean existential creativity, that which is not reducible analytically to a pre-existent given or type and which, therefore, cannot be predicated " before " the event nor reduced to formal necessities already given " after " the event. At the risk of pre-judging our conclusions before we have marshalled the evidence, we maintain that novelty is synthesis, synthesis taken in the Thomistic sense of the term and not in the Hegelian. 4 The metaphysical problem in this context bifurcates: 1) in what sense is metaphysics, as a philosophical discipline, a habit, synthetic? in what sense is the subject of First Philosophy synthetic? Metaphysical methodology, as Father Robert Henle pointed out a number of years ago, 5 never adds content to its point of departure. Whereas other sciences develop extensively by adding intelligibility to intelligibility, metaphysics cannot proceed in this fashion because outside of being there is nothing at all.6 Metaphysics is an intensive rather than extensive performance. This does not suggest, however, that metaphysics merely renders explicit what is implicit in its point of departure. Were metaphysics merely a science of explicitation, a Voegelinian " articulation " of an archaically given " compactness " 7 or experience, metaphysics would ultimately be reducible to the analytic order which is capable of being expressed logically in the proposition of tautological identity," A is A." The analytic • Briefly: Helgelian synthesis consists in the resolution of tensions through the dialectic; Thomistic synthesis consists in unifying in existence diverse aspects of the essential order which are not analytically implicated in one another. The subject is explored in my book (cf. note 3), esp. Chapter IV. 5 Robert L. Henle, Method in Metaphysics (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1951) . 6 This is the constant teaching of St. Thomas; a classic text is De Potentia Dei, q. 7, a. 2, ad 9. 7 Eric Voegelin, Ordlff and History, Israel and Revelation, Vol. 1 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1956), esp. x-xvi. 372 FREDERICK D. WILHELMSEN bends backwards upon a subject given to the mind and bombards that subject with predicates whose intelligibilities were initially abstracted from the sensorial order by the agent intellect co-operating with the order of phantasms, symobls. This method is impossible for metaphysics because it supposes that the subject of First Philosophy, ens commune, is a given, a datum, a determined whole present to the intelligence. Were ipsum esse a given, it would be. But the act of existing does not exist, even as an intentional object. 8 Metaphysics never encounters an " object " as the intentional term of its conclusions.9 Metaphysics does not articulate the meaning of an intelligible content present to itself. Metaphysical judgments terminate in the "being-true" (esse verum) of propositions bearing upon the act o£ existing/ 0 The metaphysical habit, therefore, does not express conceptually the non-conceptualizable act of existing which can only be affirmed or denied in judgment, never conceived in acts of simple understanding. The issue is worthy o£ further elucidation because of the emergence in recent years of the Thomistic school which insists upon the transcendental method as the proper point of departure for metaphysical speculation. Fathers Coreth, Rahner, and Lonergan, in the tradition of Marechal, find the metaphysical structure of being as being in the inbuilt dynamism of the intelligence. 11 The unrestricted 8 Thomas Aquinas, In de Divinis Nominibns, cap. VIII, lect. I, " ... non sic proprie dicitur quod esse sit, sed quod per esse aliquid sit." The issue is explored in my El problema de la trascendencia en la metafisica actual, Coleccion filosofica de Ia Universidad de Navarra (Madrid: Ediciones Rialp, S. A., 1963), esp. pp. 75-89. • Cf. my "The Triplex Via," The New Scholasticism, XLIV, 2 (Spring, 1970), 223-235. 10 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 3, a. 4, ad 2; De Pot., q. 7, a. 2, ad I. St. Thomas's insistence that the demonstration for God's existence does not terminate in God's Esse but in the truth of the proposition is paradigmatic for all metaphysical demonstrations. Concerning the esse verum itself, cf. Bernard J. Muller-Thym, "The 'To Be' Which Signifies the Truth of Propositions," Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, Vol. XVI (1940), esp. pp. 234-245; cf. my Man's Knowledge of Reality (Englewood Cliffs: PrenticeHall, 1968, 5th printing), pp. 134-156. 11 E. Coreth, Metaphysik. Eine Methodish-Systematische Grundlegung (Inns- METAPHYSICS AS CREATIVITY 373 and potentially infinite reach of the mind bespeaks its corresponding answer in being. (It is not without interest in this context that Father Lonergan opts for John of St. Thomas's designation of lpsum lntelligere rather than lpsum Esse Subsistens as the ultimate Name of God) .12 This author is convinced that a thorough study of the transcendental method would reveal a metaphysics in which " to be " would emerge as a function of" to know"; being, a function of meaning; existence, a derivation of essence, somewhat the way in which answers depend on questions. The economy of this study prohibits our exploring these possibilities, but that economy does not absolve us from our duty to point out the following: I) If the transcendental richness o£ being can be discovered simply by reflecting upon the dynamic exigencies o£ any act of understanding, it follows that metaphysics is implicitly present within the mind of any intelligent man capable merely of reflecting upon the conditions o£ his own understanding; 2) if this were true, metaphysics would not be an intellectual discipline that proceeded by way of separation and negation, which last is St. Thomas's own understanding of metaphysical methodology; this last does not argue against the validity of the transcendental method but, as Father James B. Reichmann has indicated, it does render dubious that method when advanced by philosophers who claim to be Thomists; 13 3) with the same Father Reichmann we fail to see how the transcendental being conditioning every act of understanding, itself unconditioned, could be anything other than essence. With Father Lonergan bruck, 1961); K. Rahner, Geist in Welt (Innsbruck, 1939); J. B. Lonergan, Insight, A Study of Human Understanding (New York: Philosophical Library. revised students' edition, 1967); "Metaphysics as Horizon," Collection., ed. by F. E. Crowe, S. J. (Herder and Herder, 1967), pp. 202-221; J. B. Lotz, Das Urteil und das Sein, Eine Grundlegund der Metaphysik (Pullach bei Mi.inchen, 1957). 19 Lonergan, Insight, pp. 657-677. My basic disagreement with Father Lonergan centers around what he calls " The Idea of Being." I deny that there is any " idea " of Being in the sense of actual existence; any other " idea of Being " would be irrelevant to metaphysics in my understanding of the discipline. 13 James B. Reichmann, S. J., " The Transcendental Method and The Psychogenesis of Being," The Thomist, XXXII, 4 (October, 1968), 449-508. 374 FREDERICK D. WILHELMSEN himself we insist upon the difference between understanding and judgment. 14 With St. Thomas we hold that the act of understanding reiterates intelligible structures, realities, essences. 15 Judgment affirms these structures or realities to exist. The task of disengaging being from mere meaning, existence from essence, is exactly what the word itself suggests: a task, a work of reasoning! The reasoning in question follows St. Thomas's insistence that the metaphysician distinguishes not by abstracting but by separating esse from its modes. 16 No act of intellectual reflection, altogether apart from reasoning about the mystery of the unity of all being within community, 17 can lead us to the conclusion that " to be " is not identically to be any essence. True metaphysical transcendence is one with the mind's judgment that existence transcends essence. In no sense is this conclusion implicitly contained within any act of understanding, nor is it deducible from intelligibilities intrinsic to data discovered within any series of acts of understanding. Although no essence englobes esse as constitutive, all essences are englobed within esse. This conclusion is thoroughly synthetic because it is not deduced or " unpacked " in the felicitous term of Father Joseph OwenS.18 The reasoned conclusion falls altogether outside of data found in the immanent structure of the world. That esse be related to essence as act is to potency is a synthetic judgment orchestrated by a structurally negative 14 This difference constitutes the core of Father Lonergan's critique of Leslie Dewart's The Future of Belief, cf. Lonergan, "The Dehellenization of Dogma," The Future of Belief Debate, ed. by Gregory Baum (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), pp. 15 Thomas Aquinas, In Librum Boethii de Trinitate Questiones Quinta et Sexta, Hach dem Autograph Cod. Vat. lat. 9850 mit Einleitung herausgegeben von Paul Wyser, 0. P. (Fribourg: Societe Philosophique, 1948), q. 5. a. 3, responsio, pp. 38-41; E. Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, second ed. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, esp. pp. 16 Thomas Aquinas, ibid., pp. 38-9. 17 I have borrowed the term "community" from Father Reichmann's study, op. cit., pp. 498-503. 18 Joseph Owens, An Interpretation of Existence (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Co., 1968), pp. 80-84. METAPHYSICS AS CREATIVITY 375 reasoning process. The widespread conviction that every possibility must be actualized one day or another is a conclusion profoundly embedded not only within the Cartesian raationalist tradition but within the pagan Greek world as well: being, actual existence, exercise, is somehow a formal effect already structured within the objectively given, essence. This analytic reduction of existence to essence was attacked by St. Thomas in that work of his youth, the De Ente et Essentia. 19 Were a nature to cause its own being (or to cause its being as if the latter were a property), the nature would have to be before it was. The only being of the possible is that of an existing mind capable of conceiving the possible and of an existing cause capable of producing it. To borrow a most apt term coined by Father Lonergan/ 0 "performance" is an ultimate. And it is precisely performance, exercised act, be-ing, that is never given analytically. We can conclude, therefore, to the following paradox: although it is true that metaphysics never adds anything to its point of departure which is being as being, it is also true that metaphysics does not discover this point of departure in anything at all given the mind as a real object intentionally present to spirit. The issue is almost banefully obvious. Were the act of existing discoverable in the cosmos as part and parcel thereof, we could presume that the scientific masters of the cosmos would be master metaphysicians! It takes no sociological statistic to inform us that the very elucidation of the proposition is sufficient to render it ridiculous. In a word: metaphysical conclusions are synthetic, they are novel. They point towards the following conclusion which shall be argued in due course: metaphysical conclusions are truly creative. Before moving to this further issue, we reiterate once again: metaphysical conclusions, doctrines, are one with the " being-true " of meta19 Thomas Aquinas, Le 'De Ente et Essentia' de s. Tlwmas D'Aquin, Texte etabli d'apres les manuscrits parisiens. Introduction, Notes et Etudes historiques par M.-D. Roland-Gosselin, 0. P., Chapter IV. go Lonergan, op. eit., "Metaphysics as Horizon," passim. 376 FREDERICK D. WILHELMSEN physical propositions; nonetheless, these truths are known thanks only to the method of separation and negation. * * * * * The existential character of all syllogistic reasoning, be it metaphysical or not, was explored brilliantly by Joseph Owens in his An Interpretation of Existence. 21 Whereas analytic inference moves from an already given to conclusions formally, albeit implicitly, contained therein, strict syllogistic reasoningbe it deductive or inductive-does not infer from a given which is explicated subsequently but from the linking together of two premises which engender the conclusion. The conclusion is not contained even implicitly in either preinise, major or minor, argues Father Owens. The reasoning in question is not formal but is one with an act transcending both premises. This act of the intelligence is thoroughly synthetic, we might add, in that it consists in concluding to new knowledge in the performance of joining together in the mind two premises that do not have to be joined by any formal necessity whatsoever! An objector might cavil by insisting that the conclusion is truly present implicitly in a formal sense once the premises have been brought together. This objection, however, is invalid because the distinction between synthesizing major and minor premises and then concluding is virtual, not real. No formal necessity forces the intellect to join two knowns in order to conclude to the hitherto unknown! (This is the genuine advance, we do believe, made by Owens.) To "see" intellectually the premises as synthesized is to conclude. "\Ve are touching here the mystery of efficient causality which so troubled Hume. Hume was aware that being, including-of course-the being of rational discourse, its " going-on," simply escapes the order of formal intelligibility. 22 Again the paradoxical structure of existence Owens, op. cit., pp. 80-85. Cf. David Hume, The Letters of David Hume, I, ed. J. Y. T. Greig (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932), 187; An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature, 171;0, by David Hume, with an introduction by J. M. Keynes and P. Srafia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938), esp. pp. 13-23. 21 22 METAPHYSICS AS CREATIVITY 377 eludes the essential order: whereas I must conclude as I do in strict demonstration, the very exercise or performance of my reasoning and concluding by-passes every essential exigency found within the data about which I am reasoning. Synthetic reasoning is trans-evolutionary, whereas analytic thinking is evolutionary. Conclusions in the analytic order are already latently present within the data from which they are deduced. It follows that analytic thinking is always theoretically predictable: given the proper data, conclusions concerning such-and-such predictably follow. The computer can merely simulate synthetic reasoning because electronic simultaneity removes from us the enormous task of thinking-through a situation within non-electronic time. Computerized conclusions are new to us, quoad nos, but they are not new in themselves. Already programmed into the computer, these conclusions are there-to-be-known before being known formally. They are "unpacked," as Owens would put it, or, in the slang of the trade, "garbage in, garbage out." The content of knowledge in the analytic order is already present as content before it is known as such. The act of syllogistic reasoning, however, is not previously there as intentional presence, even "stored" intentional presence. Esse is in every sense act and in no sense potency. This commonplace of Thomistic metaphysics takes on new significance if focused upon an order of knowledgemetaphysics itself-that always concludes " indirectly " and that terminates, not in natures given to consciousness but in truths about Being. Synthetic reasoning is not, of course, anti-evolutionary but rather trans-evolutionary. Were this reasoning anti-evolutionary no philosopher or scientist or creative artist could look back on labor done in the past and see in it the seeds of the present development of his work. But hindsight is never foresight. Had present development been present in the past, it would have" been." Therefore we would not be dealing with development but with already actualized achievement-possibly explicated more fully but nonetheless already there. Efficient causality exercised in the mind posits or sets up in being formal 378 FREDERICK D. WILHELMSEN structures which can then be analyzed backwards. 23 Thus we set students to work tracing the progress of the thought of Kant or Aquinas, for example. Tracing spiritual progress, critical exegesis, involves beginning with omega and working back to alpha. Were these students commencing with alpha they would not be students of philosophy but philosophers. The history of ideas is fairly rational and comprehensive when read backwards. It makes a moderately intelligible pattern. This history, however, could never have been predicted. Today I know that Kant and Hegel demanded Descartes as background, but from the vantage point of the sixteenth century I could never have deduced either Kantianism or Hegelianism from exigencies supposedly latent in Cartesian rationalism. Had I done so I would have been Kant or Hegel rather than a commentator on Descartes. True intellectual insight or breakthrough has no strict relationship with the normal progress or evolution of a discipline whose practicioners draw out implications formally present in knowledge already accumulated. "Discovery" is not what its semantics suggest, the uncovering of the given; discovery is rather the intentional being (esse verum) and expression (verbum, dictio) of the new. This consideration heightens the annoying experience all original thinkers have with their gifted pupils; what takes thinkers who are pioneers years to come up with is often grasped immediately by bright learners. The spontaneous reaction, " of course," " it's obvious," " why can't everybody see that! " was not at all so evident or obvious to the man who first made the discovery before he made it! In physics, for instance, scientific advance rarely depends on historical residue, and the trailblazer largely depends on his own wits. Genius heightens the synthetic structure found in all syllogistic reasoning, whereas more moderately endowed intelligence contents itself with analyzing hypotheses or theories already eleborated or with commenting upon artistic creation produced 23 Synthesis always precedes analysis and engloves it. I have argued elsewhere that the act of synthesizing is esse, whereas essence is the analytic of being. (cf. Wilhelmsen, The Paradoxical Structure of Existence, esp. Chapter IV). METAPHYSICS AS CREATIVITY 379 by other men. One man's synthesis either becomes the occupation of other men-scholars, for instance-or an analytic moment within their own syntheses. These last are never reducible simply to what goes into them. 24 Is this not the very meaning of originality? Father Owens points out the peculiarly heightened way in which metaphysical conclusions bearing on existence fall totally outside the horizon or ambient of the premises engendering them. He compares the mathematical conclusion that the angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles with the metaphysical demonstration of the existence of God. In the mathematical example, the conclusion is contained neither in the definition of triangle nor in the notion of a parallel line drawn through the apex. "But these two notions when taken together result in the new knowledge contained in the conclusion . . . [but] the equality of the angles to two right angles does not get away from the triangle itself." 25 This is not true of the reasoning concluding to God's existence as Cause of Being. The being-true of the proposition "God exists" not only is contained in no nature whatsoever but it is nowhere in any of the information from which the metaphysician concludes as he does. The impossibility of analytically inferring existence from essence or meaning, as either a constituent or as following formally as would a property, moves the mind to conclude that essence is dependent on its own esse and is therefore posterior to esse within the complexity of the sensibly perceived and affirmed existent. Given that the "to be" of the existent does not exist or " subsist," the metaphysician is confronted with the weird situation of a nature dependent upon its own existence which existence, in turn, does not exist. But whatever does not exist in itself is dependent on what does exist in itself. A •• This conclusion was first suggested to the author in his work on the metaphysics of love. No act of love is ever explicable in terms of the reasons why we love. Grounded in esse, love always escapes any attempt at analytic reductionism. It follows that there is no answer to the famous question: why did God create the world? Love is not a reason. •• Owens, op. cit., p. 83. 380 FREDERICK D. WILHELMSEN double dependence emerges, nature upon its esse and esse upon -what? The ultimate conclusion, that the " to be " of any res depends upon a Being whose Nature is To Be, totally escapes the data. Nonetheless, this conclusion is inevitable once the philosophical habit has pushed itself across the frontier of nature into the order of being as being. The issue was expressed trenchantly by St. Thomas when he wrote that, " the First Cause who is God does not enter into the essence of created things; nonetheless, the esse which is in things cannot be understood except as' deduced' from the Divine Esse." 26 The act of affirming God to exist is possibly the supreme instance of efficient causality within the intentional order reiterating efficient causality in the extramental order. The absolute novelty of being is answered by the relative novelty of metaphysical knowledge. Analogously to the way in which the synthetic function of esse is never reducible to the substantial and accidental modes of reality that esse posits, the synthetic character of metaphysical conclusions escapes the data engendering them. Human intellectual creativity thus imitates Divine Creation. * * * * * The creativity of metaphysical doctrine is illustrated further and radicalized by both its negative and " separative " structures. Typical metaphysical method involves an exercise of reason which constantly separates (relatively) the act of being from the order of nature and which subsequently denies that being (esse) is the way in which the human mind is constrained to conceive being. The diverse rationes entis-existence as act, perfection, synthesis, the good, the true, etc.-are so many verba of the intelligence that escape univocal conceptualization and symbolization. Even more: given that all conceptual•• De Pot., q. 3, a. 5, ad 1. The demonstration of God's existence from what I have called "the double dependence " is the nerve center of the De Ente et Essentia. This demonstration depends upon the prior distinction between existence and essence. In opposition to Father Owens I hold that this distinction is known to be real and not merely notional anterior to the proof for God's existence. METAPHYSICS AS CREATIVITY 881 ization and symbolization are formally univocal, if only reductively so in many instances, it follows that not only God but even created esse falls outside every intentional act in the sense of not being terms present to the mind in understanding. 27 These verba are not conceptual terms within the essential order. They are simply truths (with a small " t ") about the principle with which nature is not identified, nature's own being. Any other conception of metaphysical knowledge would see it as a kind of super-physics or crowning of all other intellectual activity through a prolongation or reflection upon exigencies already discovered within the diverse scientific, humanistic, and philosophical although non-metaphysical, disciplines. Were this the case, metaphysics would be ultimately analytic and theoretically predictable in its development. Existence would fall back into essence. Creationism would fade away into legend and late twentieth-century man would have returned to the closed universe of his pagan forefathers. Norbert Del Prado's 27 Thomas Aquinas, In de Divinis N ominibus, c. 5, lect. 2 (Torino: Marietti, 1950), n. 660, p. 245: " Deinde, cum dicit Dionysius . . Et ipsum . . . ostendit quomodo esse se habeat ad Deum; et dicit quod ipsum esse commune est ex primo Ente, quod est Deus, et ex hoc sequitur quod esse commune aliter se habeat ad Deum quam alia existentia, quantum ad tria: primo quidem, quantum ad hoc quod alia existentia dependet ab esse communi, non autem Deus, sed magis esse commune dependet a Deo; et hoc est quod dicit Dionysius quod ipsum esse commune est ipsiU8 Dei, tamquam ab Ipso dependet, et non ipse Deus est esse, idest ipsius esse communis, tamquam ab ipso dependens. Secundo, quantum ab hoc, quod omnia existentia continenter sub ipso esse communi, non autem Deus, sed magis esse commune continetur sub eius virtute, quia virtus divina plus extenditur quam ipsum esse creatum: et hoc est quod dicit, quod esse commune est in ipso Deo sicut contentum in continente et non e converso ipse Deus est in eo quod est esse. Tertio: quantum ad hoc quod omnia alia existentia participant eo quod est esse, non autem Deus, sed magis ipsum esse creatum est quaedam participatio Dei et similitudo lpsius; et hoc est quod dicit quod esse commune habet lpsum scilicet Deum, ut participans similitudinem Eius, non autem ipse Deus habet esse quasi participans ipso esse." This text must be linked with the insistence in the De Ente et Essentia, c. 4, that the demonstration for God's existence involves the double dependence spoken of in the text of this study, "alia existentia dependent ab esse communi " but " esse commune dependet a Deo." These considerations reveal the impossibility of talking metaphysical good sense about the act of existing in isolation from either God or the nature whose very be-ing esse " is." They point up the synthetic structure of the existential order as well as the synthetic structure of the intentional order of metaphysics as an intellectual discipline. 382 FREDERICK D. WILHELMSEN insistence, made in 1911, that the "real distinction" is the V eritas Fundamentalis Philosophiae Christianae is as true today as it was then. 28 The fact that contemporary Thomism has moved far beyond Del Prado without contradicting him is an illustration of the thesis being advanced in this essay. The non-identity of esse and essence is deducible from neithe1· existence nor essence for the following reasons: 1) esse (unlike the existent) is never a given from which anything could be deduced (from the bare consideration of ipsum esse nothing follows because quite literally there is no ipsum esse as either real or intentional object), 2) essence is existentially neutral and therefore yields no truths whatsoever about being; conversely, no examination of essence can yield falsehoods about being. From an analysis, a la Hegel, of either esse or essence we would have to conclude to the nonsense that nothing exists at all. lpsum esse or ens commune in abstraction from ens or from lpsum Esse Subsistens is Non-Being, Hegel's famous antithesis to Being; essence prescinded (not abstracted) from esse is equally Non-Being. 29 One overarching conclusion emerges from these considerations. An analytic demarche in metaphysics would have to commence with either existence as given or essence as given, but the point of departure from existence is blocked because esse is no object, and the point of departure from essence is useless because existentially neutral. Metaphysics lodges itself as a nascent habit in the mind when a man compares the diverse modes of existing of a common essence (existential diversity within essential community) or the relative unity and absolute diversity of everything in being. The exercise of this comparison of The One and The Many engenders the conclusion that existence transcends, while englobing, essence. The very performance of this act is synthetic, novel, creative. Every subsequent metaphysical per28 Norbert Del Prado, De Veritate Fundamentali Philosophiae Christianae (Friburgi Helvetiorum, 1911). 29 Thomas Aquiuas, De Ente et Essentia: " Ergo patet quod natura . . . absolute considerata abstrahit a quolibet esse, ita tamen quod non fiat praecisio alicuius eorum." C. ill, ed. Roland-Gosseliu, p. 26. METAPHYSICS AS CREATIVITY 383 formance manifests a similar structure without being thereby a simple articulation of the already known. In a profound sense there are no " alreadys " in metaphysics. * * * * * We can no more demonstrate the structure of metaphysical knowledge from formal necessities, from " systematic " considerations, than we can dig esse out of essence. The immense difficulty in discussing the structure of metaphysical truthsand, a fortiori, their novelty and creativity-is rooted within the very mystery of existence as probed by Thomistic wisdom. Msgr. Gerald Phelan was a pioneer in pointing out the inadequacy of Aristotelian terminology for expressing St. Thomas's deeper insights into Being. 30 The fourfold nexus of causes that Aquinas inherited from Aristotle included, of course, the efficient cause-that existing agent which contributes to the generation of a substance or accident by actualizing a previously existent potency, a real potency in the classical language of the Schoolmen. Only that which exists can cause efficiently. But Aristotle's efficient cause forms part of nature. Within Thomism the Aristotelian insistence that only things that exist can produce existing effects was carried over in its entirety. The very meaning of efficient causation was simultaneously both deepened and obscured due to the Thomistic non-identity between existence and essence: deepened, because esse was affirmed as the very act of being which rendered efficiency possible, obscured, because esse simply cannot be fitted into Aristotle's list of causes. Phelan wanted to jettison the whole vocabularly of causality, at least in the crucial instance of creation. 31 Is esse a cause? If by cause we mean a principle contributing 80 Gerald B. Phelan, "The Being of Creatures," Selected Pape:rs, p. 87. "Consequently, discussion of the being of creatures in terms of causality, participation, composition of act and potency, esse and quod est, and all the familiar vocabulary of the production and reception of being (esse) used in reference to creation . . . all this still enveloped the thought of St. Thomas in an aura of essentialism." 81 Phelan, ibid. 384 FREDERICK D. WILHELMSEN to the production of being, then esse is both cause and effect: cause in the sense of being the act of all acts, that without which no other cause acts; effect, in the sense that the" to be" of any thing whatsoever results from the " aggregation " of aU four Aristotelian causes at work: i.e., without an agent acting (sexual activity of man and woman), upon properly disposed matter (ovum, seed, etc.), according to their natures (humanity) , for an end (propagation of the race, etc.), the child does not come into being. Esse as an ultimate act fascinated Cajetan and opened him to a furious attack by Bafiez. 32 St. Thomas's statement that esse " results from the principles of nature" permitted Siger de Brabant to treat the Common Doctor roughly. 33 The ambiguities simply point up the puzzling characteristics of radical existential activity when expressed in terms proper to Aristotelian meta-physics. If we wished to exploit the Aristotelian terminology, we might designate esse as an " internal efficient-formal cause." Esse is "most formal," the act even of forms. But esse could be called, by a stretch of language, an internal efficient cause because esse is ultimate radical activity of all that is, that which is most intimate to any being whatsoever. 34 But an "internal formal-efficient cause" requires such a degree of refinement in order to escape a nest of contradictions that it is dubious that the term could ever receive widespread acceptance. An act which is determined by 32 Domingo Bafiez, The Primacy of Existence in Thomas Aquinas, translation with an introduction and notes by Benjamin S. Llamzon (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1966); E. Gilson, "Cajetan et I' existence," Tijdschrift voor Philosophic, 15, pp. 54-72; F. Wilhelmsen, "History and Existence," Thought, XXXVI, no. 141 (Summer, 1961), pp. 207-214. 33 The controversy is detailed by Gilson in his Being and Some Philosophers, pp. 64-73. 34 Summa Theologiae, I, ad 8, 1: "Cum autem Deus sit ipsum esse per suam essentiam, oportet quod esse creatum sit proprius effectus eius; sicut ignire est proprius effectus ipsius ignis. Hunc autem effectum causat Deus in rebus, non solum quando primo esse incipiunt, sed quamdiu in esse conservantur , .. quamdiu igitur res habet esse, tamdiu oportet quod Deus adsit ei, secundum modum quo esse habet. Esse autem est illud quod est magis intimum cuilibet, et quod profundius omnibus inest, cum sit formale respectu omnium quae in re sunt . . . Unde oportet quod Deus sit in omnibus rebus, et in time"; Cf. In I Sent., d. 37, q. 1, a. 1; Summa Contra Gentiles, III, c. 67. METAPHYSICS AS CREATIVITY 385 that which it makes be rather than determining its own proper effect escapes the nature of Aristotle's efficient cause. In truth, we encounter here, once again, the incapacity of the human mind to express esse in a verbum of simple understanding. The metaphysician can only orchestrate and deepen his insights about being by taking account of the univocal structure of every meaning when applied analogically to esse. This truth prohibits metaphysics from ever halting in any " vision of Being," and it spurs the philosopher to further reasoning issuing into subsequent judgments which are never reducible to his point of departure. The scientia of metaphysics concludes by separation and negation to truths about being which are simply as novel as is being. The heart of creation, existence, is forbidden any direct access to the intellect through the intelligible species. Never given in concepts, existence is never given at all. In a deep and mysterious sense, First Philosophy " creates " within the intentional order a world of truths about Being. These truths are not frozen into a univocist Platonic Truth capitalized and thus contemplated in terminal intellectual vision. The creation of a New Order of Knowledge concerning the Order of Being is itself being, the very being of reasoned judgments. These considerations, if substantially valid, constrain us to conclude that metaphysics is not only thoroughly synthetic and therefore creative but it also enables us to give Kant his due even while transcending him. Kant's complaint about metaphysics was lodged in his insistence that metaphysics was an absolutely universal and necessary science about absolutely Nothing at all. Kant was right. Metaphysics bears on no "object" in the strict Aristotelian sense of the term, nor do metaphysical insights play over formal intelligibilities interiorized intentionally in the mind. Kant was wrong only in supposing that knowledge is reducible to intelligible content, be that content synthetic or analytic. (Esse, after all, is not the content of the synthesized but synthesizing as an act.) Because the mode of conceiving-the" meaning "-of metaphysical judgments must be denied of the truths affirmed, 35 the metaphysician is always 386 FREDERICK D. WILHELMSEN constrained to transcend his own conclusions. Being is never the way in which I am constrained to conceive it. The metaphysician's transcending negations catapult him out of any plateau of understanding and move him to use every conclusion as a point of departure for further reasoning about Being. These transcending negations generate new truths. Metaphysics is the only human science which is defined by its future. Were the First Philosopher to halt at any point, his conclusions would be debased into univocal falsifications of existence. Originality and creativity are not happy coincidences in the life of a genuine metaphysician; they are conditions for the very exercise of his profession. FREDERICK D. wILHELMSEN University of Dallas Irving, Texas 35 The proposition must be taken formally as written: given that modes of conception function as predicates said of subjects; given that these predicates are intelligibilities finding their principles in intelligible species; given that intelligible species are the product of determined action by existing natures on the intelligence, it follows that esse is never expressable, even correctly but partially, by formal intelligibilities. God is true but not as I conceive truth; existence is perfection and act and synthesizing but not as I conceive these attributes. The triplex via functions within all metaphysical discourse and is not limited to man's judgments about God. (Cf. my "The Triplex Via," loc. cit.). I do not understand the esse of God which is " omnino ignotum" (In Epistolam ad Romanos, I, 6) and "penitus ... ignotum" (Summa Contra Gentiles, III, c. 49). But even the esse of the most trivial creature is " entirely unknown " and " utterly unknown " if knowledge means understanding, rather than judgment. My " understanding," in this regard, is by analogy with the univocal order; unless this be understood and corrected constantly, metaphysics opens itself to the very critique launched against it by Kant in his Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics, edited in English by Dr. Paul Carns, reprinted edition (La Salle, Ill.: The Open Court Publishing Co., 1945) . ANALOGY AND THE DISREPUTE OF METAPHYSICS T HE IN ABILITY of metaphysicians to reach common and lasting agreement on any of their propositions is notorious. Furthermore, metaphysical philosophizing regularly produces statements which strike many as being strange or even meaningless. If the metaphysician's words are given the meanings they have in ordinary language, his statements may appear to be either internally inconsistent or to contradict contingently given matters of fact. Modern philosophy has responded to this situation in two ways. Descartes felt that all a metaphysician had to do was to find a foolproof way to distinguish the certain from the doubtful and then apply this method to our philosophic problems. His method was modeled on that of mathematics; more recently we have been advised that the guarantee of success is the construction of our metaphysics on the basis of logic, or of biology, or of phenomenology, etc. The other way, made classic by Hume and Kant, holds that there is no such thing as a sound method for metaphysics because it is by nature an enterprise undertaken only as the result of some mistake. One contemporary version of this approach has it that metaphysical statements presuppose confusion about the logic of terms in everyday language. This essay proposes a different kind of approach to metaphysics' difficulties. Drawing out implications of a familiar doctrine which is itself metaphysical, the doctrine that being is not a generic concept, it will argue that paradoxical formulas and great problems in achieving common agreement are to be expected in metaphysics without its necessarily being an illegitimate pursuit and without there being a still undiscovered royal road to answers for its questions. In other words, it will be argued that metaphysics has difficulties unique among human 387 888 JOHN C. CAHALAN intellectual endeavors because it is by its nature uniquely difficult. Not all the reasons that could be put forward for this claim will be examined here. The one I will focus on is important both because it involves previously unseen consequences of a classic discovery about the logic of many metaphysical concepts and because it is relevant to the attempt to deal with philosophical problems linguistically. As metaphysical, the presuppositions of this account will be highly controversial if not thoroughly disreputable, and of necessity this will appear to the reader as a major weakness. But if the argument that there is no foolproof method to rid us of problems of the kind to which metaphysics gives rise is correct, then reliance on disputed assumptions must in fact be unavoidable. Actually, arguments have been offered many times in support of the assumptions made here; this essay will add nothing to them. What it hopes to contribute is an explanation of why arguments of precisely that kind have such difficulty winning common agreement, an explanation, however, which does not render these arguments null and void. But of what benefit can it be to learn that, included in metaphysics' bag of tricks, are ways of accounting for its own peculiarities? Unless one shares its metaphysical assumptions, what could one learn from this study other than that metaphysicians are sometimes capable of cleverness, a point which is probably not in doubt. There is more to it than that. What is involved here is a choice between naive and non-naive approaches to these problems. Metaphysics is considered disreputable because of its embarrassing queerness and scandalous lack of agreement. But all attempts to rid us of these, whether of the Cartesian or the Humean-Kantian kinds, have generated as much controversy and paradox as they were trying to eliminate. So, a theory which can explain the existence of a type of problem that it can be subject to itself and which does not at the same time claim to be a way of avoiding that type of problem will have the advantage, unlike these other theories, of being consistent with the facts of our philosophical experience. That experience suggests that, whether we are pro- or ANALOGY AND THE DISREPUTE OF METAPHYSICS 389 anti-metaphysics, when we humans begin to philosophize, we are not going to avoid difficulties of the kind metaphysicians get into. A significant, though partial, reason for this is found in the logic of concepts like that of being. I Against Parmenides, Aristotle pointed out that being is not related to particular classes of beings, and the characteristics which distinguish these classes from one another as a genus are related to its species and their specific differences. When it is said that a generic concept abstracts from differences which attach to the genus in its various species, "abstract" is used in a sense which is perfectly intelligible according to the standard of ordinary usage. Etymologically, " to abstract" means to draw from or separate from; and unless our language has meanings which are complex in such a way that some parts can be at least cognitively distinguished from others and referred to without referring to the others, the relations of genus to species to specific difference would not hold between any of our concepts. The same is true of the species-individual relation. We can refer to blue, for instance, because we have experienced it; but, whenever we refer to blue, we fail to refer to any number of things that were present with blue in any given experience of it. This is not to say that there are no philosophic difficulties associated with the use of the word" abstraction"; indeed there are. It is simply to say that the assertion that a genus abstracts from differences between species, or that a species abstracts from differences between individuals, does not by itself commit one to any philosophic theory of abstraction; it does not, for instance, commit one to the view that, in order to have a language with universal terms, we must first of all perform self-conscious and directed acts of focusing on some aspects of experience and distinguishing them from others. Unfortunately, when one says that a generic concept does and being does not abstract, he is not only using the term "abstract " consistently with an ordinary usage, he is also employing the only terminology available in which to express 390 JOHN C. CAHALAN what it is that generic concepts do which concepts like being do not. This terminology is unfortunate because of Peter Geach's attack, in Mental Acts, on "abstractionism" as a theory of how we acquire generic and specific concepts; so, a few words relating my views to Geach's are necessary. Although we are not in complete agreement, his central argument against abstractionism is one which is of equal importance to the case I am making. He points out (pp. 33-38) that to the genus-species relation between the concepts chromatic color and red there does not correspond a distinction between features really given in experience. There cannot be one feature of a thing by which it is colored and an additional feature by which it is red. There is no color in a red sense-object over and above the redness; otherwise it would not be true that red is a color. With this I am in agreement. But while being able to say that red is a color implies no real distinction between what is expressed by these concepts, it does imply a logical distinction. We can refer to one and the same " real " feature of our experience by means of the concept red, which concept will not refer to blue, or by means of the concept chromatic color, which will also refer to blue but not to white. These two concepts, in other words, refer to the same reality in logically distinct ways. And by the abstraction true of generic concepts but not true of concepts like being I mean the logical feature of generic concepts which distinguishes the way we refer to experience by means of them from the way we refer to experience by means of specific concepts. (Certainly, what is referred to by a specific concept was experienced by us together with many features really distinct from it, but the relevant comparison of being is with generic concepts.) So, by attacking under the name of abstractionism a view demanding that generic and specific concepts express really distinct features, Geach is not attacking the view of abstraction which I am making use of. All this can be made clearer by examining why being cannot be abstract the way a genus is. When we define the criteria for the use of generic and specific terms, we find that the definition for a specific term is richer in ANALOGY AND THE DISREPUTE OF METAPHYSICS '391 content than that of the generic term, that the meaning of the specific term includes but adds to the meaning of the generic term. A specific term has a logically complex meaning a part of which is the meaning of the generic term; so the concept of the species involves in addition to the concept of the genus concepts which refer to what falls logically outside of what is referred to in the concept of the genus. This difference between the criteria for generic and specific terms constitutes the difference between the ways these terms refer to experience, the difference being that the meaning of the generic term is a component of the meaning of a specific term which can be cognitively separated from or pulled out from the other parts of that whole. Can being express a feature common to all beings as triangular expresses features common to the isosceles and the scalene? Can we cognitively separate some component or components of meaning which might be common to all beings from other components which would differentiate beings from one another? No, if the differentiating components are real, they are referred to by the concept being just as much as are the components of similarity. For there to be a scalene triangle, there must be a figure possessing the features defining triangularity and in addition features defining the scalene. But what can be added to what is referred to by being? To put it one more way, what is expressed in the notion of a specific difference falls outside of and is logically extraneous to what is expressed in the notion of the genus; what falls outside or is logically extraneous to the notion of being is nothing. Therefore, being does not abstract from differences as does a genus. The concept being, however, is taken by many metaphysicians to be a transcendental, that is, to refer to absolutely all aspects and categories of reality. But there is also a commonly held view that no concepts can be transcendental in this sense, since it is essential to their function to distinguish different features of our experience from one another. This objection is irrelevant to my purposes for three reasons. First, all it could prove is that transcendentals do not have the same 892 JOHN C. CAHALAN kind of use as the great majority of our concepts. Like the logical positivist criticism of metaphysics, it succeeds in expressing a way in which metaphysical thinking differs from other kinds but not in showing that these other kinds are the only valid ones. Second, most defenders of transcendentals that I know of recognize the need for a plurality of transcendental terms with logically distinct uses; each of them refers to being in general, but no one of them says all there is to say about being in general. But it is not the transcendental character of being that is important here. On the hypothesis that a notion refers to absolutely everything, it follows that the notion does not abstract from any differences between things; but examples appearing below will show that a notion may be nonabstract in the way being is yet not be transcendental. It is this way of being nonabstract or nongeneric which accounts for the embarrassing features of metaphysics that we are studying. Convenience demands that terms be introduced for the connotation and denotation of words nongeneric as "being" is. For these uses previous philosophy has left us the terms " analogue " and " analogate." I will adopt this terminology because asserting that two things are analogous does not have the same emphasis as simply asserting that they are similar. All similarity implies difference. But asserting that a given similarity is only an analogy goes beyond merely implying that the likeness is accompanied by difference. In speaking of analogues, analogical terms, etc., I am not, of course, committing myself to all the liabilities acquired by these terms during their somewhat checkered history. Taking being as an analogue, however, is only one way of attempting to avoid dilemmas of the Parmenidean kind. One other is to conclude that the concept being is nonexistent, that is, that the word " being " is used in totally equivocal senses. Another way is to interpret the concept (s) of being as nondescriptive or nonattributive, as having the meaning, for instance, of an empty logical or phenomenological form such as " subject of predication " in general or " object " in general. ANALOGY AND THE DISREPUTE OF METAPHYSICS 393 Both positions can be associated with the view that existence is not a predicate. I find myself unable to accept the view that the multiplicity of uses for " being " can be explained as complete equivocations. And it is hard to see how interpreting being as nondescriptive would solve the problem dealt with here. For the fact that a concept is logical or phenomenological does not imply that its relation to other concepts is not that of genus to species. So, if a concept such as object in Husserl cannot be related to its subordinate concepts as genus to species, it remains to be determined how it is related to them. If we hypothesize that " being " is not totally equivocal and, therefore, that there is some community of meaning in its various uses, do we not imply that an abstraction in some way characterizes our acquisition of this meaning? Although abstraction, in the sense in which we have been speaking of it, may not be a sufficient condition for our possession of common meanings, it appears to be a necessary condition. That abstraction is somehow necessary for our acquisition of the meaning of " being " also follows if we only acquire this meaning concomitantly with our acquiring generic and specific meanings such as " red," " tree," " laughing," " sharp," " speed," etc. And it does seem to be the case that we would not have our notion of being had we not experienced what we can refer to as "something red," "something moving swiftly," etc. But would not the family resemblance theory provide a means of avoiding abstraction as an element in our account of the community of meaning for various uses of "being"? Unfortunately, it would not. The family resemblance theory obviously will not account for any transcendental term, since such a term is predicated of something not simply because of the eyes which it shares with some members of the family or the ears which it shares with others but because of any feature it possesses whatsoever. And as we shall see, there are nontranscendentals which share being's way being nonabstract. More fundamentally, however, the existence of family resemblance relations presupposes abstraction. In Wittgenstein's 394 JOHN C. CAHALAN words, " We see a complex network of similarities, overlapping, criss-crossing" (Philosophical Investigations, 66) . But we cannot see a complex network of similarities unless we see cases of similarity. To imply that we can see complex networks of similarities without seeing particular ways in which some things are similar would not be an advance in the theory of meaning, as Wittgenstein's analysis definitely is; it would be a return to Platonism in a disguised form. And " abstraction " in our sense need signify no more than a grasp of some way in which otherwise distinct things are similar; for seeing a similarity means seeing a similarity in a certain respect and, to that extent, performing a cognition which leaves out of consideration other features which are also given in experience. So, recognizing that two members have the family nose involves an abstraction in the ordinary sense. Likewise, although there may be no feature possessed in common by card games, board games, and ball games, card games certainly do have features in common; they have a common feature by reason of which they are called "card" games. And it might be that they share a feature by reason of which they are called " games." This is no more impossible than there being similarities between certain social processes by reason of which we can say this is a game of bridge and that also is a game of bridge. Thus, an abstraction could be involved in our acquisition of a family resemblance term such as " game " in a manner similar to the way the abstraction corresponding to a term such as " speed" was seen to be involved in the acquisition of our meaning for" being." But there is a decisive difference between the two cases. On the family resemblance hypothesis an abstractable common feature that might earn the name " game " for two activities using cards would not be a common featu're earning them the name " game " along with both board games and ball games. Some feature might earn them that name in common with board games, but some other feature would earn them that name in common with ball games. In other words, family resemblance relations between various uses of a word begin where ab- ANALOGY AND THE DISREPUTE OF METAPHYSICS 395 stractions end. On the contrary, we acquire our meaning for " being," which by our hypothesis is somehow similar in various uses of the word, only in the process of acquiring meanings for such terms as " ball," " board," and " card." Therefore, being a card does entitle a thing to be called a being in a sense similar to that in which a ball is called a being, a board is called a being, etc. So it appears that "being's" community of meaning does not begin to function only after abstraction's function has been terminated; rather this nonabstract community of meaning is bound up with abstraction. In other words, arguing on the basis of an allegedly ordinary meaning of" abstraction," we have arrived at the philosophical paradox of a nonabstract meaning acquired by abstraction. I will argue that this is just one example of the kind of result which is to be expected from standard metaphysical procedures, procedures which are entirely valid. The abstraction associated with being and concepts like it has been called, not very helpfully, imperfect or incomplete abstraction and analogical abstraction. In a moment I will present a model in terms of which analogical abstraction can be made intelligible. But now the result of this discussion can be expressed by saying that an analogue, such as being, does not abstract perfectly or completely from the differences with which it is associated in its various analogates. In what follows I will show two consequences which result if there are concepts which are imperfectly abstracted in this way: the first is the necessarily paradoxical character of propositions using such concepts; and the second is the corresponding difficulty in discovering and agreeing on the truth or falsity of these propositions. II Etymology suggests that to aid our understanding of analogical abstraction we examine proportionality as a logical form. A proportion such as 4 : 2 : : 6 : 3 expresses a similarity between two ratios, but it expresses the differences along with the similarity. What it expresses is a form of seeing-as, of seeing that 4 is to 2 as 6 is to 3; and in this seeing-as the differences 396 JOHN C. CAHALAN are seen along with the likeness. But seeing 4 : 2 as similar to 6 : 3 implies seeing each of these ratios as an instance of the abstractable value, double. Since the ground of similarity is abstractable from the differences, we have a logical means of expressing the similarity which, unlike proportionality, does not express the differences at the same time. Thus we can predicate " double " of both ratios. The similarities signified by proportions, therefore, are not necessarily analogically abstracted similarities. But about analogical similarities it can be said that, unlike generic and specific similarities, they can only be expressed" proportionally," which does not mean that a proportion must always be used but that what must be used is some logical form which, like proportionality, expresses difference at the same time as likeness. Assume that we can see substance as similar to accident in a manner analogous to our seeing 4:2 as similar to 6:3. Just as we must be capable of seeing 4 : 2 as double if we can see it as similar to 6 : 3, we must be capable of seeing substance as being if we can see it as similar to accident. Seeing substance not as substance but as being, however, cannot involve the nonconsideration of features peculiar to substance, as there is a nonconsideration of specific differences in the genus. Rather, it involves seeing everything about substance as being. And, since the concept being does not abstract from the differences, it must be capable of expressing both similarity and difference between substance and accident. The upshot of this is that the difference between two subjects of which an analogue has been affirmed must be expressed by means of an affirmation and negation of the analogue itself. Therefore, in the case of one analogate there will be a double affirmation regarding the analogue, but in the case of the other analogate there will be simultaneous affirmation and negation regarding the analogue which, regardless of appearances, will not be contradictory. Why can the differences between things of which an analogue has been predicated be expressed only by means of an additional affirmation in one case, and negation in the other, involving the same analogue? When we have as- ANALOGY AND THE DISREPUTE OF METAPHYSICS 897 serted a nonequivocal term of two things we have expressed a similarity between them, for the similarity in the affirmations signifies similarities in things. To express dissimilarity between two things, we must affirm something of one of the things and deny it of the other. To say that A is a man and B is a man is to express a similarity between them. To express dissimilarity, we must add that A is, for instance, a Lutheran while B is not a Lutheran. But, in the case of generic or specific predication, what is affirmed and denied in the second instance is related to what is affirmed in the first instance as something logically extraneous, as something falling outside of what is signified. Again, to say that " triangle " abstracts from " scalene " or " isosceles " is to say that the latter signify something which is not signified by the former or that the former signifies something capable of being added to by, but something indifferent to what is signified by, the latter. Thus, if the analogue which is affirmed in the first instance were not involved in and essential to what is both affirmed and denied in the second instance, there would be no difference between an analogical and a generic predicate. The same analogue, therefore, must be essentially involved in the affirmations which express the similarity of the subjects and in the opposition of affirmation and negation by which dissimilarity of the subjects is expressed. Of course, the analogue cannot be involved in the original affirmations and the subsequent opposition of affirmation and negation in exactly the same ways; otherwise, redundancy would result in one case and contradiction in the other. But that is simply to restate the fact that an analogue, unlike a generic concept, can, while remaining itself, be involved in affirmation and negation in diverse manners. To help make this point clearer, let me put it in a slightly different way. When a concept is attributed to two things, what is attributed expresses at least a way in which the two things are similar. However, when what is attributed to two things is an analogue and, hence, not only expresses a way in which the things are similar but also a way in which they are dissimilar, 398 JOHN C. CAHALAN the attributions themselves fail to bring out the fact that the analogue expresses a way in which the things are dissimilar. Still, the things do differ with respect to the analogue. For, if an analogue does not abstract from differences, the differences do not fall outside of what is signified by the analogue. So, among the affirmations and negations which express the differences between two analogates must be affirmation and negation regarding the analogue itself. I£ among what can be asserted and denied of two analogates to express their difference were not the same predicate which is asserted of both to express their similarity, the predicate with reference to which the things are similar would be abstracted from its differences and would not be analogical. And even though the exact way in which an analogue is used to express similarity will not be the same as the way it is used to express dissimilarity, still it is the analogue itself that will be twice affirmed of one analogate while being both affirmed and denied of the other; for the difference between the ways it is used in these cases cannot add to the analogue as a specific difference adds to the genus. As unfamiliar as this may sound, it is only an attempt to express in a methodical way something which has examples with which we are all acquainted. There is a history of philosophic puzzles concerning the division of being, that which exists, into substance and accident. Substance is supposed to be what exists but does not exist in another while accident is that which exists but exists in another. Another what? Another being. So, existence is the concept relied on to formulate both what substance and accident have in common and what distinguishes them. Relations provide another example. For some, there are both internal and external relations. But external relations have been described by means of a double affirmation of the concept of relation and internal relations by means of affirmation and negation. The relations signified by " larger than " and " near to " merely refer their subject to other things. " Knowing " and " loving " signify qualities affecting their subjects intrinsically in addition to referring ANALOGY AND THE DISREPUTE OF METAPHYSICS 399 them to others. Thus there are relations which are merely relations, purely relative; and there are relations which are not merely relations, not exhausted by what is signified by "relative." Many paradoxes concerning the Deity involve analogues. Both God and creatures are said to exist. Often, however, it is added that God is his own existence while no creature is its own existence. In the first case, two affirmations concern existence. In the second case, both the affirmation and the negation concern existence. Now, think of the contradiction that some mystics and/ or pantheists see in asserting existence of anything other than God. And, on the other hand, think of the contradiction the atheist sees in the idea that, instead of simply possessing the feature signified by an abstract term such as "existence," some individual thing can be identified with it. From the viewpoint of the theistic metaphysics mentioned above, the mystic is guilty of identifying existence with the difference with which it is associated in God and the atheist of identifying existence with the difference affecting it in creatures. I£ existence cannot be completely abstracted from its differences, it runs the risk of being absorbed into them. Again, those who interpret moral evil as an offense against God can sometimes be found to refer to it as an evil relative to a good which is goodness itself, whereas physical evil is relative to a good which is not goodness itself. Many metaphysical problems concern knowledge or consciousness, and the logic of analogical concepts has had its effect in this area also. Some metaphysicians hold that consciousness must be analyzed as a genuine mode of existence other thanand defined by its correlative opposition to-ordinary existence, the existence things have in themselves. But there is a division in the ways this view has been defended. Some have held that knowledge must possess existence of the ordinary kind at the same time that it has the nature of a correlative opposite to that kind of existence. In other words, consciousness is a thin()' b at the same time that it is consciousness. For this position, according to our terminology, existence in the ordinary sense 400 JOHN C. CAHALAN is an analogue involved in its differences in such a way that one kind of thing of which this existence can be affirmed must be distinguished from others of which it can be affirmed by a simultaneous denial regarding existence of this kind. The other way of defending this view would have it that consciousness, being defined in opposition to ordinary existence, precludes its existing in that way and still being what it is. Therefore, the features characterizing ordinary existence would constitute specific differences under the genus mode of existence. (This view is recognizable as Sartre's radical division of the pour soi and en soi from one another as modes of reality.) The reason why a metaphysician would oppose Sartre's position would probably be that he takes what is referred to as existence in itself as necessary for any reality whatsoever. This necessity would explain why Sartre's disassociation of the two modes of reality forces him to describe one of them as nothingness. But it is precisely belief in this necessity that is supposed to justify the extreme opposite view that any mode of existence defined in opposition to ordinary existence is contradictory and that, therefore, consciousness is not a distinct mode of existence. This opposite view, however, agrees with Sartrean view that something could not be defined against existence in itself and still possess it. In other words, this view also implies that existence of this kind is not an analogue. Perhaps the view that consciousness should not be analyzed as a mode of existence is correct. Still, the proneness of metaphysicians to so analyze it would have to be explained. For it is not only the theories just looked at that do so but also the Idealist theory. What is Idealism, after all, if not the conviction that consciousness actually is an existence for its objects, together with the unwillingness to admit the paradox that there is for its objects some other state of which it can be simultaneously asserted that it, too, is an existence but denied that it is an existence for a knower. More examples will follow. They are all, of course, cases in which analogical concepts can be alleged to be present in order to account for a paradox. That analogy is capable of doing ANALOGY AND THE DISREPUTE OF METAPHYSICS 401 so does not rely for its proof on examples but on logical necessities involved in expressing the difference between things possessing a common feature when those differences do not add to the common feature as a specific difference adds to a genus. The problem of deciding whether or not one is actually dealing with an analogue is discussed in what follows. But, on the hypothesis that we are predicating an analogue of a subject, it follows that we are predicating it of something having features contradicting features which are essential to, intrinsic to, and not abstractable from, the analogue as predicated of some other subject; and this must be expressed by the simultaneous affirmation and negation of the analogue in ways which are different but do not differ by characteristics logically added to the analogue from without. III It is important to distinguish the kind of apparent contradiction being explained here from the kind which arises between philosophers who are unaware that they are using a word in two different senses. Nor is it the kind that results from the fact that our language is much less varied than is the reality which is to be conveyed by means of it. Because of this, a philosophic use of a word which is appropriate from the standpoint of one of the word's ordinary uses will be inappropriate from the standpoint of others. Any confusion having this kind of source can be cleared up by substituting a complex phrase or clause which explains that use of the original word on which the philosopher \Vas relying. But, whenever the meaning of the original word was analogical, whatever phrase or clause we substitute for the word will necessarily be capable of double affirmation regarding one thing and simultaneous affirmation and negation regarding another. Further, if we possessed as widely varied a language as we could possibly use, it would necessarily continue to contain words subject to this kind of paradoxical use if it is true that there are aspects of things which are not capable of being the foundation for or object of generic or specific abstraction. If, 402 JOHN C. CAHALAN for instance, potency is an analogue and if we had completely different words for active and passive potencies, the fact would not be destroyed that what we were referring to by these words would possess aspects so related that they could be expressed by asserting a term common to both, which common term, while not being used equivocally, must in a different way be asserted of one and denied of another. If such common terms were lacking, there would be a deficiency in our language; for not only would we then be incapable of expressing some ways in which things are similar, we would also be incapable of expressing some ways in which they differ, the same terms (or synonymous terms) being needed to express both. 'Vittgenstein, of course, was aware that our language is less varied than are the uses that we have for it, and he sought to explain the existence of philosophic problems and strange philosophic statements by this fact. Here is a well-known passage from the Bluebook: A philosopher is not a man out of his senses, a man who doesn't see what everybody sees; nor on the other hand is his disagreement with common sense that of the scientist disagreeing with the coarse views of the man in the street. That is, his disagreement is not founded on a more subtle knowledge of fact. We therefore have to look around for the source of his puzzlement. . . . Our ordinary language, which of all possible notations is the one which pervades all our life, holds our mind rigidly in one place, as it were, and in this position sometimes it feels cramped, having a desire for other positions as well. Thus we sometimes wish for a notation which stresses a difference more strongly, makes it more obvious, than ordinary language does, or one which in a particular case uses more closely similar forms of expression than our ordinary language. Our mental cramp is loosened when we are shown the notations which fulfill these needs. I hope to have shown, on the contrary, that if the philosophic puzzle, the strange statement, or the apparent contradiction involves the predication of an analogue of its analogates, the difficulty cannot be removed by finding another form of expression for what we are saying about one of the analogates, either a form that does not convey similarity with the other analoaate 1:> ANALOGY AND THE DISREPUTE OF METAPHYSICS 403 or a form that does not convey difference. Granted that both the limited forms of our language and the logic of analogues can lead us to vacillate philosophically between neglecting the differences for the sake of the similarities or the similarities for the sake of the differences, still there is a distinction between these two cases which is crucial. In the case of an analogue dissimilarity must be expressed by the use of the same or a synonymous word as is the similarity. So, if a newly introduced form of expression for one of the analogates really has the same meaning as the replaced form of expression, necessarily both similarities and differences between the analogates will be capable of being expressed by means of affirmation and negation employing the new form of expression. And if the new form of expression does not have the same meaning as the old, then, contrary to Wittgenstein's hypothesis, the new form is not being used to express the same facts as the old. The peculiar logic of analogical concepts we have described here was first pointed out by Yves Simon. 1 Earlier Simon had worked out a theory that thinking was both immaterial and an activity in the sense similar to that in which walking, laughing, and other physical processes are called activities. 2 As an example of this peculiar logic which will lead directly to the question of determining the truth of propositions about analogues I will contrast Simon's theory with the views expressed by Ryle in The Concept of Mind. Here is part of the criticism of " the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine ": It maintains that there exist both bodies and minds; that there occur physical processes and mental processes, that there are mechanical causes of corporeal movements and mental causes of corporeal movements. I shall argue that these and other analogous conjunctions are absurd; but, it must be noticed, the argument will not show that either of the illegitimately conjoined propositions is absurd in itself. I am not, for example, denying that there occur mental processes. Doing long division is a mental process and so "On Order in Analogical Sets," The New Scholasticiwn, XXXIV (1960), 1-42. • Introduction a l'ontologie du connaitre (Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown), pp. 57-95. 1 404 JOHN C. CAHALAN is making a joke. But I am saying that the phrase "there occur mental processes" does not mean the same sort of thing as "there occur physical processes," and, therefore, that it makes no sense to conjoin or disjoin the two. So, for Ryle, the meaning of " process " when said of physical events has nothing in common with the meaning of "process" when said of mental events. Simon, on the other hand, does not find the meaning of " action " when predicated of mental events totally dissimilar to its meaning when predicated of change in the physical order. Perhaps Ryle was taking'' process" as said of physical events to refer to an aspect of these events that mental events really do not share, while Simon was taking " action " to refer to a different aspect of physical events, one which they do have in common with mental events. As a result, there could have been no contradiction between these views since what Simon asserts of both thinking and, for instance, walking is not the same as what Ryle asserts of one and denies of the other. Unfortunately, opposition between these two views could not be so easily eliminated if Simon is correct. For he argues that action as predicated of cognition and of change is an analogue. (He takes action to be productivity. Physical acts produce results distinct from themselves; this productivity he denies of thinking. Physical acts, however, also incorporate as being indistinct from themselves the productivity by which their agent brings them into existence; otherwise an infinite regress of actions required for the production of further actions develops. And, in the same way, thinking can envelop as indistinct from itself the productivity by which the thinker brings it into existence. Thus the difference is between a productive productivity and an unproductive productivity.) If action is an analogue, one cannot refer to the differential of change in abstraction from the common ground linking change and thinking. And the answer to the question whether what Simon meant by " action " in the case of change could have been the same as what Ryle meant by "process" must be yes and no. No, insofar as what Simon meant by" action" ANALOGY AND THE DISREPUTE OF METAPHYSICS 405 in the case of change can also be said of thinking; this is not true of " process " for Ryle. Yes, insofar as what " action" meant in the case of change can in another way be affirmed of change while being denied of thinking; this is true of the meaning Ryle had for " process " in the case of physical events. But, for Simon, the difference attaching to action in the case of change cannot be understood apart from a similarity between change and thinking not recognized as such by Ryle. And similarity between analogates is expressed by the same concept as is difference; so, if Ryle really was referring to what Simon considered to be the difference of action in the case of change, he was referring to something common to change and thinking without knowing it. Since Simon admitted both samenesses and differences between mental and physical events, if he were to have had a dispute with Ryle, it would have been over the elements of sameness; neither side would have been denying the existence of differences. And because analogy would have been involved, the dispute could not have been settled by Simon's simply pointing to a zone of sameness between thinking and change unqualifiedly abstracted from all differences. The lack of unqualified abstraction means that the difference is given along with the likeness. As a result, when one grasps what " action " refers to in the case of change, the possibility is always there that he may fail to focus on the similarity between action in the case of change and action in the case of thinking. And, having missed the similarity while recognizing that a similar form of language is used in both cases, a philosopher may feel that others have been misled into thinking there is a likeness by the similar ways in which these disparate areas of experience are referred to in language. Recall what Wittgenstein said in the Bluebook about the " analogy " between mental and physical activities: Perhaps the main reason why we are so strongly inclined to talk of the head as the locality of our thoughts is this: the existence of the words " thinking " and " thought " alongside of the words denoting (bodily) activities, such as writing, speaking, etc., makes 406 JOHN C. CAHALAN us look for an activity, different from these but analogous to them, corresponding to the word "thinking." When words in our ordinary language have prima facie analogous grammars, we are inclined to interpret them analogously; i. e., we try to make the analogy hold throughout.- We say, " The thought is not the same as the sentence; for an English and a French sentence, which are utterly different, can express the same thought." And so, as the sentences are somewhere, we look for a place for the thought. Do we see analogies between things because there are similar forms for referring to them in our language? Or do similar linguistic forms sometimes exist because we have grasped analogies between things in the sense of meanings which express both the points of similarity and the points of dissimilarity between things? It has been argued that metaphysical paradox .is a necessary and legitimate occurrence if philosophy ever deals with such meanings. But are things actually characterized by aspects which, when known, are seen to be both points of similarity and points of dissimilarity between the same things? Are there, in other words, analogues of the kind we have described, and if so, are there any which philosophy deals with so that its paradoxes can be accounted for by them? On the one hand, such questions can be answered only by reference to particular examples. If thinking and walking are both actions as Simon says they are, then there is an analogue of the kind we are interested in; if not, perhaps there is some other example. When, on the other hand, because of the imperfect abstractability of the analogue, someone has failed to grasp a similarity which is there for the grasping, we must employ argument to establish the similarity. And it is my contention that the same condition, imperfect abstraction, which renders a kind of simultaneous affirmation and negation a necessary result of metaphysical thinking, also explains the extreme difficulty metaphysics has in finding arguments which compel common agreement. As a result, any argument necessary to show that an actual philosophic paradox can be accounted for by the presence of analogues will be of impaired communicability by the very fact that it concerns analogues. ANALOGY AND THE DISREPUTE OF METAPHYSICS 407 This is what remains to be established. IV If abstraction is a prerequisite for the human grasp of truth, when the mind is dealing with aspects of things which can be only imperfectly abstracted, it is operating under conditions of special difficulty, that is, conditions which make its discovery of the truths in question more difficult for it than is the discovery of other truths. For, to the extent to which abstraction would be held in check, a necessity for our grasp of truth would be absent. And a case can be made that abstraction has such a role. The propositional forms we use to express and communicate what we consider to be the truth do nothing if they do not reflect the fact that our faculties of conceptual knowledge are not capable of expressing the whole of any of our experiences at once, that we must express what we have experienced bit by bit, putting together the results of diverse mental acts. (Even a transcendental, again, does not say all there is to be said about anything.) Any theory of the nontautological use of our propositional forms which would exclude the piecemeal character of our thinking would not only be false, it would be ridiculously so. And the logically piecemeal character of our thinking, that is, the failure of any one of our concepts to express all there is to be expressed in a species, an experience, an event, or a thing, is what our notion of abstraction principally refers to. Although I have a fondness for this argument, I recognize that it is insufficient as an explanation of how lack of complete abstractability affects the discovery and communication of philosophic truths. The only way I have found to accomplish this expeditiously is by analysis of specific examples of metaphysical thinking. So I will briefly develop two such lines of thought in order to point out how analogical concepts can create obstacles to this thinking, obstacles of a kind that will occur in any case of metaphysical reasoning about analogues. On his way to establishing that thinking is indeed an action on the part of the thinker Simon first tried to show that the 408 JOHN C. CAHALAN thinker is active in thinking, that is, that thinking is caused by the thinker and not by something else. And to show this, he began by asserting the necessity of thinking's having some efficient cause. Elsewhere he tried to point out the reason why we know that some things need an efficient cause in order to exist. 3 According to him, it is when we recognize that what is known as the material cause is insufficient to account for something that we know the causality of some other being is also necessary. Thus we recognize that a statue needs a sculptor when we recognize that the clay's being what it is is not a complete explanation of the statue. The clay was clay before it became a statue; therefore, it is not through being itself that the clay became a statue. How could this argument for efficient causality avoid the traditional problem that it is not necessarily true that a thing either exists through itself or through another, for " through itself " is not the contradictory opposite of "through another" but merely of "not through itself"? Recognizing the insufficiency of the material cause would license us to posit some other being on which the thing depends, because implied in this recognition is the recognition that the thing is caused somehow, namely, materially. And to see this is to see that the thing, for example, the shape by which the clay is a statue, is a dependent thing. But such a dependent thing is either dependent on the material cause alone or on the material cause together with other causes; so the insufficiency of the material cause shows dependence on some other being. For Simon as for many others, the notions material oause and efficient cause are analogues. Bodies are material in relation to properties such as shape and motion, and essence is material in relation to existence. Does a particular case of something materially caused have a necessary relation to an efficient cause because of the differential factors peculiar to this case? Yes and no. No, insofar as the analogue is in some way 3 Prevoir et savoir (Montreal: Editions de l'Arbre, 1044). pp. 36-39; Freedom of Choice, ed. Peter Wolff (New York: Fordham University Press, 1969), pp. 129-135; Traite du libre arbitre (Paris: J. Vrin, 1952), pp. 94-98, ANALOGY AND THE DISREPUTE OF METAPHYSICS 409 abstractable from the differences; otherwise, only this analogate of something materially caused would be dependent on an efficient cause. But insofar as these differences cannot be abstracted from, the answer is yes; these differences are not extraneous to that by reason o£ which there is a necessary relation to an efficient cause. But, in order to see these analogues as the grounds of a necessary relation between their analogates, the analogues themselves must be made our objects, not just the analogates. In other words, the analogues must be seen insofar as they are points of similarity, not of difference, between their analogates; and this is what the incomplete abstraction of the analogue is. Assume that it is being argued that if an analogate of A exists, then an analogate of B must exist. To recognize the relation between analogues A and B we must have experienced an analogate of A, for instance, and performed the incomplete abstraction necessary to grasp this analogue, A, by reason of which this thing is analogously similar to other analoga tes of A. For, to say the existence of something which is an analogate of A ipso facto implies the existence of something which is an analogate of B, is to say that the relation of the analogate of A to the analogate of B is not caused merely by the differentiating factors associated with analogue A in this thing; it is to say that A's necessarily imply B's regardless of the differences affecting A in various analogates. (On the other hand, since A and B are analogues, the relations between their analogates, while remaining genuine, are subject to the same kind of internal differentiation as are the analogues themselves. As one instance of A differs from another, so its relation to an instance of B will differ from that of the other; but this will remain just as much a genuine relation to an instance of B as the thing is a genuine instance of A. So the model of proportionality is still applicable; for implied in the assertion that whatever is materially caused has an efficient cause is the proportion that as one thing differs from another in being materially caused, it will differ from another in being efficiently caused. To be the efficient cause 410 JOHN C. CAHALAN of existence absolutely considered would be one thing; to be the efficient cause of an already existing body's acquisition of a new physical modification would be another.) Failure to achieve the incomplete abstraction of an analogue from its analogates means failure to grasp an analogue insofar as it is a point of similarity rather than of difference between the analogates; and this will always result in features peculiar to one analogate being substituted for features which attach to the analogue in its generality. The experiential source of the analogue materially caused is the sense-observable change that bodies undergo. Thus a consequence of failure to achieve incomplete abstraction of this analogue would be to consider being the effect of an efficient cause to be identical with being a physical process or the result of such a process. And the history of philosophy offers many examples of theories identifying efficient causality with physical efficient causality; Hume, for instance, included spatial and temporal relations among the defining features of causal relations. In such theories the relation to an efficient cause is restricted to one analogate of the materially caused so as to be incapable of being asserted of other analogates. It is possible for such a view to be held by someone who, not failing to achieve the partial abstraction required, would grasp the analogue which expresses the reason why physical changes necessarily have efficient causes but who simply does not know that there are other analogates. But when the required abstraction has not been accomplished, someone like Simon would not find surprising a position, such as Hume's, that there is no analogue which expresses the reason why physical changes have efficient causes since there is no discoverable reason why they have them. It was asserted above that, since abstraction is required for the grasp of propositional truth, where abstraction is impeded the grasp of truth will be made more difficult. We are now a little closer to seeing what meaning that admittedly vague assertion has for the problem of deciding where truth lies in a philosophic dispute. The argument we have examined concerns an alleged necessary connection between certain kinds of things. ANALOGY AND THE DISREPUTE OF METAPHYSICS 411 Grasping that necessity would involve grasping the reason for the connection, the aspect o£ one thing which grounds its necessary relation to the other thing. But that would require abstraction, and, in the case o£ analogues, one cannot abstract perfectly from features which do not attach essentially to the analogue insofar as the analogue grounds the common necessary connection but which do attach essentially to the analogue in any particular case from which we acquire our knowledge o£ it. This explanation o£ the problematic character o£ philosophic disputes, therefore, will apply to arguments concerning necessary connections between certain things or certain aspects o£ things. Does this so severely limit its value as an explanation that it is rendered uninteresting? To answer this objection it would be enough to recall that the troubles we are trying to give a partial account o£ are those o£ metaphysics. But one does not have to be doing philosophy in the grand manner to rely on a proposition-especially a hypothetical one-which asserts some necessary connection, being true. And not only is it a fact that many philosophers have believed in some necessary connections holding between diverse aspects o£ our experience, it is difficult to think o£ philosophers who have not. Although a purely therapeutic type o£ philosophy, one which occupied itself with making statements to the effect that such and such a conclusion does not follow or such and such a problem does not impose itself, might not rely on a belie£ in any such necessary connection, it could be argued that any philosophy wishing to reach some positive conclusion cannot avoid them. This is even true for a philosopher who sees his task as purely descriptive as long as the evidence he would put forward for his description could be expressed in the form o£ reductio ad abmrdum, proceeding from some givens, o£ the contradictory opposite. Thus paradigm case arguments are good examples o£ what I mean by the reliance o£ a philosophic argument on a belie£ in a necessary connection. So is the argument against transcendentals from the need o£ an intelligible opposite. Most philosophers have 412 JOHN C. CAHALAN believed in some necessary connection between sense knowledge and propositional knowledge. And so on. v There is still more to see, however, about the causing of metaphysical dispute by the logic of analogues and analogical terms. Of all the paradoxes involving that logic, my favorite may be the famous theory of prime matter (which let us arbitrarily stipulate to mean the subject of substantial change) as a pure potency, a totally featureless, propertyless being. Everyone will admit that philosophizing about dispositions and capacities has proven a risky undertaking; but someone who is willing to admit to a reality which is a total capacity, a total disposition and nothing else, is hardly one to be afraid of an over-adventuresome use of a concept. I will briefly work out a fairly standard way of reaching that conclusion. The analogates of nonbeing constitute an analogical set of the kind we are considering. On the one hand, nonbeing is a logical construct; we can arrive at this construct in the process of observing that among the things true of our pet collie, for instance, is not his being a philosopher. On the other hand, our two-day old child is no more a philosopher than is the collie; of both it is purely and simply true that they are not philosophers. But we have hopes that the child, unlike the collie, has the potentiality to receive that knowledge we call philosophical. If such a potency is something real, still to be something in potency alone is absolutely speaking not to be it; so being in potency would be an existing way of not being. But is potency something real? Perhaps the paradox of an existing form of relative non being can be avoided by recognizing potency as itself a logical construct, a species of logical construct under the genus nonbeing. Unfortunately, this is the way out that was attempted in the theory that for a thing to be something in potency meant that some contrary to fact conditional about it was true. But in that case a child would have the ability to become a philosopher only as a result of ANALOGY AND THE DISREPUTE OF METAPHYSICS 413 becoming the object of some other human's thought, for only as such does he become referred to by a contrary to fact conditional or by any logical construct. Now, as far as I know, no believer in prime matter claims that it can be known by experience; whatever we can learn about it we must learn by reasoning. We are supposed to be able to learn about it that it is a pure potency. But if potency is itself an analogue, then grasping the truth of any necessary proposition which is used to show why prime matter is a pure potency and which employs an experientially acquired concept of potency will be subject to the kind of difficulty we are describing. Assume that the reasoning invokes as necessarily true a statement such as "Every change requires a subject which undergoes the change and which itself is only potentially what will come into existence as the result of the change." In order for us to grasp the truth of that proposition, experience must have provided us with uses for the words "change," "potentially," " subject of change," etc.; and the first locus of uses for these terms which is given in our experience would be what is conceptualized by the philosopher of substance as accidental change. The concept of potency which is employed in his proof of the nature of prime matter, therefore, will be acquired through his understanding of the relation between the subject and term of an accidental change. But a major difference will distinguish potency at the level of accidental change from potency at the level of substantial change, if there is such a thing as substantial change. The subject remaining throughout an accidental change is not only something which is potential with respect to some accidental modification. it is at the same time and by its identity with itself something which is actual in other respects. A child, as opposed to a collie, deserves to be considered a potential philosopher because of the actual qualities that are found in the being of the child. But, unlike the subject of accidental chan!'"e from which the concept of potency is acquired, the subject of a substantial change could not be, by its identity with itself, anything actual at all. The subject of a change 414 JOHN C. CAHALAN bringing into existence a substance could not possess in itself the characteristics of substance since to be the subject of this change it must be only potential in this respect. And it could not be an accident or a group of accidents which was the subject of a substantial change; where an accident, that which exists in another, exists, substance already exists. So prime matter is neither something which exists in another nor something which does not exist in another. Since by hypothesis it is a potency, prime matter must be purely potential. But just as it can seem contradictory to assert existence of something while denying it any actual characteristics, it can also seem contradictory to assert potency o£ something and deny it any actual characteristics. The metaphysician must acquire his knowledge of whatever proposition he uses to deduce the status o£ prime matter as a potency from his experience of accidental change. And because the potency relative to accidental change is by identity with itself something actual -note the simultaneous affirmations of potency and its opposite here-it is impossible to abstract completely the analogue potency from the difference affecting it in this case, namely, its being not only a potentiality but also an actuality. And since the difference, being something actual, cannot be completely left out of our consideration by means of the abstractive process through which we become aware o£ the analogue potency, the possibility is created of our coming to think that it is really the actuality o£ the analogate, subject of accidental change, which is the precise reason for its being the subject of a change. Perhaps no one would deny that the actual existence of the potency prior to a change is at least a remote reason, a necessary if not sufficient condition, for there being a subject o£ change. Still the prime matter theorist will hold that it is not actual existence as such, nor the possession of certain actual characteristics as such, which proximately and sufficiently qualifies something to be the subject of a change. It is conceivable for both these things to be true of something without its being eligible to be the subject of a change. The actual features of a child's being cause him to be potentially a phi- ANALOGY AND THE DISREPUTE OF METAPHYSICS 415 losopher. But these actual features are linked to the change by which the child becomes a philosopher, not insofar as they are actualities but insofar as they ground potentiality. And it is conceivable that there be a change in which all the actual features belonging to the subject before the change continue to exist after the change; what cannot continue is the subject's being only potentially what it became as a result of the change. A sufficient reason for this being difficult to grasp is that the aspect of a thing which makes it eligible to be the subject of a change, potency, cannot be distinguished from the difference affecting it in the experienced instance by an abstraction which would satisfy whatever standards would express in full the contribution to the human discovery of truth which it is abstraction's role to make. But, against this analysis, an objection can be raised, and the answer to it will allow a much more precise description of the way imperfect abstraction creates an obstacle to the knowledge of metaphysical truth. Any philosophy relying on alleged necessary propositions must in the final analysis claim that some of these propositions are self-evident in the traditional sense, that is, are capable of being known from the mere fact that the meanings of their terms are known. Some such propositions are needed as starting points for the philosopher's arguments. Therefore, the meanings on the basis of which the truth of these propositions is evident must have been acquired before he began to philosophize; in other words, the propositions playing the role of principles for such a philosophy must assert necessary relations between things, relations whose grounds are already expressed in meanings of ordinary language. For example, the philosopher would know the meanings of " change," " something undergoing a change," "capability," and "what exists after a change" previous to recognizing that whatever undergoes a change must have the capability of being what will exist at the end of the change; he would have the uses of "existing," " existing in another," and " not " before discovering that substance and accident divide being. Because these meanings must be possessed prior to any philosophic use of them, it can be objected that the reason for 416 JOHN C. CAHALAN disagreement over alleged necessary relations involving analogues cannot be that philosophers fail to achieve the incomplete abstraction from differences that is required for an analogue to be understood as the ground of a necessary relation common to many of its analogates. For, if we already have such meanings, whatever mode of abstraction they entail must have already come into logical existence. In reply to this objection I direct your attention to a kind of abstraction other than that characterizing the signification of general concepts. Philosophers-and others who are engaged in argument-frequently announce that they are abstracting, at least temporarily, from this or that aspect of the subject under consideration while concentrating on some other aspect. Although in some respects similar to the abstraction (hereafter, abstraction1) characterizing general concepts, this kind of abstraction (abstractionz) differs from the first in being a characteristic of a conscious, intended, thought process. Abstractionz is necessary for arguing about complex subjects just as abstraction1 is necessary for propositional truth; our thinking can only come at things step by step, putting together the results of diverse insights and diverse lines of investigation. Likewise, inquiring into the truth of an alleged necessary connection between different aspects of our experience involves this second kind of abstraction. For it involves considering an aspect of things as the possible locus of a necessary relation to another aspect; therefore, whatever else might be associated with our experience of our first aspect but is not relevant to this necessary connection will be left out of consideration. (For instance, my using being as an example of a concept imperfectly abstracted1 required my asking you to abstractz from its transcendental character as not relevant to whatever is necessarily true of being insofar as it is imperfectly abstracted1.) To put it another way, asking what other aspects of experience a given aspect may have necessary relations with implies our ability to distinguish this aspect from, and to leave out of consideration, all features attaching to it ccmtingently in the existence where we have experienced it. Propositions used to assert such necessary connections are ANALOGY AND THE DISREPUTE OF METAPHYSICS 417 the kind we are discussing. And since abstractionz is required for the knowledge of them, it is required for the knowledge of the self-evident truths from which this kind of philosophizing must begin. But knowing a self-evident necessary truth means seeing relations between meanings already present in ordinary language. Therefore, the abstractionz involved in the search for necessary philosophic truths presupposes and relies on the abstraction! associated with those ordinary meanings. And this dependence of abstractione on abstraction1 allows us to respond to our objection. In order for our language to possess the terms of the self-evident proposition, the relevant abstractions1 must have been achieved; but the corresponding processes we are calling abstractions2 need not have taken place. That is, necessary relations between the aspects of things exprt.,;sed in ordinary language need not have been discovered nor even inquired into. But, when the preceding abstractions1 have been of the kind we are calling incomplete and imperfect, the subsequent abstractions2 (which can likewise be called imperfect abstractions inasmuch as they deal with analogues) will be made under conditions creating the maximum possibility for error in the resulting judgment. For, when we are wondering whether an analogue does or does not have necessary connections with other elements of our experience, the possibility of focusing on what is known abstractively1 so as to be prevented from seeing it as having the necessary relations exists in a way in which it simply does not exist in the case of things generically and specifically abstracted1. In the case of analogues, differential factors peculiar to only some instances are present and able to solicit the attention of abstractione where they cannot be present in the case of genera or species, namely, at the term of the process which provides the abstracted1 meaning for abstraction2 to focus on. Again, understanding the analogue as ground of a necessary relation common to all analogates means seeing the analogue as a point of similarity capable of predication of all the analogates, not just as a point of dissimilarity predicable of some but not of others. And seeing it as a point 418 JOHN C. CAHALAN of similarity is to achieve the imperfect abstractionz, But when it is imperfect, abstraction1 gives difference along with likeness, the same concept expressing both, for the differences affecting the analogue in each of its real existences are not even logically extraneous to the analogue as a specific difference is to a genus. As a result, it will be particularly difficult to discover by means of abstraction2 the necessary propositions needed to show, as in the case of action, that the community between two experienced instances of the analogue is more than verbal, or, as in the case of potency, that there is an instance of the analogue other than the kind we have experienced. In fact, at the end of our investigation, such conclusions may appear purely and simply contradictory. Let us apply the distinction between abstraction1 and abstractionz to the argument for pure potency. By abstraction1 we have a meaning for "subject of change." This phrase is predicable of a number of individuals, and each of these individuals possesses a great number of features. Suppose we ask, "What feature possessed by these things, if any, caused them to be such that they existed one way at one time and another way at another time?" This question is not like" What makes all men men?" to which a reasonable answer might be that they are men. On the contrary, our question assumes that all the individuals concerned are called "subjects of change" because they are known to be subjects of change. What the question does is to express verbally our focusing on things insofar as they are subjects of change in order to find out what causal factors, if any, are relevant to the existence of subjects of change as such, that is, in abstractionz from whatever else these things may be. It happens that we have " potency " and similar terms in our language; we use them with reference to subjects of change, and they do seem to express a condition without which a thing would not be a subject of change. Assume that through this line of thought we come to believe that every subject of change must have the potency to be what will exist at the end of the change. Would our knowledge of this proposition provide us with the ANALOGY AND THE DISREPUTE OF METAPHYSICS 419 illumination needed to recognize the totally nonactual character of the subject of a substantial change? I£ the meanings of the terms of this proposition are analogues, not necessarily. I£ knowledge of this proposition is to yield knowledge of pure potency, it must express two abstractions2, not only that of " subject of change " but also that of " potency to be what will exist at the end of the change." And it would be entirely possible for one who had achieved the incomplete abstraction1 necessary to have the word" potency" in his language to make the following mistake while attempting to accomplish the corresponding abstraction2: in examining the concept something potentially something else he focuses on that feature of his object which is its " being something actual which is suited to becoming something else" and fails to recognize that it is not because of its actual being qua actual that anything is suited to became something else, that it is because a form of relative nonbeing is true of it that something is eligible to become what it is not. Consequently, his reflection leads him to think " potency " connotes a kind of actuality. And although he seems to assent to the principle of the prime matter theorist's argument, what he means by " potency " can only be called a point of dissimilarity with what the prime matter theorist wants" potency" to mean in the case of substantial change. Such an error would be a correctable one, for nothing in our argument supports the view that genuine metaphysical knowledge is impossible. But a process of correction would be subject to the same obstacles we have been describing for the process of discovery. For example, one could try to eliminate the apparent contradiction in pure potency by pointing out that prime matter will always be actual in some way but not actual in and of itself as is the subject of accidental change; it would still be unproven, however, that it is not qua actual that a thing is eligible for accidental change. And the communication of this would be hampered by the paradoxical ways of speaking that the logic of analogical concepts forces on us, for instance, the paradox that, even though a child is potentially a philosopher only because of some actual characteristics present in his being 420 JOHN C. CAHALAN and not in the collie's, still he is more properly said to be eligible to become a philosopher because of the way of not being a philosopher that is true of him. It has always been thought that the only ways to be ignorant of a self-evident proposition were either to be ignorant of the meaning of its terms or to have never had one's attention directed to the necessary connection these meanings imply. When these terms are analogous, however, and we do have the ability to use them, even conscious consideration of their meanings does not guarantee a grasp of the truth, since there is more than one way of being ignorant of the meaning of an analogical term. Nor is there anything other than knowledge of a self-evident proposition which can guarantee knowledge of it, for, by definition, a proposition does not become self-evident to us through our viewing it in the light of something else which is a criterion for its truth. If an opponent has failed to grasp the self-evidence of a given truth, its necessity can still be shown him by indirect means, that is, by showing him that denying it leads to a denial of something else that is evident to him. But this process would presuppose his correct understanding of other truths involving analogues and his ability to see through any apparent contradictions, resulting from the logic of analogy, in our statements. VI To summarize and conclude: Developing the idea that being is not a genus I have presented a reason for metaphysics' having the troubles it does, which does not render metaphysics invalid but does necessitate its being prone to confusion and error. To say a concept can express a difference between two things is to say it can be affirmed of one and denied of the other. So a concept capable of expressing a similarity between things but which does not abstract from differences between them will be involved in simultaneous affirmation and denial of one of the things. This is what is meant by a concept's being imperfectly abstracted from differences; and when we must signify aspects of our ANALOGY AND THE DISREPUTE OF METAPHYSICS 421 experience by means of such concepts there cannot have been fully achieved what it is the role of abstraction, a necessary precondition for our grasping of truth, to achieve. So, when metaphysics must deal with things by means of analogical concepts, the discovery of the necessary connections it relies on as its inference-tickets must be accomplished under the most disadvantageous conditions. For, if the ground of a necessary connection between things is what is signified by an analogical concept, it is signified by a concept that also expresses features which constitute points of difference between the things having the necessary relation as a common property and which are inextricably bound with the analogue in all the analogates from which we can draw our knowledge of it. I feel that there are other factors contributing to metaphysics' troubles; but if I am correct, the factor studied here is important. One kind of evidence for its importance is supplied by the number of paradoxes and disputes susceptible to analysis in this manner. (In the places cited above Simon has worked out similar analyses for " duration" as said of time and eternity, various uses of "life," and "having a preceding cause " as said of free and unfree acts.) But another kind of evidence is supplied by the number of metaphysicians who have described the concepts they were using in terms similar to those from which we have tried to work out this theory of the effects of analogical concepts on metaphysical thinking. And hitherto those noting the analogical character of metaphysical concepts have in doing so been innocent of the purpose for which we have pointed to it here, namely, to apologize for paradox and dispute in metaphysics. (To my knowledge, it has not been until recently that analogical concepts have been invoked to prove-which they do not do-that God-talk is meaningful. They are at most a necessary condition for Godtalk, not a sufficient condition.) If the achievement of consensus on the truth or falsity of propositions is any criterion, then philosophy has always been the most difficult kind of human thinking; but if the testimony of philosophers themselves carries any weight, then metaphysics is philosophy's most troublesome branch. And this explanation 422 JOHN C. CAHALAN of metaphysics' plight does not claim to be any less troublesome than what it is explaining. In fact, it can be accused of explaining the strangeness and the controversial character of metaphysics by means of something which itself seems very strange and is highly debatable. But after so many explanations claiming to save us from these things, the present account should not be held suspect for not claiming it; and there is no way of proving this account which is not subject to the same kind of problem. For, if my argument is correct, then abstraction is itself an analogue capable of being both affirmed and denied of certain concepts (and this is to say that logical similarity or community in meaning are, in our sense of the word, " analogous " concepts) . And should a particular example such as being not be sufficient to convince an opponent that my statements about imperfect abstraction are cases of the logic of analogy and not of contradiction, then there would be nothing to do but to try to get him to admit as necessary propositions from which an analogous affirmation and denial would follow. And the difficulty of that undertaking should by now be clear, that is, obscure. Where does this leave us? Right where we have been all along. Philosophic arguments, both metaphysical and antimetaphysical, will continue. I have tried to show one reason why we should expect this to be the case. For those who will disagree-if my analysis has been correct, they should be legion-and think that we should look forward to eliminating some day metaphysics' state of confusion through some foolproof method of answering its questions or exposing its errors, it at least may be helpful to realize that a permanent state of paradox in metaphysics and of controversy among metaphysicians does not ipso facto render all metaphysics null and void, that there are hypotheses favorable to metaphysics that account for this situation. For, in order to be possible, success in metaphysics need not be probable. JoHN Merrimack CoUege North Andover, Mass. C. CAHALAN THE INADEQUACY OF SITUATION ETHICS F OR SOME TIME one was tempted to think that the expression, "the new morality," was merely a catch phrase invented by writers of popular articles for use as a respectable cover in recounting various tales actually designed for the mild erotic stimulation of their readers. One did not, of course, intend to deny that there is a growing tendency to withhold from Victorian and fundamentalistic sexual prudery even the adherence in profession which many had continued to accord it long after having abandoned it in practice. The new morality did not, however, seem to be anything of significance for the professional philosopher concerned with ethical theory. This initial attitude had to be changed when " the new morality " was adopted as a slogan by various theologians and religious personages who claimed to hold something new and who attempted to give a reasoned defense of their position. One of the foremost of these theologians is Professor Joseph Fletcher of the Episcopal Theological School who calls his view situation ethics and gladly takes for it the rubric, " the new morality." 1 Given the currency of Fletcher's views (and others like them), it is important that his ethical theory be subjected to rigorous critical evaluation. Fletcher holds that there are at bottom only three possible approaches to ethical decision making. (p. 17 ff.) Legalism he describes as approaching the moral decision with a codified set of directive rules. Apparently he is thinking of one's consulting a list like the Decalogue, finding that bearing false witness is forbidden and, therefore, holding that any act of bearing false 1 Fletcher's most complete statement of his views is contained in his book, Situation .Ethics: The New 2'domlity (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966). I shall depend on this book in referring to his work. For convenience, I shall insert page numbers in parentheses in the text to cite references to this book. 424 J. CHARLES KING witness is wrong no matter what the circumstances. Antinomianism, he says, approaches moral decisions with no principles whatever, and it remains unclear how its decisions are to be made. Situation ethics does approach the moral decision with rules and principles, but these are not to be taken as directivesrather, they are merely guidelines and illuminators for making a decision in the present case. (p. 26 ff.) A particular situation may be such that the situationist sets aside a principle, such as extra-marital sexual relations are wrong, in the belief that such relations are in this situation right. Fletcher urges situation ethics on us by arguing the implausibility of the other two approaches. I shall have more to say about his supposed trichotomy later, but for now I wish to continue the account of his position. As Fletcher realizes, more than one particular theory of right might be developed within the bounds of what he calls situationism. His own position might better be called Christian Situation Ethics (or as we shall see, Agapic Situation Ethics). His theory of right is expressed in one principle: "The situationist holds that whatever is the most loving thing in the situation is the right and good thing." (pp. 61, 65) He makes it clear that this principle follows from his first principle of value which is, "Only one thing is intrinsically good; namely, love: nothing else at all." (p. 57) Further, he makes it clear that " love " is to be understood as agape (Christian love of fellow man or general good will), not as philos or eros. (p. 79) It will occur to anyone familiar with the British tradition in moral philosophy that Fletcher's position is very closely related to act-utilitarian views, such as those of Bentham and G. E. Moore (in Principia Ethica). Indeed, he quotes on the motto page _Moore's well-known and much criticized assertion that "right" does and can mean nothing but "cause of a good result." Since so much critical thought has been devoted to various forms of utilitarianism, it will be instructive to draw clearly the comparison between Fletcher's view and utilitariamsm. THE INADEQUACY OF SITUATION ETHICS 425 The characteristic feature of utilitarian theories of right is the claim (whether made as a meaning claim or otherwise supported) that the criterion of rightness is maximization of value or goodness. Thus, the utilitarian must first present a theory of value or goodness. He then presents a criterion of rightness in terms of value produced. Obviously, by adopting differing theories of value persons could arrive at different specific theories of right, although still agreeing on the basic utilitarian claim that the right is what maximizes the good. In its best-known classical form utilitarianism was conjoined to a hedonistic theory of value. Thus, classical utilitarians held that an action is right if, and only if, it produces at least as much pleasure as any other action possible under the circumstances. Further, for Bentham at least (though probably not for Mill) , this was the principle of rightness. Any other moral principles, such as, " Bearing false witness is wrong," were conceived as mere rules of thumb for convenience sake. In principle, one could always appeal directly to the first principle of rightness and only such appeals had any binding force. Other rules merely gave a summary of past experience. They had no binding force. Obligations come only from the first principle. Such a view is now usually called act-utilitarianism. It is clear that Fletcher agrees with Bentham that rightness is maximization of goodness and that rules of rightness other than this first principle are to be taken as mere rules of thumb or illuminators. [Thus, in a generic sense, Fletcher's situationism is more or less the same view as act-utilitarianism.] But, of course, Fletcher differs with Bentham in regard to value. Bentham holds that only pleasure is intrinsically good, whereas Fletcher holds that only agapic love is intrinsically good. If Bentham is a hedonistic act-utilitarian, Fletcher is an agapic and if Fletcher is an agapic situationist, act-utilitarian; Bentham is a hedonistic situationist. One possible variation is important to note. Having said that pleasure is the only intrinsic good, the hedonistic situationist (act-utilitarian) can say simply that the action which 426 J. CHARLES KING produces the most pleasure is right. It is doubtful, however, that Fletcher wants to say that the action which produces the most agape is right but rather that the action which expresses the most agape is right. Since agape is (as we shall see) an attitude which favors the neighbor's interest and is expressed in attempts to further the neighbor's interest, it seems clear that he will want to say that the expression of agape is the criterion of rightness. One might ask, but is it then agape or its expression which is intrinsically good? This might be taken as a problem for the interpretation of Fletcher I have presented. He does not seem to me to state his position precisely enough for us to say exactly which he intends. His answers to particular problems using his criterion are clearly given in terms of the expression of agape, not in terms of producing more agape in the self or in the neighbor (although this would be an activity of which his theory of right would usually approve) . Perhaps he really thinks it is the expression of agape that is intrinsically good, but it seems more likely to me that he might want to say that the two are not separable, i.e., that expression in action is a criterion for having agape. Further, he says that our task is to seek an optimum of loving-kindness. (p. 61) I take it that loving-kindness is agape expressed. Fletcher also says that love is something we do. (ibid.) This seems to me to support my conjecture. Thus, Fletcher understands the maximization of goodness to be the expression of what is good rather than the production of what is good as a hedonist would have it. The important features of the two positions remain parallel. The difficulties I suggest later apply to either view. It seems clear, however, that even further difficulties would arise for the production view. On that view, for example, one would be instructed to view his neighbor always as a possible agapic lover, not as a possible beneficiary of one's own love. Love's task would be to increase itself, but that would leave no time for furthering the interests of others, which is surely supposed to be the point of Christian love. Since hedonistic act-utilitarianism is generally regarded as THE INADEQUACY OF SITUATION ETHICS 427 open to over-powering objections, it is important to decide whether Fletcher's agapic theory of value enables him to avoid these common objections. In most standard works on ethics one finds at least the following kinds of objections to hedonistic act-utilitarianism. (These objections are so familiar that I shall state them only sketchily and shall say only enough to show what line seems the most promising for Fletcher to use if they are turned against him.) (A) If we suppose that a young man whose wealthy father refuses him money could truly say that (knowing he would not be caught) more pleasure would result in total, considering all concerned, if he killed the old man, then hedonistic act-utilitarianism must say that it is right for him to do so (or even that it is his duty to do so). To this example it would seem natural that the agapic situationist would say; " Well, that is what the hedonist gets by worrying only about pleasure, but it poses no problem for me. Love would never behave in such a way." (B) Suppose that one must choose between two actions, let us say, spending the evening reading by a fire with a bottle of brandy or attending a party which one has promised to attend. Now, if the total pleasure produced by these actions for all concerned is equal, then the hedonistic act-utilitarian must say that it is morally permissible to do either. Many philosophers have argued, however, that it seems clear that we really think that one is obligated to go to the party (keep the promise), the equality of pleasure produced in the two cases notwithstanding. To this objection one can again imagine the agapic situationist saying, " This is the hedonist's problem. Love keeps its promises. Loving concern for the promised friend would indicate that one ought to keep the promise, other things being equal. Love is concerned with the feelings of our neighbors, not with the cold summing of pleasures." (C) The best known and most often cited objection to actutilitarianism is that it fails to account for duties of justice (or that it often indicates that certain actions are permissible when they seem clearly to conflict with the principles of 428 J. CHARLES KING justice). The point is made with many examples. Basically, they repeat this situation. Suppose that one can, in given circumstances, perform either of two actions. One can distribute a given amount of pleasure equally between three different individuals or one can provide for one individual the same total amount of pleasure while providing none for the other two. The hedonistic act-utilitarian must say that either course of action is morally permissible. Many philosophers have argued, however, that the second course of action is clearly unjust (more clearly, no doubt, when the example is given in greater detail) ; that it is therefore wrong; and that the first course is, accordingly, one's duty. In regard to this objection one can imagine the agapic situationist saying, "But, of course, love could never be expressed in this arbitrary fashion." Indeed, Fletcher goes further and says baldly that love and justice are one and the same. (p. 87) Justice is love distributed or love working out its problems. From this he concludes unjust actions can never be loving actions and loving actions can never be unjust. These answers to traditional objections against act-utilitarianism in its hedonistic form do have enough plausibility to warrant further examination of agapic situationism. It is clear that the question as to the nature of agapic love now becomes crucial. Unfortunately, Fletcher does not tell us precisely what he means by " love " (or" agape ") , but he does sav a good deal about it, and I propose to examine what he does say. We should, however, be clear from the outset as to the kind of account of the nature of agape Fletcher's view requires. The crucial point is just this: he must not, in explicating the nature of agapic love, in any way appeal to judgments of goodness or rightness or to any judgments containing terms themselves to be explicated using the concepts of goodness or rightness. Given the use he wishes to make of agapic love, the violation of this requirement would lead his theory into a vicious circle. One suspects, of course, that this requirement is likely to be violated by any plausible account of Christian love. Further, THE INADEQUACY OF SITUATION ETHICS 429 the ways in which it seemed likely that the agapic situationist would respond to the traditional objections to hedonistic actutilitarianism arouse the same suspicion. When we ask why love would never do this or that, do we not expect to be told (even if indirectly) , " Because it would not be right." Indeed, some would take Fletcher's identification of love and justice as the only evidence required that he is guilty on this score. I shall have more to say about his view of love and justice later, but for now I would like to try to make the case for his argument's being circular on a broader base, i.e., to try to show that the circularity is probably irreparable. Fletcher makes clear that agape is not sentimental and is not based on liking of, or desire for, its object. (pp. 79, 117) Rather, love is " an attitude, a disposition, a leaning, a preference, a purpose." (p. 61) He tells us further that, pinned down to its precise meaning, agapic love is benevolence or good will (in strong senses of these now somewhat watered-down terms) . (p. 105) Moreover, he insists that this love extends to all, even to our enemies. (p. 101 f.) In light of these and other things he says, it seems most plausible to suppose that he views agapic love as an attitude which leads one to favor and seek the well-being of all other people. While Fletcher never gives a precise statement of this position, what he does say indicates various ways in which he might try to state it. At one point in describing love he says that love seeks the neighbor's good. (p. 103) This suggests the claim that " x has agapic love for y " means " x is disposed to seek what is good for y ." But this way of putting it will not do. He cannot say that agape is an attitude which leads to the seeking of the neighbor's good, because agape has already been offered as a criterion of goodness. Thus, to seek a man's good would be either to increase his love or to act lovingly toward him. But this is circular. In short, if love is the criterion of goodness, then seeking the neighbor's good cannot be a satisfactory account of the nature of love. But rather than a disposition to seek the neighbor's good, love is perhaps an attitude which leads us to favor and seek 430 J. CHARLES KING what is in the neighbor's interest. Thus, we might say that" x has agapic love for y" means "x favors and seeks to promote the interest of y." Again difficulties arise. If we say that favoring and promoting the neighbor's interest is trying to satisfy all his desires, then love will lead us to beat the masochist, give heroin to the addict, help the murderer to find his victim, etc. But Fletcher insists that agape is not gratification and does not necessarily please. He says specifically that love does not give heroin to the addict just because he wants it (love might do so as part of a cure). (p. 117) But having admitted that love does not favor and promote the satisfaction of all desires, the agapic situationist must now try to specify the sense in which love favors and seeks the neighbor's interest. He has said that love is prudent (and so apparently rational). One might, therefore, take the neighbor's own long-range goals and preference-order as given and say that love will seek what is in the neighbor's interest in that it will seek to satisfy those desires compatible with fullest achievement of the neighbor's long-range goals. Thus, one would suggest that "x has agapic love for y" means "x favors and seeks to satisfy those desires of y which are compatible with y's fullest achievement of his own long-range plans and goals." But clearly the same difficulty arises again. Some persons may have adopted long-range life plans which would lead us to say that love must then support outrageous schemes. Consider, for example, the young son of a Mafia leader who tries to surpass his father by deliberately setting out t,o become the world's greatest criminal. According to this account, love would then try to aid him in his quest. Yet, this is surely not the role of Christian love. Thus, the agapic situationist is driven to say that agapic love is an attitude which favors and seeks to satisfy desires compatible with some restricted group of long-range interests. The problem is how these interests are to be identified. For obvious reasons they cannot be identified using considerations of rightness or goodness. But rightness and goodness would otherwise be the obvious candidates, and no other plausible THE INADEQUACY OF SITUATION ETHICS 481 way of identifying the kind of interests love would try to promote suggests itself. After all, one would have thought that Christian love was trying to do what was good for the neighbor or trying to help him become what he ought to be. Fletcher does speak of love as ministering to the neighbor's needs, and this might suggest using needs as opposed to desires in an account of what love favors and tries to promote. (p. 104) But this seems unpromising, since needs would have to be specified either in terms of the long-range goals of the neighbor or in terms of what it would be good or right for him to have. Thus, the same problem would arise on this account as well. One might try to avoid the difficulty by saying that "x has agapic love for y " means "x favors and seeks to promote the happiness of y ." But if one takes happiness to be measured by degree of satisfaction of long-term goals, then the difficulties concerning the promotion of outrageous schemes appear again. If, on the other hand, one takes happiness to be satisfaction of only certain goals and desires, it seems clear that these would have to be specified using judgments of what men ought to be or what is good for them. In summary, my argument is this: the agapic situationist appears to avoid the difficulties of hedonistic act-utilitarianism only because he has built principles of goodness and/or rightness into his account of love. But this process begs the question. A close examination reveals that, when one attempts to characterize agapic love as an attitude which favors and leads to the promotion of the neighbor's interest, one is unable to say what will count as favoring or promoting the neighbor's interest within the bounds the agapic situationist must observe. If promoting the neighbor's interest is explicated in some way using all the neighbor's actual desires and goals as a basis, then agapic love should favor and promote various outrageous schemes which Fletcher says specifically it does not promote. But the only plausible way to adjudicate among the neighbor's desires is through the use of judgments of right and/or good. To use agapic love as Fletcher uses it in his agapic situation ethic would, therefore, either lead to results he admits would J. CHARLES KING be wrong or else involve a petitio. 2 In connection with this point it may help to consider Fletcher's contention that love and justice are the same, since justice is love distributed, nothing else. (p. 85 ff) I would suppose that the natural way to take what he says is as the claim that the terms "love" and "justice" have the same meaning. He says, for example, that love and justice are one and the same and can never vary. (p. 89) Further, he writes quite explicitly, " Love =justice; justice= love." (p. 95) On the other hand, he also says such things as : "Justice is Christian love using its head .... Justice is love coping with situations where distribution is called for"; (p. 95) "Prudence, careful calculation, gives love the care-fulness it needs; with proper care love does more than take justice into account, it becomes justice." (p. 88) These statements and others like them indicate that Fletcher does not really intend to say that "love " and " justice " have the same meaning but that justice is love with qualification or in one aspect. But one must admit that it is simply not clear how precisely Fletcher intends us to take his identification of love and justice. I suspect, however, that his concern is with a supposedly possible difference between courses of action indicated by love and by justice. He wants to emphasize that justice and love will yield the same decision in each given case. This is presumably due to the fact that (according to him) what is just in a given case is the course which love would dictate. If we take " justice " as a term from the theory of right, then what he is doing here is simply spelling out his theory of right more fully by applying it to the specific case of justice. What he intends to do, I think, is to give us a criterion for justice in terms of love expressed so that the two cannot then be in conflict. Thus, if we take Fletcher to be suggesting an actual identity of meaning between " love " and " justice," he is at odds with 2 Fletcher suggests on page 105 that agape is an attitude held because of God or because of His command or wish. Depending on how it is developed, this move could involve another circle, since it is tempting to think that it may mask an appeal to a previous principle such as obligation to do God's will. THE INADEQUACY OF SITUATION ETHICS 433 himself, since he says things which make sense only if the two terms have some difference in meaning. But if we take him to be giving a criterion for justice, then the same objections already entered against his view on rightness in general arise again in connection with this particular case. This is clearly indicated by an example Fletcher discusses: Nathaniel Micklem relates a story of Cannon Quick's about an Indian deeply in debt who inherited a fortune and gave it away to the poor, leaving his creditors unpaid. The "moral" drawn was that something is wrong with charity (love) when it is at variance with justice, . . . This is, of course, a very badly drawn lesson. It is true, yes, that love and justice should not be at variance. The reason, however, is not that one would excel the other but, rather, that they are one and the same thing and cannot vary! The Indian failed in agape, and was therefore unjust. (p. 89) But how are we to determine that the Indian failed in agape? He certainly attempted to serve the interests of his neighbor. Given that the poor probably had greater need for money than the creditors, it is not at all clear that he has failed to promote as much as possible the interests of as many of his neighbors as possible. But note that Fletcher is quite sure that he failed in agape. Is this not because agape is promoting the proper inte!ests of those neighbors whose lone ought to promote or, put another way, promoting first the interests of those who have a just claim on one? In short, is it not necessary to use considerations of rightness (in this case, justice) in explicating agapic love itself, so that the whole theory is involved in a vicious circle? In spite of the circularity of his central claim, one cannot help feeling considerable sympathy for one aspect of Fletcher's view. He is anxious to remove ethics from the hold of those who check a list of prohibited actions (such as lying or adultery) and then reject as wrong any action on the list no matter what the circumstances. But, sympathy for any opponent of such moral primitivism notwithstanding, it is necessary to point out that Fletcher makes a serious mistake when he takes the only alternatives for principled ethics to be rigid 434 J. CHARLES KING codified pharisaism, on the one hand, and situationism (actutilitarianism), on the other. He apparently believes that anyone who does hold any moral principles, but who also draws into his moral decisions considerations of the exact circumstances of particular cases, must be a situationist if he is to be consistent. He admits that a non-Christian situationist may replace agape with some other value-Aristotle he takes to have substituted self-realization as the value. (p. 31) But even so, a philosopher who, like Aristotle, wants to consider the facts of particular cases remains in Fletcher's view a situationist. Notice, however, what he says in introducing the idea of a situation ethic: The situationist enters into every decision-making situation fully armed with the ethical maxims of his community and its heritage, and he treats them with respect as illuminators of his problems. Just the same he is prepared in any situation to compromise them or set them aside in the situation if love seems better served by doing so. (p. 26) Here moral rules and principles are regarded as mere summaries of past experience. When in a particular case we believe that the rule will not lead to the best result, we are to set the rule aside, to act contrary to the rule. Since there is always the situationist (or act-utilitarian) first principle to which appeal may be made directly, this view of principles and rules is not surprising. It is, however, doubtful whether such summaries should be called moral principles at all. What Fletcher has overlooked is the possibility of another kind of approach which also takes full account of the peculiarities or particular situations but which also retains moral principles which are directive and which are not to be simply set aside whenever we think it would be well to do so. One must, of course, distinguish between making an exception to a principle or rule and a principle or rule containing an excepting clause or being conditional. This is an obvious and fairly familiar distinction. If I subscribe to a certain rule such as, " Do not steal," in simple, categorical form, then if I THE INADEQUACY OF SITUATION ETHICS 435 decide on whatever grounds to make an exception to the rule, i.e., to steal, then I have broken the rule. But if the rule is " Do not steal unless it is necessary to save life," then if I steal in circumstances in which to do otherwise would cost a life, I have not broken or made an exception to the rule against stealing. Thus, anyone whose moral principles and rules go beyond simple injunction or prohibition to the inclusion of conditions under which the action is enjoined or prohibited must be as interested in the circumstances of the particular case as is Fletcher's situationist. Further, with a complex set of principles and rules (and surely any plausible theory of right will be complex if it uses principles and secondary rules) it will be necessary to include ordering principles to say which duties, rights, etc., imposed by the rules are to take precedence in cases of conflict. But this need not be taken (as Fletcher appears to do) as giving rules for breaking the rules. So long as all the principles include in full statement (or simply have understood) a clause like " provided that the ordering principles do not override," no exception has been made, and no rule has been broken. It is extremely important that we realize that the kind of approach I have been describing is possible (whatever the content of the principles adopted by various persons), since Fletcher is, of course, able to score very easily against the two kinds of position he represents as the only possible alternatives to his situationism. One of his most persuasive devices is the citing of cases in which ridiculous decisions are indicated (or, alas, have been made), when someone clings to hard and fast application of a simple unconditional principle. He is then able to contrast this approach with the benign sensibleness of his situational approach. But the kind of position I have described can join whole-heartedly in the rejection of the pharisaism which Fletcher calls legalism. It could also easily be held by someone who, like Fletcher, rejects the hypocritical ethics of the American middle class. (p. 137) But this should make it clear that one can be as reasonable and as contemporary in outlook as Fletcher tries to be without having to be a situationist. 436 J. CHARLES KING At this point it might be well to say something about Fletcher's stipulation that this ethic is relativistic. (p. 43 f.) Most of the time his relativism seems to involve nothing more than the claim that in differing situations differing courses of action may be right. In other words, simply another denial of simple-minded, simple-rule legalism. Understood in this way, relativism is surely a characteristic of any plausible moral theory including the kind of complex principle view I have described above. But this means that the complex principle view may lead to as much agonizing over applying or adopting principles as does Fletcher's situationism. Simple-minded legalism may, as he intimates, attempt to avoid agonizing decision, but this need not be true of a plausible moral theory of complex principles. It is possible that Fletcher intends to be a relativist in a stronger sense, but this is never made entirely clear. He does say that love decides situationally, not prescriptively. (p. 134) But his discussion seems to indicate that what he would count as prescriptive would be decisions which somehow committed one to simple unconditional rules. When Fletcher says that we must be concrete and consider well-defined cases, naturally there is merit to his suggestion. Cases show how complex principles must be. They help us decide what principles to adopt. But it is in trying to formulate and test principles (complex though they be) that we assure ourselves that we have considered situations morally and not merely from the standpoint of personal taste, personal interest, or temporary emotion. By abstracting from particular interests and temporary involvements, the process of adopting principles helps us to achieve objectivity. This is the point of the universality of moral judgments. No matter how conditional thev may be, moral judgments must be universal in that they must be applicable to all similar situations. Now Fletcher might leap on the term " similar "here, arguing that no situations are ever sufficiently similar to allow for a formulation of principles, no matter how complex. Yet the danger of his insistence on making a fresh decision for every THE INADEQUACY OF SITUATION ETHICS 437 case is just the kind of personal involvement in the case which may rob even the best-intentioned of objectivity. Further, there are at least two replies to the possible objection about similarity. First, one need not be committed to saying that the set of principles he embraces at any one time is eternally final. If a particular situation does genuinely contain elements not covered in any principle we already hold, then we may have to make a decision of principle-to commit ourselves to a new principle. But it is important that we make a decision of principle, not just a decision in this case, for it is by considering the case from the standpoint of possible principles that we may hope to achieve objectivity. Second, the principles we adopt are not imposed on us from above. Therefore, if there does occur a set of circumstances which calls to our attention a difficulty in our principles, nothing keeps us from adjusting them provided we make our decision as an adjustment of principle, not as a mere one case judgment. The point remains, however, that it is important to adopt principles, since this is one way in which one may hope to attain the objectivity which is an important aspect of the distinction between mere judgments of personal preference and moral judgments. J. CHARLES KING Pomcma College Claremcmt, California FAITH IN OTHER PEOPLE: THREE VIEWS T HE " CREDIBILITY GAP" which was once considered the affiiction of a political administration has now become a general feature of our society. Economic and ethnic groups now meet one another in principle with skepticism. A deep-seated mistrust governs relationships among nations and between individuals. In view of this, the question concerning the conditions necessary for people to trust each other seems to be an urgent one. The problem seems acute enough to warrant an essay which has as its concern precisely the question of what it means to have faith in another person, and this article will endeavor to explore this issue by analyzing and evaluating three contrasting notions of what is involved in believing other people. The division of the essay is threefold: Part One will consider the contribution of the empiricism of David Hume, while the emphasis on reason of some scholastic writers will provide the framework for discussion in Part Two. Lastly, Part Three will propose the personalist approach of the nineteenth-century neo-scholastic thinker Matthias Joseph Scheeben. I DAviD HuME Perhaps the most influential philosopher in the Englishspeaking world at the present time is still David Hume. Certainly, the general principles which he laid down concerning human knowledge are in many ways the outstanding expression of the empirical outlook which has in general characterized the Anglo-Saxon mentality, and these principles also form the foundations of the analytic philosophy which prevails in much of the English-speaking world. For Hume, a wise man will proportion his expectation of 438 FAITH IN OTHER PEOPLE: THREE VIEWS 439 future events in general to the degree o£ regularity with which he has experienced them in the past. For example, I have had a certain experience o£ this particular individual, and I have found that his statements proved perhaps rarely true, or perhaps frequently so, or perhaps almost always so. I£ I am sensible, I will proportion my confidence in his future statements to my past experience o£ his reliability. Were a man, whom I know to be honest and opulent, and with whom I live in intimate friendship, to come into my house, where I am surrounded by my servants, I rest assured that he is not to stab me before he leave it in order to rob me of my silver standish.But he may have been seized with a sudden and unknown frenzy.So may a sudden earthquake arise, and shake and tumble my house about my ears.1 The more extensive my experience of a person, the better position I am in to know how to expect him to act. H I know him very well, not even the irregularities in his manner of acting will surprise me. The most irregular and unexpected resolutions of men may frequently be accounted for by those who know every particular circumstance of their character and situation. A person of obliging disposition gives a peevish answer: but he has the toothache, or has not dined. A stupid fellow discovers an uncommon alacrity in his carriage: but he has met with a sudden piece of good fortune. Or even when an action, as sometimes happens, cannot be particularly accounted for, either by the person himself or by others, we know, in general, that the characters of men are, to a certain degree, inconstant and irregular. This is, in a manner, the constant character of human nature; though it be applicable, in a more particular manner, to some persons who have no fixed rule for their conduct, but proceed in a continued course of caprice and inconstancy. However, for me to form a judgment as to a person's reliability, it is not essential that I have had personal experience of him. There is, in general, a great uniformity among the actions of men, in all nations and ages. . . . The same motives always produce the same 1 Enquiry, Section 8, Part I, source of the subsequent passages cited. 440 PATRICK BURKE actions: the same events follow from the same causes. Ambition, avarice, self-love, vanity, friendship, generosity, public spirit: these passions, mixed in various degrees, and distributed through society, have been, from the beginning of the world, and still are, the source of all the actions and enterprises, which have ever been observed among mankind. Would you know the sentiments, inclinations, and course of life of the Greeks and Romans? Study well the temper and actions of the French and English: You cannot be much mistaken in transferring to the former most of the observations which you have made with regard to the latter .... Should a traveller, returning from a far country, bring us an account of men, wholly different from any with whom we were ever acquainted; men, who were entirely divested of avarice, ambition, or revenge; who knew no pleasure but friendship, generosity, and public spirit; we should immediately, from these circumstances, detect the falsehood, and prove him a liar, with the same certainty as if he had stuffed his narration with stories of centaurs and dragons, miracles and prodigies .... A man who at noon leaves his purse full of gold on the pavement at Charing Cross may as well expect that it will fly away like a feather, as that he will find it untouched an hour later. With regard to people that I do not know personally, then, I proportion my expectations to my experience o£ mankind in general. Above one half of human reasonings contain inferences of a similar nature, attended with more or less degrees of certainty proportioned to our experience of the usual conduct of mankind in such particular situations. Hume intends this notion o£ proportion literally, even mathematically. Some events are found, in all countries and all ages, to have been constantly conjoined together: others are found to have been more variable, and sometimes to disappoint our expectations; so that, in our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. . . . A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence. In such conclusions as are founded on an infallible experience, he expects the event with the last degree of assurance, and regards his past experience as a full proof of the future existence of that event. In other cases, he FAITH IN OTHER PEOPLE: THREE VIEWS 441 proceeds with more caution: he weighs the opposite experiments: he considers which side is supported by the greater number of experiments: to that side he inclines, with doubt and hesitation; and when at last he fixes his judgment, the evidence exceeds not what we properly call probability. All probability, then, supposes an opposition of experiments and observations, where the one side is found to over-balance the other, and to produce a degree of evidence, proportioned to the superiority. A hundred instances or experiments on one side, and fifty on another, afford a doubtful expectation of any event; though a hundred uniform experiments, with only one that is contradictory, reasonably begets a pretty strong degree of assurance. In all cases, we must balance the opposite experiments, where they are opposite, and deduct the smaller number from the greater, in order to know the exact force of the superior evidence. The same applies to the credence we give human testimony. The reason why we place any credit in witnesses and historians is not derived from any connexion which we perceive a priori between testimony and reality, but because we are accustomed to find a conformity between them. . . . As the evidence derived from witnesses and human testimony is founded on past experience, so it varies with the experience, and is regarded either as proof or as probability, according as the conjunction between any particular kind of report and any kind of object has been found to be constant or variable. There are a number of circumstances to be taken into consideration in all judgements of this kind; and the ultimate standard, by which we determine all disputes, that may arise concerning them, is always derived from experience and observation. If then there is any evidence contrary to something someone says, we balance the strength of the evidence against our experience of his reliability. The result will always be a lessening of our confidence in what is said. We balance the opposite circumstances, which cause any doubt or uncertainty; and when we discover a superiority on one side, we incline to it; but still with a diminution of assurance, in proportion to the force of its antagonist. The picture which Hume gives us of what happens when we put faith in someone has a great deal to recommend it. In 442 PATRICK BURKE point, o£ £act, this is largely how we act. I£ I am £aced with the task o£ hiring someone to do a job, how do I decide whom to hire? I£ at all possible, I go on my own experience o£ him; i£ not, I go by the testimony of others whose judgment I know by experience to be reliable. It is this principle which governs the creation of any establishment, whether in civil life or in the churches: it is the basis on which bishops are appointed and the Roman Curia perpetuates itself, for instance. The key £actor in this empiricist conception o£ faith is the presumption that a person is not to be trusted until he has proved himself reliable. There are no a priori grounds on which a person might be trusted simply because he is a person. As a guide to the choice o£ safe employees, it is eminently practical. But it cannot be accused of being a creative faith: it is essentially static. It does not help the other person to become more of a person, more fully himself. It leaves him the way it finds him. It has little to do with love. The child who experiences solely (if that were possible) or mainly this form o£ faith £rom his parents, and who has to prove himself constantly before obtaining their support, is likely to suffer enduring psychological damage. II SoME ScHoLASTICS AND NEo-ScHOLASTICs Another possible understanding of what it means to have faith in human beings was developed by Catholic theologians o£ the post-tridentine period in response to the problems concerning faith and tradition raised by the Reformers; it was subsequently taken up again by large numbers o£ neo-scholastics in the nineteeth and twentieth centuries. This is a logical or syllogistic conception of faith. Credence given to something someone says is the product of three £actors: the speaker's knowledge, his truthfulness, and the £act that he said it. The act o£ belie£ then takes the form, at least implicitly, of a syllogism or polysyllogism: FAITH IN OTHER PEOPLE: THREE VIEWS 443 Whatever a truthful person says on a subject he has sufficient knowledge of will be true. But A has sufficient knowledge about this matter, and he is truthful. Therefore whatever A says on this matter will be true. But A has said such and such; Therefore such and such is true. I£ faith in A is to be reasonable, then each of these factors must be known and not merely believed; then the conclusion is logically justifiable. Sylvester Maurus, for example, argued: Faith in a human being is resolvable into premisses, and it is because of these that we believe that what he says is true: the premisses because of which we believe what a person says are: This man is truthful, and so what he says is for the most part true; but he says, for example, Peter is dead. Therefore Peter is dead. Faith in a human being, then, is resolvable proximately into his truthfulness and the fact of his making the statement. 2 De Lugo held the same view: If we consider the matter sufficiently, we will see that the assent of faith is arrived at by means of this syllogism, either explicitly or implicitly .3 Likewise Heinrich Denzinger, Enchiridion: author of the well-known The act of faith is, either implicitly or explicitly, the conclusion of a syllogism, in which the authority of the speaker forms the major premiss, and the fact of his witness the minor premiss. 4 He analyzes the matter somewhat further: There are two syllogistic processes to be distinguished in the act of believing someone; one which prepares the grounds and concludes that it is possible and even necessary to believe, and a second • Opus Theologicum (Rome, 1687). Book VII, q. 112, n. 4. 8 Disputationes de Fide (Lyons, 1656). DiS'p. I, s. 6 (n. 77). • Vier Bucher von der religwsen Erkenntnis, p. 489. 444 PATRICK BURKE which leads to the actual act of belief itself and is contained at least implicitly in it. 5 The whole force of this view is to make faith in a person predominantly, in some cases exclusively, a matter of the intellect. Where Hume and empiricist philosophy would base it on our past experience of a person, this view bases it on an intellectual deduction. Not only the conclusion needs to be deduced from the premisses but the premisses themselves must be known to be true and not merely believed. Thus Kleutgen, one of the founders of the neo-scholastic movement, says: " In order to be accepted, both premisses . . . need to be demonstratively proven (Beweisfiihrung) and not simply correctly understood." 6 However, there is the dilemma that in a syllogism the certainty of the conclusion cannot be greater than that of the weakest premiss, and in theology there has traditionally been difficulty in " proving " the fact of revelation. In an attempt to get around this, it is held that our assent in faith rests directly on the " authority " of the other rather than on a process of reasoning. 7 But, as long as that " authority " is understood to consist in the other's knowledge and truthfulness, the problem remains as it was before, since the motive is considered to be an exclusively intellectual one. Given the sharp scholastic distinction between intellect and will, the question then arises whether the will has any part to play in the act of giving faith to someone. A number of late scholastic and post-tridentine writers considered that in general it does not but only in the case of faith in a divine revelation. In the view of Marsilius of Inghen (1330-96) the will has only a negative role, not to resist where the logic is compelling. Sylvester Maurus considered a positive participation of the will only " more probable." 8 In general, however, most of those 5 P. 491. • Theologie der Vorzeit (Miinster, 1st ed. 1853-1860), p. 522. 7 Cf., for example, W. Moran, Faith, Its Birth in Us (Dublin, 1948), 3 ff. 8 Op. cit., Book VII, q. 135, nn. 11, 12. FAITH IN OTHER PEOPLE: THREE VIEWS 445 who have understood faith syllogistically have held that the will does have a positive role to play: I do not see directly the truth of the statement that is made, and so the logic of the syllogism does not compel me to assent. For assent to take place then, in scholastic language, my will must command my intellect to assent. The intellect of itself is not sufficiently compelled by the force of the motives to exclude all doubt: therefore for this to take place it must be commanded by the will. The minor premiss (this latter statement) is proved by the fact that the motives do not all make the truth of the statement evident, and so they do not compel the intellect to exclude all doubt. 9 It is an unquestioned axiom for the scholastic and ncoscholastic conception of faith that faith cannot co-exist with doubt (a view which has since come under some heavy fire). Curiously, however, this act of the will which steps in to exclude doubt does not have to be free. It can in certain circumstances be a forced will. Not even ... freedom can be maintained to be a characteristic of faith in general. ... It should be noted that [Aquinas] denies ... freedom to the faith of a man who was present when a prophet, to confirm his statements, raised someone from the dead. 10 It is not essential to faith in general that it proceed from free will, and it is not a necessary characteristic of it even to be able to proceed from free will.11 The act of faith is constrained when the believer is constrained by the force or evidence of the proofs to accept this inevident truth as an object of his assentY Even in relation to a particular object, faith need not be free. Evident proofs of credibility can necessitate the mind's assent. That does not by any means make the object itself of faith something evident, but it removes from the act of faith its libertyY Even when it is admitted, then, that the will has a role to play in faith (and, of course, especially when it is not free will), De Lugo, op. cit., Disp. 10, s. 1 (n. 6). Kleutgen, op. cit., Beilage 3, p. 56. 11 Ibid., p. 57. 10 A. Lefebvre, L'acte de foi d'apres la doctrine de St. Thomas (Paris, 1904), 9 10 p. 18. 13 Ibid., p. 446 PATRICK BURKE its role is secondary to the intellect. It is the act of the intellect, the act of mental assent, which actually constitutes faith in a person or a statement, and so the action of the will is something extrinsic to faith as such. A distinction must be made between those characteristics which faith possesses because of the constitution of the intellect, and those which it possesses because of the constitution of the will. The former are intrinsic and in part essential, the latter are external and inessentiaP 4 The ultimate basis on which faith rests then is something which belongs to the theoretical order. Faith is rooted in a principle which is theoreticaJ.l 5 An act of faith is an act of knowledge, ... because by its very nature it is an act which pertains to the intellect (Vernunft) .16 And so any vitality that faith might have, any quality of being alive, will be the sort of vitality which characterizes the operations of the intellect. " The act of faith is vital ... insofar as it comes from the intellect." 17 11 De Lugo, op. cit., Disp. 9, s. 3, n. 48. One last point may be made in sketching this view of the nature of faith in human beings: if it is logical, it is discursive, that is, an indirect or mediate act, not one which sets up a direct relationship between the person of the believer and the person or matter he believes in. Sylvester Maurus and Franzelin make this point with particular clarity: Any mediate assent, that is, one by which we do not assent to a proposition because of itself, is resolvable into those premisses from which we infer the proposition by a syllogism, whether explicit or implicit. 18 Every assent of our intellect is either immediate, where the objective truth is manifested to the intellect by itself and not by means of some other truth known beforehand; or else it is Kleutgen, op. cit., Beilage 3, p. 62. Ibid., pp. 86-87. 16 Ibid., p. 54. 18 Sylvester Maurus, op. cit., Book VII, q. 111, n. 3. u 15 FAITH IN OTHER PEOPLE: THREE VIEWS 447 mediate assent, where the truth is manifested not by itself, but through some other truth known beforehand. . . . Every assent of faith properly so called is necessarily mediate. 19 Again, it can be seen that in this view of things there can be no presumption that what a person says is true. His credentials have to be established first. There is in fact, as Kleutgen makes clear, a presumption that he is not to be believed until he has proven that his knowledge is sufficient and that he is truthful. The same basic objection seems to apply to this view as to that of Hume, namely, that it is not creative but passive, and that it cannot serve to found a genuinely personal relationship of the type which is of such decisive significance for human life. III JosEPH ScHEEBEN In contrast with these views Joseph Scheeben suggests the thesis that genuine faith in a human being is directly based neither on past experience of his reliability nor on logical demonstration of it but on respect for his person, a respect to which he has a right as a human being. That is to say, by the very fact that he is a human being, he is entitled to my respect. He has a dignity and a worth equal to my own. I£ I take his life, I have forfeited my right to my own life. I£ I despise him, I have implicitly condemned myself. Part of the respect to which he is entitled is a presumption that what he says is true, unless there is good reason to believe the contrary. It lies in the nature of the case that we are not moved to give a person this recognition on the grounds of logical proof: normally in the case of human beings such a thing is impossible. We give him this recognition because of our respect for his person. This respect not only urges us but makes it justifiable for us . . . to presume his reliability, as long as there are not well-founded grounds 19 J. B. Franzelin, De divina traditione et seriptura (Rome, 1870), pp. 559-60. 448 PATRICK BURKE to the contrary. 20 Such a presumption is the distinguishing element, or rather the very root of faith; so much so that without it we cannot speak of faith in any valid sense. 21 The respect which Scheeben is speaking of is not the sort of thing which we give to people because of any particular virtues we may know they have, much less because of an office which they hold in society. He means the respect which we owe to a person simply by the fact that he is a person. It is not something, then, which we give to a privileged few and not to others. It applies to every member of the human race without distinction. The same is true of the presumption of veracity of which he speaks. Every human being, by the simple fact that he is a human being, is entitled to receive from me a presumption that he is telling the truth. There is, however, a restriction which must be placed on this, namely, that the person be claiming to describe his own personal experience and not information obtained at second hand. The reasons for this restriction will be discussed shortly. It will be clear even from this much that Scheeben's understanding of faith is strongly personalist, although it is widely assumed today that " personalism " is a recent development. But his personalism is of a special kind. Faith does not presuppose a personal relationship with the other: it creates one. More, it is, in his view, that which makes any truly personal relationship possible. From the beginning this conception of faith is a creative one. It does not first demand that the other person produce his credentials. It goes out to him, assures him of his own value and worth, and so creates the possibility for him to become himself. In this sense it might well be called a religious or at least humanist faith. It would seem in any event that only a faith which acts in this way, which starts by presuming the reliability of the other, is capable of fulfilling the demands which crucial human situations place on us, where the development of a human person is in the balance. 90 Scheeben, Dogmatik, I (Freiburg i.Br., 1875,' 19592 ), 643. •• Ibid. FAITH IN OTHER PEOPLE: THREE VIEWS 449 The act of believing another person then, in Scheeben's view, is not by any means simply a matter of cognition; it is a question of morality, of my ethical attitude towards my neighbor in general as a person, of whether I am prepared to treat him as a human being ought to be treated. What is at stake is not primarily my knowledge but my ethical status. Faith is by no means simply a logical act of knowledge; in its totality it is an ethical (sittlicher) act. 22 The root of faith [namely, my respect for the personal dignity of the other] is ethical in nature, and as the act itself develops to completion its character remains always ethicaJ.23 What does it mean, that an act be "personal"? For Scheeben, it means on the one hand, as we have seen, that it is directed primarily not towards an object, such as a truth or a proposition, but towards the person of the other and specifically, in this case, to his person as being worthy of respect by the fact that he is a person. It also means that it arises out of the depths of the person acting. Here we encounter a question of decisive importance. If faith is to be a genuinely personal act, there is one essential pre-condition which must be fulfilled: it must be given freely. A majority of Catholic writers on this subject in the past have seen so little of the personal element in faith, even as given to human beings, that they have considered it quite compatible with a compelled assent: compelled at least by the obviousness of the other's knowledge and veracity. The basis of the view was a literal interpretation of James 19: "The devils believe and tremble." Scheeben points out that such belief can be called faith only in an equivocal sense. 24 The heart of true faith is lacking. Did James really consider that the devils were believing Christians? For Scheeben, faith by its nature is not something to which we can be compelled either by experience or by logic. We believe a person because we want to, freely and willingly, •• Ibid., 816, 632. •• Ibid., 633. •• Ibid., 649. 450 PATRICK BURKE That does not mean we will necessarily like what he says but, if we accept his word only because we have no other choice, then we cannot be said to have faith in him. Genuine faith is present only when the other "offers us his own insight as the ground and norm of our conviction, and we willingly accept it as such." 25 "An unwilling acceptance of testimony, resting on the fact that denial would be too foolish or useless ... does not deserve the name of faith." 26 Either faith is given freely, or it is not faith. "Faith is essentially and intrinsically ... an act of free will." 27 Yet we must go further. Even this is not enough, in Scheeben's view, for an act to be truly personal. The things that distinguish a person from an object, that constitute him a person, are mind and will, and the depth of the unity of these, which is his " heart." An act that is merely an act of the mind, such as an exercise in mathematics, is not a personal act. Nor is one that would be solely an act of the will, even free will, for that would be simply an assertion of blind force. For an act to be personal it must bring both a person's mind and will into play in a unity. But this unity has a depth, the "heart," and a person is really acting as a person only when what he does rises out of his heart. All these elements are present in faith if it is genuine, and so faith is an exceptionally good example of a personal act; it is an act of the whole person. Man is involved in the act of believing with his whole interior being, and with the whole spiritual side of his being, with mind and will and heart. 28 [And so] faith is an act of the whole person, in a way that scarcely any other act is; it is an act of the person as such, and he acts in it with all those powers which are most characteristically his.29 It was natural enough for Scheeben, like the Romantics before him and such a man as John Dewey subsequently, to turn 25 Ibid., 617. Cf. also his article" Glaube" in Wetzer !Uld Welte's Kirchenlexikcm (Freiburg, 1881), cols. 619-620. •• Ibid., 631. •• Ibid., 813, Scheeben's emphasis. •• Ibid., 812. '"Ibid., 809. Cf. also 812 !Uld " Glaube," 659, 660. FAITH IN OTHER PEOPLE: THREE VIEWS 451 to the notion of the " organic " to describe a reality which is thus complex yet simple because alive. The opposite of an organism is a machine. The unity of a machine is built up by adding parts one to another from the outside: it is an extrinsic unity. By itself it is inert. It is a juxtaposition of things to perform a certain function repeatedly. The unity of an organism, on the other hand, is built up from within; it has a variety of parts, but they form an inner whole, because it is living. Faith is certainly susceptible of analysis regarding its constituent elements, but we must not lose sight of the fact that what we are analyzing is really something simple and straightforward, and the elements which we consider one by one form an inner unity which is alive: faith is a " living organism." (Scheeben) Any conception of faith in terms either of experience, in the sense outlined above, or of logic Scheeben rejects as mechanical. A syllogism is the mental equivalent of a machine. It produces its results automatically. Its unity comes from the addition of premiss to premiss. It is not alive and concrete: it is abstract. This is a forceful charge against the typical scholastic concept of faith. " It conceives of faith in too abstract and mechanical a fashion, its living organism is overlooked or attenuated." 30 The same applies to Hume's concept of experience. From beginning to end faith is a " living development," 31 and so this logical-mechanical concept of faith as a process of reasoning is quite unable to do justice to it. It goes together with this that he rejects the neo-scholastic view, forcefully defended by Kleutgen, that faith is based on theoretical insight. If the ultimate basis of faith is cognitive or theoretical, the knowledge that the other person possesses the required information and is truthful, then the one who gives him belief is rather like a detached spectator observing certain phenomena and concluding from them. But if faith is to be a genuinely personal act, a living and organic whole, then its 30 81 Ibid., 630. Ibid., 648. PATRICK BURKE root must be on the level not of the theoretical but of what Scheeben terms the " practical," that is, an action or attitude which commits the person of the believer. It takes its origin from something which involves the one believing existentially. " Belief has its foundation not in a theoretical principle but in respect for the dignity of other intelligent beings." 32 " Genuine faith is a practical recognition of the personal dignity (of the other) ." 33 Another way of putting this is to say that the motive of faith acts first not on the mind but on the will, and only through the will does it influence the mind. If the motive of faith, the reason why we believe a person, were our experience of his reliability in the past, or our reasoned conclusion to that effect, then it would influence our mind in the first place; we would conclude it was reasonable to believe him, and because we thought it was reasonable we would do so. Although Scheeben is far from denying that faith in a person ought to be reasonable, it is not reasonableness which he considers to be the motive which really leads us to believe someone but the person's simple dignity as a human being. This is something which appeals to the voluntary or affective side of our nature. No doubt the act of accepting what he says as true is an act of the mind, an act of assent, but this follows after. " The motive of faith ... acts first on the will, engendering respect, esteem and trust; only through the will does it have influence on the assent of the mind." 34 Interestingly, Thomas Aquinas holds also that this is where faith does not simply receive help but begins: " The beginning of faith lies in the affective part of man (in affectione), in that the will leads the intellect to give assent." 35 Faith is a personal act, then, not simply because it involves the commitment of one person to another. It is personal, first in the radical sense that every person is entitled to receive it by the fact that he is a person. By the fact that he is a human being like myself he has a right to my respect on pain of my •• Ibid. •• Ibid., 626. •• Ibid., 633. 85 Do Veriwte, q. 14, art. 2, ad 10. FAITH IN OTHER PEOPLE: THREE VIEWS 458 denying my own human dignity, and therefore he has a right to my presumption that what he says is true. In a given case there may be good reason to go against the presumption. The fact remains that it and not its contrary is the starting point in dealing with another person and with what he says. From the side of the one giving credence, faith is a personal act because it is specifically an activity of those powers which constitute a person as such, and its root is freely given respect which, to be genuine, can only come from the heart. Faith in a human being is therefore an act of the whole person. It is personal especially in the sense that, as a result of these facts, it is creative of the other person. It presupposes in him nothing but the potentiality to become himself, and in going out to him it makes it possible for him to do that, and it expresses confidence that he can. However, there is more to faith in a person than the general character of a personal act. There is also the question of believing what he says, of being convinced of something. What is it that justifies me intellectually in doing this? I£ what we have seen of Scheeben's views is true, is he not in effect denying that faith needs to be a reasonable act? Such denial has not been uncommon. A number of those who have recently laid emphasis on the personal character of faith have suggested, in praise of it, that it is at bottom an unreasonable act. Even where it is not explicitly stated, such a view has come to be implicitly assumed in some quarters as a result of an only half-comprehended existential philosophy and of the theology of Karl Barth. It is, of course, understandable that philosophers who consider, in the tradition of Hume, that "religion is founded on faith, not on reason," that is, that religious faith and reason are unrelated, find it easiest to speak with theologians of like mind. But, for many people, both are evading the crucial issue. I£ the question of reasonableness is not of ultimate importance for faith, then I may believe anything. With Scheeben this is not the case. It is important that faith should always be a reasonable act: we must be intellectually justified in giving credence to what the other says. Faith must 454 PATRICK BURKE "be reasonable and lead to truly reasonable knowledge." 36 How then do we go about securing this? In the first place, it is obvious that, if our acceptance of what someone says is not to be sheer credulity and if it is to result in a genuine addition to our knowledge, then the other person must actually possess the knowledge which he claims to have, and he must be truthfully communicating it; further, we must know with surety that he possesses it and is communicating it truthfully. It is these two qualities which the other possesses, then, truthfulness and knowledge--or insight, as Scheeben prefers to call it, because he wishes to restrict consideration to the case where a person is claiming to speak about his direct experience -which ensure that our belief will be an act of genuine cognition. They are not the motive of faith as such, the reason why we believe him: they are " specific attributes " of the motive, that is, they specify the way the motive acts. The motive is his dignity as a human being. Of itself this simply leads us to respect him. For our respect to be able legitimately to take the specific form of belief these other two things are required as preconditions. They do not by themselves act as the motivating force which brings us to believe him, but they mean that our resulting conviction will be accurate and not a delusion. The difference may be subtle, but it is important. If they do not of themselves constitute the motive which leads us to believe a person, however, they are also not entirely separate from the motive. They are aspects, qualities or " attributes" of his dignity as a person, namely, those which make it possible for our respect for him to take the specific form of belief in what he says. On the other hand, these two factors, the knowledge of the person we give credence to and his truthfulness, are not on the same level of significance; they have different types of roles. Scheeben's ideas on this subject represent one of his most distinctive contributions to the theory of faith. 36 Scheeben, loc. cit., 649. FAITH IN OTHER PEOPLE: THREE VIEWS 455 To believe a person means at least this much, that I adopt his insight or knowledge as my own. I " take his word for it." It is an act of mental substitution. I did not witness a particular incident: X claims to have witnessed it; I accept his account of it. " In point of fact, faith is at bottom nothing but the substitution of someone else's insight, and as a rule only direct insight or intuition, for one's own," 37 given, as we have seen, out of respect for his person. Somehow or other I must come to consider this justifiable. But my final act of assent, e. g., such and such is what happened in that case, does not rest on my knowledge that the adoption of his insight is justifiable. It rests directly on his insight because that is what I am adopting. This is a point of basic importance in Scheeben's conception of faith. The assent of belief is not discursive (in contrast to common neo-scholastic theory), it is direct and immediate, the other person's insight simply taking the place of my own. Also, it is not as if I were to reason from his insight to mine: in the past I have found his insights in this matter to be correct, therefore I will accept that such and such is the case now. My final act of assent is not-if it is to be genuine faith-in any sense the conclusion of a process of reasoning, whether from his insight or my knowledge that his insight is reliable. It is the direct and immediate adoption of his insight in place of my own. The immediate intellectual basis of my assent, then, is his insight. However, the only access I have to his insight is through his words or some external sign, and these signs do not necessarily express accurately what he knows or does not know. So I rely on his truthfulness to be assured of this, that his words correspond to his knowledge. Of itself his truthfulness does not assure me that what he says is true. But to the extent that he is truthful, he will see to it that his words accurately represent his own conscious awareness of having knowledge of the matter in question. His truthfulness assures me that he thinks that what he says is true. Not, once again, that I draw 37 Ibid., 650. 456 PATRICK BURKE a logical conclusion from his truthfulness to the fact that his words correspond to what he thinks. I can do this, but it is not faith. Faith is present when I view his truthfulness as part (a "specific attribute") of his personal dignity, which I respect, and so out of respect for his person I trust that his words correspond to his thoughts. 38 But there is still a gap. How do I know that what he thinks is true is really true? There is one type of case where we normally recognize a special assurance about this, namely, when he is speaking of his own direct personal experience. This is the restriction Scheeben makes, mentioned earlier, and, of course, it is a large one. There is a big difference between the case where a person is describing something he has witnessed or seen in some way himself and where he is passing on second-hand information obtained from another source as if it were true. In the second case he may be easily mistaken. In the first, so long as he sticks strictly to what he has experienced, he cannot be in error. But how do I know that, when he claims to be describing an experience, he really experienced it? This depends on his truthfulness; a genuinely truthful man will not claim to have witnessed something when he did not. Ultimately, then, everything rests on the question of his truthfulness. But how do I know that he is truthful? It is prescisely to this question that the initial observations on respect for his person apply. Because he is a human being he has a right not to be judged to be morally evil unless there are grounds to do so. His dignity as a human person, equal to my own, gives him the right that I should presume his truthfulness until there are solid reasons to the contrary. From the point of view of its intellectual justification, then, his truthfulness is sufficient to assure me of the validity of his knowledge when he is claiming to describe his own personal experience. Where a person is passing on second-hand information or hearsay, Scheeben considers that genuine belie£ in the sense of a personal act is often excluded. In such case, ratification may well have to be sought from other sources. •• Cf. ibid., 640. FAITH IN OTHER PEOPLE: THREE VIEWS 457 A further point may be inserted here. Neo-scholastic philosophy has usually drawn a distinction between the motive of an act and the act itself. The motive of faith was generally held to be the combination of the speaker's knowledge and truthfulness; lengthy debates were carried on in the seventeenth century whether the fact of the statement should be counted as part of the motive for believing as well. For Scheeben, as we have seen, the motive of faith as such lies in none of these but in the personal dignity of the other human being. From the point of view of its intellectual justification, the whole weight lies on the validity of the other's insight. This, and nothing else, is the basis on which our belief rests as an act of the mind, and it rests on it, in Scheeben's view, directly and immediately. But, in every statement that a person makes there is included a formal claim that his insight regarding the matter in question is valid. Even if faith is understood in the strict sense as the acceptance of a statement on the word of another, then acceptance of the basis of faith-the validity of the person's insight-is already a formal act of faith in the person concerned. The presumption of his truthfulness is a similar procedure, except that it is not the acceptance of an explicit testimony: in every statement that a person makes there is normally included a claim that he is truthful, but it is included only implicitly, not expressly, like the validity of his insight. As a result, Scheeben terms this presumption of the person's truthfulness not a formal act of faith but "an act analogous to faith." Its structure is the same as that of faith, except that it is not a response to an explicit statement. The distinction may seem pedantic. The question at issue is, is it meaningful to speak of faith other than as a response to a testimony? In reference to religious faith the question becomes: is it meaningful to speak of faith other than as a response to a divine revelation? In its own way this question sums up one of the major dilemmas of Christian theology in our time. One final conclusion may be drawn from this part of the inquiry. We have already seen some of the ways in which faith is a personal act in Scheeben's view. We are now in 458 PATRICK BURKE a position to add another. By its nature faith involves a direct and immediate union of mind with the other person. My act of faith rests directly on the insight of the other person, so that it is an " immediate assent." I adopt the other person's insight as my own; I base mine immediately on his. The result is a particularly intimate form of personal union. In fact, Scheeben maintains that it is really in order to achieve this union of mind with the other person that we give credence to what he says, in the case of real faith. Faith has its root ... in the desire ... to ,enter into a union of mind (geistige) with him.39 The assent of the mind to the truth attested to takes place only insofar as the will, led by respect for the person of the one speaking, seeks agreement with his judgment, participation in his knowledge, and community of knowledge with him, that is, desires a spiritual or mental union (geistige V ereinigung) with him.40 An unwilling acceptance ... which brings about no union (Anschluss) with the other person but simply regards him as a channel by which a truth we have not ourselves experienced happens to become accessible to us, does not deserve the name of faith, and it is a misuse of words to call it such.41 From this point of view also, as Scheeben sees it, faith is personal in a creative sense; it does not presuppose a personal relationship, it creates one. Our awareness of hidden, subconscious forces at work in people and our alertness to social, economic and psychological pressures among individuals and groups has made us wary of others, suspicious of their motives, and cautious in affirming faith in them. At a time like this there is much to be said in favor of a theory which calls for neither verification of truthfulness nor proof of the sufficiency of one's knowledge before commanding our faith. Scheeben's personalistic approach circumvents the limitations inherent in the empiricist theory of Hume and the rational systems of the scholastics by calling our attention back to the dignity of the human person. It is " Ibid., 631. •• Ibid., 638. •• Ibid., 648. FAITH IN OTHER PEOPLE: THREE VIEWS 459 there that man, because of his human dignity, has a right to be met with a positive and affirmative attitude and not with mistrust and disbelief except insofar as there is evidence to warrant it. PATRICK Department of Religion Temple University Philadelphia, Penna. BuRKE DEWART'S THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF: A REVIEW ARTICLE L SLIE DEW ART in his The Foundations of Belief 1 has both a negative and a positive purpose. Negatively, he criticizes epistemological, metaphysical, and natural theological positions called thomistic. Positively, his efforts are directed toward a total refashioning of episSemology, ontology, and theodicy. While recognizing the dangers of extreme brevity, we may attempt to summarize his position under the rubrics of Being, Consciousness, the Knowing Process, Truth, Reality, and God. Being is that which exists. It is that "sort of reality which is revealed in experience." (p. 431) As such, being is absolutely contingent. Moreover, it is simply a fact that confronts us. Like Mount Everest, being is simply there. Objects that are beings have no innate intelligibility. "Anything that is, is essentially, and as such, a fact. It need not be, it has no meaning that constitutes it as reality." (p. 294) This does not mean that being is unintelligible or absurd; rather, beings may be said to be extra-intelligible; for "there is no reason intrinsic to them and to their constitution why they should be as they are." (p. 294) It is only the extrinsic world situation in history that accounts for the form beings take. The only sense in which we can say that being is intelligible is in the sense that "1oe can understand it." We cannot say " that it is in itself subject to being-understood; for its being understood is not done, as it were, in consultation with it." (p. 296) Being contributes nothing to our understanding of it for " our understanding of being requires only that we relate ourselves to it." (pp. 296-7) Consciousness is the starting point of the knowing process, 1 New York: Herder & Herder, 1969. Pp. 460 $9.50. DEWART'S "THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF" 461 the undeniable empirical fact common to us all. It is the condition of the possibility of the opposition of subject and object because the subject in the subject-object relationship is constituted as such by consciousness. Consciousness or subjectivity is the presence of the self to itself. Consciousness takes place "in and through the self's self-differentiation from the known self . . . and through the presence of the self to the non-self." (p. Q64) It "emerges as it differentiates, abstracts, separates and opposes things to each other-that is, as it objectifies the world of being-and as it differentiates itself from that which is not itself." (p. 264) In short, growth in consciousness is a growth in self-differentiation and a consequent creation of the self that is accomplished in and through the self's presence to the self and the non-self. The Knowing Process is an aspect of the process of emerging self-consciousness. The knowing process is not one in which the mind bridges a gap between itself and the supposed intelligibility of the object and thereby incorporates that intelligibility into itself. Rather, instead of the mind making the world present to itself in knowledge, it makes itself present to the world by opposing itself to the world . . . . knowledge does not actually combine subjective conditions with objective content. If consciousness creates itself only in and through the differentiation of subject from object, it follows that the creation of the self is made possible only in and through the objectification of being. Hence, human understanding attains to a meaning which ... is not of its own making but which, on the other hand, was not precontained in the reality of the world prior to knowledge. The meaning of reality does transcend the subjectivity of mind; but reality does not have within itself a transcendent meaning which the mind merely transfers onto itself when certain conditions are satisfied. The meaning of reality emerges within the mind's relation to reality which consciousness achieves. Therefore human knowledge is truly operative, not only in the self-creative sense previously outlined, but also in the sense that consciousness is responsible for establishing the meaning of that which is known . . . knowledge is not the transposition of an objective content from reality into the subjective reality of the 462 PETER CHIRICO mind. Least of all is it the transposition of an objective content from the mind into reality. The mind's creation of meaning takes place only in and through the establishment of the self's presence to reality. Therefore, quite as in the case of the self-creation of consciousness, meaning is created by consciousness, but not arbitrarily. The meaning created by consciousness is the meaning of reality-it is indeed the meaning of the objective reality that is known. And we need not hesitate to speak in this context of " objective reality " in the full import of the word. For the point is indeed that only objects properly so called have meaning. But ... the reality of being is not identical with its objectivity. Objects have meaning precisely because they are relative to the self, a self whose subjectivity results from its differentiation from them. (pp. 269-70) Hence, the knowing process is one in which the self creates meaning in becoming present to itself in and through its presence to the world. Truth is the quality that the knowing process confers upon the mind. Truth is ... the meaningfulness of the facts. We might say that truth is the meaning of the facts, provided this were not construed as if the meaning were within the facts. Truth is the mind's " making out " the meaning of the facts; it is making the facts to have meaning. Truth is not the meaning found within the facts; truth is the meaning which is put upon the facts because they are understood. (p. 299) In short, truth is the meaning the mind imparts to the brute facts it relates itself to, and that meaning is commensurate with the growth of consciousness through the mind's selfdifferentiation from that which is not itself. It follows from this that truth varies with the achievement of self. Hence, truth always grows as the subject grows in consciousness. In this context error is simply " that form of consciousness which should be surpassed," (p. 314) and one may speak of truth as " that value or quality of knowledge which increases as knowledge grows and perfects itself." (p. 314) Truth, in the last analysis, is that aspect of man's being that drives him forward. DEW ART'S "THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF " 463 Truth is that property of consciousness which renders man transcendent; it is that quality of knowledge which impels consciousness beyond itself. Truth is, therefore, that which makes human understanding dynamic and creative, searching and selfcritical, restless and progressive, and ambitious to the literally ultimate degree. (p. 326) Reality is that which transcends consciousness, that which is other than the self. Reality and being are not identical concepts. "The essential characteristic of reality is its aptitude for being related .... Reality is whatever the self can have relations towards. Being, on the other hand, is the object of thought: it is that which is empirically given." (p. 399) Hence, those beings that are related to us are real precisely because of their being related; they are not real because they are beings (i.e., empirically given) . Therefore, there is nothing intrinsically incoherent about a reality that would not be a being. There may be reality that is not a brute fact, not empirically given. In this context non-being does not refer to nothing but to a reality that is not a being. God is that reality which is non-being. Man's starting point in the quest for God begins with the " empirical observation that we do experience what primitive religions call God, although evidently we do not experience him as being at all." (pp. 387-8) It begins with that aspect of ordinary experience that we call religious experience. Man finds himself confronted with the brute facticity of being that has no meaning in itself. Yet he is driven to seek meaning by the very dynamism of his being. However," the meaning of existence cannot ... be found in being, because it does not exist in being" (p. 438) ; for being is, as we have seen, non-intelligible. So the meaning of existence may and must be found elsewhere, in non-being. That it (the meaning of existence) is, in fact, found elsewhere is borne out by experience .... The consciousness of being, though revealing only being as the object of experience, places man in a position to question the ultimacy and exclusiveness of being. (p. 439) We have only to ask why there is something rather than 464 PETER CHIRICO nothing and we are forced to reply that this is only because a sufficient reason for being exists. And yet there is nothing given in being, that is, in empirical reality, that is this sufficient reason. But to give this reply is to transcend the assumption that being exhausts reality, that existence marks the totality beyond which only nothing is found. Is not the point, if we reflect upon it, fairly evident: that the absoluteness of the contingencY. of being reveals, (at least by indirection), that being is not, as it were, the most important, the most significant, the noblest thing in the world? ... For all its value and dignity, all being and all existence, including human existence itself, can be counted for nothing and given up-without regret. . . . If we understand this, and are able thus to subtract ourselves from any bondage or debt in which we might he held by being on account of our having been born into being, and if we can, thus, thereafter exist freely, as the result of conscious choice, the reason is that we can understand ourselves in the light of that which transcends being in every way. (p. 440) Hence, in religious experience and in a religious mode of action that implies a judgment on being and a commitment to a meaning that cannot be found in being, there is already implied an acceptance of a reality beyond being that we may call God. It should be noted, however, that God is not the object of our experience. . . . being is and remains always the object of conscious experience. That which transcends being is revealed only in being, and within the experience of being, in the sense that our experience of being, and only our experience of being, reveals in us the capacity to judge being (whether rightly or not) and to dispose of it (whether for good or for ill). Though conscious being is conscious of being, and though it is conscious of no object but being, in the consciousness of its object, namely, being, it can become conscious of that which is not an object, namely, that which transcends being. (p. 441) In short, religious experience reveals that the meaning of human existence is not to be found within the realm of being, Rather, it is to be found in a reality that is beyond being, a non-being. "And when human experience reveals this, human experience has become religious belief." (p. 442) * * * * * DEW ART'S " THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF " 465 I cannot but admire the daring of a man who would undertake to rewrite so many of the fundamental areas of philosophy and, indeed, within the compass of a single volume. Further, I find myself in agreement with a number of his aims and specific points. That past philosophical positions need to be transcended, that empirical evidence needs to be studiously consulted, that the differentiation of human consciousness must be taken into account, that we must cease to make God a being like ourselves, only infinitely bigger-all these points and many others deserve commendation. However, there are many grave reservations that I would make with regard to Professor Dewart's work. For the purposes of brevity and clarity I will limit myself to three: a critique of the notion of being as non-intelligible; a questioning of the adequacy of the description of the knowing process as selfcreative through the mind's self-differentiation in and through its presence to itself and to the world; and, finally, some critical remarks about the historical judgments that are liberally scattered throughout this large work. Being, according to Dewart, is simply there. It is brute facticity; it is non-intelligible intrinsically. In order to assess this notion I will attempt to indicate some of the data Dewart believes must be accounted for by a notion of being, the inadequacies he sees in the classical view of being as intrinsically intelligible, the manner in which his view purports to account for the necessary data, the difficulty I find with Dewart's account, and finally, what I believe is a more adequate way to account for the data. The data that most impresses Dewart in the matter of man's approach to understanding being is the changeability and variability in that understanding. The same man at various stages of his life looks upon the same data in varying ways. Thus, the adult views his childhood quite differently than he viewed it when he was living it as a child. Further, different people living in the same world develop different views of being in accordance with their backgrounds. Not only do attitudes of people differ with regard to specific beings, but often there are 466 PETER CHIRICO vast cultural differences between peoples that manifest a different view of the whole world of being. These differences, many of them good and fitting, must be accounted for by one's view of being. Now the classical view of being fails completely to do justice to this state of affairs. According to the classical view " every real being is a self-contained object." (p. 258) There is in things a "Thalesian divinity ... which the mind extricates and appropriates for its own use .... " (p. 300) Every being has its own fixed essence that determines what the being is to be and how it is to act. Quite simply, "a being's essence accounts for what it is necessarily as intelligible." (p. 378) Such a view of the intelligibility of being fails completely to accord with the facts of changing and varying understanding. For, those with such a view see the intellect of man as the infallible capacity to ferret out the fixed intelligibility of being. Once that intelligibility is grasped, as it must be grasped, there is no room for a different view of things ... except on the grounds of either intellectual or else moral fault. If truth is but the outcome of looking at what-is and grasping it, those who disagree with one's understanding of the truth cannot be in the same good faith that one knows oneself to be in, unless they lack intelligence or opportunity. (p. 36) Hence, if one accepts the classical view of the fixed essences and fixed intelligibility of things, one simply cannot account for the intellectual pluralism and intellectual progress that is so evident today. In order to correct this deficiency Dewart opts for the nonintelligibility of being coupled with the creation of intelligibility by the mind in its self-differentiation from other beings. Once one concedes that the mind creates truth in its self-relation to being, then one is in a position to recognize the validity of views other than one's own. For such other views simply refer to different more or less adequate developments of individual self-consciousness that lead to the creation of different degrees and variations of truth. Further, one is able to see that there is no position that is totally true or totally false but DEW ART'S " THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF " 467 that each position is true to the degree that it represents an adequate development of consciousness and is false to the degree that it is a development that can and must be surpassed. Hence, the way is open to the development of truth and to the variation in truth, something that was impossible with a view that saw being as intrinsically intelligible. While I must admit the ingenuity of Dewart's view, I find that Dewart does not manage to live up to it. Throughout his book one finds rather harsh judgments on the stands of other men. The views of the Greeks and the Thomists are labelled " totally incredible," (p. 186) " nothing short of fantastic," (p. 256) "preposterous and fantastic," (p. 300) and they are judged to be so inadequate that no alert modern man could be content with them. Now, in these judgments Dewart is assuming that there is a state of affairs in the world of being, a human process that continually goes on not only in Professor Dewart but in other men. Insofar as this process goes on in other men, it is going on in what are objects opposed to Professor Dewart. Hence, on his view of being, what is going on in these men is simply brute facticity. It is non-intelligible because the whole world of being is non-intelligible. Further, the views that these men have of the processes they describe in their books are present to Dewart only in black markings on pieces of paper. Since these black markings are also beings external to Dewart, they are also non-intelligible. Therefore, on his view of being, Professor Dewart is confronted with two sets of non-intelligible data. On his view, he can not say that either set is intrinsically true or false. Both sets are simply there. Hence, it makes no sense for Dewart to make judgments that compare the intelligibility in the print of the books he is criticizing with the processes that this print purports to describe. As far as Dewart is concerned, for him intelligibility and meaning derive from him alone as subject. The "truth is not the meaning found within the facts; truth is the meaning which is put upon the facts because they are understood." (p. 299) Hence, instead of criticizing others for their errors, Dewart should, if he were faithful to his own principle of the 468 PETER CHIRICO non-intelligibility of being, be criticizing his own failure to develop and differentiate his own self-consciousness. In short, it is contradictory for a man who claims that all beings are extra-intelligible or non-intelligible to make a habit of criticizing the expressions of some personal beings (note that the expressions, too, are beings) as " fantastic," " incredible," that is, unintelligible. If being is simply there, if it has no intrinsic intelligibility, how can it be condemned in any case for not being intelligible? As soon as one begins to make judgments about another's views, one either implicitly admits that there is an intelligibility that exists apart from one's own mind that is the standard of one's judgments or one assumes that oneself is the standard of judgment. Does Professor Dewart subscribe to the second assumption, at least in his own case? Actually, Dewart is correct in disowning the view of beings as having only fixed intelligible essences that determine what they are and how they act. This view of the intelligibility of being when coupled with the notion of the natural infallibility of the intellect (an infallibility that I do not intend to deny though I cannot clarify it within the limits of these pages) does tend to lead to a static and intolerant notion of truth. However, the corrective that needs to be applied is not the denial of the intelligibility of being but almost the exact opposite. What is inadequate in the view of fixed intelligible essences is not that it sees intelligibility where there is no intelligibility but that it sees intelligibility as fixed and limited whereas it is changing and practically unlimited. In the first place, the intelligibility of beings is not always fixed. Intelligibility is that quality of order and relationship in material things that the mind can grasp and appreciate. That the movements of my hand have a relationship to my brain, that my past affects what I am at present, that the type of person I am is largely dependent upon my environmentthese and a host of other relationships and explanations that the mind can grasp constitute the intelligibility of myself. But I am changing. My relationships are changing. I am becoming a more complex and differentiated being. By these very DEWART'S "THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF" 469 facts of growth, the intelligibility that is associated with me also grows. I have no fixed and permanent intelligibility that is established once for all time. Moreover, this intelligibility of changing being is not the comparatively limited intelligibility implied in the view that Dewart is opposed to. For the universe is not an heterogeneous collection of disparate items all with their own limited intelligibility in isolation. The fact is that the web of interrelations that characterize our sphere of existence is incredibly vast. Scientists have been working for centuries attempting to unlock the immensity of these relationships, and no one would claim that they have gone beyond the beginning of the beginning. In fact, the inquiring activity of science presupposes that everything is interrelated, that there is a cause for each thing and every aspect of each thing, that nothing just happens in a way that is totally unrelated to any other happening, that if one had the gift of omniscience one could even know how the dice would fall each time, given height, spin, and all the other factors involved. Now it is this changeability and vastness of the intelligibility of being that accounts for the existence of differing and yet relatively true viewpoints. For no one man grasps anything like the total intelligibility of the universe. Each of us sees only a portion of the world and each of us is conditioned and limited by his past to realize the import of only a fraction of what he sees. Hence, it is that each of us can have different yet legitimate developments in and through the development of consciousness that takes place through our respective encounters with intelligible being. Hence, too, there is to be expected a continuous advance in the truth. As long as there is still more intelligibility to be grasped, there is the further possibility of a personal development in the truth. Finally, (and we cannot develop this point here) there is revealed in this view the possibility of error; for it is the failure to grasp the data pertinent to the question one asks that leads one to postulate an explanation, an hypothesis, that does not accord with the real world of objects. 470 PETER CHIRICO My second reservation regarding Dewart's position has to do with his description of the knowing process. Obviously, from what I have just stated, I cannot agree that the knowing process involves the creation of all intelligibility. However, I think that it is quite true to speak of this process as a growing self-differentiation from the known self accomplished through the presence of the self to the non-self. Certainly this is an aspect of what takes place when we know. My objection here is not so much that Dewart's account is incorrect but that it is inadequate and incomplete. Because space limitations prevent a full catalog of the shortcomings of his views I will limit myself to discussing only three of them. First of all, if it is true that knowing does involve a differentiation of self, this is only the first step of the process. If one pays more attention to the introspective empirical evidence, as Professor Dewart so often urges us to do, one realizes that an end of true knowledge is to unite oneself to what is known. We can understand this more clearly if we think not of some nameless object but of that object we call a person. When we know nothing about another individual we are not conscious of any division between us. The moment we become conscious of him is the moment of our realization of the gulf between him and ourselves. However, if we begin to understand him, if we begin to attempt to share in the way he experiences things and to appreciate how he understands his experiences, if, in a word, we approximate in our own development and self-differentiation the development and self-differentiation that characterizes him, we become like him. And if we love ourselves and what we have become in the process of reaching up to the development of another being, we will love him also. Real understanding of another is ultimately unifying, even if it does entail self-differentiation. Hence I do not find, as Dewart claims, that " the idea that through knowledge reality ' comes into ' the mind, in however analogical a sense, appears fantastic to, and is usually resisted by, the newcomer to philosophy." (p. 69) Further, the self-differentiation that takes place as one grows in knowledge is also self-unifying. The man who really has a DEW ART's "THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF " 471 developed consciousness and a self-differentiation with regard to a given area of being is the man who sees the meaning of even complex things at a glance, even though the process by which he arrived at the condition of seeing things in this way was a process of self-differentiation. Hence, the expert in physics understands in one simple view Einstein's relativity equation, a mother understands in a flash the wealth of meaning involved in her love for her child, a theologian of the stature of St. Thomas grasps the unity of the universe and himself as a part of it in a grasp that could never be articulated for another. Yet, in each case there was necessary a prior process of selfdifferentiation. Hence, although it is true that self-differentiation from self and from the other is an aspect of the process of knowing, self-unification and unification with the universe is a goal of that process. Perhaps the greatest inadequacy in Dewart's description of knowledge is its failure to pass beyond the common sense level. For Dewart, knowledge always remains at the initial stage in which the knower becomes conscious in varying degrees of his self-relation to reality. It never rises to the stage in which the knower transcends himself and arrives at the grasp of the relationships that exist between things outside of the knower. In other words, knowledge in his system never reaches the scientific level. Now, as a matter of fact, all our knowledge does begin with our consciousness of a relationship and a distance between ourselves and some beings. Thus, my knowledge of the place of the earth and the sun in the scheme of things necessarily begins with my consciousness of the relationship of these two bodies to me. Hence, I realize immediately with all the assurance of common sense that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. However, when human inquiry is prolonged it seeks for more than just what appears in consciousness. It seeks for the relationships that exist within things even apart from consciousness. Thus, it arrives at the notions of the revolution of the earth about the sun and of the movement of the sun and its planets in relationship to the stars of this galaxy, etc. It 47!l PETER CHIRICO becomes able to predict what will happen in the heavens in the future and to describe accurately what happened at some celestial moment of the past when it was not present as conscious. In short, the process of knowledge proceeds from initial consciousness of how things are related to me to how they are interrelated among themselves. And it is precisely because the mind can do this that it is capable of bearing judgments on the opinions of other men as Dewart so frequently does. Such a judgment is simply the mind's assessment of the relationship or lack of relationship that exists between the intelligibility in reality and its representation in written or spoken words of another human being. It is an evaluation of conditions that exist entirely outside the knower, although that evaluation begins necessarily with the knower's relationship in consciousness to the realities in question. Finally, I believe that some remarks must be made about the rather large number of historical judgments made by Dewart throughout his work. Judging what the thought of another is or was is an immensely complicated task. It is not enough to quote a few texts in which the author expressly treats the subject in question. The mark of a great thinker, especially a philosopher or theologian, is integration of thought. The great mind develops continuously, not by accumulating new data that is pigeonholed according to subject matter but by a progressive expansion of its understanding that consistently incorporates into its overall view and each of its subsidiary views every new piece of data. Hence, if one hopes to grasp the viewpoint of a great thinker, one cannot simply read what he has written on a subject. One must go through, at least in an approximate fashion, the same kind of integrated development that he went through to arrive at his terminal position-a development that included a host of elements not specifically labelled as the subject we are interested in. In short, in order to grasp the meaning represented by a great man's words, one must become like him, become his intellectual equal. It is for this reason that the tyro who demands that DEWART's "THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF" 473 the teacher briefly and clearly explain to him what relativity means is asking what the teacher cannot give. For he is asking that the teacher short-cut the necessary process by which he (the student) must grow so as to approximate in a limited way that understanding that once was Einstein's. Now I find in Dewart's book a readiness to interpret others that appears to indicate he has little idea of the enormity of the task involved in deciding what another man held. Thus, the incredibly complex view of Bernard Lonergan on knowing, a view that can be grasped only after an intense study of the whole thought of the man, is misunderstood so that in Lonergan "the assumption appears to have been explicitly made that besides consciousness there is another datum, ' knowing,' and even 'looking,' which, presumably, unites one being (the conscious knower) with another (the known) ." (p. 514) Anyone conversant with the whole of Lonergan's thought would know that he would not and could not hold that besides consciousness there is another datum, knowing. This may not emerge from the single text that Dewart cites; it emerges from the whole corpus of Lonergan. For Lonergan, consciousness is an aspect of the knowing process that goes through every aspect of that process. Similarly, Dewart assumes that in the classical concept of knowledge " language has no role in the process of human consciousness, but is wholly subsequent to consciousness and the mere externalization of it." (p. 121) Now Dewart is undoubtedly correct in claiming that language is an essential and distinct and intrinsic aspect of man's thought process. But it simply is not true that the classical concept of language, especially as that concept was expressed in St. Thomas, was unaware of this fact. It is true that one may have difficulty in finding a treatise on the function of language in St. Thomas. However, one can find a quite nuanced view of human understanding and the palce of verbum in that understanding. In fact, I would suggest that the view of language gleaned from St. Thomas's treatment of verbum is in many ways superior to the view Dewart now propounds as overcoming a fallacious 474 PETER CHIRICO notion of the past. Nor is this a recent discovery. One has only to read the series of articles written over twenty years ago by Bernard Lonergan and now printed in book form as Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas (University of Notre Dame Press, 1967). For St. Thomas, the language that is essential to human understanding is the inner word. That inner word is the product of the act of understanding; and that inner word is not always of some immutable essence but of the intelligibility to be found in sensible data. The outer or spoken word or external action refers to and means this inner word. When one recognizes that for St. Thomas knowledge means a modification of the being of the knower, when one further realizes that the intelligibility of that which the knower assimilates is assimilated according to the being of the knower (and hence, according to the manner in which the knower has been changed by prior knowledge and differentiation of consciousness), one can begin to see how inner words that are the product of successive acts of understanding can be quite different in different people and can lead eventually to the differences in outer language and culture that are familiar to us all. Dewart's failure to grasp the meaning of others is nowhere more apparent than in his tendency to ridicule the notion that one can know essence before existence . . . . It is barely credible that generation after generation of philosophers have accepted without murmur the assertion of St. Thomas ... that "every essence or quiddity can be understood without anything being known of its existing." . . . For this assertion is nothing short of fantastic: it is precisely the opposite of what any legally sane, adult citizen can verify for himself .... (p. Far from being " fantastic," this assertion of St. Thomas makes eminent sense in the context of his whole thought. For St. Thomas, nothing is in the intellect unless it is first in the senses. But once one has had sense experiences and once one has grasped the intelligibility in his sense experiences, one is capable of combining in his own mind elements of prior DEWART'S "THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF" 475 experience and understanding and conceiving other beings that might exist. Hence, I know of the existence of birds and of the existence of men. Because of that past knowledge, I can conceive of a flying rational creature, though I have no evidence that such a being exists. Nor is this kind of thought worthless. For this process of conceiving what might be is the very basis of modern science. It goes by the name of hypothesis. Out of all his past knowledge and out of the few clues presently available regarding the problem before him, the scientist constructs a theory about what might be. That theory is only thinking, only hypothesis. It approaches being a grasp of the real insofar as it is verified by empirical testing. What is truly ironic is that Dewart himself is forced to acknowledge in another context that man can conceive of a world that does not yet exist-approximately what St. Thomas means when he says that one can know the essence of something without knowing it exists. His (man's) awareness of the world as that in which his consciousness comes into being opens up a possibility from which affective, appetitive experience takes its origin, namely, the possibility of conjuring up a different human situation. That is, the prospect of defining himself otherwise than as he now is, the prospect of making his situation be other than it now is, opens up for man the possibility of being beyond what he now is .... Hence, to become aware that one exists in situation is to become aware that one could exist differently, since awareness of being in situation is awareness of the contingency and limitation of a reality which consciousness transcends. Thus, to grasp the world as the locale of man's situation is to grasp the contingency of man's situation; but to be aware of this contingency is to be aware of the possibility of conceiving another world (or, rather, of conceiving a rearrangement of this world) which would constitute an alternative to one's present situation. (pp. 272-73) Finally, to limit myself to one of the many criticisms that could be made against Dewart's judgments regarding the history of theology, let me say that his account of the origin of the notion of created grace (p. 381-82) is hardly in accord with the evidence gathered by the historians of grace. (Com- 476 PETER CHIRICO pare Dewart's account with that found in Charles Moeller and Gustav Philips, The Theology of Grace and the Ecumenical Movement [London, 1961] pp. 11-23). In summary, I admire Dewart's attempt to criticize the old philosophical foundations of belief and to erect newer and more solid foundations. But I believe that he has not paid enough attention to the data. He has not effectively grasped what the old data were; and he has not attended sufficiently to experience to be able to erect a more coherent account of how man understands and how he reaches up to God. When the foundations of belief are said to include the non-intelligibility of being, the building that is constructed on those foundations is bound to be incoherent and unintelligible. When the mind of man is said to be creative of the meaning of being, it will be no great step to declare that it is also creative of the meaning of that reality Dewart calls God. PETER CHIRICO, St. Patrick's Seminary Menlo Park, California s. s. BOOK REVIEWS The Time of Our Lives. The Ethics of Common Sense. By MoRTIMER J. ADLER. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970. Pp. 361. $7.95. It says something for the vitality of philosophical thought, and for a philosopher who can formulate it, to argue that, while this century in no sense seems utopian in realization, it is still nonetheless a better century than any preceding one. The thirteenth century has been eloquently argued for as the " greatest of centuries." Mortimer Adler proposes the twentieth instead in his latest book, the third one developed from the annual series of Encyclopaedia Britannica Lectures delivered at the University of Chicago and designed, like the earlier two books, to stimulate the revival of traditional philosophical inquiry in this century. Adler's books are always models of organization, and the present one is no exception to well-planned development, philosophical exposition, and persuasion. I stress " persuasion," in the sense that Adler, to use a fruitful distinction of his own, concentrates on " first order " problems, which is to say, he argues about the basic issues that matter for man and not primarily about whether man can successfully transcend the use of his tools of communication (Adler solves this by doing it); and to develop philosophical exposition about first order problems is to argue persuasively in the philosophical sense of the term. The book has four major parts. Part One presents the commonsense answer to the question of how one can make a good life for one's self. Part Two states philosophical objections to the commonsense answer; the defense of this answer entails meeting philosophical critics of common sense on their own ground. Part Three, by expanding and deepening the commonsense answer, transforms the answer into moral philosophy. Part Four confronts the difficult social, economic, political, and educational problemsalong with the critics-