THE GENERAL INDEX TO THE THOMIST VOL. XXXVI (1972) INDEX OF AUTHORS PAGE ANDERSON, THOMAS C., Aristotle and Aquinas on the Freedom of the Mathematician . BEARSLEY, PATRICK J., S.M., Another Look at the First Principles of Knowledge . CAMPBELL, HARRY M., Teilhard de Chardin and "the Mysterious Divinity, Evolution" CENTORE, F. F., A Note on Diversity and Difference . FLANAGAN, JosEPH F., S. J., Lonergan's Epistemology KAINZ, HowARD P., A Metaphilosophical Reflection on the Aristotelian and Kantian Treatments of Time . KERLIN, MICHAEL J., "Where God Comes In" for A.lfred North Whitehead LAURA, RoNALD S., Some Elucidations and Cognitivity Preblems of Religious Discourse . MAY, WILLIAM E., Animal Laborans and Homo Faber: Reflections on a Theology of Work MuLLIGAN, R. W., S. J., Divine Foreknowledge and Freedom: A Note on a Problem of Language NEUMANN, HARRY, Is Philosophy Still Possible? . OAKES, RoBERT A., Is "Self-Validating" Religious Experience Logically Possible? PECCORINI, FRANcisco L., Suarez's Struggle with the Problem of the One and the Many PETERSON, JoHN, Aristotle's Incomplete Causal Theory . PoTVIN, THOMAs R., 0. P., Review Article:" Esprit Saint et L'Eglise" REISER, WILLIAM E., S. J., Review Article: Foundational Reality and Harvey, and Lone·rgan . Three Approaches: REYNA, RuTH, On the Soul: A Philosophical Exploration of the Active Intellect in Averroes, Aristotle, and Aquinas . RossNER, WILLIAM, S. J., The Process of Human Intellectual Love, or Spirating a Pondus SHMUEL!, EFRAIM, Some Similarities between Spinoza and Hegel on Substance SHRADER, SR. KRISTIN, R. S. l\1., Dewey on Science and Religion . AsHLEY, BENEDICT M., 0. P., Causality and Eoolution 231 199 566 608 472 75 117 98 599 626 293 545 256 433 420 483 512 131 39 645 658 PAGE SoBOSAN, JEFFREY G., C. S.C., Jesus the Man and Jesus the Christ: Did Bultmann Change? . TEKIPPE, TERRY T., The Shape of Lonergan's Argument in" Insight'' THOMPSON, WILLIAM, S. S., Theology's Method and Linguistic Analy- sis in the Thought of Langdon Gilkey . WALHOUT, DoNALD, The Perfectological Argument WYSCHOGROD,EDITH, Emmanuel Levinas and the Problem of Religious Language fl67 671 363 394 1 INDEX OF BOOK REVIEWS AHERN, M. B., The Problem of Evil (F. Sontag) . AKENSON, DoNALD HARMAN, The Church of Ireland, Ecclesiastical Reform and Revolution (W. Hayes, 0. P.) . ARNOLD, R. E., L. A. KENNEDY, A. E. MILLWARD, The Universal Treatise of Nicholas of Autrecourt (T. K. Scott, Jr.) . AYERST, D., FISHER, A. S. T., Records of Christianity. Vol. I: In the Roman Empire (B. Ramsey, 0. P.) . BALTAZAR, EuLALIO R., God Within Process (W. J. Finan, 0. P.) . BAUM, G., Man Becoming: God in Secular Language (M. J. Kerlin) BLEIENSTEIN, F., Johannes Quidort von Paris. tJber kOnigliche und piipstliche Gewalt (W. J. Kramer) . BoGUET, H., An Examen of Witches (J. J. Nicola) . BowEs, P., Consciousness and Freedom, Three Views (M. Schneider, 157 195 703 193 151 315 178 532 . Bozzo, G. B., Chiesa e Utopia (A. Mattiazzo) . BROCKETT, L., The Theology of Baptism (J. Toner, 0. P.) CAPITAN, W. H., Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction (M. Sharon Burns, R. S.M.) . CISTERCIAN FATHERS, The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux, Vol. I, Treatises I (J. R. O'Donnell) . DAVIS, J. W. (ed.), Value and Valuation: Axiological Studies in Honor of R. S. Hartman (G. L. Concordia, 0. P.) . DIALLO-TAYIRE, A. A., La crise de ['information et la crise de confiance des Nations Unies (A. Zizzamia) . DoNNELLY, J. (ed.), Logical Analysis and Contemporary Criticism (A. J. Lisska) EvANs, C. S., Despair: A Moment or a Way of Life? (L. Weeks) FISHER, A. S. T., AYERST, D., History and Christianity, Vol. I: In the Roman Empire (B. Ramsey, 0. P.) . GALLAGHER, I. J., Morality in Evolution. The Moral Philosophy of Henri Bergson (J. Theau) . GusTAFSON, J. M., Chri.Ytian Ethics and the Community (L. Weeks) 328 3fl7 540 330 7fl4 860 705 882 198 525 382 PAGE HARRISON, G. B. (ed.), The Trial of the Lancaster Witches (J. J. Nicola) HARTLEY, T. J. A., Thomistic Revival and the Modernist Era (R. Mcinerny) HAUGHTON, R., The Theology of Marriage (K. Dwyer, 0. P.) . HEcK, H., Der Begrifj Religio bei Thomas von Aquin (C. Williams, QPJ HIGGINS, J. J., Merton's Theology of Prayer (R. Smith, 0. P.) . HILL, W. J., Knowing the Unknown God (A. J. Kelly, C. SS. R.) . HUME, R. E., The World's Living Religions (W. C. Cenkner, 0. P.) IsAAc, J., Jesus and Israel (J. M. Oesterreicher) . KEEFE, D. J., Thomism and the Ontological Theology of Paul Tillich: A Comparison of Systems (F. M. Jelly, 0. P.) . KENNEDY, L. A., ARNOLD, R. E., MILLWARD, A. E., The Universal Treatise of Nicholas of Autrecourt (T. K. Scott, Jr.) . KENNY, A., The Five Ways, St. Thomas' Proofs of God's Existence (W. A. Wallace, 0. P.) . KILEY, J. F., Einstein and Aquinas: A Rapprochement (W. A. Wallace, 0. P.) LARCHER, F. R. (tr), Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle (W. A. Wallace, O.P.) . L'EsTRANGE EwEN, C. (ed.), Witch Hunting and Witch Trials (J. J. Nicola) . LINDSAY, J., Origins of Astrology (0. Neugebauer) . MACQUARRIE, J., Paths in Spirituality (R. R. Masterson, 0. P.) MARKUS, R. A. (ed.), Augustine: A Collection of Critical Essays (F. Van Fleteren, 0. S. A.) . MARRERO, V., Santiago Ramirez, 0. P., Su Vida y Su Obra (A. Moreno, 0. P.) MAsCALL, E. L., The Openness of Being (W. J. Hill, 0. P.) McSHANE, P. (ed.), Foundations of Theology (C. N. Bent, S. J.) MILLWARD, A. E., KENNEDY, L. A., ARNOLD, R. E., The Universal Treatise of Nicholas of Autrecourt (T. K. Scott, Jr.) . MoNTGOMERY, J. W., History and Christianity (B. Ramsey, 0. P.) MosT, W. G., New Answers to Old Questions (C. R. Meyer) O'CoNNOR, E. D., The Pentecostal Movement (J. M. Cafone) . PARKER, F. H., Reason and Faith Revisited: The Aquinas Lecture, 1971 (W. N. Christensen & J. King-Farlow) . PHILLIPS, D. Z., Faith and Philosophical Enquiry (J. King-Farlow) PRINCIPE, W., Hugh of Saint-Cher's Theology of the Hypostatic Union (W. A. Newman, 0. P.) Proceedings ACPA, Philosophy and Christian Theology (L. B. Geiger, 0. P.) . 582 519 70Q 3M 694 800 524 179 166 708 175 582 848 696 697 187 587 585 703 193 190 168 160 690 819 PURTILL, R. L., Logic for Philosophers (D. C. Kane, 0. P .) . RAMSEY, I. T. (ed.), Words About God: The Philosophy of Religion (J. C. Livingston) . RANDALL, J. H., Hellenistic Ways of Deliverance and the Making of the Christian Synthesis (G. T. Dennis, S. J.) . REICHENBACH, B. R., The Cosmological Argument. A. Reassessment (W. A. Wallace, 0. P.) RICHMOND, J., Theology and Metaphysics (W. J. Hill, 0. P.) . Rmm, C., La Trascendenza della Grazia nella Teologia di San Tommaso d'Aquino (J. R. Sheets, S. J.) . RYLE, G., Collected Papers (9! vols.) (J. 0. Urmson) . SANTAYANA, G., Lotze's System of Philosophy (C. E. Schuetzinger) ScHLEGEL, R., Inquiry into Science: its Domain and Limits (B. M. Ashley, 0. P.) . ScHRAG, 0. 0., Existence, Existenz and Transcendence: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Karl Jaspers (J. B. Davis, 0. P.) SEIDEL, G. J., Being, Nothing and God (J. B. Reichmann, S. J.) SHAW, M. W., Studies in Revelation and the Bible (A. Smith, 0. P.) SHIBLES, W. A., Metaphor: An Annotated Bibliography and History (P. van K. Thomson) . SIMON, Y., Work, Society and Culture (L. R. Ward) . SIMPSON, M., Death and Eternal Life (J. Toner, 0. P.) SoNTAG, F., How Philosophy Shapes Theology: Problems in the Philosophy of Religion (J. King-Farlow) . SVEINO, P., Orestes A. Road to Catholicism (A. S. Ryan) VAN DER PoEL, C ..J., The Search for Human Values: Moral Growth in an Evolving World (W. E. May) VEATCH, H. B., For an Ontology of Morals. A Critique of Contemporary Ethical Theory (J. Zagar, 0. P.) VEKEMANS, R., Caesar and God. The Priesthood and Politics (J. J. Farraher, S. J.) VERHOEVEN, C., The Philosophy of Wonder (W. P. Haas, 0. P.) . YARNOLD, E., The Theology of Original Sin (L. M. Hughes, 0. P.) PAGE 173 150 185 305 346 731 309 184 534 186 351 341 343 715 702 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. XXXVI JANUARY, 1972 No.1 EMMANUEL LEVINAS AND THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE E MMANUEL LEVIN AS IS A French phenomenological thinker with deep roots in Jewish tradition. His work shows an extraordinary thematic unity; it is an attempt to ground the view that the advent of other persons is a primordial upsurge of language. Thus he attacks one of the most vexing and fundamental concerns of contemporary religious thought: the primary meaning of language as a human phenomenon. The novelty of Levinas's investigation lies in its assumption that both language and morality rest upon nonrational foundations. Together with the question of language, Levinas develops an account of the responsible self as an infrastructure prior to all decision-making processes, that is, prior to the activation of responsibility in the world of freedom. Working in the tradition of Edmund Husserl, Levinas seeks to uncover for phenomenological investigation not only the moral self but such diverse phenomena as need, knowledge, and work. From Levinas's point of view the method of phenomenology makes possible an analysis of what is present to consciousness 1 EDITH WYSCHOGROD by revealing the structures of consciousness in its various spheres of operation. The work of consciousness presupposes existing entities, a world; it presupposes the relation with an object, with what is posited, with the being which is before consciousness. Levinas does not question the adequacy of Husserl's phenomenological method in its power to uncover the structures of cognition. But at the heart of Levinas's thought is the question: does consciousness, as phenomenological philosophy understands it, exhaust the data of all experiencing? Is not phenomenology itself more than a method, that is, does it not, like the entire tradition of Western metaphysics to which it belongs, eventuate in relations of dominance, power, and egoity? To discover the answers to these questions we must not only identify thematizing consciousness, consciousness which intends its object, but reveal its essential operations. We must find out what is accomplished in thematizing and what sorts of experiences are distorted when brought into its purview. As Husser! had already shown, a method arises naturally from a particular region of being and is a powerful instrument for the discovery of the meaning of the being from which it originates. But the misapplication of a method falsifies an ontological realm into which it has been transplanted but from which it does not derive. For Levinas, thematizing consciousness is exercised in a particular way; it is not activated neutrally to do its cognitive work but as power, violence, and domination. When the self is identified exclusively with the work of reason, when cognition is invoked as the paradigm for all experiencing, some domains of actuality are falsified. Particularly when the relations in existence between the self and other persons are assumed to be only variants differing in object but not in kind from the cognitive model, the experience of the alterity of other persons is distorted. There are for Levinas experiences such that they contain at any given moment more than consciousness can hold. These are the metaphysically significant experiences of the infinite, of transcendence, of the face of the other as something alien and rich, something foreign to one's own being. PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE The task of metaphysics is to attest the reality of these experiences which resist conventional analyses of consciousness and to bring these experiences into relation with the totality of existence. ToTALITY AND INFINITY: SETTING THE QuESTION In his major work, Totalite et infini, Levinas undertakes to show that all psychic life, even in its infra-cognitive structures, tends to incorporate the world into a totality, a network of functional relationships with others which betrays the interiority of personal life by reducing persons to their social roles within a complex network of socio-economic relationships. Totality devours individuality by failing to recognize the sphere of inner life. The totality is the whole into which individual lives are incorporated. From his earliest work, Levinas assumes the inevitability of this process. Within totality the activities of separated being, that is, of man as he differentiates himself from being as such, are capable of providing the conditions for human contentment. Unlike Heidegger's Dasein for whom existence is an ek-stasis towards the end, a being-towardsdeath, man is satisfied to "live on" the world in which he finds himself. To dwell, to work, to exchange, to meditatethese are the modalities of life as separated being. The world of separated being is the domain of economy; within the confines of economy the products of human endeavor are subject to exchange and therefore to usurpation. Yet inner life persists although it cannot recognize itself in this context. Thus, in Levinas's thought, economic life is more than merely precarious; it is experienced as tyranny. This tyranny is represented by the state which betrays rather than expresses the personal sphere. All work is symbolic within the totality, for totality conceals the original intention of the work in question. In this sense work is as deceptive as the dream of Freudian psychology. But, from Levinas's point of view, once we have penetrated the facade of work no better understanding of subjectivity ensues. We have only revealed the intention of the work but not the 4 EDITH WYSCHOGROD inner self of the worker which remains absent from it no matter how subtle the interpretive scheme we devise, since work is not a devious project of concealment but the modus operandi of totality. What is not at once obvious with regard to work can be brought to light, but the realm of work can never reveal interiority, the inner lives of men which transcend totality. Only the word in its pure function as a calling forth to responsibility can break into totality. How is the authentic self called to responsibility? How is the monadic solidarity of the whole broken? Separated being is the being who inquires, who asks what a thing is. This question already implies that the thing is not what it seems to be. The something more which is implied in the question can often be answered in terms of psychology. But no questions of this type are identical with the question: of whom do we inquire. Such a question is nonpsychological in origin; indeed it wrenches us free from the realm of psychology. For psychology still implies a further content belonging to the given which demands that we bring it to light, but the one to whom we address our inquiry can never be presented as a content. The reply to the question: who is it, is always presented as a face. There is no question anterior to this question; its ultimacy precludes all further interrogation. Indeed the " who " intended by the question cannot be the object of cognitive inquiry but is something given to an affective intention, that is, the " who " of the question " who is it," is the object of desire. Thus Levinas writes: The who correlative to desire, the who to whom the question is asked, is in metaphysics as fundamental and universal a notion as quiddity, being and existing, and the categories. 1 When we inquire, " who is it " the answer to the question and the person interrogated are identical. Only when we have perceived a person's exteriority, an exteriority radically different from that of things, do we per1 Emmanuel Levinas, Totalite et infoni (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1961), p. I5i'l. PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE 5 ceive a human presence beyond ontology. With the appearance of true exteriority the totality reveals its phenomenal character, its inability, quite literally, to do justice to the other. We do not experience this inadequacy as discontent, for lack of contentment is at least theoretically satiable, whereas the feeling aroused by exteriority is incommensurable with satiety for it cannot be reduced to a feeling of need. The hunger experienced in the presence of other persons feeds upon itself. It is lived as a hunger for the other which can neither be consummated in pleasure nor bypassed and forgotten: Desire does not coincide with an unsatisfied need; it lies beyond satisfaction and dissatisfaction. The relation with the other person, or the idea of the infinite fulfills it. Everyone can experience it in the strange desire for the other person that no pleasure comes to crown, to terminate, or to put to rest. . . . Because of it, because of the presence before the face of the other, man does not allow himself to be deceived by his glorious triumph as a vital self and, distinct from the animal, can know the difference between being and phenomenon, recognize its phenomenality, the deficiency of its plenitude, a deficiency not convertible into needs, and which beyond plenitude and emptiness cannot be filled.2 The face resists our power to conceptualize it, not because the resistance of the face to conceptualization is so great that we cannot overcome it but because the face breaks with the sensible form which appears to contain it. Addressing us as persons, the face solicits a relationship with it which cannot be expressed in terms of enjoyment or knowledge. This means not that the other person is invulnerable to power but that the power which we have over him is transformed. We now have before us a being whose being cannot be put out of operation, " neutralized," so to speak. The being of the face is such that a negation of its being involves its annihilation. The grounds upon which Levinas argues that the face conveys a moral imperative are experiential, that is, every experience of the face of the other yields more than a perception of the flesh, more than the appearance of a face in the world: it 2 Ibid., pp. 154-155. 6 EDITH WYSCHOGROD yields a command. The face itself is the only coercive argument for such imperatives. Indeed the recourse to argument is an option made available only after the face has erupted into the continuity, the smoothness, the indifference of the world. There are no grounds other than those of experience upon which Levinas rests his case. Once the face is experienced it transcends the categories of interpretation applicable to surfaces: form, texture, color, palpability, the idea of a field of interlocking planes, and is experienced as the foundation of moral life. For Levinas " the epiphany of the face is the ethical." The relationship with the other may turn into conflict, but such conflict can only arise after one has already taken cognizance of the face. The expression we read on the other's face does not convey information about his inner psychological state but is always a primordial revelation of destitution and distress. The face bespeaks a basic inequity between self and others, for others appear as if from on high. It is possible to speak of Levinas's interpretation of the face as the topography of a moral universe which appears as a series of cantilevered planes in which the self reaches towards the other but remains always below the other. We cannot refuse to respond to the appeal of the other who is above us, for he arouses our kindness and call us forth to responsibility. The link between the expression of the other and our responsibility to him respresents a function of language anterior to every unveiling of being: It is a question of perceiving the function of language not as subordinate to consciousness one has of the other or of his nearness or of community with him but as the condition of this consciousness.3 Language does not serve a thought which precedes it and which it somehow " translates " in order to make known the content of inner life. Its upsurge is simultaneous with that 3 Emmanuel Levinas, "L'ontologie est-elle physique et de Morale, no. 1 (1951), p. 93. fondamentalle? ", Revue de Meta- PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE 7 content. The language of the face is such that upon its appearance we are obligated to enter into discourse with it. The existent who expresses himself is prior to being which reveals itself and forms the basis for knowledge. The event of expression consists in bearing witness and in guaranteeing the witness which it bears. All language refers to the face, which, as Levinas puts it, is its own " word of honor." The one who speaks is the guarantor of what he says even though he may lie or be mistaken. There is no word for which someone is not ultimately responsible, which does not revert to a speaker whose face as such commands. The pivotal point of Levinas's ethical metaphysics is conveyed in the notion that the face of the other conveys the idea of the infinite. Only the idea of the infinite transcends the self who thinks it. The formal structure of the Cartesian analysis of the idea of the infinite provides the means for a break with ontology. Levinas argues that for Descartes the self who thinks maintains a relation with the infinite. This relation is not one of that which contains to the content contained, since it is impossible for the self to contain the infinite. The content is not attached or united to the containing since the infinite to be what it is, infinite, must be separated from the self. It differs radically from other objects of consciousness in that the " ideatum " exceeds any idea that we can have of it. Consciousness which intends the infinite differs from all other intentional stuctures insofar as it intends more than it can encompass: indeed it intends precisely what cannot be encompassed. The infinite is placed in us; it never arises from any structure of the self. It is experienced in the most radical sense for we cannot reduce its alterity to the same. It emerges in social relations when we are addressed by a being absolutely exterior to our own. The face of the other reveals the injustice of the totality and of all the phenomena which derive from human freedom. One's own freedom is ashamed of itself before the other, for it has discovered in itself the possibility of murder and violence; it discovers itself as injustice. Levinas maintains that the 8 EDITH WYSCHOGROD relation with the other which is preceded by neither representation nor comprehension is "invocation" or "prayer." The essence of such invocation is religio, but religio of a very special order for it arises within the framework of ethical relations: If the word "religion" must nevertheless indicate that the relation with men, irreducible to understanding, is equally distant from the exercise of power but unites to the infinite in human faces-then we accept the ethical connotation of the word with all its Kantian echoes.4 LANGUAGE AND DISCOURSE In a half dozen essays which comprise Levinas's most strategic recent work, the problem of language is discerned as the central issue of his thinking. 5 While philosophers of similar temperament such as Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, to whom Levinas is indebted, refrain from analyzing the structure of thought, for Levinas the process itself holds considerable interest. According to Levinas, the process of thematization does not consist in perceiving a " this " or a " that " but in understanding something by the given. That is to say, something is not first given and then understood but, in accordance with Husserl's interpretation, by the given such and such is already meant. Although thematization means something by the given, it in no sense prejudges the content of what is given. The act of meaning a " this " insofar as it is a " this " does not distance one from the object, from" being in the original"; it simply means that in understanding a " this " insofar as it is "this," not the object but its meaning is understood. There is no mere object; there is only an object meant: • Ibid., p. 95. • These essays are: "La trace de I' autre," "Enigme et phenomene," "Langage et proximite," all in En Decouvrant !'existence avec Husserl et Heidegger, (Paris: Vrin, 1949), pp. 187-236; "La signification et le sens," Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, Vol. 69 no. 1, pp. 125-156; "Humanisme et An-archie," Revue Internationale de Philosophie, nos. 85-86, pp. 323-337; "La Substitution," Revue Philosophique de Louvain, vol. 66, Aug. 1968, pp. 487-508. PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE 9 The intending of " this " insofar as it is " that," does not intend the object but its meaning. Being neither has to fill nor to falsify meaning. Meaning, neither given nor non-given, is intended. But it is starting with meaning that being is manifested as being.6 Levinas does not deny that for Husserl the world is immediately present to consciousness, a presence guaranteed by its being. But this being is not subject to subsequent recreation or reconstitution by consciousness. The presence of being cannot be interpreted as a weighing down upon the subject of the being of the world, nor as the impact of the manifold sensible upon a passive consciousness. If any lesson has been learned from Husserl, it is that to be present to consciousness is not the equivalent of filling an empty container, that the notion of a " this " unwinding before a passive gaze is happily defunct. Every " this " which is experienced is already a " this " which is intended. What Levinas derives from Husserl's understanding of intentionality is its function in designating something as one, " something insofar as it is something." For Husserl "to understand something as ... " lies at the foundation of consciousness; it operates as an a priori of consciousness without which consciousness would not be what it is. Every designation of truth or falsity already presupposes it. Such apriority is neither "temporal anticipation" or "logical anteriority." To proclaim meaning is first and foremost to name, to proclaim that the object intended is a " this " or a " that." When Levinas writes that the "apriority of the a priori is a 'kerygma,'" what he means is the still strictly Husserlian supposition that the apriority of the a priori is that by virtue of which a simple proclamation that the object is what it is becomes possible because of the intention which animates it, bestows upon it its unity. Thus Levinas understands the object to maintain an identity, an ideality through its multiform and vanishing appearances precisely as Husserl understands it. Levinas writes: • Emmanuel Levinas, En decouvrant (Paris: Vrin, 1949), p. l'existence avec Husserl et Heidegger 10 EDITH WYSCHOGROD Everything, if you will, is imaged in experience except the identity of individuals, which dominates the instants of the images. It (identity) can only happen as intended. 7 In short, experience presupposes identity through multiplicity, "to-mean-as-the-same," "to-take-as-the-same." Thus, for Levinas, while Husserlian phenomenology reinstates the primacy of being so that the object is interpreted as fully present, as being, it also and primarily understands thought as conferring an ideal meaning. Being could not show itself without this ideal meaning. To put it otherwise, Levinas sees Husser! as having meant that to bestow a meaning upon being is neither more nor less than letting being be. If this is indeed Husserl's standpoint, it is, from Levinas's point of view, correct. There is no appearing beyond meaning or outside of it. The consequences of this approach to phenomena are, according to Levinas, extremely significant, for now every phenomenon is discourse or a fragment of discourse. Levinas agrees that to avow that a thing is a "this" or a " that " as Husser! has done is a function of judgment. Thus, not only are all phenomena " language," even if only in a rudimentary way, but all saying is already judgment. It is not a subsidiary or accidental feature of language but belongs to speech as predicative. It is as proclamation that language is signifying. The contiguity of linguistic signs is not an arbitary event. Language signifies because it is, as kerygma, the avowal of an identity. Thus, thought and other processes of conscious life for which thinking provides the model are correctly understood by Husser! to implicate human existence in the discursive realm, but these processes for Levinas can never provide the foundation for moral life. We have now seen that Levinas's interpretation of Husserlian intentionality enables him to show that every phenomenon does not merely bear a freight of language but is already a fragment of discourse, that to appear is quite literally to have been spoken for. Levinas arrives at a second equally critical 7 Ibid., p. 220. PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE 11 conclusion: the individual can only be attained in discourse through " the detour of the universal." The universal is a priori and precedes the individual. When thought thinks itself to be most concrete, to have achieved the truth of sense certainty, to have attained the particular, it reaches only a "this" or a " that." Thus from the Husserlian supposition that all thinking is the conferring of an identity, the thinking of a thing as a "this" or a "that," Levinas is led to a Hegelian conclusion, viz., that cognition can never attain particularity. To discern the remarkable proximity of Levinas's view to that of Hegel one need only examine the following passage from Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind: It is as universal, too, that we give utterance to sensuous fact. What we say is: " This," i. e., the universal this; or we say: "it is," i. e., being in general. Of course we do not present before our mind in saying so the universal this, or being in general, but we utter what is universal; in other words, we do not actually and absolutely say what in this sense we really mean. Language as we see, however, is the more truthful; in it we ourselves refute directly and at once our own " meaning "; and since universality is the real truth of sense certainty, and language merely expresses this truth, it is not possible at all for us even to express in words any sensuous existence which we " mean." 8 Levinas's conclusion that thought thinks the universal sheds new light upon what has already been uncovered in the phenomenological analysis of totality and its modes of operation. We have seen from Totalite et infini that thought proceeds from self to same. In his successive investigations of the problem of language Levinas shows that the self of totality not only intends the same but that the same which is intended is an empty universal. Now we find that the problem of uncovering true alterity which is first brought to light in Totalite et infini is deepened, for we are compelled to ask: if thought thinks the universal, if it cannot intend the individual in his concrete particularity, how can genuine particularity be at8 G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind tr. J. B. Baillie (London: Allen and Unwin, 1931), p. 15!i!. 12 EDITH WYSCHOGROD tained? We must inquire, if language is the work of thematization and identification: how can singularity without universality be understood. It might be argued, Levinas admits, that this very universality means that the truth which appears is a truth for all. We could then argue that universality as the truth for all opens the possibility of communication. Does not the truth as universal, as equally true for all, mean that the content of truth can be shared? But singularity cannot be found by pursuing universality as the truth for all; the " all " which is evoked is merely formal. " True for all " means that what is true is available as theoria to everyone; it is available through the bestowal of meaning, through thematizing consciousness. The truth for all can never attain unique subjectivity for it does not found the logical work of discourse but is rather the consequence of that work. The relation with a subjectivity, an interlocutor, is in no way presupposed by the universal essence of truth. The difficulty with the concept of " universal essence of truth " is lodged in what it presupposes viz., that everything can be known. When the interlocutor is himself an object of knowledge, discourse belongs to the impersonal level of thought. But, Levinas contends, what is kerygmatic in thought carries more than universality, more than the proclamation that a "this" is a "this": it is "proximity between self and interlocutor." Whatever the content of discourse, genuine speech is contact presupposing a relation with a particularity which lies outside the message which it transmits. The bearer of the message is impervious to thematization; he can only be approached. Discourse is not subsidiary to knowledge because the interlocutor can, as such, never be known. Discourse emerges only out of prior proximity. The imperviousness to thematization arises not because there is a being such that its being is too rudimentary, too insignificant to be brought into plenary presence. The being which cannot be thematized, which is incommensurable with being, must be understood as a meaning coming from beyond being. PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE 13 The notion of proximity which Levinas develops is not a diminution of the distance between beings; it has nothing to do with spatial contiguity. Proximity is rather the immediacy of human presence. It "means" in and of itself. "Proximity is in and of itself signification." Levinas writes: Proximity is thus a relation with a singularity without the mediation of any principle, any ideality. Concretely my relation to one who is near me, his significance anterior to the famous meaning bestowal, corresponds to this description. 9 We have seen that universality belongs to knowledge as its infra-structure. But is the idealizing intentionality of cognition the only access to reality? In his earlier work Levinas show that feeling (sentience) is a unique mode of relating to the world which does not subvert the credibility of intelligence. It is neither a thought lacking in clarity and distinctness nor a representation not brought into sharp focus. It is an altogether novel mode of relating to the world, sufficient unto itself and satisfied with the felt. The immediacy of the sensible is an event of nearness. The sensible is never known; it is approached. The sensible does not bring before consciousness elements refractory to consciousness, nor does it offer what cannot be integrated into the structure of the world. But the sensible establishes a unique access to the real. Sensible intuition is not a thought thinking itself; such a view stems from the primacy of vision among the senses. Yet vision itself, Levinas argues, signifies in ways not immediately apparent. It is common to say that one eats something up with one's eyes. Such an expression is more than metaphorical, since it shows the primacy of consuming, of devouring, incorporating into oneself. The sense of taste clearly transcends the cognitive model for the object is pierced and demolished. The real meaning of the sensation of taste lies not in the information received but in its penetration into the intimacy of things. If sensation is read as the fulfillment of an intention by the given, it is misunderstood for it is then modelled on an aspect • Levinas, Revue Philosophique de Louvain, vol. 66 (Aug. 1968), p. 448. 14 EDITH WYSCHOGROD of vision cognitive in its intentionality and false to the sensuous itself. In sensation something happens between the feeling and the felt in the strongest sense. To feel the world in Levinas'E thought is to consume it. The primacy of touch has also been subverted by the cognitive aspect of the visual. In touch what has been primordially revealed is not the quiddity of the existent, although touch can turn into a mode of knowledge by transforming the palpable into information, into knowledge of the surface of things. Touch is "pure approach, pure proximity," before it eventuates in information or understanding. The act itself is not an experience of the act; the caress, for example, is contact, not a metalevel experience of it. Proximity in the caress remains what it is although it may express something in addition to contact and nearness. The way in which these things are given in their " flesh and blood reality " is through proximity. The felt is defined by this relation; it is, according to Levinas, " tenderness." The concreteness of the sensible is language. But intentionality bypasses the concreteness of the sensible, fails to take account of the nearness of being. From the point of view of understanding what the sensible contributes to understanding may seem superficial, but the ethical relation to the real is rooted in the lived reality of the sensible. The sensible is an engagement in life. In Levinas's view one sees in the way that one touches rather than touching in the way that one sees. Moral relations circumvent intentionality; they are relations of nearness. The moral relation is the relation with the next one touching rather than intending the next one in his nonideal unity. There is an absence of horizon against which the identity of the other is revealed. He is the other who means prior to the bestowal of meaning. To have a meaning before all meaning is bestowed is to be other. The temporalization of nearness, of proximity, reflects its difference from consciousness as a mode of access to the real. Proximity is an anachronism to consciousness; it has vanished before consciousness can take cognizance of it. Consciousness PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE 15 is always "behind" human presence, arrives too late upon the scene, and is therefore at the outset already bad conscience. For Levinas the notion of proximity is not merely an exception to intentionality so that consciousness still retains a privileged standpoint with regard to the formation of values and praxis; it undercuts the importance of consciousness as a privileged mode of entry into the real. It is through approach that the face emerges and the manifestation of being is transfigured into ethical relation. " Consciousness," writes Levinas, "returns to obsession." Similarly: It is a summoning of the self by the other, a responsibility with regard to men that we do not even know. The relation of proximity . . . is already summoning, extreme urgency-an obligation anachronistically prior to all engagement. It is an anteriority older than the a priori. This formulation expresses a way of being touched which in no way allows itself to be invaded by spontaneity; the subject is moved without the source of movement being made into a theme of representation. The term "obsession" designates this irreducible relation to consciousness. 10 The term obsession has been overlaid with psychological nuances so that it is generally taken to mean pathological exaggeration, but its original import implies a nearness of being. The near one summons and commands, places upon one the onus of a responsibility without choice. Proximity is not a simple coexistence of two existents. In the presence of the near one an absence wells up which is the very reverse of serenity, a hunger which Levinas designates in much of his work as " desire," a proximity which could not be nearer and an appetite which remains insatiable. That which is absent is the presence of the infinite which cannot be put into words. Elusive, ineluctable, it " contests its own presence." It is absence" at the edge of nothingness," always in flight but leaving behind it a trace as the face of the near one. AN ALTERNATE Vmw oF LANGUAGE Levinas claims that the view of language which we have just disclosed is far from exhaustive. Language thus understood 10 Ibid., p. 489. 16 EDITH WYSCHOGROD only serves to communicate what has already been fixed in intuition. Expression plays no role in constituting these meanings. While Husserl recognizes that the given is situated against a horizon or world, these horizons do not play a role of great importance in understanding the function of language. It remained for later phenomenologists, particularly for Merleau-Ponty, to show that meaning itself is situated in relation to a language or culture, that meaning is always contextual. Words do not have isolated meanings but already refer to other words rather than to givens. Language itself refers to the one who hears and the one who speaks, to the contingency of his history. One can never summarize all the contexts of language and all the positions in which interlocutors find themselves. Like language itself, experience is no longer made of bits and pieces locked into Euclidean space. The elements of experience " signify " starting from a world, from the position of one who looks. Customary definitions of words cannot be trusted for significations are not limited to any special realm of objects, are not the privilege of any special content. Spring, for example, can refer to the season and to the speaker with equal primordiality as Michel Dufrenne has shown. Meanings refer to one another, can arise within the totality of being all around the one who speaks and perceives. A " this " insofar as it is a " this " is not a modification brought to a content apart from language but lives in a world whose structure resembles the order of language. The " this " is not given outside of that order; signification does not emerge from a being which lacked signification. Objects become meaningful starting with language and not the reverse; the figurative sense takes priority over the literal. The essence of language now belongs to the illumination of what is found beyond the given, of being as a whole. The given itself takes on its meaning from this totality. The totality itself is not composed of isolable elements but is chameleon-like in its fluidity and instability: it is the product of a "creative gesture of subjectivity." Signification thus understood is a free and creative arrangement. The eye itself PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE 17 is embodied, that is, it is ensconced in a body which is also hand, sound emitting, etc. The one who looks does not introduce relativity into a congealed totality from a fixed vantage point, for the look itself is already a look belonging to a body and therefore a look relative to a position. The fact that the totality inundates the sensible given and that vision is embodied is not an accidental feature of receptivity. Nothing is given, according to this view, apart from the ensemble of being which illumines it. The one who is receptive to this illumining totality is not a passive spectator but helps bring the ensemble into being. The subject is not one who is vis a vis that which is; instead he is within and alongside of that which is. He participates in its assemblage. This " ubiquity" is what it means to be body. This assemblage is one of non-natural entities, that is, of cultural objects; paintings, poems, etc. But it is also the less studied effect of all linguistic gestures. These cultural objects gather up otherwise dispersed entities into meaningful configurations which are themselves totalities. They express a period, a historical era; they make meaning possible. Expression is not organized in terms of thought anterior to its exteriorization but is the expressive gesture itself. Meaning moves into a preexisting cultural world. Corporeality itself means that one is plunged into that world, that one expresses it as soon as it is thought. The corporeal gesture is itself a kind of poetry, a celebration of the world. One becomes subject and object at the same time imitating the visible and coinciding with the perceived movement kinesthetically. Levinas writes: It is obvious that in this whole conception expression defines culture, that culture is art and that art or the celebration of being constitutes the original essence of incarnation.U Art is not a project to make something beautiful but part of the ontological order. To accept such a modification of standard phenomenological 11 Emmanuel Levinas, "La signification et le sens, "Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, no. 2 (1964), p. 133. 18 EDITH WYSCHOGROD thought as offering a possibility for attaining genuine alterity would run counter to the very presuppositions upon which Levinas's own enterprise is based. For Levinas art can never be the foundation of the ethical, since art represents a return to pagan sacrality, to a position in which one is overwhelmed by undifferentiated being. Clearly a point of view which exalts all gesture, all language as art, cannot, in Levinas's view provide the basis for an apprehension of genuine alterity. To express is the very opposite of celebration. He notes that the present view of language rests upon the assumption that truth is inseparable from its historical manifestations. He concedes that this view of language provides rich and novel insights for understanding the conditions which language fulfills when it is the language of activity and event, when it is metaphor, but it simply explicates and makes panoramic the role of the creative self. In this regard it is important and valuable, but its insights are limited to the relationships which obtain within the totality; yet such insights can never become ultimate. Levinas attacks this view of language as a foundation for ethics on Platonic grounds. He is able to formulate a rejoinder in these terms by reducing this view of language to a theory of becoming and therefore making it subject to Platonic correctives. It is a theory in which intelligibility is lodged in becoming itself, in the historical process. For Plato the world of genuine meaning is prior to the world of language and culture in which it is expressed; indeed there is a privileged standpoint from which all historical cultures can be judged. This transhistorical angle of vision which judges all cultures expels the mimetic poets from the realm of being, the realm from which the transhistorical standpoint originates. The language of the poets leads not to a " preexistent signification " but to the imitation of existing cultures. For contemporary philosophies of language as well as for the unfortunate poets of the Republic, meaning cannot be separated from the bearer of meaning. But Levinas is himself required to account for the experience of meaning in human existence. If he wishes to remain within the boundaries of phenomenology he too must find a locale for PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE 19 meaning as it appears in the context of human concerns. He must show how meaning is introduced into totality to reveal a transhistorical dimension within history itself. He must uncover an experience which is not subject to the kerygmatic structure of thinking which we have just examined, for this structure provides a hermeneutical tool only for the understanding of the totalizing self. Despite the fact that thought fails to provide a viable ground for the founding of values, there is a type of experience which introduces the transhistorical into totality itself. This experience is work. We have seen that there is a kind of work which belongs to totality as proper to it, work which allows man to take account of his needs and to provide for them. But work in the authentic sense is the very opposite of work in the domain of economy. No longer is it protection against possible adversity in an unknown future. Instead it expects no realization in its own time. Such work is not an expenditure of energy which eventuates in commodities. Work, thought through radically, is a movement of the same to the other which never returns to the same. It demands that the other be ungrateful, for gratitude would reverse the movement of the same to the other by returning what was given to the self from which it derives. Nor is work the accumulation of merit, for merit is always acquired on one's own behalf. Authentic work is possible only as patience; the one who works does not seek a personal soteriological goal. He renounces all hope of being contemporary with the successful outcome of his labor. To intend a work whose victory lies outside of one's own time is to establish an eschatology without hope. It is being in the mode of being for what comes after oneself. This is the sacrifice of personality demanded of personality within the framework of history and cannot be understood as an expression of cultural multiplicity. Levinas does not deny that meaning begins in a cultural context, but he denies that it ends there. Culture in his view is the scaffolding which falls away leaving the transhistorical dimension of work. 20 EDITH WYSCHOGROD The Trace 12 How is an authentic philosophy of language possible apart from cultural multiplicity? Is there a being such that its being is the same for all cultures? Levinas claims that the being of the other revealed within the totality signifies transhistorically and transculturally. This being is seen as a human face. Levinas claims in Totalite et infini that the face functions as the corporeality of spiritual existence, just as the hand is the corporeality of effort or the eye of vision. In his recent work the question of the origin of the face comes into prominence in its relation to language. I£ its origin lies beyond being, beyond the possibility of appearing within the limits of a horizon, then the beyond is not a simple background against which the face appears, from which it emerges as things emerge in the world. Levinas is careful to disclaim a world behind the visible world. The face is not a symbol, which through its very upsurge brings what is symbolized into the discursive realm. The face is " abstract." This does not mean that its appearance leads from the particular to the general, nor does it mean that eternity has entered into time. The face which enters into the world disturbs the order of the world and is reflected in the destruction of immanence; the face cannot be placed against a horizon within the world. It comes from elsewhere without symbolizing something other than itself. It is indicative of itself alone; it is not a mask which hides the truth of its existence. In one of his infrequent references to Sartre, Levinas cites Sartre's observation that the other person is a pure hole in the world. For Levinas this is so not because one's own world drains away through the other but because the other bears a relationship to the absolutely Absent. This is the " whence " 19 I have chosen to translate "la trace" by its English cognate " trace " rather than by track, trail, spoor, footprint, etc., so as to allow the widest possible meaning. The English " trace " conveys not only the evidence of a passing presence but can also mean the " residue " of a once fuller presence (" a trace of blood" etc.). Moreover, anything may leave a trace or residue of itself whereas tracks refer more specifically to an imprint left by creatures. PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE !21 from which the other comes. Yet the other does not reveal his origin as the sign reveals what is signified; that which is absent is not unveiled as being through the appearance of the face, for the Absent is beyond both being and revelation. It is a mistake to assume that the elsewhere which is evoked by the face can yield a meaning for investigation; to assume that is to assume that the " elsewhere " is world. It is also to ignore the fundamental lesson of phenomenology: there is no world behind the world which appears. Nevertheless the face belongs to the world of immanence a8 a thing in the world while it retains its alterity and its origin beyond appearance. It is experienced as a disruption of the correctness of the world, as though no impropriety belonged to the world as such but only emerged with the entrance of human categories. The beyond from which the face comes appears as a " trace." The face is as an absolutely completed ::Jast, a heretofore which is completely irrecoverable. Through the face alone transcendence appears without being destroyed as transcendence. Transcendence, as it erupts disturbs the surface of the world as a stone thrown into a pool ruffles its previous serenity. The meaning of the trace issues from an immemorial past, a past impervious to memory. This past is also according to Levinas, "eternity." Eternity belongs to the past as its irreversibility; this eternity is the " refuge of the past." When Levinas speaks of eternity he means a dimension which cannot be converted into the present as the act of beginning, commencement, origin, for these are the lived modes of egoity. Levinas is careful to preserve certain modalities of the past and the future as impervious to cognition and to historical knowledge so that the temporal dimension of the beyond of being, of the elsewhere, is not eroded by the historical process. The beyond of being opened by the face is a personal order. It is an order of the third person of a " He " who cannot be defined. The profile that the irreversible past takes on through the trace is the profile of the " He." The third person is the beyond. He is as absolutely unavailable, withdrawn into an EDITH WYSCHOGROD irreversible past. This irreversibility is designated as his "illeity." Levinas maintains that the trace "means," that is, that it puts one in touch with illeity, establishes a relation with the third person. Levinas's third is a presence in absentia. His view is perhaps best expressed in the lines from T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land": Who is the third who walks always beside you? When I count there are only you and I together But when I look ahead up the white road There is always another one walking beside you. 13 Since the trace is not a bringing forth into light, an unveiling, is recalcitrant to phenomenological analysis because it cannot be integrated into the order of what can appear, what approach can we properly take to it? One can locate the meaning of the trace in the phenomenal world which it interrupts. Levinas insists that the trace is not a sign. Yet he also claims that it can play the role of a sign, just as the track of the prey which leads the hunter to his quarry, or the work of the criminal which serves as a trail leading to his apprehension are characteristic marks which point to the one who has left them behind. But the trace differs from other signs; the track or trail is emblazoned in the order of being and becomes part of that order, but the trace " means " while retaining its transcendence. It means without meaning to mean. Nowhere in Levinas's work does the problem of avoiding a world behind the scenes appear more pressing. In the attempt to bypass Kantian noumenality Levinas reads a double meaning into already present instantiations, that is, into what already exists phenomenally. What is present is all that is. What lies beyond being intrudes into the world of phenomena, but its meaning wells up from the phenomenon itself and eliminates the need for intermediate idealization. Meanings lie hidden yet are available to immediate moral awareness rather than 13 T. S. Eliot, "The Waste Land," CoUected Poems, 1909-1935 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1936), p. 87. PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE 23 to thematizing consciousness. It is not difficult to see that Levinas has given ethical weight and import to Heidegger's notion of forest trails. To those who understand forest lore these trails are meaningful, just as, in Heidegger's view, there are signs for those who seek a retrieve of being. Wood (Holz) is an old name for forest. In the wood there are paths that are mostly overgrown and ending in the untrodden. They are called wood trails. Each runs separately but in the same forest. Often it seems as if one were the same as the other. But it only seems so. Woodcutters and forest rangers know the paths. They know what it means to be on a wood path. 14 Heidegger's idea becomes religio in Levinas's thought, since for Levinas there is no interrogation of being guided by traces but an instant upsurge of transcendence in the field of the other's presence. Unlike those activities which are planned to leave tracks or which leave tracks inadvertently but which can be integrated into the order of being, can be made to appear, the authentic trace disturbs the order of the world. It is like the trail of the criminal in this respect: it is the imprint of one who wishes to erase his tracks, as though a master criminal who wished to commit the perfect crime attempted to extirpate all marks of his presence. The English reader may be struck by the resemblance Levinas's view bears to that of John Wisdom with regard to the ambiguity of divine presence in Wisdom's essay " Gods." 15 In Wisdom's parable two observers return to a long-neglected garden where some plants are still seen to be thriving among the weeds. Investigation yields no positive evidence that anyone has been working in the garden, yet one of the observers perceives the trace of purposeful activity, of beauty and arrangement, while the other sees nothing but the work of chance. In Levinas's thought the one who has left his tracks has no wish in effacing his presence to leave behind his work or his 14 Martin Heidegger, Holzwege (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Kostermann. 1957), p. 3. 15 John Wisdom, "Gods," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1944-1945). 24 EDITH WYSCHOGROD word. The tracks neither say nor do anything. The order of the world has been upset in the absoluteness of someone's passing. " To be as leaving a trace, is to pass, to leave, to pardon." The trace is the weight of being beyond " its acts and its language." Levinas speaks of the weight of being because being is irreversible, cumulative, cannot be limited or encompassed by a self: The trace would be the very indelibility of being, its all powerfulness with regard to every negativity, its immensity incapable of being enclosed in itself and in some way too great for all discretion, for interiority, for a self . . . the trace would not put one into relation with what is less than being, but obligates with regard to the infinite, to the absolutely other. 16 Things, Levinas maintains, do not leave traces; they only leave effects. Cause and effect do not belong to the same order of existence. Things are exposed to cause and effect without any awareness of this fact. It is always possible that the intervention of human consciousness may attribute trace to mere effect. The history of things is without a past, that is, events in the world are contemporary insofar as the world of cause and effect are concerned, but the order of causal efficacy can be reinstated through human agency. A cause can be brought into the present through memory or through inference. The trace as trace, however, does not lead to a past which can be elicited but is the past of an extremely ancient past impervious to all effort to bring it into the light of the present. The other is in the trace of illeity; this is the origin of its otherness. All seeming alterity betrays the origin of true alterity, of the trace. What comes to mind in Levinas's discussion of the trace is the classical conception of the imago dei. This is indeed the perspective from which Levinas writes: the face is in the image of God. But what does it mean to be in the image of God? It is not to be an " icon " of God but " to find oneself in his 16 Levinas, En decouvrant !'existence avec Husse1·l et Heidegger (Paris: 1949)' p. 200. Vrin, PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE 25 trace." The God of Judaeo-Christian tradition retains "all the infinity of his absence." He shows himself only through his trace as it is written in Exodus 33: ... "Thou shalt see what is behind me: but my face shall not be seen." The approach to God cannot be effected by following the trace. Levinas means that to do so is to make the trace stand for a world. To approach the divine is to tum to others who are " upheld in it." To follow the trace is not to be guided by a map to an outlying region but to be commanded by a unique language. In diplomacy what is said by one representative to another can be taken to mean some entirely new proposal that could change the course of world affairs or which could signify absolutely nothing. Words themselves are always open to interpretation: language is, as we have seen, by its very nature equivocal. Language is oracular: a God was revealed upon a mountain or in a bush that was not consumed. These events are attested in sacred literature, yet what is attested can just as properly be interpreted as a natural phenomenon or as a projective human fantasy. Other persons solicit recognition in the same way as events recounted in the biblical text. This mode of self-manifestation is the reverse of phenomenon. Levinas calls it " enigma." The crucial question for Levinas remains: how is it possible for a meaning beyond meaning to slip into the meaning-structure of the phenomenal. Is the trace really amenable to two interpretations, both equally satisfactory? The situation is peculiar since the primary meaning is already effaced as soon as the trace appears. The phenomenon itself refutes the very meaning it conveys, for phenomenality contradicts the nonphenomenal character of " illeity ." The God who is revealed as persecuted and misunderstood is revealed in this way because to be dominated, to be beyond understanding, are the very characteristics of non-phenomenality. For Levinas the truth of Judaism and of Chistianity, persecuted truth, is only possible in a world where atheism has proffered the best imaginable reasons for rejecting them. EDITH WYSCHOGROD THE SELF OF RESPONSIBILITY In Levinas's most recent work he directs his attention not only to the recovery of the other person for metaphysical inquiry but also to the question of the responsible self. According to Levinas, " language is the obsession of a self beseiged by others." This obsession is a responsibility prior to all choice. Choice belongs to " consciousness of," to the thinker who broods in splendid isolation, to the solitary cogito. Genuine language is, however, responsibility, not only in the ordinary sense of the word but beyond it, because one is not only responsible for what one has done but for what one has not done. One is responsible for the other's suffering, for that for which no responsibility accrues in the ordinary sense. Responsibility arises from proximity and not from freedom. Thus Levinas: It is a condition of the creature in a world without play, in the gravity which is perhaps the first advent of signification of being beyond its brute " it is as a that." It is the condition of being hostage. 17 Genuine subjectivity arises precisely at the point where the full weight of the world is experienced. The individual as absolute interiority is not born in self-reflection, for the self which is being reflected upon is precisely what must be explicated. The reflexive pronoun (the French se) provides a clue to the meaning of self. It cannot be interpreted as a distance-making manoeuver. It is rather totally passive. Levinas notes that the " se " is not merely the grammatical accusative but already qualifies the self as guilty. The ownmost self is indeed the very fact of being weighed down in being. The authentic self cannot get rid of itself. Driven into itself it becomes the non-being of being. It is important to distinguish Levinas's understanding of the self from Sartre's view of pour-soi, being-for-itself, the being of consciousness, which at 17 Ibid., p. 288. PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE 27 first glance it might seem to resemble. Sartre's for-itself is a non-being at the heart of being, an emptiness of in-itself; it exists for the object. It seeks endlessly to found itself through relations of identity with being. These operations are doomed to failure, for the for-itself can never be anything nor coincide with itself. It is what it is not and it is not what it is. It posits itself as not being the in-itself, as being lack, desire. Levinas's philosophical anthropology, on the other hand, begins with man's experience of satiety. The drama of need and replenishment fully commensurate with need is enacted against the backdrop of a world which provides the subject with his requirements. Want does not go beyond the possibility of its fulfillment. The sphere of ontology is precisely the sphere in which the world and the structures which intend it are sufficient to one another. For Levinas, desire, genuine lack, intends what is beyond ontology; it does not intend a coincidence with what is, seek the fullness of the in-itself. Desire cannot want to be what it is not, as in the case of Sartre's pour-soi for genuine alterity, which is the object of desire in Levinas's thought cannot even be sought. In order to seek it, one would have to know in advance what one seeks. Since the other cannot be known this quest is impossible. The lived modalities of the for-itself inventoried by Sartre belong to the realm of ontology. What then is the meaning of the non-being of being as the structure of the ownmost self in Levinas' work? " The ethical event of expiation for another is the concrete situation that is designated by the verb ' not to be.' " The non-being of subjectivity is the emptying of an already preexistent fullness for the sake of the other. One substitutes for the other, becomes his hostage. The notion of substitution is central to Levinas's latest thought. Expiation for others can never be undertaken as a task. The ownmost self is the primordial form of this expiation. The notion of substitution, of atoning for the sins of another, is, of course, fundamental to the Judaeo-Christian view of sacrifice. To cite at random one contemporary version of the meaning 28 EDITH WYSCHOGROD of full humanity as being for others Karl Barth, in a chapter entitled "Jesus the Man for other Men," writes: There is not in Him a kind of deep inner secret recess in which He is alone in Himself or with God, existing in Stoical calm or mystic rapture apart from His fellows ... His relationship to His neighbors and sympathy with them are original and proper to Him and therefore belong to His innermost being. It means that He interposes Himself for them, that He gives Himself to them, that He puts Himself in their place, that He makes their state and fate His own cause, so that it is no longer theirs but His .... " 18 Substitution is possible only for a moral consciousness obsessed with the other person, with what is strange, unbalanced, escapes all principle, origin and will. The non-being of subjectivity is an-archy, an absence of principle prior to sheer disorder, for disorder always appears upon a background of order and is explicable in terms of a fundamental coherence of being. The non-being of subjectivity arrests ontology in this sense: insofar as consciousness is the arena in which being loses itself and finds itself again, it remains beyond recovery. It is always irrevocably past and therefore irrecoverable. Its irrecoverability can however become language: Its incapacity is however spoken. The an-archy does not rule and is thus maintained in ambiguity, in enigma, leaves a trace that discourse in the melancholy of expression tries to say. But the trace only .19 The other interrupts the smooth flow of the same leaving it speechless. One is " obsessed " with the other; the other disrupts the web of conscious life as responsibility which cannot be justified, for which no ground exists. Levinas is not afraid to say that the other is " presecutor " not in the sense in which the other devises strategies antagonistic to one's own interest 18 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 3, part 2 (Edinburgh; T. & T. Clark, 1960), p. 212. 19 Levinas, Revue Philosophique de Louvain, vol. 66 (Aug. 1968), p. 489. PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE 29 but because the moral itself is persecution. This obsessive interiority is not a pathological delusive system. It is the self's way of abnegating itself as egoity. The an-archy of which Levinas speaks belongs in this context. For Levinas there is an ipseity (selfhood) underlying moral consciousness and which accounts for the " living recurrence of subjectivity," the unity of self which does not stem from temporal flux. It is a living unity which unlike consciousness never slackens. It is not a movement of loss and recovery which characterizes consciousness, nor does it enter into appearances. The selfhood of the ownmost self is not the consequence of an intention to maintain itself as unitary; rather it belongs to the self as not needing justification. The moral self is in itself in the sense of " being in its own skin." It is the very opposite of the personal pronoun " I " which masks singularity. It is the reflexive pronoun which, as we have seen, is in the accusative voice, the very opposite of power and domination and which belongs to the anteriority of the ownmost self. Genuine ipseity is a retreat into the ownmost self without foundation elsewhere. It is always previously identified and so does not bear the onus of having to identify itself; it is always older than consciousness. The identity of singularity is not the essence of the existent nor the result of a synthetic operation of the intellect. Singularity is an identity which cannot even be asserted and therefore certainly cannot be vindicated: These negative qualifications of subjectivity, of the ownmost self do not sanction an 1-know-not-what ineffable mystery but confirm the pre-synthetic, pre-logical and, in some way atomic unity of the self which prevents it from splitting up, from separating from itself, and consequently from manifesting itself as if it is not beneath a mask and from naming itself other than by a promoun. This impediment is the positivity of the one. 20 The model of negative theology underlying Levinas's description of the ownmost self is clearly visible. Having already •• Ibid., p. 494. 30 EDITH WYSCHOGROD shown that thematizing consciousness guarantees that a being be what it is by bestowing a meaning upon that which is profiled in its numerous appearances, Levinas is compelled to insist that the ownmost self lies beyond the conferring of identity, beyond the function of intending the quiddity of a thing through its manifold appearances. What appears to be a denial of selfhood is as William James puts it, "a denial made on behalf of a deeper yes." Indeed it is Levinas's purpose not to diminish the self by defining it which is precisely the point of the via negativa in theology as William James points out: Whoso calls the Absolute anything in particular, or says that it is this seems implicitly to shut it off from being that-it is as if he lessened it. So we deny the "this" negating the negation which it seems to us to imply, in the interest of the higher affirmative attitude by which we are possessed ... qualifications are denied ... not because the truth falls short of them, but because it so infinitely excels them. . . ." 21 Levinas seizes upon the metaphors of everyday language to express the relation of being in oneself. Living in one's own skin, or the dead time between heartbeats, or the time between inhalation and exhalation convey the sense that Levinas has in mind. These metaphors are not arbitrary, for the body is not incidental to the ownmost self but its lived modality. Body is the in-itself of the deepest level of the self; it is the self's vulnerability. It might be argued that the radical passivity which Levinas claims belongs to genuine subjectivity destroys all possibility of a subject. He concedes that this is true of the self if it is understood as thematizing consciousness, as cognitive, as pure egoity, for all of these functions originate activities of one sort or another. But prior to the upsurge of the world, of freedom, Levinas posits a primordial (pre-orginaire) self. The paradox of the interiority described lies in the fact that there is a being such that its being precedes beginning. 91 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Mentor, 1958)' p. 819. PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE 31 Interiority is the fact that in being beginning is preceded but what precedes does not present itself to the free gaze which would assume it, does not make itself present, nor representation. Something has already passed " above the head " of the present, has not crossed the cordon of consciousness, does not allow itself to be recovered, something which precedes beginning and principle, which an-archically, in spite of being, reverses or precedes being.22 The something which lies outside the logos structure of reality precedes the formation of all values; it is a " sensitivity " through which the subject is responsible. This " responsibility " makes the subject accountable for responsibility itself. It is anterior to all intentional structure. If this conception of the moral self is justified, how can the de facto condition of the world, the radical evil which meets ihe eye everywhere within the totality he accounted for? Levinas suggests that the very nature of responsibility makes one vulnerable to what lies outside of the self. One is vulnerable to exteriority by virtue of being in the world as body. Being as body is what it means to be present in the world. Levinas sees the telos of body itself as lying in the necessity for maintaining the duality of structure required by a world of self and other. Responsibility is always prior to the realm of choice which responsibility makes necessary. Evil belongs to the realm of choice and is therefore a secondary phenomenon. Levinas is profoundly antimanichean in his insistence that evil is a falling away from a prior realm of responsibility rather than an independent phenomenon. It derives from a being's very need to preserve in his being which belongs to all beings. Indeed it is this very fact which undercuts the uniqueness of man: in the realm of ontology man is like all other beings. It is only when the self is brought back to itself that it dares to undermine the right to persist in being and thereby introduce meaning into being. CoNCLUSIONs We have seen that, for Levinas, the moral self is anterior to all positing even when such positing is axiological; it is anterior 22 Levinas, Revue lnternationale de Philosophie, nos. 85-86, p. 881. 32 EDITH WYSCHOGROD to all decision-making processes. Levinas is compelled to put the matter in this way not only because the source of values lies outside consciousness itself but because consciousness as positional is destructive of the very exteriority from which all values derive. To insist that consciousness is, among other things, axiological, is to destroy the foundations of all valuing by uprooting its source: the alterity of the other. Consciousness is intentional; intentionality is an activity. For Levinas this is Husserl's great discovery. Once valuing is construed as an act, it commandeers the other for its own purposes, makes him part of the same, destroys his uniqueness, etc. Thus the moral self must be pure passivity. It cannot become anything else as Aristotelian matter through the imposition of form becomes a " this " or a " that." The moral self must be passivity without potency. Levinas has thus put forward a radical version of the view that values are objective, founding all objectivity beyond consciousness itself. It might be argued that there is nothing beside what is or becomes a given for consciousness. Levinas would agree. Therefore the objectivity of values lies beyond ontology. This assumption forces Levinas to account for their presence without reintroducing a noumenal realm beyond the world which appears. To introduce such a realm would be to overthrow one of the fundamental insights of phenomenology: that there is no " backstage " behind the proscenium, no world behind the world with which we are confronted. If this is so, we see why Levinas is compelled to concede that there are foci within the phenomenological realm, gathering points or knots of value which are known in all their phenomenality, but which in their very upsurge attest the transcendence of ontology. Such a concentration of value is the face of the other person who appears not as spiritualized but as embodied. Indeed his carnality becomes the source of his vulnerability. It might be conceded that the other is indeed a given and a veritable presentation of sense, "there" in his Leibhaftigkeit, his flesh and blood reality, through sensory intuition. It might even be conceded that this presence appears at once in its very upsurge PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE 33 as a source of value, as an object of an axiological intuition. But it might reasonably be objected: why does Levinas insist upon the transcendent, that is, upon the supraontological origin of the other as a source of value, as the object of such axiological intuition. Is this not to disguise theology in phenomenological garb, to slip a new natural theology into what is presumably a phenomenology of the moral self? The answer to this question can only be affirmative, yet it is a qualified affirmation in a sense which I shall try to show directly. Levinas has taken pains to establish the notion of " trace '' which attests il-leity, the third presence whose past can never be made present. To speak of a trace is to attest what cannot be spoken about, reduced to the same or unveiled. It can never be brought to the full and plenary presence of the being of objects or made clear and distinct as concepts and their relationships. To say that the trace can neither be bought into full presence nor made clear and distinct is not to say that we intuit the interstices of phenomena, perceive the coda rather than the sound of the theme, for the negative aspect of a phenomenon in Levinas's thought belongs to the phenomenon itself. It is rather to refuse all discourse which attempts to attribute either positive or negative qualities to God. It is to theologize by reinaugurating the via negativa of the mystics, which is a refusal to attest the existence of God as a " this " or a " that." Does the trace lodged in the phenomenal world, which is more than what is presented, whose meaning can only be shown negatively and which enigmatically always remains only what it is, justify designating Levinas a natural theologian? To the extent that the phenomenal realm provides empirical foundation for affirming a realm which transcends it, Levinas can be viewed as belonging to this tradition. But he is far from asserting that there is a design in nature which reflects divine purpose and which can be ascertained by a careful scrutiny of the operations of nature. When we look at the face of the other we know that we are commanded to honor the alterity of the other by recognizing an asymmetry between us. We also know that something has " happened " in the intersubjective 34 EDITH WYSCHOGROD " space " between us which transcends any knowledge we may have of it. But far from gaining an objective knowledge of God's purpose, we feel a deepened sense of responsibility, the weight of the other's suffering, an enhanced sense of the other's creatureliness. We do not interpret what we feel as belonging to a teleological nexus but as bearing a moral imperative. Moreover, it is a moral imperative lodged within the particularity of encounter and which cannot be made into a universal law. What is absent from the perceptual field of moral encounter in Levinas's thought is beauty, order, and arrangement. which lie at the foundation of classical conceptions of natural theology. It is important to note that Levinas prescinds all aesthetic elements from this broken natural theology, confining himself to attesting transcendence only within the field of human relations. If Levinas eludes classification as a natural theologian, there are obstacles no less serious in interpreting his work as that of an "ethical thinker." Indeed it could be argued that Levinas by separating the moral self from rational life has undercut the very basis upon which all moral disputes can be settled including those which arise from his own position. 23 Yet to do so would be to misunderstand the crucial role which reason, as evinced in law and institutional life, plays in Levinas's thought. Man lives within totality and must be subject to the prudential rules which govern the political order. These rules are subject to formalization in accordance with the laws of thought. They are vital to the governance of affairs within the totality. The totality is the realm in which the universal is legitimately ensconced, that is, the sphere in which we must think out appropriate measures of conduct for all men. But 23 Jacques Derrida, Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, vol. 69, no. 4, p argues that Levinas gives us neither ethical precepts nor a theory of ethics but an " ethic of ethics." Let us not forget that Levinas does not wish to propose laws or moral rules to us; he does not wish to determine a morality but the essence of the ethical relation in general. But, since this determination does not give itself as a theory of ethics, it is a question of an ethic of ethics . . . Is this ethic of ethics beyond all law? " PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE 35 these rules of conduct must not be mistaken for the moral order anterior to the appearance of any and all rules, an order which in its very nature we have seen to be an-archic. This is not, however, to deny three serious considerations which are entailed by the separation of the moral from the discursive self. First, it makes impossible any but oblique references to the moral self (what I have called a via negativa of the moral self) since what is truly moral lies beyond discursive language. Second, it may lead to a conflation of moral issues with legal issues. What can be argued is whether or not our actions conform to a law. What determines whether the law is a moral law cannot be argued, since all human laws stand under judgment as products of the politico-historical complex of totality. Third, there is an assimilation of reason to actual violence which puts reason, the desire to know and experience, under somewhat the same condemnation as outright violence. In reply to the first objection, Levinas could claim that, in accordance with phenomenological principles, language arises from the phenomenon. We cannot commandeer language from other realms of being to suit the demand for clarity and precision but must be true to the opaqueness of the phenomenon itself and the phenomenon of the moral self requires this via negativa. To the second objection, Levinas could reply that the weight of what lies beyond discursive language is not to be interpreted as an incentive to irrational action. It is to realize that the value of the other absolutely transcends the possibilities of discursive language and cannot be incorporated into any legal framework. Moreover, we ought to discuss practical moral questions. There is no logical necessity whatever which should make us conclude that thoughtless and irrational action follows from the assumption that the self of responsibility cannot be described. On the contrary, with the growth of responsibility of the self an ever increasing caution in the conduct of life affairs is a more likely outcome. The third objection would constitute for Levinas no objection at all, since the point of his work is to elicit the violent substructure of reason itself. 36 EDITH WYSCHOGROD But the problems arising from separating discursive language from the foundations of the moral self cannot be dismissed summarily. We have seen that for Levinas genuine language "expresses," that is, the bearer of language ultimately both conveys and limits the meaning of language. Beyond the content of discourse language is in its very foundations ethical. This approach to language raises problems on two levels: first, while placing a high premium upon language not merely as the milieu of the ethical but as the ethical itself, this approach nevertheless regards language as the onset of violence and, second, it in effect makes Levinas's own program unsayable. Let us examine these difficulties more closely. For Levinas, human communion does not bypass language. Rather, the face of the other opens up the right to the spoken word because it is the sine qua non and warranty for the authenticity of language. But language is an original phenomenon. Heidegger insists on the simultaneity of thought and language and the impossibility of predicating any sequentiality in their emergence; thought and language are born together. Language as an original phenomenon means that the possibility of metaphysics is the possibility of the word. Metaphysical responsibility is already a responsibility for language. Thus Levinas: Modern investigations in the philosophy of language have made the idea of a profound solidarity between thought and word familiar. Merleau-Ponty, among others ... will show that disincarnate thought thinking the word before uttering it, thought constituting the world of the word joining it to the world, previously endowed with significations in a transcendental operation, was a myth. 24 What is critical is that there is not first the face, then language, but a simultaneous upsurge of face, language, and responsibility. Language wells up with the appearance of the face. Yet, in its very appP.aring, the face undergoes a primordial act of violence. We have seen that for Levinas the other is a drawing of his alterity into the light. But no discourse can 24 Totalite et infini, p. 180. See Merleau-Ponty, pp. 177 ff. Pheno1nenology of Perception, PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE 37 evade the necessity of the other's appearing to us, a drawing forth through violence into discursive possibility. Violence is inherent in phenomenality as such. 25 When Levinas attempts to found metaphysics upon ethics, the ethical foundation itself is shaken by the necessity of language to become phenomenal, that is, by the necessity of the face to appear. The emergence of true peace can only appear as an end to language, as deferred to the " not yet " of an indefinite future. Such a peace must be silence. Thus, the telos of language would not lie in its very upsurge which is an act of violence but in something other than itself, in silence. The second problem relates to the difficulty of philosophizing itself. We have seen that, for Levinas, there is an inherent incompatibility between the Greek logos and the prophetic word. For this very reason he seeks to uncover nondiscursive phenomena, phenomena of appearing which found language so that the worn-out metaphors of philosophical discourse can be avoided. Heidegger has achieved this by seeking to recover the original meanings of a philosophical language traduced by its history without discarding the language itself. Levinas's rejection of ontology closes this possibility, for the language of being which such an enterprise recovers is, for him, not a genuine rebirth of language but an efflorescence of the same. He therefore works through metaphors which essentially convey a sense of the infinite through descriptions of epiphany. This is the very meaning of the face, the trace, enigma etc. The divine appearing, elusive and enigmatic, is recovered by bringing to discursive clarity this very obscurity and vagueness, by opening to interpretation what the phenomenon itself guides but does not legislate. In this task Levinas has no alternative but to use the outworn language which for him is the language of totality. It is a language of spatiality, of inside and outside, which is irreducible. It might be argued that such language 25 See also Derrida, Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, vol. 69, no. 4, p. 444446, and Maurice Blanchot, " Connaisance de l'inconnu," Nouvelle Revue (1961), p. 1092. 38 EDITH WYSCHOGROD served negative theology well, but it must be recalled that negative theologians did not ground the possibility of ethics in the upsurge of language and did not consider the word spoken between men the foundation of ethical life. Thus language itself is undermined by the requirements of what Levinas calls " formal logic," that is, the structure of language which brings into correlation the intending with what is intended. EDITH WYSCHOGROD Queens College Flushing, New York THE PROCESS OF HUMAN INTELLECTUAL OR SPIRATING A PONDUS LOVE, I N IDS REFLECTIONS on the procession of love in God Cardinal Billot raises an interesting question about the process of creatures' intellectual love. That question might be stated in this manner: Does a distinct reality exist within the loving will which corresponds analogously to the mental word produced by the intellect in its act of knowing? 1 He is considering human love and knowledge insofar as they offer to us a foundation for our understanding something about the Divine Processions according to knowledge and love. Within human knowledge, of course, our normal mode of knowing consists in producing an immanent term which we call the mental word. This word is an apprehension of or judgment about something. Some reality which does or can have extramental existence is produced intentionally within the intellect as known. Through this mental word we look intellectually at the reality itself to enjoy a vision of it. Let us suppose on the other hand that in our will there is an operation of love? Or rather, on the contrary, must we confess within our will a similar intentional term of the beloved? Does that being which is loved really exist in some intentional way within our appetite? If so, is it really distinct from the operation of love? Or rather, on the conrtary, must we confess that no such term is produced within our act of loving? Cardinal Billot is prepared to concede that such a distinct volitional term does not exist within our love. Although I 1 De Deo Uno et Trino, Ludovico Billot, S. J. (Rome: Gregorian University, 1935), p. 365. Among other and more recent studies on love is The Experience of Corpus Books, 1968). Although Love, by Jules Toner (Washington-Cleveland: this is an interesting analysis of the total experience particularly of " radical love " and contains a remarkable criticism of other works on love, it does not explicitly dwell upon the exact question treated here. 39 40 WILLIAM ROSSNER respect Billot as a fellow Jesuit who loves St. Thomas Aquinas, I should like to disagree, amiably, however, as becomes brothers. Such a concession might seem to reduce our experience of an impulse toward what we love to some kind of myth. It might also appear to render less intelligible our process thought about Divine Love and the second procession according to which the Father and Son are the principle of the Holy Spirit. As favoring his position Billot cites a text of St. Thomas Aquinas: "The will does not have something proceeding from itself in the manner of something produced; but the intellect has in itself something proceeding from it, not only in the manner of operating but also in the manner of something produced." 2 I should prefer rather to say that in normal human speculative knowledge the intellect conceives a concept of something or speaks a mental word through which we know extra-mental reality. This grounds our human supernatural knowledge of the analogy in God where the Father speaks a word which is a generating of the Son who is the second Person of the Holy Trinity. And similarly in human intellectual love the will produces a distinct term which is intentionally the beloved; and this too grounds our knowledge of the procession according to love in God whereby the Father and Son breathe forth the Holy Spirit. I. THE QuESTION OF THE PROCEss OF LovE The problem raised here is interesting to anyone who finds attraction in the subject of love as it is found in creatures or in God. When raised to trinitarian heights it allures not only dogmatic theologians but also philosophers. In God each procession grounds a distinct person. The procession according to knowledge becomes generation of a Son from the Father. The procession according to love, although it grounds the distinct Holy Spirit as proceeding from Father and Son, nevertheless is not itself generation. In other words, within the • De Veritate, q. 4, ad 7. PROCESS OF HUMAN INTELLECTUAL LOVE 41 divinity, while the procession according to knowledge is itself a generation, the procession according to love is not itself a generation. The reason for this is that it is not a procession in likeness of nature by its own formal nature. Rather by its own nature it has existence merely in the manner of an impulse and inclination. Every inclination supposes a form or nature whose inclination it is, but does not formally constitute the nature. And therefore, the one proceeding according to inclination does not proceed as begotten, even granting the fact that that which proceeds has identically the same nature because in God inclination and nature, form and will are the same.3 However, in seeking to understand something of this mystery of love we must first be precise about what we are studying here. Love in the will of a human person is our subject. There are indeed other kinds of love, such as that in angels or in God, which are in some ways more perfect. Also there are other kinds of love which may be considered in some ways less perfect. For example, sense love also exists in human beings and in other types of animals (a distinction empiricism tends to forget); so does vegetative love of which reproduction is one sort; to say nothing of the attraction between bodies and their parts which extends beyond humans to all of corporeal reality (and this is a part of what is called natural love by men like St. Thomas who give to the vocable " love " a wider extension than it enjoys in our modem uses of common languages). We shall, therefore, concentrate upon the intellectual love in the will of a human person. The question we are asking is, " What is the process in human intellectual love? " Whatever light we may attain will indeed be partially transferable to all other kinds of love, for it, like being, is analogous: always somewhat the same though also simply different. One obvious difference between human and non-human loves is that we have no immediate inner • John of St. Thomas, Cursus Theologicus in Summa Theologicam D. Thomae, Tractatus De Sacro Trinitatis Mysterio, Prima Pars, Quaestiones Parisiis, XXVIIXXXIII (Ludovico Vives, Editor, 1884), Introduction. 42 WILLIAM ROSSNER experience of non-human loves; and one similarity, love always tends towards a good. II. LovE IS A PASSION AS WELL As AN AcTION When we love something we experience the fact that the beloved exerts a pull upon us. At times the impact of the good may be so strong that we actually experience a beginning of a bodily motion towards it. Even merely knowing the good may induce this feeling of being drawn to it. This aspect of love is what I call the passion of love. This passion is prior to the operation itself of loving and may even remain involuntary. In some instances the pull is at least partially a matter of sense passion, although to be sure we are at times aware of its tugging at our will even though we do not voluntarily consent to it. However, we can also have a passion in our will, and here we try to understand what that means. What is passion in intellectual love? " Passion " as an English noun is derived from the Latin "pati," to suffer or to be drawn. It may have different meanings. The common meaning of passion is simply " to receive," as air receives illumination from the sun. A proper meaning is " to receive with loss of something else," as one undergoes a cure of a disease while receiving health. The most proper meaning is " a reception with the loss of something suitable," as one suffers an illness with the loss of good health. Underlying all of these is the fundamental meaning of passion, " being drawn to something." 4 Although one meaning of love as passion is that it is a sense emotion, we shall not here study that but rather look at the passional quality of love in the will where the mystery emerges before our minds. For how can one and the same operation of love be simultaneously a passive reception and an active inclination? As we seek an answer to that question we must begin by asking, " In what sense is intellectual love a passion? " • Summa Theol., I-II, q. aa. 1, and 8. PROCESS OF HUMAN INTELLECTUAL A. INTELLECTUAL LOVE 43 LovE IS PASSION IN THE CoMMON MEANING OF THE TERM The common meaning of passion is " reception of something without entailment of loss." In this meaning love is a passion, for one receives an attraction from and to the beloved. 5 This statement alone, however, does not tell us very much since various things, such as knowledge, also imply such reception. In both knowledge and love similar receptions occur and they are passions; what they are I shall indicate briefly in order to avoid confusing them with the different passion to which I refer in love. They are two-fold. The first kind may be considered primarily as it takes place in the intellect. Since the intellect is not always actually knowing, it may be said to be in potency to the act of knowledge. In preparation for its act of knowing it needs to be activated; and this actuation is done by the illuminating or agent intellect as immediate efficient cause which casts a ray of intelligible light through the sense phantasm as instrumental efficient cause. Thereby it educes from the passive intellect an intelligible species by which it is now activated to know the sensed object. A real transition from potency to act takes place in the knowing intellect, or it undergoes a passion in the order of nature. An analogous actualization of the will prepares it for the act of loving. Both powers are analogously put in act in order to act and undergo passions; but this is not the peculiarity of love which we seek. A second kind of passion which must be eliminated is the reception of an accidental perfection in a substance whose essence is not to be. When a human person who is only potentially knowing or loving actually knows or loves, he or she receives a new perfection, that of becoming actually a knower or lover. This operation is not an actuation of an operating power in the same order, for the intellect and will were already in act to act; and so the operation is an act of a perfect being or an "actus perfecti." However, the person's radical sub5 Ibid., q. 26, a. 2, c. 44 WILLIAM ROSSNER stantial potentiality for a new accidental super-existence is indeed actuated, to be knowing something or to be loving something. These passions are not what we are seeking, however, for they are common to the acquisition of all accidental perfections rather than the passion peculiar to love alone. In order to discover that meaning of passion we shall have to look at love not just in the order of nature but also in the intentional order which is its own. What is it within love precisely as appetite which is its own passion? A reception must take place within the appetite itself by which that appetite is so activated by the lovable object that the appetite can take its pleasure in that beloved. What is received in that manner? B. AND ALso IN THE FuNDAMENTAL MEANING OF PASSION Here we may dig down to the notion which underlies all the meanings of passion or trahi: to be drawn to something, trahi ad aliquid. 6 In receiving a new perfection the lover is drawn to that actuality by something active. Within love a peculiar passion is undergone. The lover not only is drawn to his beloved but also it is a being drawn which draws him. What he receives is a being drawn by the beloved to the beloved. Now we approach the unique significance o£ love as passion, for in it alone does such a reception exist. The question, " what is love as passion? " now becomes, "What is this reception of being drawn to something?" A good is presented by intellect to will. Here I wish to consider the good merely metaphysically or transcendentally. It may be or it may not be a true moral good. Although I by no means wish to deny the importance of the question of moral good and evil, at this point I do not wish to become involved in moralizing. Our human wills have freedom of exercise, specification, and contrariety. The freedom of contrariety involves an imperfection of choosing an apparent good which is really contrary to our nature; but now I wish to think of the perfection 6 Cr. supra p. 42 and Summa Theol., I-II, q. 22, a. 1. PROCESS OF HUMAN INTELLECTUAL remaining in the love and to ask here too, "What reception of a being drawn to something?" C. Is LovE As PAsSION THE CAuSALITY 45 LOVE IS this OF THE ENn? The solution which I should like to propose and discuss is that love as passion is the very causality of the end. Let us remember that we are studying the moment in which a good takes hold of a person so that it becomes his good. It is good in itself; for other goods may indeed be sought as means, but without this good in itself they are futile. This good influences his actions and inner life which are now ordered to its attainment. This is the moment, in a word, at which the extramental goodness of the beloved enters his personal dynamism effectively enough to be an objective or a purpose. Now what is actual and active here in the manner proper to love? It is the good as end which is actually attractive and actually attracting. And within the love, what is this but its being attracted or allured or drawn to the end by the end? The will is being impressed by its beloved. Intellectual love as passion is the influence or causality of the end within the will of the lover. Love, consequently, is a term in the order of finality, the completion of that universe of discourse. When the love is informed with the goodness of the end as beloved final causality is realized in actuality. And by that very fact of its being a completion of finality love is simultaneously a beginning or a principle in the order of efficient causality. I do not mean to say only that final and efficient causality are involved here, for they are indeed involved in everything within creation. No, what I want to say is that in intellectual love a meeting point exists for the entire orders of efficient and final causality in a pure form. Love is the causality of the end causing the causality itself of the efficient cause. This is in fact the heart of the circularity of love and of its being a flowing intentional existence, an esse intentionale fluens. It is necessary to take apart and study separately the various implications of this suggested doctrine; but such separation is 46 WILLIAM ROSSNER due to the exigencies of discursive thought and its expression. In reality the elements are united in the nature of the process of love. D. PRESUPPOSITIONS oF THIS SoLUTION Involved in the statement that intellectual love as passion is the causality of the end are some four presuppositions which need noting. 1. Motion in Final Causality is Metaphorical Here as in much serious philosophical discourse it is necessary to push a bit at the frontiers of languages. In English, for example, we might say, "The end is not a cause except as it moves the efficient cause to act." In Latin, "Finis ... non causa nisi secundum quod movet efficientem ad agendum." 7 Our question now becomes, " What is signified by ' moves ' and 'movet '?" Aristotle faced a similar problem with the Greek language. In On Generation and Corruption he says: ''Ean OE TO 7T'OLYJTLKOV alrwv o,, Uhv 7T'OLYJTLKOV. vy[fta OV 7T'OLYJTLKOV fl To o' oil tVfKa OV KaTa fL€Tacpopav.8 The maker is a cause as that from which the source of motion. But that for the sake of which is not a maker. Consequently health is not a maker except according to metaphor. (My translation) In ordinary speech we might use such expressions as these: " He was moved by his declining health to take medicine." "The interests of health moved him to go on vacation." Literally, however, health does not move anything, nor is it really productive for it is not an efficient cause. It moves one only in the sense of being desirable. That is indeed a real influence upon one who acts, upon the agent. This is metaphorical motion, but it is the real causality of the end. De Potentia, q. 5, a. l. Aristotelis Opera ex 1·ecensione lmmanuelis Generatione et Corruptione, I, 7, p. 353. 7 8 Bekkeri, II (Oxonii, 1837), De PROCESS OF HUMAN INTELLECTUAL LOVE 47 2. The Agent is Itself Influenced by the End The second presupposition to be noted is that the influence of the end extends not only to the actions or effects which the agent produces but also to the very agent himself who acts. Upon the one and the other, however, a difference of influence exists. The actions or effects of the agent are effects of the end (and also, of course, of the agent as efficient cause), but the agent himself as a person is not an effect of this end. Nevertheless he must be influenced by it and even primarily, for it is only through the agent's being drawn by this end that his actions are influenced by it and are consequently its effects. If the end is to be a cause at all the agent must be influenced by it. In other words, in order to be an agent any being must be oriented to the effect as intended. No agent can act without this intrinsic orientation toward something, for it cannot exercise action unless it does something determinate toward which it, and its operation, in the very first moment is inclined. Some things may be so inclined by something else, as a space ship is directed toward the moon by the people in ground control. In such a case the end directs the space ship only mediately, through the persons in ground control; but this, of course, brings us to the persons who direct the ship (or whatever subrational agent may be involved). For choosing an end for another implies choosing an end, and the only appetite which can so choose is a rational one. The primary activity of end is on a will whose object is the good as end and whose first operation is intellectual love. In a word, the end extends its causality to the agent itself and that causality is primarily in an intellectual appetite, and it is in that will as first activated by the end or as undergoing love as passion. If we carefully study intellectual love we are carried to finality, and if we study finality responsibly we are brought to intellectual love. The reason for this is that finality in act is intellectual love in its characteristic of passion. 9 9 Cf. e. g., The Thi1·d Revolution, by Karl Stern (Image Books, Doubleday: Garden City, New York, 1961), p. 87: "The adherence to the' machinery' when 48 WILLIAM ROSSNER 3. One Operation has Two Distinct Aspects The third presupposition which must be emphasized is that only one operation of love is being studied. When we distinguish love as passion from love as action we are not referring to two separate operations. Nor do we refer to a first act whereby the will in potency is put in act to act and a second act which is the operation itself of the will in act. No, only one operation is involved-the immanent operation of love. However, this single operation is complex in structure: passively it depends upon the end as being itself the causality of the end; and simultaneously it depends upon the will which elicits it as immediate efficient cause. That first passive characteristic by which it is from the end is the one now being studied, but later we shall return to the second characteristic of love as action. Here the passion of love is what we seek. 4. Two Passivities Must be Distinguished And that brings us to the last of our presuppositions. Two passivities are involved in love: a passivity which pertains to the end itself and is not our point; and a passivity which pertains to love and is our point. The first passivity means that the good as end is loved. To be loved (amari) , to be sought (appeti) , to be desired (desiderari) , and similar expressions are used in reference to the end. They imply in general two things: first, being loved like being known insofar as it is consequent upon the operation of love adds to the beloved an extrinsic denomination which is a relation of reason; second, the good which is an end is a cause that by the singular nature of its causality does not change or exercise action but merely exists as being good and beloved. This passivity is not our present concern because it belongs primarily to the good rather than to the love and secondarily to love not just as passion but also as action. it comes to these questions is due to the fear which all authors of mechanistic systems have of the idea of finality. Even if one accepted the mechanistic concept to that extent, the question would still have to be answered as to why ' society' began to inhibit instinctual drives in the first place." PROCESS OF HUMAN INTELLECTUAL 49 LOVE On the other hand, the passivity which is our point is within the love itself. The appetite is being attracted by the end and to the end. This being attracted is within the love. Although the end does not move as efficient cause, it does have an actuality proper to its own nature and its own kind of causality: it is actually attractive and attracting the love. And within the love is the being attracted. This is a passivity within the intentionality o£ love and correlative to the activity o£ the end. It is love as passion. 10 These four presuppositions sufficiently clarify, I hope, the background o£ the meaning o£ the proposition which says that the causality o£ the end is love as passion or, perhaps better, that love as passion is the causality o£ the end. E. REASONING FAVORABLE CAUSALITY To LoVE As PASSION BEING THE OF THE END From certain considerations we may draw the conclusion that love as passion is the causality o£ the end. I should like to put the argument in the form o£ a syllogism. The actual causality o£ the end is its being loved by the agent. But any real causality, including that o£ end, includes a passive dependence o£ the effect upon the cause. Therefore, the actual causality o£ the end is love as passively dependent upon the end or love as passion. Regarding the major, which says that the actual causality o£ the end is its being loved by the agent, we may say this. As the influx o£ the efficient cause is the exercise o£ action, so the influx o£ the final cause is to be sought and to be desired. To be sought (appeti) is from the first act o£ appetite and what is being sought is the good and end, or the being sought is the influx o£ the end. Again, every agent acts because o£ some end, and the end £or each is some good which is loved and desired. Therefore every agent acts any action whatsoever out o£ love for some good. 11 Or finally, the causality o£ the end consists in this fact that something is desired because o£ it. 10 11 De Verit., q. a. 2, c. Summa Theol., I-II, q. 28, a. 6, c. 50 WILLIAM ROSSNER In the degree, therefore, that the end is more perfect and more willed, to that degree the will of the one willing the end extends to more things because of the end. 12 The minor which says that any effect passively depends upon the cause is generally admitted as pertaining to all causality. Real causality demands a passive dependence of the caused upon the cause, for by its nature cause implies dependence of something upon another. 13 The end is good and appetible and finalizes as being good and appetible. The actuality of the end is the activity proper to appetibility. To educe the appetibility of the good from potency to act is to begin its formal causality. Appetibility is simply the capability of being loved and its actualization is its actually being beloved; and so the causality of the end is its being actually loved. The real goodness of the end is existing exterior to the will as the goal of the will indeed 14 but it is not yet the influence of the good within the will, for this goodness must be interiorized inside the will. The goodness must somehow enter the spiritual will, make its attraction felt there, exist within will as alluring it. The being allured is something intrinsic within the will. There, however, it cannot be only a potency or habit, for a causal influence must be something fully actual. Nor can it be any act of will other than love, since love is the first act and all other acts are effects of the love and the end rather than the actual causality of the end. Hence the first love of the end must be the place where the causality of the end is to be found; and that is true insofar as this love is dependent upon the end or insofar as love is a passion. F. REFLECTIONs ON THIS PRoPOSED SoLUTION Germinally contained here is much that could be developed further. Only one operation of love, let us recall again, is Contra Gent., c. 75, ratio 5. Summa Theol., I, q. 33, a. 1, ad 1. 14 " The goal of the will is existence precisely as outside the mind, as actualised or possessed by reality external to the mind, outside the spiritual act of the will." Preface to Metaphysics, by Jacques Maritain (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1943), Lecture !il, p. !ill. 12 ] 13 PROCESS OF HUMAN INTELLECTUAL LOVE 51 involved, the primary love of the good. Within its complex structure, however, various real principles converge. Of these, quite basic are the efficient and final causality which are now present in a pure manifestation. Here the primacy of finality appears definitively. · This elicited operation of love depends immediately upon two causes-the end and the will. Both are simultaneously in time true causes having a direct influx on the nature and existence of the love. Together with the efficient causality of the will whereby love is an action (to which we shall return) the objective causality of the end makes it also a passion. 1. Love Has a Relation of Real Dependence Upon the End Unless the good actually attracts the person love is impossible. Something may be good in reality, and I may know that it is attractive and does attract some people, nevertheless it may "leave me cold." In order that I may love it, it must enter my affections. It must exist within my will as drawing me to it. A real relation of dependence upon that end must exist in me. When we analyze this relation we find, as must be the case for all real relations, a real subject, a real term, and real foundation. The real subject is that which is related, here that which is dependent. Here the real subject is the love. The term is that to which the subject is related, here that upon which it has dependence. In this case the term is the good. The real foundation is some reality in the subject by virtue of which the love is dependent upon the end. In this instance what is that? 2. The Foundation of the Relation is "Being Dra1vn" That in the love by virtue of which it is dependent upon the end must be some reality in the love, for without a real foundation there is no real relation. It is the being drawn toward the end, insofar as it is in the love. This must be, like all real foundations, a non-relative reality in the love. Although, like love itself, it necessarily refers to a beloved, it is in itself a nonrelative characteristic, a perfection of the will which inheres in 52 WILLIAM ROSSNER the will. Now any motion as in this being (including inclination which is intentional) is a passion. 15 And the actual appetitive inclination as in this appetite is appetitive passion. The being clrawn as in the will is intellectual love as passion. The crux of our problem here, in other words, is the " being drawn." As in the will it is love as passion; as from the end it is the causality of the end. The statement that love as passion is the causality of the end is, consequently, not a tautology. The reality of being drawn is indeed one in both subject and predicate, but each differs by its relation. The subject "love as passion" means "being drawn as in this." The predicate "causality of the end" means "being drawn as from this." 16 The difference between actual and merely potential causes consists in this that causes in act exist or do not exist simultaneously with that of which they are actual causes. 17 Only while the being drawn exists in the will does this finality actually exist. 3. "Being Drawn" Termed "Pondus" The paucity of our vocabulary of love, as is so often the case, gives us no vocable for the being drawn. Since, however, it is so central to discussing the process of love I shall suggest a term which can serve until someone offers a better. A venerable Latin adage says, " A mor meus pond us meum," literally "my love my weight." I shall call the being drawn the "pondus," leaving it in Latin to emphasize the technicality of the expression. Pondus will signify in a sort of shorthand the various circumlocutions and comparisons used in the attempt to conceptualize this reality: to be drawn (trahi) , to be attracted (attrahi) , to be allured (adlici) , to be moved (moveri, metaphorically and appetitively), to be inclined (inclinari). St. Thomas Aquinas also uses the helpful term, In Ill Physicorum, lect. 5. Ibid. We are confronted here with the appetitive analogue to efficient causality. 17 In II Physicorum, lect. 6. For a discussion of this passage, cf. The Philosophy of God, by Henri Renard, S. J. (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1951), pp. 18-22. 15 16 PROCESS OF HUMAN INTELLECTUAL LOVE 53 impression (impressio) / 8 Impression implies being impressed. One might say in our English language that one is impressed by something or someone; and that adds a stronger connotation of an impression like that of a seal on wax, indicating that the imprint of the beloved dwells in the affection of the lover. All these shall be briefly signified by "pondus." Now this pond us, as the real foundation of the dependence of our love upon our end, bears two characteristics, for an end has a double function. It both specifies in the order of form and finalizes in the order of exercise. The pondus, then is a being specified, which is a reality in the order of form from the object loved, and a being finalized, which is a reality in the order of exercise of act. a. Pondus is an adaptation in the order of form Considered under the first aspect, as the lover's being specified, the pondus is an adaptation of the appetite to the good in the order of form. Without such voluntary specification, or according to its mere nature, the human will is proportioned to its natural end which is the object of its natural love-the universal good and happiness in general.' 9 The object of an elicited act of appetite, however, which we are considering here, is some particular intellectually known good, even when this particular good is made an ultimate end in which the person places his happiness. To such an end the will must be drawn in the sense of being made resonant and proportionate to it. Here the pondus is the element of structure or value within the love corresponding to the inner structure of the good value. For example, one whose affection had no sympathy for temperance would undergo a noticeable transformation of affection if he began to love temperance. Under this aspect, then, the pondus is a passive transformation and information whereby the love is made resonant and proportionate to the end. 18 E. g., Summa Theol., I, q. 37, a. 1, c. For the analogous situation in angels, cf. The Sin of the Angel, by Jacques Maritain (Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press, 1959), especially p. 18 ff. The French original is "Le peche de l'Ange," Revue Thomiste, 1956, no. 2. 19 54 WILLIAM ROSSNER b. Pondus is exigency in the order of existence Secondly, the love is dependent upon the end also, not only just as it possesses intrinsic value but also as finalizing to action. This function of the good preserves but adds to its specifying object. Now existence, of the good and of the love, moves to the center of the stage. The good attracts the lover to get it or to give it and thus to be in a fuller measure. The good at this moment is not merely determining the nature of the love but also attracting it into being. It is inclining the person into this manner of superexistence which is to be loving this good. This is the properly final causality which is in the order of effectuation into existence. Both the final and efficient causes deal with the exercise of action and hence of existence. An agent acts on account of love for some end. Finality, however, is irreducibly different from efficient causality. The causality of the end is prior to and the cause of the causality of the efficient cause. No agent can act unless he exercises a determined action, for there can be no indeterminate actual existence. He must be oriented to some particular action and existence. He cannot do anything without this inner inclination to this act. Thus he depends upon this determined existence as alluring him to itself so that he will actually be in this new form of existence. (Here, of course, I remain within the perspective of creaturely causes.) Once again we may ask what reality within the love is the foundation for this dependence upon the good as finalizing. Once again we may reply that it is the pondus, now as being drawn toward existence itself. The will is now impressed with the goodness of a new existence. It is ponderous in reply to that termination in which it will actually be. The will now has a thirst for more existence. That existence is within it as inclining the will to itself. The pondus is that existence as urging, as a demand, as an exigency. There is now a wound, a privation in the person of what he is to be and of what he is tendentially which spurs him to redeeming action. Even though the person is not the new existent in absolute reality, he is beginning his process toward it. His dynamism and his PROCESS OF HUMAN INTELLECTUAL LOVE 55 momentum is toward it so that he is difficult to stop or even change once this pondus grips him. Thus the real goodness of the end enters his personal progress. He is attracted to act; and the more actions to which this attraction extends the more it dominates his being and the more universally this end becomes his end. If he is being drawn to do whatever he does for the sake of this end and if this pondus weighs in all his actions the end may be said to become for him an ultimate end and to be beginning to be loved with his whole heart. If it weighs with him as of extraordinary value he may be said to be on his way to loving it with charity. And if he is beginning to see all else as of little value so that he will be prepared to forego or overcome many things for his beloved he is experiencing the dawn of heroic love. Such is the pondus as being drawn to action. As it is in the will it is love as passion, and as from the good it is final causality, particularly in its characteristic of finalization to action. It is a being impelled to exercise action, which is a mode of existence, and consequently always a being inclined to be. The inadequacy of a mind like Leibniz' lay in conceiving the central volition as a choice between essences, which by its own inner logic lead to the indecision of a Gide before conflicting possibilities. One of the magnificences of Shakespeare emerges in seeing that a fundamental question is to be or not to be. The course of a person's life lies in being inclined to be. He may say "no " or "yes, but." In that degree, however, he chooses not to actualize what he really is. On the contrary his "yes" to the attraction of truly existing is the beginning of his own fulness of life. G. CoNFIRMATION oF THIS ANALYSIS In concluding this section we may note that this dissection of love seems a reasonable interpretation of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas (which for one who loves and respects him is a strong confirmation, even though one knows that authority is a weak argument in general). When intellectual 56 WILLIAM ROSSNER love as passion is viewed as causality of the end, light is shed on various crucial and puzzling texts. For example, in the body of Summa Theologiae, I-II, 26, 2, he says, "The appetible gives to the appetite first a certain adaptation to it." 2° First in the appetite, or first in the love as the first actuation of appetite, is this reception of an adaptation or a passion which is the influx of the appetible. " For appetitive motion," he continues, "goes in a circle ... ; the appetible moves the appetite, acting in a certain manner in its intention, and the appetite tends to the real possession of the appetible, so that the end of the motion is there where was its source." 21 The end is thought of as a principle actually causing, and this actual causality is the appetite's actually being drawn. "The first change of the appetite by the appetible is called love .... " 22 " So therefore since love consists in a certain mutation of the appetite by the appetible, it is clear that love is a passion, properly indeed as it is in the concupiscible sense appetite; but commonly and by an extension of the word as it is in the will." 23 In other words, as love is an impression by the end it is a passion. And finally, love is " the change of appetite in which it is moved by the appetible so that the appetible is for it an object of complacence." 24 The result of the causality of the end is the operation of love or of complacency in the beloved. To this aspect of love as an operation in which it is the effect of finality we now turn. •• ". . . ipsum appetibile dat appetitui prima quidem quandam coaptationem ad ipsum .... " Summa Theol., I-II, q. 26, a. 2, c. 21 "Nam appetitivus motus circulo agitur, ut dicitur in III De Animo; appetibile enim movet appetitum, faciens quodammodo in eo eius intentionem [Leonine: in eius intentione] et appetitus tendit in appetibili realiter consequendum, ut sit ibi finis motus, ubi fuit principium." Ibid. •• "Prima ergo immutatio appetitus ab appetibili vacatur amor .... " Ibid. 23 " Sic ergo cum amor consistat in quadam immutatione appetitus ab appetibili, manifestum est quod amor est passio; proprie quidem, secundum quod est in concupiscibili; communiter autem et extenso nomine secundum quod est in voluntate." Ibid. •• This presupposes to be sure the continuance of primary existential actuation. Cf. e. g., Summa Theol., I-II, q. 9, a. 4, ad 1. PROCESS III. OF HUMAN INTELLECTUAL 57 LOVE LovE Is AN AcTION AS PROCEEDING FRoM THE EFFICIENT CAUSALITY OF THE WILL IN ITS FIRST IMMANENT OPERATION The general problem we have been considering in this essay is the process of human intellectual love as both a passion and an action. In the preceding section we saw something of how it may be said to be a passion; and now in this section we turn our attention to how it is simultaneously an operation. Fundamentally, the solution emerges from the fact that as passion love is the causality of the end. The end causes only as it attracts an efficient cause to action. The two are necessarily correlative. Finality is actual only in actuating efficient causality. These two causalities meet in a striking form in love. By the very fact that love as passion is the causality of the end it is also the source of action toward that end. A. LovE IS AN AcTION BEcAUSE PAssiON WITHIN THE WILL IS VoLUNTARY Although this union of causalities is true in all loves, it becomes interesting in intellectual love, for anything within the will is voluntary. The will itself can be drawn only voluntarily. The end can actually attract it only in the degree in which the will permits itself to be inclined and inclines itself in turn. It can be adapted only as it adapts itself, be impressed only as it itself tends. That there should be passion in the will which is involuntary or non-voluntary would be contradictory. Whatever in love is from the good must be simultaneously from the will as efficient cause; and, according to its being from the will as efficient cause, love is the first immanent operation of the will. In other words, love depends upon two principles, the good and the will. When we analyze that real relation of dependence upon the will we find again a real subject, term, and foundation. The subject of the dependence is, of course, the love, and the term upon which it depends is now the will as its proximate efficient cause. And again we ask, what is the foundation or that in the love by virtue of which it is so dependent? 58 WILLIAM ROSSNER We can, to be sure, say that this aspect of love whereby it is the first operation of will is the foundation of its dependence upon will; and that again is not saying nothing, for it points up the important characteristic of voluntariness in love. To express the same thought somewhat less technically, it is necessary for the lover to take up the initiative. Although the impulse to love originates in the goodness and beauty of an existent, that impulse can die aborning unless the lover takes over the initiative and actively cooperates in the literal sense of operating along with the impulse which he receives. This may be compared to the necessity of being friendly if one is to have friends. One who smiles and is obliging finds others smiling and obliging to him. But the attractiveness and the smile, so to speak, of existence can fall apart into a bleak frown toward one who does not respond. For even the kiss of existence which can be love as passion must be voluntarily accepted. Is it possible, however, to discover more fully and accurately this characteristic of love which founds its dependence on will? I think it may be done by investigating more carefully the process of will by which the operation of love is performed. B. THE PROCESS OF EFFICIENT CAUSALITY IN WILL By will I understand the appetite of an intellectual being which is grounded in the intellect. The object of this appetite is a good as intellectually known, and so it may be called an intellectual appetite. It is an operative power which has its own nature; as an appetite it is an inclination and as an intellectual appetite it is an inclination to universal good in general whose possession promises some happiness. The nature of the will is itself a natural tendency which is in act while the will actually exists. Consequently it is a natural love which is the first act of appetite, for there is no distinction between a nature, its natural appetite, and its natural love if it is actually existing. (The question of love as natural is not our present problem for detailed study.) By the very fact that the will exists, in other words, it actually tends to incline toward its own PROCESS OF HUMAN INTELLECTUAL LOVE 59 good. Once a good is presented to it by intellect it tends to incline actively toward its good. It does not need to be put in act before it can act, by something intrinsic like an impressed species. By nature it is already in act to act, actually inclined to incline. 25 In this respect the will differs from the knowing intellect, which as only potentially knowing needs an intrinsic actuation by a species whereby it is put in act to know. The intellect's operation of knowing is an intussusception of another within itself. The will's operation, however, is itself an actual inclination to something extra-mental toward which its natural love also inclines, in general. In this regard the will should be compared with intellect rather insofar as intellect is also a natural appetite. By its very nature the knowing intellect has a natural love which is a tendency to be moved toward actual knowing, usually by an intelligible species. This inclination does not itself need any further actuation beyond the primary one whereby it is existing. It does not need to be put in act in regard to being moved, for in this respect it is not in potency. Rather it is by nature actually inclined to be actuated by an impressed species. Its inclination to be moved from potency to act is not in tum in potency but in act. Otherwise it would not be an intellect. Similarly, the will by its own nature has a natural love which is its inclination to incline toward the good as intellectually known, or to elicit as immediate efficient cause its first operation which is intellectual love. This actual inclination needs no efficient causality other than the existential actualization of the person with his operative powers. In this respect the will may be compared to the illuminating or agent intellect which is of itself in act and does act when the necessary material is furnished it. 26 Likewise, the will is in act to act its first 26 Cf. Philosophy of Conduct, by Henri Renard, S. J. and William Rossner, S. J. (Kansas City, Missouri: Rockhurst College, 1962), p. 28. 26 Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry, by Jacques Maritain (Kingsport, Tennessee: Pantheon Books, Kingsport Press Inc., 1953), especially pp. 95 ff. 60 WILLIAM ROSSNER operation, although it must await specification and finalization by the intellectually known good. The will is the only secondary efficient cause which is the immediate source of human intellectual love. C. THE FouNDATION oF DEPENDENCE UPoN WILL Is PARTLY LovE As REALITY IN THE ORDER oF NATURE Consequently, it may be said that the foundation within our intellectual love for its dependence upon the will is that aspect attributable in any effect to secondary efficient causality. This aspect is its reality in the order of nature insofar as it comes to be. (At the risk of wearying the reader let me say once more that we always are presuming primary existential actuation.) What was not begins to be and this becoming is from the will. That love which receives specification and finalization from the end must exist as specified and finalized. The specification and finalization add to mere coming into existence, but without that existence they do not themselves exist, Only of an existent can there be specification and finalization, but only through efficient causality does the existent come to be. These various causalities are simultaneous, mutual, and interpenetrating. Each is distinct, contributing a different element of the effect. Each is necessary. The love results from all. If any were missing, the others would be impossible in actuality. Specification and finalization are from the end alone, but that they come to be within the will is only from efficient causality. Intellectual love as it is an actuality which comes to be is from the will, an action which is its first immanent operation. 27 27 Cajetan has a difficulty here: Specification of love is a new reality in the order of nature and also from the good. Therefore the good must exercise efficient causality, since no reality can exist in nature without a secondary efficient cause, except the spiritual soul which is created. We can now see the limitation of his thought: specification as specification is indeed from the good as end, but as actual it is from the will as efficient cause. (In Jam, 27, 3, n. IX and X; SO, 2, n. X). PROCESS D. OF HUMAN INTELLECTUAL Is THE FouNDATION TERM PRODUCED? ALso INTENTIONAL? DIFFICULTIES AGAINST LOVE 61 AN IMMANENT THIS SoLUTION So far we have reasoned that the aspect of love whereby it comes to be actually as reality in nature founds its dependence upon will. Is that, however, the whole story? Or is it true furthermore that a part of that intentionality which is peculiar to love also comes from the will? Is some intentional term produced within the will in the operation of love? Perhaps we can better see the meaning of this question as well as a clue to its answer by again comparing love to our act of knowing. The heart of intellectual knowledge is to understand (intelligere) or to read within (intus legere) the appearances of things. It is to see, a direct immediate intuition, an actual gaze into extra-mental reality. In order so to see we must make this extra-mental reality, which in itself is only potentially intelligible, to be actually intelligible within our intellect (for no thing other than God is by its own nature actually intelligible and understood) . Our intellect then must express this extra-mental reality to itself, conceive it within itself, speak it interiorly in a mental word. Here it exists as actually understood. This speaking of an interior word which we do from the weakness of our intellection is a part of our immanent operation of intellectual knowing. The word immanently spoken, the verbum dictum, is the term produced by the operation of our intellect. Without the word the act of knowing, the intelligere, would be impossible in our normal speculation. For by it the reality is made an object before the intellect, and through it as means the intellect can look into the reality itself. By it the intellect attains the thing. There it draws the thing into itself, making the reality one with itself in intellectual existence, so that the actual understanding is the actual understood. Through it the reality is objectified, manifested, and spoken because the intellect is manifestative and seeing. Now for love. Is there also in love a term produced analogous to the mental word in knowledge? It might seem that there is no good reason to say so and even reasons against so 62 WILLIAM ROSSNER saying. Such a term is not, of course, demanded by the nature of an immanent operation itself. Nor is the will entirely like the intellect which draws the thing into itself; for the will is rather, on the contrary, drawn outward toward the thing and tends toward the thing in its own transobjective subjectivity. The true is primarily in the intellect, but the good is primarily in things, not within the will by any representation or likeness. Furthermore, how could the beloved be within the will as a term produced? Not by representation, for love is not knowledge; not in itself, for the beloved thing precisely remains outside the will; not in its power, for that is from the beloved as attracting the will beyond itself. How else could it be in the will as term? Moreover, the famous text of De Veritate is introduced as evidence that St. Thomas himself did not think that such a term exists: "The will does not have anything proceeding from itself in the manner of something produced: but the intellect has in itself something proceeding from it, not only in the manner of operation but also in the manner of something produced." 28 For such reasons existence has been denied of a reality in love analogous to the word and the speaking of the word in knowledge. However, contrariwise, we can find reasons favorable to the existence of a similar term in intellectual love and, 1 think, texts of St. Thomas which also bespeak such a position. E. ARGUMENT IN FAVOR OF ASPIRATION OF THE PONDUS Since the intellect forms within itself the extra-mental reality which it objectifies intentionally, it has a representational likeness of the thing known as its immanent term. The will, too, analogously is allured or attracted by the extra-mental thing, and so the thing exists within that will as drawing it beyond itself or as its inner tendency or pondus. Consequently, in any will in which this pondus comes to be it must be 28 De Verit., q. 4, a. 2, ad 7. Billot, as we noticed above, remarks that St. Thomas in his opinion seems to deny here this distinct reality. Billot himself is prepared to concede that it is at best only virtually distinct from the operation of loving. PROCESS OF HUMAN INTELLECTUAL LOVE 63 produced. This existential proportionateness with that beloved thing toward which the will inclines must be produced by the appetite interior to itself. Such is not the case in an innate or natural appetite because by its nature that appetite is determined to one. So, for example, a body within the gravitational field of another body will by nature answer the pull of that body. The will, however, by its nature possesses an inclination to the good in general and hence an indifference regarding various particular goods which are intellectually known. Regarding particular goods it possesses a dominion which is indeterminate though determinable by its own action. It determines itself actively, using compenetrating intellectual knowledge. When it does put in itself a determined resonance with one thing rather than another, it produces this term as efficient cause of its own particular inclination. By virtue of this selfdetermining quality that will now actually inclines toward this good, and its elicited act is terminated interiorly in such a weight and impulse. This impulse is a term in the sense of a reality produced in the will within which alone the good exists as actually beloved. Of course, this pondus is a determined tendency to a real union with an extrinsic existent, which is the external result of the love. The love is an inclination to a real union with that exterior being who is the beloved. It is not itself that real union, which is effected by some other power. However, an intrinsic appetitive term is produced within the appetite by virtue of which the appetite will rest in the real possession of that extrinsic beloved. If, on the contrary, the possessed being should be hated rather than loved, the will would be uneasy or even tortured by its presence. We must, in a word, make a distinction in love analogous to that which we make in knowledge between speaking the word (dicere verbum) and understanding (intelligere). I shall call the act of the will insofar as it produces the pondus a " spiration," following St. Thomas Aquinas. Spiration is sufficiently free from its own overtones to accept the assigned meaning. It is derived from the Latin, " spirare," which means "to breathe." It still keeps an obsolete meaning of an " act of 64 WILLIAM ROSSNER breathing." Within the science of supernatural Christian theology one can speak of the procession according to will in God whereby the Father and the Son spirate the Holy Spirit as Divine Love and Gift. Within common language, however, and also within contemporary philosophical discourse the vocable, "spiration," is seldom used at all. Still, it does have a certain suitability for our present purpose. For there are expressions allied to it: we speak, for example of " aspiration toward something," a " breath, or sigh, or kiss " of love, an " inspired " person-all of which help us understand the meaning of an inclination toward a good goal. Spirating the pondus, then, is in love like speaking the word in knowledge. The spiration is analogous to the conception, and the pondus is analogous to the mental word. Like all analogates the two processes and their terms are simply different yet somewhat the same. The will process is similar in that, as the intellect apprehends and intuits while forming the concept in which it expresses extra-mental reality, so the will actively tends toward a good while forming within itself the impulse by which it is made harmonious with the beloved. For the pondus is not produced except to a determined object toward which the will inclines and by the actual inclination of the will to that object. The voluntariness of love demands this, for by its voluntariness not only is all the actuality of love from the will but also the proper intentionality or appetitive tendency is both from the will and from the end. A person as person loves by his or her will. In loving the beloved the will must make the goodness of the beloved its own goodness either to get it or to give it. An activity is required. Within the will is a productivity whereby love may be endowed with efficaciousness to the outside and may become a source of commanded actions. Thus the lover, for example, can make the happiness of the beloved his own happiness. He can produce within his own will an appetitive union with the perfection of the thing loved. He can willingly give to the beloved the goodness of the beloved so that it becomes intentionally in his own will his own goodness and, although they remain meta- PROCESS OF HUMAN INTELLECTUAL LOVE 65 physically two distinct persons, nevertheless in the transcending mystery of appetitive union the happiness belonging to the beloved becomes the happiness of the lover. F. FAVORABLE TEXTS FROM ST. THOMAS AQUINAS In his general teaching on the procession according to love in both God and man we find St. Thomas in agreement with what has been said. According to the operation of the will another procession is found in us, namely, the procession of love, according to which the beloved is in the lover, as through the conception of the word the thing spoken or understood is in the one understanding. 29 A similarity between the processions according to knowledge and to love is that the beloved, too, is made present within the will of the lover. Since the first procession is better known to us, more precise words have been invented to signify the individual elements which can be considered in it, but not in the procession of will. Consequently, we use certain circumlocutions to signify the person proceeding. and also the relations which are accepted according to this processiOn.... Still it is necessary to think in a similar manner about each processcion. For just as from the fact that one understands something a certain intellectual conception of the thing understood proceeds within the one understanding, which is called the word, so from the fact that one loves something there proceeds (if I may so speak) a certain impression of the thing loved in the affection of the lover like the understood in one understanding. As a result, when one understands and loves himself, he is in himself not only through real identity but also as understood in one understanding and as beloved in a lover. On the part of the intellect words have been invented to signify the relation of the one understanding to the thing understood, as in the fact that I say to understand (intelligere) ; and also other words have been invented to signify the process of intellectual conception, namely, to speak and word (dicere et verbum) . ... As for the will, however, besides to delight in and to love (diligere et amare), which signify the relation of the lover to the •• Summa Theol., I, q. 27, a. 8, c. 66 WILLIAM ROSSNER thing loved, no words have been invented which signify the relation of the impression itself or the being affected by the thing loved, which proceeds in the lover when he loves, to its source and vice versa. And therefore because of this poverty of vocabulary we signify the relations of this sort by the vocables love and dilection, as if we were to call the word " conceived understanding " or " generated wisdom." Therefore, insofar as in love only the relation of the lover to the thing loved is implied, love is like understanding and to understand. Insofar, however, as we use those words to express the relation of that which proceeds in the mode of love to its principle and the converse, by love (per amorem) is understood love proceeding (amorem procedentem), and by to love (diligere) is understand to spirate (spirare) the love proceeding. 30 In this essay I have attempted to compensate £or the dearth o£ vocabulary by using " pondus " and " spiration," not an invention o£ new terms but a renewed and somewhat modified use o£ old terms. But now let us reflect a little more on a final probe into our mystery. What is loved is not only in the intellect of the lover but also in his will though in a different manner. F'or it is in the intellect according to the similitude of species. In the will of the lover, however, it is like the term of the motion in the moving principle which has been made proportionate through an agreement and adaptation which it has to that term. In such fashion a higher place is in a certain manner in fire by reason of its lightness according to which it has proportion and suitability to such a place .... It is necessary that the beloved is somehow in the will of the lover .... Because the beloved exists in the lover as inclining and in :t certain manner impelling intrinsically the lover on into the beloved thing itself and the impulse from within a living thing pertains to spirit, it is suitable to that proceeding in the manner of love that it be called spirit (spiritus), because its spiration exists like a sort of aspiration. 31 In his charismatic simplicity St. Thomas not only insists on the existence o£ the spiration o£ the pondus but also packs into his belie£ a wealth o£ doctrine. I£ we consider the beloved as 30 31 Ibid., q. 37, a. 1, c. IV Contra Gent., c. 19. PROCESS OF HUMAN INTELLECTUAL LOVE 67 existing spiritually in the will of the lover as pondus, it is first of all drawing or inclining that will outwards beyond itself to the beloved as it exists in itself, what we have called the actual influx of the good alluring the will toward itself. Secondly, if we consider this from the perspective of the lover's will, it is being drawn or being inclined outward beyond itself by the good existing within it as pondus, all in a spiritual mode of existence. Thirdly, the lover's will is actively spirating the beloved as pondus within it, as becomes a voluntary operation, and under this aspect the pondus may be called a spirit in the sense of that which is spirated. Fourthly, the love is an immanent operation actively tending toward the beloved as beyond the will. Now within this more developed perspective we may ask again our question. Is the pondus which is spirated or breathed forth an element really distinct from immanent operation o.f love itself? It seems to me that it is. For the pondus is the beloved as existing within the will and as there spiritually inviting the will to open itself to the beloved as existing beyond the will. The operation of love is the answer to that invitation, the will's bursting forth beyond itself toward the actual beloved in its trans-objective subjectivity. G. CoNSEQUENCEs OF SPIRATION Because love is an inclination to something as it exists in its own concrete conditions, it is more perfect than knowledge in relation to things which are more perfect than the knower and lover; and, on the contrary, for the same reason, it is more deleterious than knowledge regarding things which are less perfect in their existence than is the lover. In knowledge the perfection of the object known exists within the knower according to the mode of existence of the knower. Consequently, whether the student studies God or moral evil he does not by that fact become drawn to either God or moral evil. However, if the lover loves God or moral evil, his own perfecction is thereby affected. For love tends to the loved thing 3 according to their own existential conditions. The lover makes 68 WILLIAM ROSSNER himself proportionate to those concrete existing conditions of the beloved. By spirating the pondus he transforms himself as far as his appetitive dynamism is concerned into the degree of perfection of the beloved. The good now becomes appetitively the lover's, whether it be a true divine good or a merely apparent metaphysical good of what is really moral evil. In point of fact there is a true sense in which the degree of perfection of the beloved is, just merely as good, more the lover's than the beloved's. For in what is loved the good as such is the lovable, capable of and ordered to being loved. Only in the operation of love is that lovableness actually beloved, and the good is present in that operation as actually loved. This is true of all beings except God for they are in potency. God, of course, being the Pure Act of Existence is by essence actually loving and beloved by his own will. That is why the basic commandment for all creatures is not " Thou shalt lmow God " but rather " Thou shalt love God." For the highest perfection accessible to an intellectual creature even in nature is to love above all things the God who is above all things, Existence Itself Subsisting of Itself. Both morally and metaphysically it is the highest perfection because the person endows himself with an appetitive tendential existence proportioned to Unlimited Existence who is Goodness Itself. He produces within himself that goodness in the way that the term of a motion is produced within that which moves toward that term and is adapted to it. His own happiness becomes in a way the happiness of his Beloved. He imbues his own being with an inclinational harmony with Existence Itself because he spirates a pondus which in a mysterious manner is simultaneously his and God's. H. CRITICISM OF BILLOT Regarding the text from De Veritate mentioned earlier and the doctrine of those like Billot who deny the production of a distinct term in love I should like to say this: First off, St. Thomas could, of course, have written something wrong and inconsistent with what he said elsewhere. Accepting the text, PROCESS OF HUMAN INTELLECTUAL LOVE 69 however, as it stands, important things can be noted. Certainly will does not produce a term as what is loved in univocally the same manner in which intellect produces a term as a sign of what is known. The intellect rests in the contemplation of the object expressed within itself, whereas the term produced by the will is not that in which the appetite rests but an inclination on to the trans-objective real existence of the thing loved. Billot himself admits this as a possible interpretation. 32 Furthermore, another point seems worth noticing. The text says, "The will does not have anything proceeding from itself in the mode of something produaed." " Voluntas non habet aliquid progrediens a seipsa per modum operati." By the underlining I call attention to the fact that what is denied is the existence of the pondus in the mode of something produced. Now it is the peculiarity of the pondus that it does not proceed just from the will or even originally from the will. Rather here we find the metaphysical meeting of both efficient and final causality, and here the pondus does indeed differ crucially from the mental word. Originally the pondus proceeds from the good as end and is the causality of that end. The whole causality of the efficient cause is caused by this final cause. This order of finality is found in its pure state in intellectual love, but it is not so found in knowledge; and that order of finality itself proceeds from the end, a fact which a mind with the power of St. Thomas's must have known well. Within this perspective of the types of causality meeting in intellectual love the operation itself of the will proceeds from the pondus as passion, for as passion it is the causality of the end which is the source of the efficient causality of the will. In this broader and more ultimate view there is no efficient cause of love radically speaking, since love causes fundamentally the efficient causality itself. With that granted, however, and indeed emerging from it there does remain the consideration upon which it is impossible 32 Cf. Billot, Zoe. cit., also, John of St. Thomas, Cursus Theologicus, in I•m, Disp. XII, Art. VII, No. XII. 70 WILLIAM ROSSNER to waver. The pondus in turn does also proceed from the efficient causality of the will as spiration. To deny this would weaken the notion of finality itself. For it is precisely the aspect of reality in the pondus which primarily is from the efficient cause and gives thereby reality to final causality. Perhaps this sort of ignoring or denying has helped the indifference of much modern thought to true finality. 33 I£ pondus proceeds, finality is real. If finality is real, pondus really proceeds. The spiration of the pondus is in fact more necessary for love than is the speaking of the word for knowledge. It is by no means impossible that there be knowledge without conceiving a concept. We do have knowledge which is unconscious or supra-conscious, which is pre-conceptual or supra-conceptual, which is poetic or mystical or even the beatific vision in which the divine essence supplies for both impressed and expressed species. 34 This is the true meaning of St. Thomas's statement that the intellect has a word in the mode of something produced. The mental word can be dispensed with or even supplied by another. In knowledge what is indispensable is the intuition, the intelligere. In love, on the contrary, the spiration of the pondus cannot be dispensed with or supplied from elsewhere even by God, for the will must be voluntarily impelled toward the beloved. If the spiration of the pondus did not exist, the operation of love would be simultaneously voluntary and non-voluntary. The element of indispensability is that in which spiration corresponds to the understanding of the intellect. In other words, generosity is of the essence of love. The good is in extra-mental reality. The good, which is convertible with being, attracts love, and attracts it to itself. It remains in things, unbending, present even though love does not answer. If its attraction is to be efficacious, the will must basically Cf. Karl Stern, lac. cit. The Grace and Humanity of Jesus, by Jacques Maritain (New York: Herder, 1969), passim. 33 34 PROCESS OF HUMAN INTELLECTUAL LOVE 71 acquiesce to that goodness. The ancients divide love into " love of concupiscence " and " love of friendship." The first is an inclination to get the good, either for oneself or another, and the second is an inclination to give the good, either to one who already has it or who does not. However, the inclination to give the good is love simply speaking, for no one can want to get a good unless he acquiesces in its goodness, unless he willingly grants its goodness to what he wants. He must will that goodness in things, actively approve of it, communicate appetitively the goodness of being to being. He cannot want to get unless he gives. He must produce within himself that goodness as willingly given, and that goodness so given exists only in the will as the pondus produced spiritually by the spiration which is the active communication of that goodness.35 Such is the importance of the spiration of the pondus, which I express haltingly (for want of better words) as a production within the will of an adaptation to and inclination outward to goodness that is in reality. As the important thing in knowledge is to look, to listen until one sees extra-mental reality,S6 so the crucial thing in love is this inner repose in the good until an active generosity is formed within, a generosity which wells from the depths of the personality. Out from existence comes an invitation to love its glory, but the will must voluntarily accept and agree. It must make itself content that existence have its grandeur, communicate appetitively to being its own beauty and goodness, produce within itself that glory as given. Then it can cooperate in the redemption and creation of more good. But this active donation is the spiration of the pondus and only from love results true peace and joy. 37 "The essence of gratuitous donation is love. For Jules Toner, op. cit., especially the analysis of "radical love," pp. 61 fl'. •• The Range of Reason, by Jacques Maritain (New York: Scribners, pp. 87 Karl Stern, op. cit., p. 199: "Out of the dimness of the flesh (caro) Charity (caritas) emerges. This is a pre-eminently human image of the psyche. In the middle of it we find, with overwhelming concreteness, the polarity of love and hate. 85 72 WILLIAM ROSSNER we give something gratis to some one because we will good to him or her. Therefore the first thing we give is love in which we will good to a person. And so it is clear that love has the nature of the first gift, through which all gifts are freely given." 88 IV. SuMMARY: CoMPARSION MENTAL OF THE PoNDUS WITH THE WoRD To speak the word (dicere verbum) and to spirate the pondus (spirare pondus) might be said to be analogous in this way: 1. They are simply different: The pondus is a part of love itself. The concept is not intellection itself, rather it is in creatures a means which must be produced normally in order to have intellection (or in God a super-abundance of intellection.) It is true that in creatures the production of the mental word is not another operation really separate from intellection; one speaks in understanding and one understands in speaking (dicit intelligendo et intelligit dicendo), but they are distinct. Conceiving is the productive or generative aspect of intellection; an act of understanding without such production is possible and sometimes occurs. Conception can be dispensed with or supplied from elsewhere. In this sense the human concept exists in the manner of something produced (per modum operati). To spirate the pondus, on the contrary, is the operation itself of the act of love. One breathes forth in loving and one loves in breathing forth (spirat amanda et amat spirando) -this signifies identity without the separation. The spiration is not a distinct operation which could be foregone or supplied from elsewhere. The spiration is in the full sense a personal operation. The pondus is produced but does not exist in the manner The human dialogue itself contains a healing principle. And for us who have followed this development [of psychoanalysis], there remains one thing to be added-the world of Grace." 88 Summa Theol., I, q. 88, a. fl, c. PROCESS OF HUMAN INTELLECTUAL LOVE 73 of a thing produced, something removable or producible elsewhere (per modum operati) . This does not lessen the reality of the pondus but only its dispensability. One cannot actively incline toward the beloved unless the beloved is really within the will drawing the lover to himself. Actively to incline (inclinare) entails being drawn or being inclined (inclinari). Whereas speaking a word is not necessarily of the essence of knowing, spiration is of the essence of love. Q. They are somewhat the same: in both cases the object as either known or loved is made present within the soul, because both word and pondus are intentionally the thing known or loved itself. However, the word is a "resting intention" (intentio quiescens) within the intellect and thus the extra-mental reality as produced in the intellect, but the pondus is a "flowing intention" (intentio fluens) within the will and thus the extra-mental reality intentionally as spirated in the will, drawing the will beyond itself. Or in a different perspective we might summarize the analogy from the point of view of the relative and the absolute. By the relative I understand a being as ordered to another and by absolute a being as it is in itself. To conceive a word and to spirate a pond us both bespeak relation to extra-mental reality. To speak and to spirate are both relations of active origin or principle. The conceiving is a principle from which is the word; and the spiration is a principle from which is the pondus. Each is a principle from which is another. The word is that which is from the speaking; and the pondus is that which is from the spirating. Each is originated or principiated. Each is that which is from another. This relational aspect as such can be removed from knowledge, which is a perfection of a being as it is in itself, but it cannot be so removed from love, which is a perfection of a thing as flowing to something. Even when one loves oneself with an intellectual love, the self here is a trans-objective subjectivity present to the will by intellectual knowledge. Love must contain a giving of the good to that trans-objective subjectivity, but it cannot so incline to- 74 WILLIAM ROSSNER ward something unless that thing is impressed within it, actively drawing it so to give. This presence o£ the loved one within the loving will is the pondus produced by the spiration. There is a real distinction between the beloved as drawing (trahere) or as inclining (inclinare) and the love as being drawn (trahi) or being inclined (inclinari). In the moment o£ finality, and even more in the metaphysically subsequent moment which is the £ulness o£ efficient causality as caused by the finality o£ the end, this real distinction without separation exists. In this critique o£ the position o£ Billot, then, I have maintained that intellectual love as passion is the causality of the end. As action it is the first immanent operation o£ the will from which it derives both its reality in the order o£ nature and its intentionality particularly in the order o£ giving. There is a real spiration of a real pondus which is really distinct from the operation o£ love, though neither separate nor separable; and such is the nature o£ the process o£ intellectual love in a human person towards a good as end. WILLIAM Rockhurst College Kansas City, Missouri RossNER, S. J. LONERGAN'S EPISTEMOLOGY F AILURE TO GRASP correctly the complex epistemological theory of Bernard Lonergan has often proved to be a principal stumbling-block to readers attempting to grapple with this author's major treatise, Insight. This article will consequently attempt to elucidate the main lines of his epistemological theory in a step-by-step fashion. To begin with, Lonergan's theory moves through three major phases in lnsight. 1 He begins with what he calls the cognitional question (What am I doing when I am knowing?) , moves on to the epistemological (Why is doing that knowing?), and finally reaches the metaphysical (What do I know when I do it?) . For Lonergan, the sequence in which these three questions are posed is not an arbitrary one. Rather it is dictated by his basic methodological premise: A metaphysics rests on a previously validated epistemology, and this latter in turn, rests on a previously validated cognitional theory. He begins therefore with cognitional analysis and moves on to epistemological and metaphysical questions only after that. In this article I will deal only with the first two questions. Among post- Kantian philosophers Lonergan is somewhat unique in distinguishing methodologically the cognitional and epistemological questions. Further, it is a distinction of utmost importance if one is not to misinterpret Lonergan's analysis as a "transcendental deduction " in the Kantian style. Lonergan explicitly distinguishes his own position from that of Kant on the basis of the epistemological and cognitional questions. From Lonergan's perspective Kant's basic concern is epistemological not cognitional. Kant's question is what are the conditions necessary in knowing an object. Lonergan's question is what 1 Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S. J., Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (London: Longmans, Green and Co., Ltd., 1957) . 75 76 JOSEPH F. FLANAGAN are the conditions necessary for knowing prescinding from the object known, and more important, prescinding from the objectivity of the knowing itself. Both of these "distinctions" are methodically established and developed by Lonergan in the first eleven chapters of Insight. The method which Lonergan uses to develop his thought is called self-appropriation. But before examining this method in detail it will be helpful to sketch briefly the historical background. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Lonergan first dealt with the problem of self-knowledge or self-appropriation in his research into medieval theology. In the medieval context the problem of self-knowledge had been approached in terms of the soul's knowledge of itself. It was usually argued that God and angels can know themselves directly but, since man's soul was incarnate, he could only know himself indirectly. This indirect knowledge could be achieved by reflecting on such mental objects as universal concepts and syllogistic structures and by noting that the qualities of these mental objects transcended the particular, transient, and corruptible character of this world. From such reflections one could deduce that the human soul which " accounted for " these mental products must be both immaterial and immortal. The contemporary thinker finds the nature of this argument quite impersonal and too objective: from the time of Descartes the tendency has been to derive self-knowledge through more personal experiences. Twentieth-century man does not worry about the immortality of his " soul" but about his own personal immortality, about his " self," and he tends to find discussion about " souls " rather abstract and unconvmcmg. The reason for this impersonal and abstract analysis of the soul among medieval thinkers, including Aquinas, was the method that they had used in developing and arguing out their positions. In Aquinas's case the method had been taken over from Aristotle and it proceeded by the following argument: LONERGAN'S EPISTEMOLOGY 77 a soul was specified by its potencies; potencies were specified by their acts; and acts were determined by their objects. The first difficulty with this method is that it is too general for contemporary philosophical problems. Aristotle employed this procedure to analyze not only the soul of man but also the souls of animals and plants. And while the method allowed Aristotle to distinguish quite clearly between the souls of animals and men, it did not allow him to specify the precise nature of these differences. A second and more technical difficulty centered on the term "object." If the acts were to be specified according to their objects, then the nature of these objects becomes crucial. However, there is a subtle and misleading interpretation of the meaning of object. In contemporary philosophical language the word " object " usually refers to the term of an intentional act which act is performed by an intending subject, i. e., the mathematician thinking about square roots is dealing with intentional objects-objects generated by his own thinking. For Aristotle and Aquinas objects are not intentional but causal. When Aristotle speaks of plants growing "because " of nutriment, the contemporary thinker is surprised to find that nutriment is termed an object. The nutriment is not produced by the plant, rather the opposite causal relation exists. Hence, nutriment is a causal object not an intentional one. Naturally, then, when a contemporary philosopher learns that Aristotle's method of argument is to specify acts by objects, he tends to identify objects with intentional objects but, as Aquinas points out in his commentary on Aristotle's De Anima, just the opposite is the case-objects are not intentional but causal (either efficient or final) . The contemporary phenomenologist is mislead, then, when he thinks of Aristotle's use of object in terms of an intentional object. Aristotle's method is much more general and applies not only to human science but to all the sciences. In the five Verbum 2 articles Lonergan worked his way • Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S. J., Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas. Ed. David B. Burrell, C. S.C. (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1967). 78 JOSEPH F. FLANAGAN through these terminological and methodological problems and concluded that, while Aristotle and Aquinas both followed explicitly the general method o£ proceeding £rom object to act to potency to essence, they also employed implicitly the method that Lonergan himself developed and explicitated in Insight, namely, "self-appropriation." Another way o£ phrasing what I think is the key discovery in the Verbum articles is to specify Lonergan's findings in terms o£ what I will call the cognitional, epistemological, and ontological phases o£ knowing. The " cause " o£ knowing that an earthquake has occured is ontologically prior to the knowledge o£ the event, and so, in this sense the " cause " o£ knowing precedes the personal performance o£ knowing. Ontologically, the object forms and specifies the act, and so, as act is prior to potency, object is prior to act. This is the explicit order o£ argument that Lonergan found in Aquinas and Aristotle, but he also discovered that this order reverses the way you psychologically experience the order. A person's first psychological experience is questioning objects, not understanding them. And before an intelligent person will assert the independent existence o£ an object, he will critically check his understanding to make sure that he is understanding the object correctly. In other words, epistemological concerns psychologically precede and ground ontological assertions. But i£ one argues £rom objects to acts to potencies to souls as Aristotle and Aquinas did, then one is reversing these psychological experiences. Such a method, then, cannot argue explicitly and directly from personal experience. To argue philosophically £rom one's own experience one would have to reverse this procedure. And, this is precisely what Lonergan did in Insight. He begins by reflecting on knowing as an immediate per£orm·ance £or ten chapters, and only in the eleventh chapter does he begin to consider knowing as " knowledge," knowing as knowing something or someone. In other words, the critical or epistemological concern about the validity or objectivity o£ objects oro£ knowing itself is deliberately and methodically postponed during the first ten chapters. Even in chapter eleven where the LONERGAN'S EPISTEMOLOGY 79 reader is asked to verify and assert his own performance of knowing, the question of the validity or objectivity of this particular affirmation is still excluded. Only in chapters thirteen and fourteen does Lonergan take up the Kantian concern with the "objectivity " of knowing. To repeat again, our principal concern in this article is to specify Lonergan's basic epistemological position as intrinsically dependent on his cognitional position and, at the same time, to show how his development of this position resulted in a reversal of the traditional scholastic method of " philosophizing." Although Lonergan employed a different method than Aquinas and Aristotle had used, nevertheless his cognitional theory was a further development along basic lines set down by these two thinkers. He further argues that the AristotelianThomistic tradition had been misinterpreted during the renaissance period of scholasticism and that the tradition of scholastic philosophy which Kant had inherited from Christian Wolffe was Scotistic and not Thomistic. In the Scotist tradition, following the same general methodological procedures that we have described, cognitional acts were specified by their objects, and the principal cognitional object was the concept or the proposition. In Lonergan's analysis of Aquinas's cognitional theory the concept proceeds from understanding, but in the Scotist tradition, understanding was "caused " by the concept. Rather than having concepts emerge from understanding, scholastics in the Scotist tradition were accustomed to inverting the order and arguing that understanding followed the concept. This prior " emergence " of the concept was explained by deducing or postulating a prior metaphysical cause-the "agent intellect "-an intellectual " power " that could see through and interiorly illuminate the various images that the senses delivered for understanding. Under the action of this " agent intellect " the various images yielded up to the intellect their specific, intelligible forms which, in turn, provided the intellect with its object (" the concept ") . The concept emerging within the intellect then "triggered" the act of understanding. 80 JOSEPH F. FLANAGAN In this description understanding is explained in a metaphysical and causal context without any appeal to personal experiences. In this tradition the crucial action of the agent intellect is postulated and not consciously experienced. Lonergan, on the other hand, argued that, while Aristotle and Aquinas had explicitly analyzed and described these cognitional operations within such a metaphysical context, nevertheless they were both arguing implicitly from conscious " psychological" experience. THE CoGNITIONAL QuESTION In Insight Lonergan shifts from this metaphysical analysis and appeals directly to the conscious and very concrete experience of being in the psychological state of wonder or questioning. In the scholastic tradition the agent intellect acts unconsciously, and its function is inferred from the qualities of propositional structures, namely, universality and necessity. For Lonergan the action of the agent intellect becomes an immediate, conscious, and personal experience, namely, one's own quite concrete and conscious capacity to raise questions. The historical background to this shift can be found in Lonergan's first Verbum article. In this article there are two key cognitional discoveries: first, the importance of questioning in the process of knowing, and second, the significance of images in setting up and generating insights. The second of these findings is closely related to the development of the phenomenological method insofar as this method highlights the preconceptual experience and attempts to recapture the cognitional experiences that precede the formation of conceptual structures. However, in Lonergan's analysis he stresses the interaction of questioning, imagining, and sensing insofar as these preconceptual experiences supply the conditions for the principal precoceptual event-insight. The questioning and imagining phases reciprocally interactuntil, suddenly, you grasp the latent meaning within the image and shout, " I've done it! " " I have understood! " " I LONERGAN's EPISTEMOLOGY 81 have got the point! " This "grasping" is a personal performance, and once it is done you can then proceed to formulate or conceptualize your insight. This second step of defining or forming insights into conceptual structures is also conscious and, more important, you perform this " second " phase because you have grasped the point-your understanding "causes" your conceiving. I£ you have not understood, you can "borrow" someone else's concepts, but you will lack the inner understanding that generates their meaning. There are two conscious states, then, preceding the " appearance " of concepts: first, the interaction of questioning and imagining that leads to and provides the conditions for the occurrence of insights; second, the process of conceiving-understanding pivoting on itself and generating itself into some kind of conceptual structure. Both of these conscious states form the preconceptual experience and supply conditions that must be present before you " know " the type of scientific propositions that preoccupied Kant. Questioning, however, is the condition that offers the strongest contrast to the Kantian perspective, and so we will focus on this "a priori condition." Questioning puts us in the paradoxical state in which we know and, at the same time, know that we do not know. There is a problem, then, in specifying what " sort of " knowing is involved in questioning. We have already pointed out that understanding involves the prior condition of questioning, and so the " knowing " of questioning cannot be the " form " of knowing characterized by understanding. What precedes understanding is experience, both inner and outer. Such experience is spontaneous and immediate but such experiencing need not involve questioning. In fact, most of our experience remains unquestioned, and since doubts emerge only after we question, such " unquestioned experience " has a definite indubitability connected with it. However, when questions do emerge they change this " indubitable " experience-one passes from a state of mere experiencing to a state of questioning experience. It is the same experience as before, but it now has a quality of questionableness. 82 JOSEPH F. FLANAGAN For example, something strange in the face of your friend sparks a question: spontaneously you suspect that there is some reason for his expression; you can't put your finger on it, but you are certain there is some intelligible explanation. If we compare the " unquestioned " experiential phase with the questioning phase, we can say that questioning has moved you "beyond" your experiential phase. Questioning has a transcendental quality when compared with a mere experiencing state, nevertheless what is questioned is the experience, and the answer is expected within this experience, not beyond or behind it. The answer will be formative of new experience within the " old " experience-the same experience but transformed. Such questioning " of " or "into " experience could be described in lengthy and exact detail using a phenomenological analysis, but my purpose is not to engage in such descriptions but to score what I think is a key epistemological fact, namely, that the questionable is immediately present to you the questioner. Even as a sensible experience-before questioning supervenes-is immediately present to you as" senser," so this same experience as questionable is also immediately present to you as questioner. Experience as "given" is immediately present but so is experience as " questionable," also spontaneously and immediately given. This point is crucial because the act of understanding is not immediately given; neither are concepts, propositions, premises, explanations nor conclusions. The latter are cognitional " products " and are " mediated " experiences-mediated by the action of understanding, by grasping the intelligibility, latent and immanent in experience. Children have to learn answers, but questioning and its objective is not learned; it is spontaneously and immediately given. The epistemological significance of this " immediacy " is that when it comes to verification " the knower " will insist on immediate evidence to validate and guarantee his propositional claims. If sensible experience is the only immediate experience, then the sensible field will necessarily be the field of objectivity. Lonergan, however, has located a " second " LONERGAN'S EPISTEMOLOGY 83 field of immediacy, namely, the same experiential field as intrinsically questionable. The reason that this field is rather difficult to specify is because " specificity " follows upon and is grounded in understanding; but understanding has in turn a prior given and that is questioning. The objective of questioning is the "understandable" that is not-yet-understood, and so while such " understandableness " is immediately given, it is not clearly and conceptually given. The object as questionable is suspiciously vague and stands in need of the clarification that an insight provides. Questioning, then, is a "way" of knowing but not a very satisfying way; it is knowing on its way to a further phase of knowing, namely, knowing by understanding. From understanding emerge concepts, and by further understanding concepts are related and propositional structures emerge. The spontaneity of questioning, however, does not end with the formation of propositional structures. The propositions themselves are further "conditioned" by questions that seek the verifiability of propositions-" This seems true but is it really so?" "That looks like Aunt Matilda but is it really she? " etc. And so, in addition to the questions what or why, a second question emerges-is it really so? This is the specifically epistemological question. Again, the same qualities noted in comparing the first two phases of knowing recur in this third phase of knowing. Just as the questionable was intrinsic to the experience but" transcendent " to the merely experienced, so the question, is it so, that intends to verify, transcends both fields and reaches the realm of the actual. The problem in specifying this actual or existential field is that most knowers tend to identify this field with the first experiential field, i. e., with experience as given. They would claim that the knower, while not immediately in touch with the intelligible field, nevertheless is immediately in touch with the existential field. Lonergan, on the other hand, insists that we the first through sheer know all three fields immediately: experiential awareness; the second through intelligent aware- 84 JOSEPH F. FLANAGAN ness generated by wondering what is it; the third through the type of awareness constituted by the question, is it so? Naturally, this differentiation or specification is not itself spontaneous and immediate. The experiential field known in its immediacy is only potentially three different fields. You must " do " the differentiating before you know these fields in the way we have specified them. Immediate " knowing " of existence is just as vague and indefinite as immediate "understandableness ": there is an immediate, vague, preconceptual experiencing of experience as given, as understandable, and as existential. This is a somewhat subtle point that Lonergan is making, and it can only be made convincing by a gradual intensifying of one's own awareness of these three fields which, taken together, form a structured and dynamically interrelated experiential whole. If we return, again, to our example of the facial expression that puzzles you and makes you question your experience, we can perhaps clarify this point. When your interpretation (i. e., understanding) of this puzzling experience proves to be existentially correct, then your experience of your friend's facial expression shifts to a different type of awareness. You have a heightened sense of the inner meaning of his facial gesture. This verification of your interpretation takes place within the person's face; you have a fuller experience of what is actually taking place directly in front of you. The action of understanding " moves " you closer to this person; your experience seems more real and more true as it grows in intensity. This same intensification of experience is what Lonergan wishes to have happen in reading Insight. The only difference being that the immediate experience that Lonergan invites that reader to pay attention to is his own process of knowing, a process that is rarely understood, and only after long and patient analysis. Anyone who knows performs certain activities in the process of knowing but his knowledge of these " performances " is immediate and needs to be appropriated, i. e., understood and judged. However, Lonergan does not intend that this appropriation of experiencing, understanding, and verifying will re- LONERGAN'S EPISTEMOLOGY 85 suit in an abstract, theoretical grasp of what knowing means; he intends to have the reader understand and verify within his own immediately experiential, immediately intelligible, and immediately existential fields. For example, most people know what walking and talking is, and that it is something they do for themselves. Rarely, however, does a person understand what understanding is and the fact that it is a personal performance. Lonergan spends ten chapters trying to provide clues for the reader to understand his understanding and thereby gradually develop a critically intensified awareness of what he is doing when he is understanding. Even as a person " does " walking and talking so, in an analogous sense, he "does" understanding. Furthermore, he does it quite regularly but without having this heightened experience that Lonergan is trying to develop. Senators, congressmen, and supreme court judges have considerable skill in judging human experience; but rarely have they ever adverted to the immediate experience of their own acts of judging and its immediate objective. Only if they mediate their cognitional experience through a long series of successful acts of understanding and verifying will they actually possess this heightened awareness of knowing intelligently and existentially what knowing actually is. Knowing, then, for Lonergan is to be appropriated not simply as a theory or an idea but as a performance, and so, in chapter eleven, when he asks the reader to affirm that he is a knower, he clarifies and stresses this point in several ways. First, the reader is reminded that this affirmation of self as a knower does not mean that you really know yourself or someone else by experiencing understanding and judging. The question-are you a knower-merely asks whether you perform certain acts, namely, experiencing-understanding-judging. In the following chapter, twelve, he will focus on the content or objective of knowing, but in the eleventh chapter he only intends that the reader, who has intensified and heightened his performance of knowing by mediating these immediate cognitional experiences, affirm this performance as it actually occurs or has occurred. The object and objectivity of this affirmation is deliberately prescinded from. 86 JOSEPH F. FLANAGAN A second and more significant clarification of the questionare you a knower--is that this proposed affirmation is factual and not necessary. This distinction between knowing as factual and knowing as necessary is of crucial epistemological significance since it divides Kant and Lonergan on a fundamental point. Kant focused on the universality and necessity that characterized scientific propositions without stressing the personal performance which conditions the actual occurrence of any judgment on universality. The judgment may be" of" a universal object, but the judging itself is at best only an occurrence. It is this emphasis on the factuality or existentiality of the activity of understanding and judging, and not on the content or terms of these acts, that allows Lonergan to distinguish the cognitional and epistemological questions. Furthermore, in appropriating these immediate cognitional acts Lonergan is just as concerned about common-sense patterns of knowing which emphasize judgments " of " particular and concrete events as he is in judgments about universal and necessary events which characterize scientific patterns of knowing. Whether we do or do not know universal and necessary objects is not Lonergan's concern in the first eleven chapters of Insight. Or, even if we do know necessary objects, the acts by which we" do" such knowing are particular, concrete, personal acts and are neither necessary nor universal. Very few people ever take the trouble to know universal objects such as gravity and electrons. The much more common experience of knowing is within patterns that deal with particular, concrete happenings. Lonergan wants a completely concrete and comprehensive treatment of what you do when you know, and so he must methodically distinguish his own intent from the more limited context that Kant dealt with. Lonergan attempts to characterize human knowing in any form, and he does this by distinguishing act and content; and then asking the reader to verify the occurrence or non-occurrence of these acts regardless of content. The stress, then, is on knowing as it happens in your immediate experience. And certainly the mental " click" that signals LONERGAN'S EPISTEMOLOGY 87 an insight is not a necessary happening. Quite the opposite, it is only a fact, and it is such a fact only when it happens that you do understand. More often we misunderstand and that, too, is only another instance of incorrect knowing that may or may not recur. There is nothing necessary about the" coming into existence" of human insights. At best, human knowing is a probable occurrence that becomes certain only when it de facto occurs. Insights can be highly delightful experiences but no one can guarantee that they will happen or, once they have happened, that they will continue to happen. Our" cognitional lives " tend to be a question of frequencies, not necessities. The more frequent the insights the more intelligent the person and vice-versa. There is a radical, existential contingency at the center of Lonergan's epistemological focus. THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL QuESTION Having completed the development of his cognitional position in chapter eleven Lonergan moves on to the epistemological problem in chapter twelve. The reader of Insight is thrown off by the title of this chapter: "The Notion of Being." It sounds as if Lonergan is entering into a metaphysical analysis. However, as we pointed out in our introductory remarks, Lonergan holds that a metaphysical position depends intrinsically on a prior epistemological position, and so in chapter twelve, while his concern is epistemological, he is also laying the foundation for his metaphysical theory. There is a further reason for taking up the notion of being at this point. Recall that in developing his cognitional theory Lonergan insists that the question: What is knowing? methodologically precedes the question: What is objective knowing? Further, in analyzing the question of knowing Lonergan reflects on all the patterns of knowing: biological, aesthetic, practical, theoretical, and dramatic. And so when he turns to the objective or content of knowing he naturally raises the question about the objective of all knowing, which objective he will identify through his notion of being. 88 JOSEPH F. FLANAGAN At the start of this study we phrased the epistemological question in the following way: Why does the performance of experiencing, understanding, and judging make me a knower? In the present context we can phrase it this way: does knowing, whatever its form, have a common objective? Or, why is knowing, knowing? Or, is there a completely comprehensive and completely concrete form of knowing? The answer to all of these questions is the same: being. Knowing is knowing in any particular case when it provides the knower with a knowledge of being. Knowing is objective when it is knowing of being. Knowing is completely objective when it knows being completely. We shall now proceed to explain the apparent paradox in these statements by showing how Lonergan's cognitional analysis allows him to introduce a rather original perspective into the traditional question as to the meaning of being. NOTION OF BEING By specifying knowing primarily through questioning, and by carefully distinguishing between the act of knowing and its content, Lonergan is able to differentiate the terms " notion " and " concept " in an original and technically exact way. Since conceiving follows from and expresses understanding, concepts are the contents or products of understanding. A " notion " on the other hand is the anticipation of understanding and expresses " knowing " in its questioning phase. To have a notion about something is to be intelligently suspicious about that thing, to be in a state of wonder and question. To question experience is to be immediately and intelligently present to this experience, but to question is not to understand but to anticipate understanding. And so, to speak of having a notion of being-in this sense of notion-means to know being immediately and yet not understand it. To have an idea, a concept, a theory, a proposition, or a premise is to understand, and so, to have a concept, idea, or theory of being is to understand being from some mediated perspective. To put the point of this distinction even more strongly: Is LONERGAN'S EPISTEMOLOGY 89 " being " as defined by Lonergan in chapter twelve someone or something? Is "being" conscious? Is "being" singular or plural? Is " being " a man or a woman? Is " being " God? The answer to all of these questions involves conceptual (mediated) knowledge, and Lonergan's notion of being methodically distinguishes between " notional " and " conceptual " knowledge by specifying the process of knowing through questioning. Besides identifying the notion of being with questioning there is a further characteristic of this notion that is still more significant-its unrestrictedness. As already described, there are two types of questions that a person asks when he seeks to know something-what is it, and, is it what I think it is. Questioning does not stop until both questions are answered, until you know whether or not things actually are the way you think they are. The actuality of things is what knowing demands to know. Or, knowing perfects itself only when it knows the being or non-being of its object. Being is the objective intended in any restricted set of questions, but it is also the objective intended in the totality of questions. Specific questions put you in search of specific unknowns but at the heart of any unknown is the objective (not object nor subject) of all questioning-being. Spontaneous questioning can be differentiated into questions for understanding and for judging. But such differentiation is not immediately and naturally known. The spontaneous source of all questioning is a more primordial wonder that initiates, sustains, and underlies the wonder of all wisdom and worship. This wonder has an immediate content, a profound unknowableness that remains beyond and within the most comprehensive answers. The question arises: but if wonder is so comprehensive, then, it can seem also to approach as its limit meaninglessness or even nothingness. But what does "nothingness" mean? It must be specified, and Lonergan is not specifying being by answers but by questions, the totality of questions. However, questions for judgment keep up until the correct answers are reached, and so, unlimited questioning includes questions about 90 JOSEPH F. FLANAGAN the correctness of answers. Being, then, is the totality of true judgments. The only characteristic of being that Lonergan specifies is its all-inclusiveness, and so it may turn out to be true that being is an unconscious thing, an all-encompassing unconscious thing. According to Lonergan's view at this point of his analysis "being" might turn out to be Hegel's absolute idea, since an idea pertains to conceptual content and not to "notional " content. Finally, the notion of being is a fact if certain conditions are fulfilled. If you experience the desire to raise an unrestricted number of questions, if such questioning includes a conscious demand for correct answers, then it is a fact you are-here and now-tending to know being. You are de facto tending--intelligently and critically-toward an unknown objective. With this notion of being as a background we can now state explicitly Lonergan's epistemological position. Knowing for Lonergan is objective when it knows the objective of any and all knowing, namely, being. Or, knowing is knowing when it is knowing being. Human knowing, however, is never fully comprehensive knowing, and so, our knowing is never fully objective in this precise sense. Yet, whatever the form of knowing it will not be satisfied at any level of knowing until it knows whether such knowing is true to the intent of knowing as expressed in the question-is it so? NOTION OF OBJECTIVITY Contradictory to the common impression, Lonergan holds that we do not know objects and subjects spontaneously and immediately, and then through the "medium" of this knowledge proceed to a knowledge of being. Spontaneously and immediately we know-notionally-being; and from and through this immediate objective we come to know this particular subject and this colored object and that this subject is other than that colored object. This seems to contradict our spontaneous impressions, and we tend to be skeptical about the claim that a child does not have some spontaneous and LONERGAN'S EPISTEMOLOGY 91 immediate knowledge of himself and his environment. To claim that a child must learn who he is, what a crib is, and that he is not a crib seems strange. But if such knowledge is not spontaneous, then at the very least if would seem to be immediately evident. The child can see a crib immediately but he does not know-understand and verify that it is a crib. Similarly, he is immediately present to himself but he does not " know " himself without questioning, understanding, and judging himself. We are subjects whenever our eyes are open and we are conscious, but we only occasionally question and understand what we are seeing. Even more surprising, we know being immediately and spontaneously, but we do not know this or that being until we understand and verify that it is a being, i.e., something. The notion of objectivity, then, pertains primarily to the notion of being, and not to this or that being, this or that thing. It is only after the knower knows subjects and objects does the familiar and more common notion of objective knowing (as opposed to subjective knowing) emerge. Lonergan designates this more familiar notion of objective a derived notion of objectivity. However, before elaborating on this distinction, it would be helpful to spell out in more detail the various meanings ordinarily associated with the term" objectivity," and then relate these various meanings to Lonergan's more technical specification of the term. There are three different sets of meanings ordinarily associated with the notion objectivity: First, to know objectively frequently means to know certainly, unquestionably, and indubitably; these qualities of objectivity stem from the " givenness " and immediacy of sensible experience. Second, objective knowing is associated with normative knowing. Knowing objectively is knowing normatively, logically, or scientifically, i. e., following rules and procedures that expose and eliminate subjective prejudices, personal perspectives, etc. Finally, there is a third set of meanings that cluster around the property of absoluteness or ultimateness. Objective knowing in this senst> is not only unprejudiced but it is completely public; it stands JOSEPH F. FLANAGAN outside any private awareness and can be verified by any one else. Such objectiveness is absolute in the sense that it cannot be contradicted by anyone regardless of changes in temporal, spatial, historical, or cultural conditions. What is truly objective will always and ultimately remain what it is, since it has its own existence independent of its being known by this or that knower. There is, then, a complex of meanings associated with the term objectivity which can be summarized under the three categories of givenness, normativeness, and absoluteness. Theories of objectivity tend to stress one or two of these qualities. For example, any knower, philosopher or farmer, knows that sensible objects are immediately evident. He is unquestionably sure of such objects. And, more significant, in this sensible phase of knowing, the knower is not " disturbing " the object. Eyes reveal objects not as you would like them to be, nor as you think they might be, but as they actually are. This unmistakeable " givenness " tends to be the only norm in emperical theories of objectivity. A Kantian, however, will point out that you cannot see universality and necessity, and so, conditions other than immediate sensible ones must also be given before you know objects that have these qualities. Various forms of the categories must also be present before one could know such scientific objects. But such a priori categories are not immediately given, and so the Kantian has the problem of reestablishing or locating the "immediacy" that characterized the objectivity of knowing before it " moved " to the understanding phase. Knowing if it is to be true to its object must bear an immediate relation to its object. Understanding may add to the object, but to understand the object on its own ground the knower must verify in his immediate experience this " contribution " of understanding. Thus the Kantian remains ambivalent as to what precisely constitutes the objectivity of scientific objects. Lonergan escapes this ambivalence because for him, not only is the given immediate but the normative and absolute are also immediate. Any judgment involves insight and expression which " medi- LONERGAN'S EPISTEMOLOGY 93 ates " the actual knowing of this or that thing, but any act of knowing, insofar as it intends to answer whether or not this knowing really is so, intends to know being. And, since being as a notion is immediately given, any full act of knowing mediates this immediate " knowing " o£ being. For Lonergan, then, the immediate object is specified by questioning and not by seeing or touching. Besides the sensibly immediate, there is also the intelligibly immediate present in questioning. Kant's focus on the products of knowing which are mediated by concepts leaves him with only one immediate field-the sensible. And, if one is forced to choose between abstract propositional objects and immediately present sensations as normative of objectivity, the sensible field naturally tends to predominate. The reason why sensible objects are so objectively certain i.3 because they are unquestioned. You are absolutely certain of what you see and touch until you raise a question about it, then the certitude evaporates. The certain object becomes the questionable object. The question destroys the deceptive certitude of sense. You are absolutely certain that this object is real until someone suggests that perhaps "realness" is only in your eye. Then the object is transformed and becomes immediately sensible and immediately questionable. The critical problem, then, is to distinguish within the field of immediacy both sensible and intelligible dimensions. This problem is especially acute when you intend, as Lonergan does, to set up a completely comprehensive notion of objectivity that will be equally applicable to physics and psychiatry. Taking questioning as the key to objectivity allows Lonergan to include both internal and external experience within his notion of objectivity. The "given" is not merely sensibly given but can also be consciously given. The more familiar way to speak of this distinction is to refer to the consciously given as internal experience and the sensibly given as external experience. However, if the reader will recall, this distinction implicitly assumes that before we question we already know the difference between internal and external data. Lonergan, on the other hand, insists we know being (notionally) before 94 JOSEPH F. FLANAGAN we know the difference between what is consciously given and what is sensibly given. He specifies the "given" as what is presupposed by questioning, which questioning may be of data as external or internal. Questioning itself has an ultimate objective that grounds the " reality " of the distinction between inner and outer. Certitude in knowing, then, ultimately stems from questioning not from sensing, and ultimate or absolute certitude stems from absolute questioning. The objective of such absolute unrestricted questioning is also immediately given, namely, being. And since any activity of questioning is not blind groping but intelligent searching, such questioning is also immediately normative of its object. Thus questioning specifies all three properties of objectivity-givenness, normativeness, and absoluteness. Questioning is the a priori of knowing and absolute or unrestricted questioning is the absolute a priori. By specifying givenness, normativeness, and absoluteness through unrestricted questioning, Lonergan can distinguish these three properties and assign each its correct role in determining the objectivity of a judgment. A truly objective judgment will be objectively true because it combines all three properties in successive phases: givenness, normativeness, and absoluteness. This pertains both to physics and to psychiatry; the only difference is that the former deals with externally given data and the latter with internally given data. Each science develops appropriate norms for dealing with its data but both sets of norms are ultimately involved in fixing questions that must be answered before their judgments can be qualified as critically objective. Likewise, both the physicist and psychiatrist intend to make judgments that are independent of their making them. In both cases there is a need for a quality of independence and absoluteness; " absoluteness " in any affirmation derives from the scope of questioning. Since all judgments involve placing a limit on questioning, such judgments will be limited or, to use Lonergan's technical terms, such affirmations are unconditionally certain in virtue of the fact that the conditions mtended within this field of questioning have been given. LONERGAN'S EPISTEMOLOGY 95 While the conditions that must be fulfilled differ considerably in physics and psychiatry according to the norms set-up, nevertheless, both sciences demand that these conditions be met before assent is given and a judgment is posited. The judgment, I am a knower, is such a virtually unconditioned one. It is absolutely certain judgment because the conditions for making it are consciously present to you as understanding, and knower. These conditions-experiencing, judging-are not necessarily given; they are merely given. To grasp "mere givenness " is to grasp how questioning supposes data but not any particular type of data, i.e., data as necessary. Objectivity involves "givenness " but it is a radically diffuse type of givenness; data can be absolutely anything as long as it can become questionable. And so to specify the given as given before questioning is to specify it as the unquestionably given, but also as indefinite and diffuse. But can a completely unrestricted objective be given? Yes, if it falls within a completely unrestricted questioning. As a matter of fact it must be given if unrestricted questioning is given. Thus, only a totally unrestricted being is necessarily given. All other '' givens " are radically unnecessary until they become known in relation to this ultimate necessity-being. The only absolute a priori is being, all other beings are mediations of this absolute; they are known as factual through its necessity; they are known as limited through its unlimitedness. Thus, the ultimate criterion that grounds the " absoluteness " of objectivity in physics or psychiatry stems from the same source-being as " formally " unconditioned. In any objective judgment, then, one can learn to distinguish (external or internal), normaobjective properties-givenness tiveness, and absoluteness. If you make a judgment, I am a knower, such an affirmation will have all three of these immediately objective qualities. I£ you make a second judgment, this is a desk, it will also be objective. If you make a third affirmation, I am not a desk, then you can reflect on these three objective judgments as an objectively judged subject, objectively distinguished from an objectively affirmed object. 96 JOSEPH F. FLANAGAN Or, you have the familiar notion of objectivity, namely, a subject objectively related to an object. This latter and more familiar notion of objectivity is a derived notion of objectivity which derives from a context of judgments, each of which is objective in its own right. But before we can derive this notion one must first mediate through understanding and judging some knowledge of himself, of an object, and of their respective differences. Once such a context has been established all further subject-object relations can be specified as objective or nonobjective within this prior context. For Lonergan there is an immediate notion of objectivity present in any single judgment, and a mediated notion derived from a context of at least three affirmations, each of which is objective in itself. Naturally, the Kantian will not make these distinctions, since from Lonergan's point of view he is already working with a mediated or derived notion of objectivity. The Kantian is not working within the context of an unrestricted objective but within a restricted field of objects, namely, scientific objects. Naturally, within such a context being is not given; being is only given and immediate when you reflect within an unrestricted field of questions. If one has never verified that such a field is given, then he cannot verify that any particular proposition presupposes such a field and that the objectivity of any proposition is ultimately derived from this immediate, allinclusive objectivity. Ultimately, the epistemological positions of the Kantian and Lonergan are not complementary but opposed. The Kantian is speaking of an objectivity that is knowable, and is de facto known. Lonergan is speaking of an objective that is unknown and is to be known only by a concrete, comprehensive, and completely critical answering of an unrestricted questioning. The " conditioned " for Lonergan is questioning, and it becomes a limited unconditioned with correct answers. The conditioned for the Kantian is the cognitional object constituted through conditions supplied by the knowing subject. Hence, knowing for Kant is constitutive of the cognitional object (formally constitutive), while knowing for Lonergan is constitutive of the LONERGAN'S EPISTEMOLOGY 97 knower (existentially constitutive), because what constitutes any being as truly being is the actual understandableness of the conditions as they happen to be. And the conditions that happen to be given to me are to experience, understand, and verify experiential, intelligible, and existential objects including myself within a context that is conditioned by an unrestricted objective. Thus my being is a self-constituted being within the conditions as they have thus far happened to have occurred. JosEPH F. FLANAGAN, Boston College Chestnut Hill, Ma8s. S. J. "WHERE GOD COMES IN " FOR ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD M y INTENTION IN choosing the title of this study is to focus on the point of entry for the consideration of God within a philosophical scheme that is vastly more complicated than a simple natural theology. The original draft of the article had " Getting at God " in the title, but a little further reflection made me realize that these words suggest the possibility of reading Whitehead without getting at God. No one who has read him even cursorily needs an article to disabuse him of the idea that the relationship of God to the total Whiteheadian framework might be a matter of " maybe so, maybe not." Even the expression " to come in " has a ring of the extrinsic and fortuitous about it. The words do, however, convey something of the problem at issue if they are understood as asking why Whitehead invokes the notion of God within his theoretical analysis of human experience and possibly why he made that particular analysis. It should be clear, then, that I am not primarily concerned with the particular notion of God formulated by him, although it must also be clear that we cannot speak of the reasons for the notion uberhaupt without involving ourselves broadly with the conceptual and imaginative content of that notion. The reader of this article might expect it to begin with an analysis of the argument found in chapters X and XI of Science and the Modern World since it is there that Whitehead comes closest to giving a formal proof for the necessity of his God. In fact, however, I am convinced that the point of entry for the notion of God in his system lies elsewhere. I prefer to begin with his understanding of what it means to philosophize. The rationale for this beginning should become apparent as I proceed. In his later writings Whitehead often refers to the 98 " WHERE GOD COMES IN " 99 task and method of philosophy, and the character of the references is sufficiently varied and unsystematic to demand an endeavor towards the clarification of their meaning and relationship. With these later works he largely equates philosophy with speculative philosophy, or metaphysics-although his frequent use of the adjective " speculative" would indicate that he is sensitive to the wider scope of the simple term philosophy. Throughout the following paragraphs, though, I shall let the general equation of philosophy with speculative philosophy stand. 1 Whitehead sketches a definition in Adventures of I deas. Speculative Philosophy can be defined as the endeavor to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted. 2 The same interest in such a " coherent, logical, necessary system " in the light of which we might interpret our experience and criticize the foundations of all the sciences appears again and again from Science and the Modern World through Modes of Thought. A philosopher, for Whitehead, must be a rationalist who will push explanation to its ultimate limits and who will leave no proposition safe from rational challenge. 3 He is concerned to formulate the " ultimate generalities," and yet his method must be at the same time descriptive and tentative inasmuch as the generalities are a response to the experience of the philosopher and his fellows and a response that cannot close off the possibility of alternate responses. 4 To the extent that Whitehead's "rationalizing" philosopher articulates a system of strictly descriptive generalities he avoids 1 It is not easy to say what non-speculative Whitehead since even the earlier, less ambitious philosophy would be like for projects, such as An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge (Cambridge, 1919) and The Concept of Nature (Cambridge, 1920), have the marks he would attribute to speculative philosophy. 2 Adventures in Ideas (New York, 1963), p. 285. 3 See ibid., immediately above the preceding quotation; Science and the Modern World (New York, 1948), pp. 18, 142; Process and Reality (New York, 1957), pp. 12, 232; Modes of Thought (New York, 1938), p. 237. 4 See Process and Reality, pp. 6, 12, 19. 100 MICHAL J. KERLIN the charge of laboring in abstraction from the universe of ordinary experience. His role is indeed to confront and surpass the abstractions proffered by the scientist and often incarnated in the language of common sense. 5 He will himself run the risk of turning his categoreal scheme into a congeries of abstractions either by limiting his own critique or by freezing a scheme beyond the moment in which it serves for the elucidation of experience. 6 Philosophizing means transcending not only the non-philosophical categories but also the philosophical categories being produced. The fallacy of the perfect dictionary in which everything is already defined cannot co-exist with the philosophical mind as it proclaims the possibility of novelty in every conception.• It is in the face of these " depths yet unspoken " that we can speak of philosophy as a product of wonder and its activity as essentially a romance akin to that of the poet and the mystic. 8 Obviously Whitehead's ideal of the philosopher includes some suggestion of the content of his own philosophy, a suggestion that should prove invaluable in the project at hand. Perhaps the most striking intimation of a link between the spirit of philosophy and the dominant place of God and of religion within the Whiteheadian description of experience centers in his association of wonder and romance with the philosophical undertaking, but I would prefer to withhold my remarks in this regard until after fixing on the import of the critique of abstractions. Although the work of the scientist has a vital significance for the philosopher of any age and in particular for the philosopher of the contemporary epoch, it is over against the most concrete intuitions of human experience that he must face the abstractions of both the scientist and the commonsense man. At one and the same time he looks to harmonize See Science and the Modern World, pp. 59, 88, See Process and Reality, pp. 11-13; Adventures in Ideas, p. 7 See Modes of Thought, pp. 8 See ibid., pp. 173-174, Even in evoking the romance of philosophy, Whitehead would continue to emphasize its distinctive function as a rationalizing activity. "The purpose of philosophy is to rationalize mysticism." 5 6 " WHERE GOD COMES IN " 101 them " by assigning to them their rightful status as abstractions " and to complete them by a confrontation with " concrete fact." 9 It is, above all, the order of concrete fact, of primary experience, albeit under the influence of present-day physics and of certain other philosophers, that moves Whitehead to reject the image of the world as composed of simple objects or of unchanging substances supporting the flux of accident and to propose the philosophy of organism. 10 The basic texture of experience must make us see process, that is, an incessant movement of interconnected change, as the fundamental given available to theory. 11 Whitehead's elaboration of that intuition in terms of events and objects, physical and conceptual prehensions, feelings and values, is his effort to be faithful to all the nuances of structure and relationship presented in the givenness of process. He would in that sense have no objection to being called a "radical empiricist" as William James described himself in The Meaning of Truth. The terms introduced in the preceding paragraph call for explication, but within this essay such explication can have place only insofar as it is required for the progression of the discussion and precisely where it is required. At this juncture it is most important that Whitehead's descriptive response to the donnees of experience involves his giving considerable attention to the phenomenon of religion. Most evidently, what we generally call religion is part of the experience-and in no way a negligible part of that experience-of many men; and it must consequently be accounted for by the philosopher in his movement beyond all abstractions. " Philosophy finds religion, and modifies it; and conversely religion is among the data of experience which philosophy must weave into its own 9 See Science and the Modern World, p. 88; Process and Reality, pp. 6, 9, !l5. It hardly needs to be remarked that Whitehead's stated objective comes very close to that of phenomenologists like Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. 10 See William Christian, An Interpretation of Whitehead's Metaphysics (New Haven, 1959), pp. 168-172, for a similar judgment on the relative weight of scientific determinations and the facts of immediate experience in the formation of Whitehead's metaphysics. 11 See Modes of Thought, pp. 10-11, 73, 131. 102 MICHAL J. KERLIN scheme." 12 Whitehead places the origins of religion in the emotion attendant upon successful ritual and subject to growing articulation in myth and doctrine/ 3 and all of his discussions of religion in whatever phase bring together the elements of feeling and vision. That feeling would be of the essence here is natural to a philosopher who could say that "every reality is there for feeling: it promotes feeling; and it is felt." 14 But it is not possible to speak of the particular feeling in men that we call religious emotion without evoking the special manner of apprehending the world associated with the feeling; and, because of the character of that apprehension and of the world apprehended, we can with some justification say that at this locus " God comes in." 15 But we cannot simply say that God is the objective correlate of the religious emotion. My purpose in the next few paragraphs will be to clarify the nature of that correlate and its bearing on the theme of this article. 16 * * * * * In the one study that he devotes exclusively to religion Whitehead develops two principal points of view on its essence, the solitariness of religious man, and the reference of religious feeling to the factor of permanence in the world of flux. The two perspectives appear in the almost classical definition put forth in the initial chapter: " Religion is the art and the theory of the internal life of man, so far as it depends on the man himself and on what is permanent in the nature of things." 17 It is with the latter part of the definition that we must be principally concerned. The pre-occupation of the work with 12 Process and Reality, p. 23. Later I shall have to make a clarification as to the way in which religion is given for Whitehead. 13 See Religion in the Making (Cleveland, 1960), chapter 1. 14 Process and Reality, p. 472. 15 The single event or society of events which is both emotion and vision brings to mind the intuition-feeling of which Friedrich von Hiigel made so much. 16 We can speak of an objective correlate here provided that we keep in mind Whitehead's effort to go around the rigid subject-object dichotomy of classical metaphysics and epistemology. 17 Religion in the Making, p. 16. " WHERE GOD COMES IN " 103 permanence is singled out in the brief preface attached to the lectures that compose it. The aim of the lectures was to give a concise analysis of the various factors in human nature which go to form a religion, to exhibit the inevitable transformation of religion with the transformation of knowledge, and more especially to direct attention to the foundation of religion on our apprehenesion of these permanent elements by reason of which there is a stable order in the world, permanent elements apart from which there could be no changing world. 11 The stress on permanence as a correlate of religious experience and aspiration comes up repeatedly thereafter in Religion in the Making and occurs under various guises throughout the other writings of what is often labelled Whitehead's metaphysical period.19 Permanence is, however, not the only matter on which the broad-brush image of religion turns in any of these works, although Whitehead would surely judge the reference to the abiding as an essential element of the religious emotion. In Science and the Modern World he paints a picture of religion that can function here as an omnibus definition joining the sense of permanence with other distinct, but interrelated elements. Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind, and within, the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest. 20 What is added to the notion of permanence in these lines is within the realm of tone and of scope. It is, in fact, a nuancing that determines the type of permanence at issue in religious life. Religion, as Whitehead views it, is a recognition that the Ibid., preface. See ibid., pp. 60, 77, 84; Process and Reality, p. 318. 20 Science and the Modem World, p. 191. 18 19 104 MICHAL J. KERLIN order of transitive and finite events stands open to an of possibility. 21 It is a joyous acknowledgement of the everrenewed manifestation of novelty in the world-of a novelty never to be lost from the world in which it arises. 22 Finally, and in a fashion to complete the circle, it is an active hope in the harmony and richness of that future world. 23 In all of this it must be quite clear that what constitutes religion is an aesthetic feeling for and reading of the world rather than the particular set of doctrines that express it or the particular practices that spring from it. 24 As I have presented Whitehead's understanding of religion thus far, he concentrates on the most general of reference points for religious experience. He speaks of religion as being an attention to "permanence," to "ideal unity," to "the infinite in the finite," always to "something which." I have made no reference to his doctrine on God or to the place of God in religion as he describes it, and the omission has been intentional. The permanent, the ideal unity, the general and the infinite cannot simply be identified wih God. Most of the above references remain that unspecific; and, referring to the sense of permanence, Whitehead would explicitly state, on the one hand, that such permanence is not a characteristic peculiar to divinity 25 and, on the other hand, that religious experience of itself provides no clear-cut image of its correlate. 26 Yet he 21 See Process and Reality, p. and Lucien Price, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (London, 1954), p. 130. •• See Religion in the Making, pp. 109, 146; Process and Reality, pp. 377, 530. All of these passages go beyond simple references to religion, but they do support my elucidation of the above quotation. 28 See Religion in the Making, pp. 58, 148, 179; Process and Reality, pp. 530. We could apply the comment of the above footnote to most of these references. •• Dialogues, p. 59, presents the difference between religious feeling and ordinary aesthetic feeling as a matter of religious feeling being less concrete and more in danger of leaving us in mid-air. 25 Both eternal objects and the societies of events, each in a different way, have a note of permanence. As we shall see, their permanence is not irrelevant to religious feeling. 26 See Religion in the Making, pp. 60, 65, 84. Whitehead is here interested in the distance between feeling and formulation and in the impossibility of moving simply from feeling to a personal God. " WHERE GOD COMES IN " 105 would also maintain that the concept of God has an essential relationship to religious feeling and that all religion is an expression of the human search for God. 27 The content and function of the concept in religious life will vary according to culture and probably according to the place of this or that individual in the world, and it will be the task of the philosopher to apply the power of rationalization to the concept and image of God contained in belief and myth. 28 Much that follows in this essay will be an account of Whitehead's own effort at such a rationalization. It may be possible for the philosopher to stand outside religious experience and to make some fairly perceptive statements about its import in human life. But, in the case of Whitehead, there can be no question of standing outside such experience. The development of each of the later works makes it patent that religion is not just an interesting phenomenon subject to his philosophical analysis but that it represents an approach to the world in which he fully participates. Although something could be made of his boyhood in an ecclesiastical family and of his interest in theological books as a young man by way of explaining this direction, it remains most important for us that the religious reading of experience permeates his metaphysical thinking. His is the faith that he describes in the first chapter of Science and the Modern World. The faith in the order of nature which has made possible the growth of science is a particular example of a deeper faith. This faith cannot be justified by any inductive generalization. It springs from direct inspection of the nature of things as disclosed in our own immediate present experience. There is no parting from your own shadow. To experience this faith is to know that in being ourselves we are more than ourselves: to know that our experience, dim and fragmentary as it is, yet sounds the utmost depths of reality: to know that detached details merely in order to be themselves demand that they should find themselves in a system of things: to know See Process and Reality, p. 315; Science and the Modern World, p. 190. See Religion in the Making, pp. 72-76, and Science in the Modern World, all of chapter XII, on the variations, and Religion in the Making, pp. 28-86, 76-78, on the role of the philosopher. 27 28 106 MICHAL J. KERLIN that this system includes the harmony of aesthetic achievement: to know that, while the harmony of logic lies upon the universe as an iron necessity, the aesthetic harmony stands before it as a living ideal moulding the general flux in its broken progress towards finer, subtler issues.29 The texture of this " deeper faith " is clearly of the same nature as that of the religion described earlier. Both are expressions of loyalty to a world of flux that is also a world of permanence, novelty, and harmony. 30 And, once again, God is an essential correlate of such loyalty. The works we have chiefly been considering leave no doubt as to the correlation, and the last statement recorded by Price in his Dialogues can qualify as a version of the quotation above in " God-talk" rather than " world-talk." 31 To the question, " Where does God come into the thought of Whitehead?" we must, then, answer that-whatever the specific lines of argument-God enters into the philosophical picture principally through the fundamentally religious orientation of the man who is a philosopher. Whitehead cannot do philosophy, certainly not metaphysics, other than "religiously," and the concept God is largely inseparable for him from religion. 32 At this point we are returned to the manner in which he depicts the philosophical endeavor as a product of wonder and romance closely akin to the ways of the poet and the mystic. The understanding of mysticism in Whitehead may give us some pause, but religion and philosophy are certainly within some limits of kinship. Both join the infinite and the finite, the general and the particular, the permanent and the transitory. 33 What establishes the distinction between religion Science and the Modern World, p. 20. See Religion in the Making, p. 59, where Whitehead states explicitly that "religion is world-loyalty." 31 See Dialogues, p. 366. 32 The final two paragraphs of the article will involve an effort on my part to show to what degree it might be possible to talk of the concept God as separable from that of religion in Whitehead. 83 See Process and Reality, p. 23; Essays in Science and Philosophy (New York, 1947)' p. 14. 29 80 " WHERE GOD COMES IN " 107 and philosophy is that the former operates as an emotionally unifying principle whereas the latter is primarily a conceptual operation. 34 Religion may well flow into metaphysics and metaphysics into religion, but the work of philosophy continues to be that of elaborating the categories and criticizing the abstractions. Because Whitehead fears the hysteria that could be the companion of the powerful feelings of uncriticizable religious emotion, he takes metaphysics to be of vital importance for the health and strength of religion. 35 One major function of the metaphysical reflection on religious experience is to draw out more clearly the significance of a man's religious view of the world and the role that God plays for him and for the world within that view. The burden of the next several pages will be an attempt to sketch the structure of Whitehead's metaphysics insofar as it replies to the question about God and to try to close the circle of his religious thought. * * * * * Whitehead allows for no such thing as a proof for the existence of God. 36 This refusal to allow for proofs would follow consistently from his understanding of metaphysics as a descriptive rather than a demonstrative endeavor. Still, he does not locate God within the field of immediate, factual intuition as he does the most basic poles of his cosmological construction. God and world are essential concepts in that construction, but they are the fruits of interpretation beyond intuition. 37 It should be legitimate, then, to speak of some fashion of argumentation that would lead us to grasp why God must come into consideration; and Charles Hartshorne, one of the principal interpreters of Whitehead, is surely right in finding something analogous to proofs in his work. Hartshorne would claim that the systematic reason for which a conception of God appears in his philosophy is that his categories require God as a chief and principle See Process and Reality, pp. 23, 67, 318. See Religion in the Making, pp. 63, 76, 81; Adventures in ldeats, p. 207. 36 See Process and Reality, p. 521. 37 See ibid., p. 518. 34 35 108 MICHAL J. KERLIN exemplification. He proceeds to offer six categories that call for such exemplification, and his listing is useful to us here. How do Whitehead's categories require a supreme example? There are as many answers as there are categories; for they all require God. (I) Possibility implies a supreme and primordial ground, actuality an all-inclusive actual entity, (3) the transition (creativity) from possibility to actuality a supreme creative agent, (4) memory a highest type of retention of elapsed events, (5) purpose and love a highest or perfect type of purpose and love, and (6) order a supreme ordering factor. 38 Since a discussion of all six of Hartshorne's points would stretch this article out of all reasonable length, I would like to take a somewhat different and perhaps shorter route with three headings: God as the ground of possibility; God as the savior of value; God as the principle of aesthetic harmony. Within the categoreal scheme of Process and Reality Whitehead writes " that the fundamental types of entities are actual entities and eternal objects; and that the other types of entities only express how all entities of the two fundamental types are in community with each other, in the actual world." 39 It is in making intelligible this community that he has recourse to God as a principle. Taking hold of his reason for this move requires some understanding of the role of the eternal objects themselves in making possibility reaJ.4° The Whitehead of The Concept of Nature and of An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge would already discuss senseobjects as having a trans-temporal permanence unlike the other objects considered along with them, and it is clear that this permanence is not simply a question of human cognition. 41 In later pieces the twofold stress is sharpened and broadened. 38 " Whitehead's Idea of God," in Paul Arthur Schilpp's The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, Evanston, 1941, p. 535. 39 Pwcess and Reality, p. 37. 40 The term eternal object is not universally present even in the later works although the argument that follows has validity even where the terminology is different. 41 See The Concept of Nature, pp. 143, 149; An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge, p. 83. " WHERE GOD COMES IN " 109 " Red " or " four " or " being first in a series " is indeed part of our experience of this particular event, or better nexus of events, but it is not without manifestation in other events at certain moments of experience and of the " subjective " events themselves as well as of our " subjective " experiencing them. 4 " Both features are significant in that the whole order of possibility and novelty depends upon the endless availability of form and the real ingression of such form into this or that event. 43 What Whitehead is trying to capture with the above analysis is the concrete realization of the creativity that he makes the ultimate in his whole metaphysical structure. 44 But for this realization he needs God, who is the " non-temporal actuality which has to be taken account of in every creative phase." 4 ;; Whitehead's ontological principle gives the domain of possibility no reality apart from the existence of some actual entity capable of envisaging it, and God must be this entity. In conformity with the ontological principle, this question I on the relations of eternal objects to each other I can be answered only by reference to some actual entity. Every eternal object has entered into the conceptual feelings of God. Thus a more fundamental account must ascribe the reverted conceptual feeling in a temporal subject to its conceptual feeling derived . . . from the hybrid physical feeling of the relevancies conceptually ordered in God's experience. 40 The primordial nature of God can be spoken of in terms of this very envisagement; and, since all envisagement is a matter of prehension and all prehension a matter of feeling, it can be 42 See Science and the Modern World, pp. 74, 107, 158-160; Process and Reality, pp. 78, Essays in Science and Philosophy, p. 146. •• See Process and Reality, p. 63; Science and the Modern World, pp. UO, 176. Both below and above I make habitual use of the term event rather than the later occasion of Process and Reality. There (p. US) occasion is more basic ("limiting event ") and event more generic. It suits my purpose to be generic and let events include occasions . .. See Process and Reality, pp. on the ultimate. '"Religion in the Making, p. 91. •• Process and Reality, p. 110 MICHAL J. KERLIN further described as " the unconditioned conceptual valuation of the entire multiplicity of eternal objects." 47 In turn, the eternal objects conceptually valued by each event (or society of events) are the "lure for feeling" that moves every one of them; and God in his primordial aspect will be lured and lurer for all of them singly and as a whole. 48 Hence, Whitehead's willingness to use eros and nisus in the stead of the prim.ordial nature of God: God is the " urge to the future " without which there would be no genuine possibility and no relevant novelty. 49 It is also in their manner of ingression into events that the eternal objects demand God in his primordial nature. Ingression means the concretion of a new value setting for physical feeling. With respect to all realized value Whitehead would posit that the price of such value is restriction and limitation 50 and that of itself the order of possibility is without restriction or limitation and unable to explain determinate existence. 51 Nor is the pure creativity that cuts through all that is actual a principle of sufficient determinacy to ground Whitehead thus turns to God as the final irrational foundation of all limitation and consequently of all concretion. Thus as a further element in the metaphysical situation, there is required a principle of limitation. Some particular how is necessary, and some particularization in the what of matter of fact is neces47 Ibid., p. 46. The tendency of Whitehead to speak of events as a congeries of eternal objects (Science and the Modern World, p. 105) and of God as the pure envisagement of these objects leads Pols in Whitehead's Metaphysics to ask if the eternal objects are not the only Whiteheadian reality. However much Whitehead leaves himself open to the interpretation, it certainly runs counter to his manifest intention. It is also important to remember that the forms of possibility are not the arbitrary creation of God. They have their own unique validity and inter-relationships. 48 See Process and Reality, pp. 287, 523. 49 See ibid., p. 47, on the urge to the future; pp. 248, 377, on novelty; Adventures in Ideas, p. 326, on the eros image; Essays in Science and Philosophy, p. 117, on that of nisus. 50 See Science and the Modern World, p. 178; Religion in the Making, pp. 101, 111. 51 See Process and Reality, pp. 33-34. 52 See Religion in the Making, p. 92. " WHERE GOD COMES IN " 111 sary. The only alternative to this admission, is to deny the reality of actual occasions. Their apparent irrational limitation must be taken as a proof of illusion and we must look for reality behind the scene. . . . God is the ultimate limitation, and His existence is the ultimate irrationality. 53 The Whiteheadian God is, then, not only lure like Plato's forms or Aristotle's unmoved mover, but also dynamic force like Plato's demiurge or Aquinas's version of the unmoved mover. 54 The joint motif of God as lure and limit-giver is inseparable from Whitehead's thought about the primordial nature. But God must " come in " also as one who is capable of receiving all the value that is created and of endowing it with a species of permanence not to be lost. God must have a consequent nature responsive to the world as well as an atemporal primordial aspect. 55 Of themselves, values have no survival beyond the occasions that incarnate them, and these occasions are essentially transitory and "perishing." 56 They will, it is true, have some continuance in the events and societies touched by them through physical causality. Whitehead looks, however, for a reception of values by a force at work in the whole and able to divide good from evil towards the future. The consequent nature of God is his judgment on the world. He saves the world as it passes into the immediacy of his own life. It is the judgment of a tenderness which loses nothing that can be saved. It is also the judgment of a wisdom which uses what in the temporal world is mere wreckage. 57 The consequent nature of God is, in this way, the guarantee of the objective immortality accessible to every value, whether singular or societal, but it is an immortality that saves the Seience and the Modern World, pp. 178-179. See Dorothy Emmet, Whitehead's Philosophy of Organism (New York, 1966), chapter VIII, on this point. 55 With Hartshorne, Whitehead (Process and Reality, p. 50) would see the primordial nature as essentially abstmct. 56 See Process and Reality, p. 525. 53 5• •• Ibid. 112 MICHAL J. KERLIN individual for ends beyond its own particular goals and purposes. 58 Thus far I have remarked two general directions from which God enters Whitehead's metaphysical scheme: the grounding of possibility and the saving of value. The two considerations taken together in their contexts evidence a definitely aesthetic turn in his thought about God; and, although in many contexts the aesthetic side remains implicit, in others it provides a distinctly Whiteheadian avenue of approach to God. The primordial nature of Deity may bring forth novelty without weighing the relative merits of this concretion and that, 59 but this same Deity in its character as consequent gathers all towards truth and goodness and beauty. God will stand as the measure of aesthetic harmony and as the surety that pure chaos is impossible. 60 Yet his relation to the harmony is not merely an extrinsic one in the style of Paley's watchmakerwatch relationship. The multiplicity in some sense becomes one with his consequent nature, and the result is that we can no more speak of God sans world than we can speak of the world sans God. 61 And the oneness of God and the world is an aesthetic unity-aesthetic for us and aesthetic in itself. Two crucial notes must be added to this image of God as the ultimate principle of aesthetic harmony in the universe, and both concern the vitality of the harmony at issue. On the one hand, Whitehead would insist that the unity grounded by God is never static but always towards new ideals and new realizations of novelty. It is a matter of God's transcending himself in his superjective nature, 62 and man's true destiny, his dignity, and his grandeur are that he is co-creator with God in 58 See Essays in Science and Philosophy, pp. 90-91; Religion in the Making, pp. 151-152. •• See Process and Reality, pp. 160-161. The tenderness of God for each actual occasion as it arises is greatly reminiscent of George Tyrrell's "Divine Fecundity." 60 See Process and Reality, pp. 169, 526; Religion im the Making, pp. 96, 101, 146. Elsewhere (Process and Reality, p. 434) God is the principle of physical law. 61 See ibid., p. 529. The reference recalls the religious concern of Whitehead for permanence within flux. 6 " See Modes of Thought, p. 142. " WHERE GOD COMES IN " 113 the universe. No sooner do God and man arrive than they start a new journey. 63 But neither novelty nor order is the aim of God's life: for him as for all else, feeling and actuality are everything. This is the conception of God, according to which he is considered as the outcome of creativity, as the foundation of order, and as the goal towards novelty. " Order" and " novelty " are but the instruments of his subjective aim which is the intensification of "formal immediacy." It is to be noted that every actual entity, including God, is something individual for its own sake; and therefore transcends the rest of actuality. 64 If we remember the simply rational (in the old scholastic sense) distinction betwen feeling and value, feeling and actuality, we perceive that Whitehead could never accept God as simply a function of a forever unachieved future or a testimony of an abstract organization. Immediacy is, however, of the very essence of the aesthetic life; and all that has been said about limitation and harmony plays back into it. The depth of value, the depth of actuality, is not conceivable without the unity of concrete reality opening out to a limitless future. 65 God becomes, then, not only the guarantor of the aesthetic whole, but also the mirror in which that whole with all of its very real parts is fully valued and therefore fully immediate. 66 * * * * * I think that it should be clear that Whitehead's introduction of God into his metaphysics is in great measure aesthetically motivated; and, given the largely aesthetic understanding of religion that we saw at the beginning of this article, we have once again closed a circle. In fact, if I am to state a thesis, it must be that God comes into Whitehead's philosophy because that philosophy is aesthetic and religious from start to finish. It is the thought of a man who takes the religious sense of the •• See Dialogues, p. 366. •• Process and Reality, p. 135. See also ibid., p. 160; Religion in the Making, p. 97. •• See Religion in the Making, p. 146. •• See ibid., p. 148. 114 MICHAL J. KERLIN world seriously, who interprets that sense aesthetically, and who himself participates in it. Religious feeling so permeates this philosophy that the philosophical endeavor flows back and forth from religious feeling, and philosophical truth has all the aesthetic elements o£ religion. 67 And the health o£ philosophy in its very details calls for something analogous to Whitehead'3 many-sided God at work in the universe. 68 That God serves a vital role in making his metaphysics adequate to the experience o£ the world as an aesthetic and religious whole. Whitehead's own experience is dominantly o£ this tenor, and he asks his hearers and readers to test the internal consistency o£ his description and its applicability to their personal experience. I can at best make some suggestions towards such a testing. Anything more would require another essay at least as long as the presentation itself. Since I have been saying throughout that God is in Whitehead's philosophy £rom the beginning because he is in his way o£ doing philosophy, it might be thought that I would recognize no possibility o£ separating out the specific lines o£ argumentation and challenging him on them. On the contrary, Whitehead does call £or the entrance of his God at certain definite junctures; and the reasoning he uses must be subject to critique on the basis o£ consistency and adequacy. We can question whether God is required for the explanation o£ the availability and concretion o£ form, £or the saving o£ value, or for the grounding o£ ultimate aesthetie harmony. Indeed, we might challenge the whole Whiteheadian theory about eternal objects and their concretion or the Whiteheadian pre-occupation with the preservation o£ value into the future and with the dynamic harmony o£ the universe. In the first case, we would be asking about the possibility of reconstructing Whitehead's philosophy without God, and in the second about the worth o£ that philosophy in general. It may thus be perfectly reasonable to expect that he could have made sense o£ the seeming atemporality o£ forms in the world and in human knowledge without referring to God and See Adventures of Ideas.• pp. 432-344. See Process and Reality, p. 481, on the significance of the primordial and consequent natures of God for a rational view of the universe. 67 68 " WHERE GOD COMES IN " 115 yet in a manner fairly coherent with the basic principles of his categoreal scheme. But to ask him to eliminate all reference to the eternal objects would be to ask him to abandon his reading of the world. The distinction is even more important on the other specific points of entry for God in his philosophy. A Whiteheadian theory without God may be imaginable, but no theory unconcerned about values and harmony could merit to be called Whiteheadian at all. It may seem that my allowance of a Whiteheadian theory without God stands in contradiction with my claim in this article to discover the place of insertion for God not so much in particular arguments as in the general fashion of doing philosophy. The truth of the matter is that God comes into Whitehead's philosophy because of its basic thrust and yet he might have taken a somewhat different course. The overall aesthetic and religious direction is of the very essence of his world-view and affects both the style and the content of his writing, and God enters as a correlate to this aesthetic and religious reading of the world. Thus the idea God is linked with the most fundamental terms of his approach to experience and will in all likelihood pass any test for internal coherence, logic, and necessity with respect to the system, but the connection depends upon the choice of a certain mode of interpretation rather than upon the directness of intuition that justifies some of the other terms of his speculative philosophy. 63 Whitehead obviously feels that his description of experience will have more systematic coherence, logic, and necessity with such an idea than without-indeed he makes the idea world no less interpretative than God and sets the two in polar relationship with each other. 70 But, however much it may be a natural element of a system like his, he would not maintain that God is the only idea capable of contributing such consistency. It is meaningful, then, to attempt to reconstruct Whitehead with many of his principles but with something 69 See, once again, Process wnd Reality, p. 518. The neat distinction Whitehead makes between the fruit of intuition and that of interpretation will probably not hold up, but I cannot consider the issue here. •• See the same work in the same place. 116 MICHAL J. KERLIN else serving the function that God serves in the philosophy he has given us. Although that " something else " will not be God, it will have to support an approach to the world that originally demanded the God concept. The reconstruction could not quite be Whitehead, but it could qualify as Whiteheadian.71 The question would be whether it holds together and provides an adequate account of experience. A philosophy, though, that did not give a primacy to the aesthetic and religious pre-occupation which permeates Whitehead's thought and which lies behind the interest in form and value, harmony and immediacy, would in no sense be Whiteheadian and would demand a testing as a completely different type of philosophy. SUMMARY The purpose of this article is to locate the point of entry for the concept of God in the speculative philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Although the article does attend to the lines of reasoning that explicitly justify talk about God in Whitehead (the grounding of possibility, the saving of value towards the future, the establishment of ultimate aesthetic harmony) , it gives primacy to the general character of his philosophy both as to method and content and takes up the specific arguments only in relation to this general character. The basic thesis of the article is that God comes into Whitehead's philosophy because he is preoccupied with the religious and aesthetic reading of experience from beginning to end. It would seem that the concept of God can be separated from Whitehead's thought only on the condition that some other concept serve the same function within the scheme. A Whiteheadian philosophy without God might be conceivable, but an interpretation of experience that neglected the religious and aesthetic dimensions which bring the philosopher to talk of God would in no sense be Whiteheadian. La Salle College Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 71 MICHAEL J. KERLIN Note Donald W. Sherburne's efforts to make such a reconstructioo. A METAPHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTION ON THE ARISTOTELIAN AND KANTIAN TREATMENTS OF TIME A CONSTANT DANGER which besets anyone who endeavors to compare the doctrine of two philosophers on a single topic is that he might station himself at the attitude-perspective on one of the philosophers and criticize the other purely in terms of this vantage point. I£ criticizing one system or philosopher from the vantage point of another system or philosopher is not the prime reason for the seemingly irreconcilable rifts between philosophical schools, it at least contributes to these rifts. And very often, like the yankee in a foreign country, the philosophers must end up pointing at things or inventing terms on the spur of the moment, in order to make themselves understood, if possible, in lieu of the " language " of the strangers. In this article I will, of course, try to avoid "negativity" in the sense of argumentativeness. Does this imply that I will attempt to view the doctrines of Kant and Aristotle from above, as it were? Perhaps, more precisely, from between the both of them. From this " position" I would like to set myself the task, not of locating logical identities, nor of finding mathematically exact congruences, but merely of observing general symmetries in the doctrines of the two men on a specific topic. The fact that one presupposes that such symmetry can be found might, of course, suggest an a priori bias towards oversimplification. But if he analyzes the writings of both philosophers and happens to notice a notable similarity of content represented under notably different forms, this would seem to be a case of "a posteriori observation" in the domain of philosophy. That is, the "observation" of attitudes and an attempt to draw unified conclusions from these observations. 117 118 HOWARD P. KAINZ But i£ this be a valid approach, it would certainly be naive and undisciplined unless there were first a realization o£ the definite, solid differences in the viewpoints o£ the two authors in question. Therefore, before we examine the symmetries, mention should be made o£ the differences (£or without the differences, symmetry would not be there, only identity): Three major differences might be noted in the philosophies o£ Aristotle and Kant: 1) Aristotle set out to describe the physical world, going on the fundamental presupposition that the world was, indeed, intelligible. What was then necessary, upon this presupposition, was to make its potential intelligibility something actual, to bring its latent forms out into the open-in words, in concepts; and then, by a logical analysis o£ the properties o£ actual, intelligible form, to develop a metaphysics/ which, once made explicit, would in turn lend definiteness and clarity to the physical world in a semi-autonomous way. But Kant's interests lay not so much in describing and delimiting the physical world, as in setting proper bounds to man's faculty o£ reason. Under impetus o£ the faith that he could best serve science and philosophy by accurately determining, once and £or all, just what man could know and not know, and the various ways in which he could be related to the knowable, and the various ways in which he could be deceived as to the pseudoknowable, he set himself to accomplish a more "introverted " task. His starting point was reflection, and his goal the exploration o£ the faculty o£ reflection: reason. And therefore it is significant that, while Aristotle developed a system o£ categories o£ physical being, Kant developed a system o£ categories by means o£ which we must think. 2) In consonance with his concentration upon the domain o£ pure reason, Kant was primarily interested in solving the major problems raised by that ambiguous zone where subjective and objective meet; that is, the zone where intuitions 1 Cf. Physics, II, 2, 194b; I, 9, 192a. TREATMENTS OF TIME 119 are unified in concepts, or where ideas, rightly or wrongly, are given determinate phenomenal reference as content. In terms of his solutions to these problems, he also arrived at the corollary conclusion that we can know nothing about the positive reality of a substance behind phenomena, or a " thingin-itself," although we must presuppose some such reality because of the exigencies of our logical processes. Kant seems to think that Aristotle also held, at least implicitly, an analogous notion about matter, that is, that matter was a substratum which had to be presupposed for appearances and that the necessity which was ascribed to matter was a merely logical necessity. 2 And such a notion may, indeed, be implicit in, e. g., the dictum of Aristotle that the " intelligible in act " is equivalent to the "intelligence in act." But explicitly, Aristotle always seems to treat of intelligible matter as something positive 3 and existing-in-itsel£.4 3) Kant, seeming to go on the presupposition that a philosophical system can only be complete and lucid when it is deduced in a manifestly unified way, looks upon Aristotle's system of categories as "defective." For Aristotle seems to have "merely picked them up as they came his way," 5 not proceeding on the basis of any predetermined unifying method, but purporting to find by experience a complete set of objectively different types of things in the physical world. But Kant proposes for himself the task of overcoming the deficiencies of such a " haphazard " method by exploring the basis for all distinction and "objective" differentiation, namely, the mind's operations of judgment. And thus his system will give 2 Critique of Pum Reason (N. Y.: St. Martin's Press, 1965), p. 516; (A 616; B 644) . All references to Kant's first critique in the body of this study will be to the 1781 and 1787 editions (A and B editions) . References to the A and B pagination are given in the Meiner German edition and in St. Martin's Press English Edition, both of which were used in the preparation of this article. Thus the A and B citations can be indirectly used to find texts in these two editions. Aristotle sharply differentiates his position here from that of "Physics, I, 9, Plato, who looked upon matter as privation per se. • Ibid., I, 6, 190a; also I, 9, 192a. 5 Critique of Pure Reason, p. 114; Meiner ed., S. 119 (A 81; B 107). 120 HOWARD P. KAINZ rise to a priori certainty and absolute comprehensivity, while Aristotle's would have only a tentative a posteriori certainty, i. e., a probability subject constantly to revision. Thus Kant takes as his starting point the inexorable laws of logic, proceeds to describe the world of pure reason in terms of the categories of thought, and also gives special attention to the problematics of the subjective-objective no-man's-land of " appearance." Aristotle, on the other hand, seems to take physical facts as his starting point, and thereupon to describe the changing and unchanging aspects of the physical world, even striving to deduce a set of empirically comprehensive categories of objective types of physical being. The recognition of these polar differences puts us in a position now to examine the " symmetries " in the doctrines of the two philosophers in regard to the subject of time. SYNTHETICAL CoMPARISON oF THE DocTRINES oF KANT AND ARISTOTLE For purposes of clarity I will in the following section present various pivotal notions of Kant in regard to time in the form of theses, and then elaborate on the corresponding " symmetrical " positions which seem to be implicit or explicit in Aristotle. Kant's theses, however, it should be noted, will be used only as a springboard for division of the subject under consideration and not as a criterion in terms of which judgment is passed on Aristotle. 1) The Subjective Aspect of Time: THESIS: TIME IS A SUBJECTIVE FORM A PRIORI WHICH CANNOT BE THOUGHT OF AS ABSENT AND WHICH SUPPLIES THE APODEICTIC CONDITIONS FOR ALL RELATIONS OF CONTRADICTORILY OPPOSED PREDICATES IN SCIENCES OF MOTION AND ALTERATION WITHOUT GOING SO FAR AS TO GIVE THEM THE DETERMINATE UNITY OF A CONCEPT. (Critique of Pure Reason, A 31, B 46) Aristotle does not say explicitly that time is a fundamentally subjective notion. He does, however, raise the question as TREATMENTS OF TIME 121 to whether there could be such a thing as time in the absence of a human subject, i. e., a knowing soul. 6 And he comes to the conclusion that time in such a case would exist as measurable 7 (i. e., as potential) within motion, provided that motion itself could be said to exist under such conditions. Such a hypothetical conclusion, although it does imply that time under such conditions would probably be nothing actuai,B nevertheless does not opt for any preeminence of the " subjective " nature of time, especially in the Aristotelian framework, where the potential and the empirical are not prejudged for epistemo-logical reasons to be less important than the actual and the a priori. But we can say that Aristotle recognizes the fact that time is quite subjective in nature, without going so far (as did Kant) to emphasize the subjective over the objective aspect. Likewise, Aristotle gives us an indication that time in its subjective aspect is not a determinate concept (universal " form ") , since the formation of all intellectual concepts must, according to him, take place outside of time. 9 And without saying that it is a "form of sensibility" he does indicate that it is applicable only to a special sphere of existence, i. e., the realm of passing phenomena, of physical transmutation. 2) Its Foundation in Internal Perception: THESIS: TIME IS A MOST GENERAL INNER DETERMINATION WHICH WE GIVE TO ALL REPRESENTATIONS AND IS INDEED THE RESULT OF THE SUCCESSION OF THESE REPRESENTATIONS BEING INTIMATELY APPROPRIATED THROUGH THE EMPIRICAL SELF OF CONSCIOUSNESS. (Critique of Pure Reason; 10 A 33, B 49) The fact that our awareness of time is somehow linked up with our perception of the empirical processes or motions of • Physics IV, 14, 223a. 7 Cf. Randall, Aristotle (N. Y.: Columbia University, 1960), p. 202. 8 Cf. Copleston, A History of Philosophy (N. Y.: Doubleday Image, 1962), Vol. 6, Part II, p .65. • Cf. Mure, Aristotle, p. 214. 1 ° Cf. also Collins, History of Modern European Philosophy (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1961)' p. 481. 1Q2 HOWARD P. KAINZ our consciousness is recognized in a negative way by Aristotle when he states that when we are unconscious in sleep, etc., time "ceases" with respect to us. 11 He puts the matter in a more positive way when he says that, in a completely dark room, we garner the perception of the passage of time precisely by noticing the movements of our own mind. 12 The necessary and sufficient condition for our subjective ascription of time to events would seem, then, to lie in some minimal awareness of the alterations in our phenomenal self, through proprioception. But again, whereas in Kant such an inner determination is described as a (subjective) form of sensibility, in Aristotle it is referred to as a "common sensible" (i.e., an objective type of sensible form), which results ultimately from the perception of alteration as a subjective process. 13 3) Its Interconnection with Space: THESIS: TIME, AS THE IMMEDIATE CONDITION OF INNER APPEARANCES, IS ALSO MEDIATELY THE CONDITION FOR OUTER (SPATIAL) APPEARANCES AND THUS SUPPLIES THE GENERAL FORM OR CONTEXT IN TERMS OF WHICH ALL APPEARANCE WHATSOEVER MUST BE PERCEIVED. (Critique of Pure Re(J)3on, A 34, B 50) Aristotle does not, of course, stress the a priori character of time. But in consonance with his more " empirical " point of view, he does point out a definite and intimate connection of space (the potential serial infinity of continuous magnitude) 11 and time (the potential measurability, or numerability, of spatial motion) . We are speaking here, of course, of time as a " material " numberable, and not as the formal enumeration. Physics, IV, 11, Ibid., IV, 11, 13 Cf. Mure, Aristotle (London: Benn, 1932), pp. 110, 111, who says, "[the perception of alteration] is thus a psychical miniature which enables us to gauge an external magnitude or duration, and the implication is that we compare the two terms and infer the outer from the inner." (He bases this conclusion on De Anima, Ill, and II, 9, on Physics, IV, 11, and on Mem. et Remin., 10 Cf. Ross, Aristotle (London: Methuen, 1949), p. 84. 11 12 TREATMENTS OF TIME And it is with regard to time in this connotation that Aristotle says, What is moved is moved from something to something, and all magnitude is continuous. Therefore the movement goes with the magnitude. Because the magnitude is continuous, the movement too must be continuous, and if the movement, then the time.15 Movement-in-space is thus a kind of "middle term " between space and time. The movement takes on the character of the continuous extensivity which supplies its material condition. And just as the continuous extensivity is divisible ad infinitum, so also the movement which is founded upon it is numerable ad infinitum. And it is precisely the numerability of motion that gives it the material character of time. 16 Time is thus, in this sense, a new potentiality which is discerned within continuous motion, i.e., a latent attribute subject to perception and intellectual actualization by a human subject: Time ... is continuous since it is an attribute of what is continuous [that is, motion].17 As Ross puts it, the multiple, spatially perceptible events in the world are capable of taking on the attribute of " time," insofar as a single character of " nowness " can be attached to the multiplicity of them. And this attribution of "nowness " is indeed possible, insofar as each numerically single body is passing through a succession of points (geographical points, points of qualitative degree, or points of measurable size) which is capable of coinciding with the succession of points of movement of other bodies. 18 In summary, we can say that, for Kant, space was inseparably interconnected with time (the formal a priori condition of space); for Aristotle, on the other hand, time is inseparably interconnected with space (the material substratum of time) . Physics, IV, 11, 219a. Ibid., IV, 11, 219b; 220a. 17 Ibid., IV, 11, 220a. 18 Cf. Ross, Aristotle, p. 90. 15 16 HOWARD P. KAINZ 4) Its Infinity: THESIS: TIME IS INFINITE AS AN INDEFINITE REPRESENTATION (C. P. R., A 32, B 48) PRIOR TO THE DISCRETE ARITHMETICAL NUMBERING OF APPEARANCES (Prologomena, para. 9 and 10)-SUCH THAT IT CAN BE RENDERED PRECISELY QUANTITATIVE ONLY THROUGH THE "AXIOMS OF INTUITION" OF THE UNDERSTANDING. (C.P.R., A 162, B 203) IT IS ALSO "ETERNAL," AS A COSMOLOGICAL IDEA. (C. P. R., A 426, B 454) To say that time is "infinite " and that it is " eternal " is much the same thing, except that the former term refers mainly to time's formal indeterminacy, while the latter term refers primarily to the deficiency of precise limits in its cosmic content (the series of appearances or events in the world). Aristotle, as Kant, comes to the conclusion that time is both infinite and eternal. But by a quite different procedure. There is no such thing as an actual infinity in any kind of magnitude, according to Aristotle/ 9 But we can discern potential infinities with regard to space, number, and time. Space is potentially infinite insofar as it is divisible according to an infinite convergent series; number, insofar as it is augmentable according to an infinite divergent series. Time, on the other hand, is infinite in both ways, i. e., infinitely divisible in that it has a continuum of spatial magnitude as its bedrock of content 20 and infinitely augmentable in that it is, formally speaking, an active numbering produced by the power of thought. 21 Thus time is a potential infinity both materially, i. e., as continuous magnitude potentially divisible by " nows " which are always different/ 2 and formally, i. e., as a product of numbering thought, which is an " active " type of potentiality.23 But both the passive potentiality of the continuum and the active potentiality of thought are due to the subjective Physics, II, 6, 206a. Physics, III, 7, 207b; IV, 12, 220a. 21 Ibid., III, 8, 208a. For the above general analysis of infinity in space, number, and time, cf. Ross, Aristotle, pp. 83-85. •• Cf. ibid., IV, 13, 22a; IV, 11, 219a. 23 De Anima, II, 5, 417b. 19 20 TREATMENTS OF TIME capacities of man, who does the dividing or the numbering. And so we might say that in both aspects of time it is the infinite variety of possible subjective variations of objective content that gives rise to the " potential infinitude " of time, Thus Aristotle and Kant, though widely divergent in their approaches, seem to be much at one in discerning the character of infinity in the subjective representation of time. Likewise with Aristotle" eternity," or an eternal time, results when the formal attribute of temporality is attributed to the whole series of cosmological events in our experience. 24 For when we consider this series, it is impossible to form the conception of an absolute beginning with no antecedent or au absolute end without succession, and so we are led by reductio ad absurdum to posit an eternity of time. 25 This is the same general line of reasoning which Kant follows in presenting the " antithesis " of an eternal world as an insoluble problem m the first antinomy of cosmological ideas. 26 5) Its Role in Statements of Existence: THESIS: TIME IS THE REGULATIVE MEANS BY WHICH THE UNDERSTANDING GIVES TO APPEARANCES THE FORM OF DETERMINATE EXISTENCE THROUGH THE "ANALOGIES OF EXPERIENCE" (Prologomena, para, 26; C. P. R., A 32, B 49) AND INDEED IS THE CONDITION FOR ALL PREDICATION OF EXISTENCE. (C.P.R., B 71) It is Aristotle's doctrine that the sphere of time is co-terminous with the sphere of the physically existent and the physically possible, i. e., of things which are capable of some kind of physical transience and which are capable of being and not-being in succession. 27 More precisely, time is the cause or condition of that type of existence of which alone we have experience-transient existence in this world. 28 All of our thoughts must refer in some way to such existence-in-time. Physics, III, 6, 206a; IV, 18, 22b. Ibid., VIII, I, passim. 26 Critique of Pure Reason, p. 897 ff. (A 427, B 455). 27 Physics, IV, 12, 22lb; 222a. 28 Ibid., IV, 12, 221b; IV, 18, 222b. 24 25 126 HOWARD P. KAINZ As Aristotle puts it, We cannot exercise the intellect on any object absolutely apart from the continuous, or apply it even to non-temporal things unless in connection with time. 29 Thus, not only when we make a judgment such as " x exists " but also when we make a judgment of the general form "x is y "-and even where x and/or y is (are) non-temporal ideas (s) or separate substance (s) -the judgment cannot be made without some reference to some experience definitely situated in time. And so also, if there be any " truth" in our judgments, this cannot obtain without some relationship to the continuum of time. 30 6) Time's Unification in and Through Consciousness: THESIS: OUR INTUITION OF TIME, BY MEANS OF THE SCHEMATA OF THE IMAGINATION, (0. P. R., A 138, B 177) IS SUBORDINATED NATURALLY TO OUR UNITY OF APPRECEPTION, WHICH IS THE PRIOR CONDITION FOR KNOWLEDGE OF THE EMPIRICAL IN GENERAL, (0. P. R., A 343, B 68, 401, 422) AND (IN THIS SUBORDINATE ROLE) GOVERNS THE APPLICATION OF THE CATEGORIES OF THE UNDERSTANDING TO THE WORLD OF APPEARANCE. (0. P.R., A 138, B 177) In Metaph., IV, 6, 31 Aristotle criticizes Heraclitus and other epistemological relativists who say that all true being and beings are merely their own contingent and relative perceptions of things. In doing this, argues Aristotle, they imply that they themselves have no unity of being, but are, rather, discrete multiplicities. For if all objects of knowledge differ only relationally, i.e., insofar as they have a different relationship to the knower, then the knower himself must be a different correspondent term for every object which is related to him (just as an object which is double, and triple, and equal can only be so insofar as it is related to a different term under each of these aspects) . 29 3 De M em. et Remin., 450a. ° Cf. Metaph., IX, 9, 105lb; also, De Anima, III, 6, 480a. 31 Cf. loc. cit., lOll b. TREATMENTS OF TIME 127 Thus although Aristotle does not point explicitly to any " unity of apperception" as a positive attribute of intellective consciousness, he does take such unity for granted in arguing against those who by their own doctrines are forced to conceive consciousness as a series of discrete, non-related states or motions. And since time is perceived in a primary way through the motions of one's own consciousness, it would be implied that it is subsumed in a immediate manner into the higher unity of intellective consciousness, for the purpose of rendering judgments of physical reality possible. 7) Its All-Inclusive Unity: THESIS: ALTHOUGH WE CAN THINK DISTINCT TIMES IN SUCCESSION, ALL THESE TIMES ARE MERELY DETERMINATIONS OF ONE ALL-PERVASIVE, ALL-INCLUSIVE, GENERAL TIME, WHICH IS NOT A DETERMINATE ABSTRACT CONCEPT BUT AN INDETERMINATE FORMAL CONDITION OF REFERENCE TO THE PHENOMENAL WORLD. (C.P.R., A 32, B 47) As we might expect, Aristotle attributes such all-inclusive unity to time as a quasi-material substratum rather than as a formal condition: According to him, time as numerable-i. e., as the continuum of motion which is measurable 32-is par excellence the cyclical motion of the heavenly spheres, which proceed most regularly, uniformly, predictably. 33 But since there is a greater time which measures all time and all existents, 34 we might reasonably say that the motion of the outermost sphere would be the single numerable continuum giving rise to all numerability and time in subordinate spheres. And, indeed, this one recurring outer motion would be the primordial continuum giving rise to the possibility of all actual time as the numbering of motion. 35 As Randall says, the eternal circular motion of the outer sphere of the universe is •• Physics, IV, 12, 221a. •• Ibid., IV, 14, 223b. "'Ibid., IV, 12, 221b. 35 Physics, IV, 13, 222a. 128 HOWARD P. KAINZ the common frame of reference for all temporal measurement, since its number is best known, i. e., as primarily conditioning all regularity whatsoever.36 Thus, just as Kant from his idealistic vantage point sees time as a unique form of sensibility containing in an indeterminate way all particular, determinate times, so also Aristotle, with a more objective orientation, sees it primarily as an attribute or inherent possibility of the unique " outermost sphere" of the universe. 8) Its Inapplicability to any " Transcendent" World: THESIS: "ETERNITY" AS A PURELY TRANSCENDENTAL IDEA IS WITHOUT REAL INTUITIVELY-GIVEN CONTENT OR REFERENCE TO THE REALLY KNOWABLE WORLD OF TEMPORAL PHENOMENA. (C. P. R., A 641, B 669) It should be noted that we are speaking here not of " eternal time " as a cosmological idea but of eternity as an anthropomophically-conceived attribute of some metaphysical " necessary being " or some metaphysical world. As such, it is a merely negative concept and denotes the timelessness of a necessary being, or of an ens realissimum, or of a separate substance, or of an idea, or of a " moment " as created arbitrarily by a numbering mind, or of an eternal principle whose denial results in self-contradiction. Aristotle states quite clearly that time neither measures nor affects any such sphere of eternity or anything whose nature is eternal in this strict, absolute sense of the word. 37 Time is validly applicable only to the sphere of physical, corporeal transience. It ceases to apply just short of the boundaries of thought and the entities of thought. 38 Aristotle differs from Kant, of course, in that he posits a metaphysical world of the prime mover and the unmoved Randall, Aristotle, p. Physics, IV, 38 It should be noted, however, that, while time does not apply to these boundaries, it is still the material means and context out of which such "boundaries" are formulated. (Cf. sect. 5, snpra) 36 37 TREATMENTS OF TIME U9 movers and the souls of the primary celestial self-movers in each sphere 39 and the separable " active " intelligence in man; 40 and in that he speaks of such " eternal " things as of real entities. Kant, on the other hand, only admits the possibility of some such things, and the practical fact that we must sometimes presuppose them, in order to give greater unity and completeness to our knowledge. But whether such a "metaphysical " world be conceived as an actuality or as a bare, empty possibility, it is granted by both philosophers that time will be completely inapplicable to it. Neither of them will admit of a monistic structure in which time and eternity can somehow be identical. CoNcLuSION Just as two persons who begin at different sides of a room would be apt to apply the terms, " right," "left," " front," and " behind " in different ways to the same things, it would seem that the different starting points of Kant and Aristotle-as mentioned in the introduction-have led them to describe certain selfsame attributes of time in different ways. Thus, for instance, Kant sees time as a formal unity, while Aristotle sees it as a unity in its material substratum of continuous extension; both see it as interconnected with space, but Aristotle, unlike Kant, takes space as the starting point for this insight; both see it as an infinity, but Aristotle designates it a potential infinity of that which is actual and determinate, while Kant designates it an actual infinity of that which is of its very nature incomplete and contentless (the a priori form of sensibility) ; and so forth. One of the most notable things that can be discerned in the unity-in-difference which prevails between Kant and Aristotle on the subject of time is that the former is almost always speaking about it in its formal aspect, while the latter is •• Provided that such souls are taken as distinct in existence from the " unmoved mover" of each sphere. It is not clear whether Aristotle can be interpreted in this way. •• De Anima, ill, 5, 4SOA. 130 HOWARD P. KAINZ very often merely referring to it in its material or potential aspect. Once this is understood, we have the key to a good number of moot points which seem at first encounter to represent widely divergent opinions or solutions but then upon further examination are found to be most conveniently reducible to poles of attitudinal bias. HowARD Marquette University Milwaukee, Wisconsin P. KAINZ ON THE SOUL: A PHILOSOPHICAL EXPLORATION OF THE ACTIVE INTELLECT IN AVERROES, ARISTOTLE, AND AQUINAS I INTRODUCTION T The Issues HIS ARTICLE IS AN exploration of two issues that arose in the medieval analysis of Book III of Aristotle's De Anima as diversely interpreted by Averroes and Thomas Aquinas, viz., (I) the Active Intellect in its relation to body as form (in what sense, if any, is the soul the form of the body's matter) ; (2) on the question of the unicity or multiplicity of the Active Intellect (is the active aspect of the intellective soul a single unique entity in which all men somehow participate or are there intellective souls multiplied according to the number of individual men) . The Historical Thesis In the history of the Western world there have appeared only two periods in which a really great philosophy was developed. These were the 4th century B. C. when Plato and Aristotle reached the highest point of development of Greek philosophy in establishing the relationship between the material and the spiritual, a synthesis acceptable to the classical world, and the 13th century when Thomas Aquinas worked out. equally satisfactorily to medieval man a continuity between the supernatural and the natural, a connubium of the rational and the mystical. Except for Augustine's ingenious notion of creation in time 131 RUTH REYNA and his doctrine of " illuminational intuition," 1 an influence felt in greater measure in the later medieval and modern periods than in Augustine's own century, there appears to have been little philosophical genius manifested during the first thirteen centuries of medieval thought. Between the closing of the Academy of Plato and the Lyceum of Aristotle by the Emperor Justinian in the 6th century and the advent of St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th, there arose a paucity of philosophical thinking in the West. Greek thought was distinguished by the high value it placed on man and his achievement; it held the universe to be basically one whose parts are all in consonance. Man, a part of a great cosmic world, was on equal footing with the gods and with nature. With this bulwark pulled from beneath them through the banning of Greek philosophy as wicked paganism by the early Christian church, men floundered and grasped for an ideal that would again place them at ease with the world and with themselves. Such salvation was offered in the sacramental 2 and in the casuistical system of the Church. It is interesting to note that no real progress was made in science and the humanities in the interim when Greek philosophy in its greater part was lost to the Western world. Only the Timaeus of Plato and portions of the logic of Aristotle were available in the universities; and upon recovery of the Aristotelian writings (the Physics, Metaphysics, and the De Anima) in the and 13th centuries, human progress again was evidenced. That is to say, with the return of traditional humanism 3 there was a return to scientific and humanistic progress. 1 An avenue of knowledge of eternal and immutable truths transcending that of the process of reasoning. • The conception that this world is but the visible sign of an invisible reality, impregnated with energy, purpose, and love of its Creator who dwells in it as he dwells in the bread and wine on the altar; that medieval men conceived this world to be a sacrifice which they dedicated to the Beneficent Giver. Cf. W. T. Jones. A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 195!l), p. 524. • Traditional Platonic: (1) the highest good of man lies in the fulfillment of his ON THE SOUL 133 Greek thought, while lost to the West in its more meaningfulness for some eight centuries, was being seriously preserved by the Arabian philosophers in the East where Aristotle's chief works were translated into Syrian and then into Arabic versions from the Syrian translations. It was through the conquest of Spain by the Muslims in the 8th century that Aristotle was re-introduced into Europe, but in Arabic of which Hebraic and Latin translations were made by the 12th and 13th century scholars. The Arabs regarded the philosophy of Aristotle as a final system and sought only to give it proper interpretation. Yet, despite this, and in common with Christian scholastics, they failed to produce an accurate commentary; for, not only was it inevitable that Aristotle was to be distorted in the process of so many translations, the human element of creative philosophizing also entered in to give diverse and wishful meanings to the interpretations. The Arabs, influenced by the theology of the Qur' an, deviated from the strict biological and physical dissertation of Aristotle and attempted to show how through philosophy the individual may rise to union with God. Aristotle's First Mover was no longer pure and complete Actuality, above voits or intellectus who knows nothing but himself, but was for the Arabian apologists pure intellect, knowing himself and all other things in himself. Such a first mover evidently is more metaphysical as a first than physical as a mover. Thus Arabian philosophy was marked by its attempt to bridge the gulf between God as pure actuality and matter as pure potentiality. This consideration, then, can be said to have been the basis of the variant Arabian concepts of the eternality and character of the world and of God and shaped their notions of epistemology and the relation and function of the Active and Passive Intellects and the meaning of personal salvation. At this point Neo-Platonism with its doctrine of emanation natural potentialities and (!i!) the only sound method of promoting that fulfillment is the use of man's natural powers of reason to restrain and guide the passions and the will. 134 RUTH REYNA made its influence felt and bridged the gap between the two extremes of God and matter, interpolating, as in al-Kindi, four types of intellect/ establishing a doctrine of the hierarchy of intelligence, as in al-Farabi and ibn-Sina (Avicenna) .5 This precipitated the historical quarrel between Averroes (through Siger de Brabant) and Thomas Aquinas on the interpretation of the human active intellect and the active intellect of God as described in the Metaphysics. The early Arabian thinkers adopted the interpretation that the active intellect is impersonal and separate from the individual, and maintained it to be either a world intellect or to be identical with the Active Intellect of God. In addition, there was the doctrine of Averroes 6 who not only held the unity of the Active Intellect but also declared the Passive (Possible) Intellect to be one in all men. It was the impressive influence of this great Arabian expositor of the philosophy of Aristotle as perpetuated by the Latin Averroists at Paris that forced the 13th century scholastics to attempt a re-evaluation of faith and revelation in the consistent formulation of faith in order to show the possibility of the rational analysis of belief. So it was that Thomas Aquinas, at times hard put to answer Averroes's doctrine in the light of Christian orthodoxy, had, perforce, to maintain that the Active Intellect forms part of the human soul but is separate from the body and the sense faculties inasmuch as it does not make use of a body organ. In this manner, although not in accord with Aristotelian teaching, Thomas was able to apologize for the Christian doctrine of the soul's immortality and to account for the final resurrection of the body. • The Divine intellect, World-Soul, Nature, and the Physical Universe. 5 God emanates the universe from himself in a series of triads of mind, soul, and body, each one of which is identified with a heavenly sphere. This process terminates in the Aristotelian " active intellect," which governs directly beneath the moon and transmits to all things their appropriate forms. • General structure of the ideas of Averroes used in this section of the Introduction is derived from translation and interpretative analysis of S. J. Curtis, A Short History of Western Philosophy in the Middle Ages (London: MacDonald & Co., Ltd., 1950), et passim. ON THE SOUL 135 The central problem, therefore, that the 13th century had to face was that of giving philosophical form and sanction to the beliefs, values, and attitudes of ordinary men. For Aquinas this naturally meant the giving of philosophical form to Christian concepts of truth. The Philosophical Thesis As it will be remembered, while the Christian West was almost entirely deprived of the works of Aristotle except for an acquaintance with his logic, the Muhammedans were actively concerned with his philosophy. Under the influence of Neo-Platonic philosophers with whom the Arabs had already been made acquainted through the al-Mamoun School of Translation at Bagdad (c. 832), they were led to interpret the doctrine of the uncreated and eternal character of the universe in terms of the Plotinian doctrine of emanation. This, together with the consideration of Aristotle's difficult teaching concerning the Active Intellect, led some of them to reject the personal immortality of the soul. Aristotle's somewhat vague and uncertain description of the active intellect in the De Anima (III. 5) 7 offered an opportunity to the Arabs, and later to the Christian scholastics, to interpolate their own unique interpretations. A verroes, while resembling Avicenna in philosophical tone, viz., his teaching on the eternality of the universe and the procession from God of a hierarchy of intellects each one of which is the form and the cause of the motion of its particular heavenly sphere, nonetheless seriously endeavored but not altogether successfully to restore the pure Aristotelian teachings. Averroes's view of matter, however, was reasonably Aristo7 " ••• mind ... is what it is by virtue of becoming all things, while there is another which is what it is by virtue of making all things: this is a sort of positive state like light; for in a sense light makes potential colours into actual colours. Mind in this sense of it is separable, impassible, unmixed, since it is in its essential nature activity (for always the active is superior to the passive factor, the originating force to the matter which it forms)." (15) Tr. J. A. Smith. 136 RUTH REYNA telian in that it was more positive in character than the NeoPlatonic. For him, it held the latent forms which were actualized by the prime mover who is the first of the minds generated from God. Last and lowest of the emanated minds is the human intellect, the mover of the lunar sphere. This complicated theory of the intellect or soul holds that there exists no individual human intellect but that all cognition is a participation of the individual in the knowledge of the superindividual, or universal Active Intellect. Averroes believed that the Active Intellect is a separate substance which has its being altogether distinct from human intellect. The human or Passive Intellect is the subject which receives the form of the Active Intellect making the activity of contemplation wholly impersonal. Always in close connection with the body, the Passive Intellect perishes when the body perishes. However, the Active Intellect for Averroes, as for Aristotle, is the only operation of human consciousness that is not supported by the body and survives the latter's dissolution. Therefore, all that is individual and personal in man is destroyed by death-the impersonal intellect in us remains alone unextinguished. In this analysis there is no individual immortality. For Averroes, the soul of the individual is merely a specific part of the universal soul. This Averroes doctrine of the separate intellects was accepted readily in the University of Paris. Therefore, if the Christian doctrine of human personality were to be demonstrated and individual immortality to be upheld, it was of the highest importance that Averroes should be answered. To this end Thomas Aquinas wrote his refutation De Unitate lntellectus (On the Unity of Intellect against the Averroists) in which he denies that the intellective soul is a separate substance unique in its species for all men. This stand he must take, for ecclesiastical dogma demands a transformation of the Aristotelian distinctions into a coincidence with religious dualism. If the Active Intellect is thought of as a separate substance, then Aquinas voices his entire disagreement: " as regards the intel- ON THE SOUL 187 ligible species which are in the possible intellect, the intellectual virtues remain" 8 (viz., when the body is corrupted). In his attempt to preserve the historical Aristotle Averroes may more nearly express the literal meaning of the former, but Thomas Aquinas converts the Aristotelian text into a truer spirit of philosophy when, in attempting to show that his own doctrine can be held on rational grounds, he expands and adapts Aristotle's view to fit in with the logic of the experience of man. He is not averse to taking advantage of the obscurantism to be found in the indecisive teaching of Aristotle on personal immortality and experiences no unfavorable impulse while injecting an interpretation appropriate to Christian doctrine. In assimilating Aristotle to Christianity modifications in both the letter and spirit of the original doctrines of Aristotle are inevitable. Aquinas, in his employment of rational analysis, is obliged to reject the Augustinian hierarchial universe along with its illuminationist theory of knowledge, and he makes his modifications of Aristotle by placing the active intellectual principle in the souls of particular individuals. In doing this he apportions the principle into as many souls as there are individual men, but at the same time he restores some of the Augustinianism he seeks to obscure, for, in order to remain orthodox, Thomas must show the soul to be an " immaterial," incorruptible entity in the Augustinian sense and capable of separate subsistence. Aquinas attempts to establish Aristotelian authority for the Christian doctrine of the uniqueness and immortality of the individual soul by interpreting portions of the De Anima to that end. 9 8 Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 67, a. c. • In Bk. III, Chap. V of the De Anima Aristotle remarks: "It [the agent intellect] does not remember, because it is impassible; the passive intellect is corruptible, and the soul understands nothing apart from this latter." (Version of William of Moerbeke). This passage was rendered from the Greek as "this alone is immortal and perpetual. We have, however, no memory of it because it is impassible, whereas the passive intellect (or, the mind that can be affected) is perishable; and without it nothing thinks "-taking 'it' to refer to the agent intellect. The Latin translation, however, followed by Thomas Aquinas, takes 'it' to mean the passive intellect and inserts anima, "the soul," as subject of "thinks." 138 RUTH REYNA Aristotle left a number of formidable problems for philosophy to solve, not the least of which is " on the relation between human active intellect and the active intellect of God " as described in the M etaphysica, the one with which this study is concerned. Four main interpretations are possible: (1) as generally understood in Aristotle, that the active and passive intellects are but two phases of the one intellect; (2) the Active Intellect is impersonal and separate from the individual soul-either it is a world intellect or it is identical with the Active Intellect of God (early Arabian thinkers); (3) that of Thomas Aquinas: the Active Intellect forms part of the human soul but is separate from the body and the sense faculties because it does not make use of a bodily organ; and (4) as in A verroes who not only maintained the unity of the Active Intellect but also declared the passive intellect to be one in all men. There is the further problem of what becomes of the Active Intellect after death. Does it leave the body to join a world intellect or the intellect of God, or is the individual soul immortal and does it preserve its active individuality after death. When Aquinas answered the Averroists he had to face these problems. For the purposes of this essay it will not be necessary to discuss every question involved in connection with the intellective soul, such as the specific nature of material and possible or passive intellects along with their various operations. The present writing is confined to an exploration of only two issues that arise in the medieval analysis of Book III of the De Anima. First, in what sense, if any, is the soul the form of the body's matter; and second, is the active aspect of the intellective soul a single unique entity in which all men somehow participate, or are there intellective souls multiplied according to the number of individual men. Hence, St. Thomas takes the whole section to refer to the state of the intellect after death: it "does not remember," etc., once the passive intellect has perished; the latter is only called intellect and is really pars animae corporalis. From Aristotle's De Anima: In the Version of Moerbeke and the Commentary of St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. Dr. W. Stark, trs. Kenelm Foster and Sylvester Humphries, intro. Ivo Thomas (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951), p. 427, tr. f. n. 139 ON THE SOUL These considerations are not disjunct or nonrelative, and the discussion to be presented will endeavor to illustrate their mutual dependence and interrelation as diversely interpreted by Averroes and Aquinas from the Aristotelian text. II THE AcTIVE INTELLECT IN ITS RELATION To Bony As FoRM On the Relation of Soul to the Body's Matter The Eastern philosophers' absorption of Neo-Platonic mysticism, together with their traditional addiction to logical analysis, caused them to overlook the Aristotelian functional character. The Arabs insisted on viewing logic as substantive and took the position that nature and discourse were one and the same and thus regarded the elements of discourse as real existing entities. As a consequence they lost sight of the disparity between nature in process on the one hand, and the discourse-viewing aspects of the process on the other. On this point, in his article on Latin Averroism, Stuart MacClintock has to say: ... the Latin West, deprived of Aristotle's biological works for many centuries, and possessing only the logical writings, it had forgotten Aristotle's emphasis on process in nature and had concentrated on the formal modes of discussing process. So when this current of interpretation was fused with Arab tradition, which was saying something similar, the principles of process of Aristotle's biology were, so to speak, substantialized, and his philosophical grammar became fundamentally nominal, rather than verbal or adverbial.' 0 Another commentator, J. H. Randall, Jr., remarks concerning this manipulation of language: " ... these abstract nouns reinforced the Platonizing tendencies of the Averroistic commentaries to make independent existences out of the sub10 " Heresy and Epithet: An Approach to the Problem of Latin Averroism," Review of Metaphysics, Vol. VIII, No. 31 (March 1955). 140 RUTH REYNA stantive of discourse. Verbs were turned into nouns, and the operations into substances." 11 Aquinas, himself, was faced with the necessity of altering the Aristotelian texts if he were to reconcile such interpretations as the unicity of intellect of the human species as one in form with the Active Intellect, with the orthodox Christian doctrine of the unity of the human person. It was necessary, therefore, that he formulate the theory of the human person by making the soul the only form of the human composite, 12 that is, the substantial form of the body, as against the version propounded by the Latin Averroists at Paris 13 that held the intellective soul to be a separate substance and as such unique in its species and somehow available to all men. This Thomistic doctrine of the soul showed little similarity to Aristotle's postulation of the intellect as a process, a psychic principle, as entelechy or actualization of what the body potentially is. So it was that when the 13th century received Aristotle it was with the original considerably reshaped; and it was these 11 The Renaisance Philosophy of Man, eds. E. Cassirer, P. 0. Kristeller, et al. (Chicago: University Press, 1948), pp. 259, 260. 10 St. Thomas's argument runs thus: " ... there cannot be more than one substantial form in any one thing; [because] the first makes the thing an actual being; and if others are added, they confer only accidental modifications, since they presuppose the subject already in the act of being .... We can therefore reject the view of Avicebron that according to the way in which any given thing can be divided in to genera and species so it can be divided into substantial forms. Thus an individual man would have one form that made him a substance, another that gave him a body, another that gave him life, and so on. But what our premisses compel us to say is that it is one and the same substantial form that makes a man a particular thing or substance, and a bodily thing, and a living thing, and so on. For the higher form can give to its matter all that a lower form gives, and more ... the soul gives not only substance and body but life also. We must not think, therefore, of the soul and body as though the body had its own form making it a body, to which the soul is super-added, making it a living body, but rather that the body gets both its being and its life from the soul." Commentarius, ed. cit., p. 170, sees. 224, 225. 18 General structure of the doctrines of the Latin Averroists (through Siger) derived from translations by Stuart MacClintock of Siger de Brabant, De anima intellectiva (c. 1257) from the German translation by F. Bruckmuller, Untersuchungen iiber Sigers De Anima lntellectiva (Munich, 1908), as outlined in " Heresy and Epithet," loc. cit., et passim. ON THE SOUL 141 errant interpretations concerning Aristotle's teachings on the soul that caused the 13th century confusion. Where Aristotle taught soul and body as aspects of a process, both the Averroists and Thomists read him to mean real parts of a substantial entity. So it was that Aristotle emerged expertly emasculated at the hands of both factions and found himself in the difficult position of an authoritative source for two directly opposite doctrines neither of which he would likely to have counteranced in his life time. According to Aristotle, man is a composite of soul and body, the soul being the actuality or the activity of the composite providing "the essential whatness" to matter. 14 Each entity or composite manifests vegetative, sensitive, and intellective activities 15 made possible by the presence of the soul-the " cause " or principle of life process; 16 each individual according to "whatsoever his own nature [race] renders possible" feeds, reproduces, senses, moves, and thinks. Since the activity of understanding in material man has an immaterial operation 17 Aristotle's discussion remains incomplete until he finds something to account for this fact. This he does in his active intellective principle " separable, impassible, unmixed, incorruptible, immortal " and extrinsic to man. 18 MacClintok presumes this to be not a part of the soul of individual man but probably something like the fact of discourse and communication itself, a guarantee for man's knowledge without actually being an organic aspect of the individual soul. 19 The text of the Metaphy8ica seems to validate this presumption, for, in speaking of the primary principle of life, Aristotle says, " as in primary being, what is predicated of a material is "De Anima, Bk. II, Chap. I, 412ab (ed. McKeon). 15 Ibid., Bk. II, Chap. 3, 414a, 28-31: "Those we have mentioned are the nutritive, the appetitive, the sensory, the locomotive, and the power of thinking." 16 Ibid., Chap. 4, 415b, 8-11. "The soul is the cause of the living body, etc." 17 Ibid., Chap. 2, 413b, 24-27: " We have no evidence as yet, etc." 18 Ibid., Bk. III, Chap. 5, 430a, 16-19. 10 Loc cit., p. 538. 142 RUTH REYNA what it actually does, so, too, in other definitions the differentiating characteristic is most analogous to the thing's action or functions," 20 and again in another passage, " what it is to be pertains to the form or function, for ' soul ' and ' to be soul ' are the same thing; but ' man ' and ' to be man ' are not the same, unless the soul itself can be said to be man. Thus it is that in one way a concrete being and what it is to be it are the same; but in another way, they are not." 21 Aristotle denies that the intellective soul is the form of the body in the customary sense of providing being to matter, i.e., standing as the activity of the matter, the principle of its process, the figure imposed on wax. He clearly states in the De Anima 22 that the intellect is in some way separable from the body and as such cannot be its substantial form. Following this in the M etaphysica he postulates the presence of a divine element in the human soul 28-the valls, which constitutes the really immortal part of man. It enters from without. Aristotle begins with the body, to which soul is related as form to matter. It is not, however, a mere function of the body. The body is the instrument of the soul; for matter is a potency and exists only insofar as it is necessary for the realization of a form. Even so, soul is inseparably bound up with the body and can have no life apart from it. But, as we have seen, Aristotle tells us that there is another sense in which soul (mind, intellect) is separable from matter, 24 and this alone is "immortal" and "everlasting." There can be no doubt but that these two doctrines are, if not conflicting, at 20 Bk. VITI, Chap. 2, 1048a, 2-8. Tr. Richard Hope (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952) . 21 Ibid., Chap. 8, I048b, 1-4. 2 " 418b, 26: "Intellect is a distinct kind of soul, alone capable of separation as the eternal from the perishable." See also De Anima 480a, 10-25. 23 " ••• for the activity of mind is also its life, and the divine is that activity. The self-sufficient activity of the divine is life at its eternal best. We maintain, therefore, that the divine is the eternal best living being, so that the divine is life unending, continuous, and eternal." (Met., XII, 7 ,1072b, 26 fl'.) 20 See Metaphysica, Bk. IX, Chap. I, on "active and passive powers." ON THE SOUL 143 least clouded, which obscurantism lends itself admirably to the conflicting interpretations given by Averroes and Thomas Aquinas. However, for the Averroists the intellective soul is explained solely in the main Aristotelian sense, in terms of its operation in understanding that can take place only by means of the perceptions that the body supplies, yet takes place by no corporeal activity, and in this sense it can be said to be separated from the body. How, then, they ask, can form separable from its matter be said to be the source as such of the composite's being. Consequently, theAverroists concur with the most apparent meaning of Aristotle that the intellective soul is not, nor can it be, the form of the body in the sense of providing it with being; but they conclude (erroneously as far as a fair interpretation of Aristotle is concerned) that it functions as the body's form only when conjoined to it during the activity or process of knowing. 25 Siger de Brabant, the representative Averroist of the 13th century, begins like Aristotle with the whole individual man, an ensouled body that exhibits vegetative, sensitive, and intellective activities and seeks an explanation of the intellectual activity. But Siger, predisposed by Arabic tradition and centuries of interpretation and reinterpretation, prefers to understand Aristotle's active intellect principle as a part of the soul in some sense and concludes that the intellective part of the soul is separate, unique, and immortal, yet appropriated to the body with the assistance of the senses during the process of knowing, that is, outside of man and conjoined to him only 25 ". • • it now appears how the activity of understanding is attributable not to the intellect alone, but rather to the whole man. This is not because understanding takes place in the body ... but this [understanding] is in virtue of that part of him that is the intellect, whence because the intellect in the act of understanding is an agent by its own nature intrinsic to the body, the activities of intrinsic agents, whether they are motions or activities with motions, are to be attributed to the composites that are made up of the intrinsic agents and that for which they are thus acting intrinsically, and are called by the philosophers intrinsic powers, or activities intrinsic to something-their forms and their perfections." Siger de Brabant, De Anima inteUectiva, cit., pp. 154-55. 144 RUTH REYNA during the intellective procedure. The active intellect as separated could not, for the Averroists any more than for Aristotle, be considered the substantial form of the human composite; for such form under the doctrine of Aristotle would have to be "generated and corrupted" with the body and could not, therefore, be " incorruptible," " separable," and "immortal." III ON THE QuESTION oF THE UNICITY oR THE MULTIPLICITY oF THE AcTIVE INTELLECT The adumbration of the Aristotelian text as the Latin Averroists receive it raises for them the problem of reconciling the fact of individual acts of intellection (they agree that it is the individual man who thinks and knows) with the implications of the text that there is but a single separated intellective soul for all men. Their resolution of the problem, however, is even more vague than the fragmented reports of Aristotle, 26 for all they can say is that during the activity of intellection this soul is somehow appropriated to the individual man whose cogitative (passive) souls are prepared by diversified phantasms so that differing acts of intellection result. Thomas Aquinas, however, faces the reverse of these difficulties. Consonant with the view maintained in the Middle Ages that no material agency could act on the immaterial intellect, nor could the latter design intellectual species from •• In the Third Book of the De Anima Aristotle had been considering the intellect as though it were a complete unity, then suddenly he tells us, "Now since in the whole of nature we find two factors involved (I) matter which is potentially all the particulars included in the class, and (2) a cause which is productive in the sense that it makes them all, these distinct elements must likewise be found in the soul. And in fact mind . . . is what it is by becoming all things, while there is another which is what it is by virtue of making all things; . . . . Mind in this sense of it is separable, impassible, unmixed, since it is in essential nature activity, for always the active is superior to the passive factor, the originating force to the matter which it forms." Bk. ill, Chap. 6, 480a, 10-20. ON THE SOUL 145 the material phantasm, 27 it is of gravest immediacy that the active intellect and the passive intellect be regarded by Thomas as two powers or faculties. In insisting that the principle of intellection must be diversified according to the number of individual men/ 8 and that these diverse intellective souls are the inherent forms of the various human composites, 29 Aquinas is manoeuvering philosophy into the theological position. The grounds for this transposition are less historical than philosophical, as MacClintock puts it, " Common experience tells us that diverse acts of intellection are caused by the diverse souls of particular men, who themselves activate universals in particulars, but this clearly is against the sense of Aristotle's text, as then presented, where the active aspect of knowledge is clearly called ' separable and incorruptible,' which leads easily to its being unique in species." 30 By insisting that the active intellect is multiplied into as many souls as there are individual men, that the diverse intellective souls are substantially inherent in each body, that is, that the intellectual soul is the only form of the human composite, Aquinas makes a deliberate alteration of the text that is far afield from the original sense of Aristotle, except as it may account systematically for the fact of individual intellection. It seems, however, that Aquinas has found here an adequate philosophical solution of the sticky problem that the Averroists had encountered in their literal interpretation of Aristotle and had left so inadequately resolved. The Latin Averroists may have given a proper explication of Aristotle, but it was left to Thomas to render the latter applicable as a guide for medieval as well as for modem man. Beginning with the definition of the soul in the De Anima as (a) 27 Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, "Scholasticism," e. Hastings (New York: Schribner & Sons, 1955), Vol. VII, p. 370 ff. 28 See Commentarius, Lee. 7, sec. 690 (cit.), p. 408. •• " ... what makes it an animate body is its form, the soul." Commentarius, sec. 9.!39, p. 177. 30 MacClintock, loc. cit., p. 534. 146 RUTH REYNA " the first actuality of an organic body," 31 Thomas insists that this is intended by Aristotle to apply to all souls whatsoever and adduces the subsequent passage as proof: (b) " it has been said universally 32 what the soul is. . . ." 33 He says in his Commentary, "as to (a) Aristotle's first conclusion is that if physical bodies are substances 34 in the fullest sense, all living bodies are substances too, and as each living body is an actual being it must be a compound substance [i. e., composed of matter and form]," 35 and, Thomas concludes, " Form is that by which a ' particular thing ' actually exists," 36 [therefore there are as many individual souls as there are forms of which the soul is.] Thomas Aquinas then continues to weight the argument: just because " living body " implies two things-the body itself and that modification of the body by which it is alive-it cannot be said that the element in the composition termed " body " is itself the principle of life or " soul." By " soul," he points out, we understand that by which a thing is alive. It is understood, therefore, as existing in a subject, taking "subject " in a broad sense to include not only those actual beings which are subjects of their accidental modification but also bare matter or potential being. On the other hand, the body that receives life is more like a subject and a matter than a modification existing in a subject. 37 Regarding item (b) Thomas remarks further: " Since, then, there are three sorts of substance, the compound; matter; and form; and since the soul is neither the compound-the living body itself; nor its matter-the body as the subject that receives life; we have no choice but to say that the soul is a Bk. II, 412b, 1 (sec. 233 Moerbecke version) . Moerbecke translates as "universally," -other translators do not. Aquinas takes this to mean "all souls" (multiplicity). 33 Ibid., 412b, 10. 3 ' De Anima, Bk. II, Chap. 1: "Bodies especially seem to be substances; and, among these, natural bodies, for these are the principles of the others." 35 " ••• matter is, indeed potency, and the form, act; ... " Ibid., 10. 36 Commentarius, sec. 215, p. 167. 37 Ibid., sec. 220 (paraphrased) . 31 32 ON THE SOUL 147 substance in the manner of a form that determines or characterizes a particular sort of body, i.e., a physical body potentially alive." 38 (Italics added) However, lest it be thought that soul is an actuality in the manner of any merely accidental form, Aquinas cautions us to take note that Aristotle adds that it is a substantiaJ actuality of form, 39 and this means, Thomas says, "that since every form has the matter proper to it, the soul must actualize just this special sort of body." 40 (Italics added) Concluding his argument, Thomas claims that in the passage beginning "I£ then" 41 Aristotle gathers all these observations into one definition, saying that if any definition covers all types of " soul " it will be this: the soul is the primary actuality of a (each) physical bodily organism. 42 Thus he not only construes Aristotle's words to mean diversity of intellect, but he also believes he has demonstrated the Aristotelian text to signify 43 that the soul is the form of the body, for "just as the body gets its being from the soul, as from its form, so too it makes a unity with this [particular] soul to which it is immediately related." 44 IV CoNCLUSION It has been pointed out in the text of this article that the doctrines of A verroes through the Latin Averroists at Paris differ considerably with those propounded by Thomas Aquinas, at least with respect to the problem of the soul. Although 38 Ibid., sec. •• De Anima, 4Ua, •• Commentarius, sec. " " If then, there is any one generalization to be made for any and every soul, the soul will be the primary act of a physical bodily organ." De Anima, 4 (McKeon). •• Commentarius, sec. •• Disregarding the textual uncertainty conjoined. u Commentarius, sec. about the way the soul and body are 148 RUTH REYNA both factions are speaking in the context of the interpretation of Aristotle, and using as they do the same philosophical language and the same textual propositions to express their conclusions, their fundamental explications of the soul are widely divergent. Of the two schools of thought the Averroists come closest to the original sense of Aristotle, beginning as he does with the ensouled composite man and finding natural explanation for the natural activities of man. However, in their zeal to resolve natural problems through interpretation of the original Aristotelian text, they make the serious error (as do the scholastics) of substantializing the functional doctrine of Aristotle and making his minimum intellectual principle an actual part of the soul. That this substantiality, as the Averroists hold, is valid in form to the body only when the individual is actually engaged in the activity of understanding is not more in accord with Aristotle since the latter plainly indicates that the soul can in no way be regarded as substantial form to the body's matter. On the other hand, Aquinas shows that the text the Averroists attempt to interpret so literally is eventually involved in intolerable difficulties that are contrary to the letter and spirit of Christian dogma-difficulties which can best be resolved by breaking up the intellective soul and introducing it into individual men as their substantial forms. At least this solves for Thomas Aquinas the problem of the orthodox doctrine of personal immortality which would then be possible if the soul were a substance capable of separate subsistence but at the same time diversified according to the number of individual men. Thus he must first make Aristotle's rudimentary principle into an active part of the soul, then break this active part up into many individual souls, and finally introduce these souls into individual bodies as their respective substantial forms. This Thomas does with expert philosophical craftsmanship, making Aristotle responsible in name if not in function. The Averroists, on the other hand, can find no rational justification in the use of the Aristotelian texts or in the application ON THE SOUL 149 of Aristotelian principles and methods for the substantiation of the Christian view that there is a multiplicity of individual intellective souls, each of which is the substantial form of a particular body infused in it by an act of creation and capable of separate subsistence after the body's dissolution. However, they see in the Aristotelian teaching verification for their own postulation that the Active Intellect is universal, the same in all men, that it not only brings the soul up to a level at which it can perceive the intelligible but also carries the soul to a still higher level where it can attain union with the intelligibles themselves. In this intellectual union with the Active Intellect the lower faculties of the soul cease to function; and this, for the A.verroists, is immortality. The 13th century Averroists are not consciously attempting to accommodate Aristotle to the Faith. They are interested only in reconstructing Aristotle's own argument in an historical, systematic, and coherent manner, regardless of whether conclusions are sometimes at variance with religious orthodoxy; and there is not in them any of the Thomistic conviction that reason, properly exercised, cannot do otherwise than confirm the truths of faith. But, Thomas Aquinas, perhaps the greater philosopher of the two schools, does what he must do-performs the required surgery upon the Aristotelian teachings-thus giving to the world, if not a faithful interpretation of this great Greek thinker, at least an applicable and followable guide to spiritu·ally functional living. RuTH REYNA Alhambra, California BOOK REVIEWS Words About God: The Philosophy of Religion. Edited by IAN T. RAMsEY. New York: Harper and Row, 1971. Pp. $3.95. This book is one of the latest additions to the Harper Forum series designed to present students with reliable resources for the study of religion. Words About God is subtitled The Philosophy of Religion, but the book is concerned solely with the logical uses of religious language. Moreover, except for the first section, the essays are limited to contributions of British philosophers of this century. This is, of course, a parochial view of the problem, but it is also the case that in recent years British philosophers have given special attention to these issues. It is clear that Ramsey, now Bishop of Durham, makes no pretense of inclusiveness. He wants to illustrate the evolution of the discussion of the logic of religious language in British empiricism from the early work of Russell, G. E. Moore, and Wittgenstein to A. J. Ayer and the Verification Principle and on to the broadening of empiricism and the implications of this development for more recent explorations of the logic of theological discourse. Ramsey fulfils this intention very well. I must remark, not entirely gratuitously, how heartening it is to see a Bishop so at home in the intricacies of contemporary philosophical analysis! The editor's Introduction gives an excellent brief over-view of the issues. This is followed by a section of classical passages on the problem by Plotinus, Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas, Mansel, and R. Otto. These essays should impress the student with the fact that theologians have long been aware of the necessity of reserve or reticence in speaking about God. I found the lesser-known selections (perhaps for that reason) from Lotze and Bradley on the personality of God especially interesting. Parts Three and Four include numerous selections from century British philosophers on the analysis of language--from Russell's distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and by description and Ayer's Verification Principle to Weismann's discussion of "language strata," Ryle's " category mistakes," Strawson's " logic of persons," Austin's " performative utterances," and Max Black's analysis of the cognitive role of metaphor, among others. Part V of the book illustrates how these newer insights into the uses of language are now being applied to the logic of religious discourse. This section contains essays by R. W. Hepburn, Donald Evans, and the editor. The last section of the book is not entirely satisfactory. One is led to see how philosophical analysis has presented theology with new tools and 150 151 BOOK REVIEWS a new opportunity for fruitful exploration of the peculiarities of its language, but the selections chosen to illustrate the application are few and, in this reader's view, not among the best in what has become an extensive and richly diverse body of literature. Two points can be made in the editor's defense: He was apparently required to pare down his original selection of essays considerably, and he was no doubt mindful of the fact that numerous collections of essays on religious language have appeared in the past few years-many of them containing the best journal articles in the field-indeed, some of them duplicating essays already reprinted more than once. Does this collection of readings serve the purpose for which it was designed? As indicated, Ramsey illustrates the development of language analysis in this century with a perceptive and economical choice of basic essays. However, the book offers the student a limited exposure to the theological uses of language analysis. It will have to be supplemented with the now well-known collections of Flew and Macintyre, Basil Mitchell, Dallas High, and others. Scholars in the field will be familiar with the literature condensed into this volume. On the other hand, students with limited philosophical training will find much in this book too difficult for them. The book will, then, be of primary use to students with some philosophical sophistication -advanced undergraduates and graduate students. The book should do good service in advanced courses in the philosophy of religion. The publisher has priced the book too high for a paperback edition of readings of less than 250 pages. JAMES c. LIVINGSTON College of William and Mary Williamsburg, Virginia God Within Process. By EULALIO R. BALTAZAR. New York: Press, 1970. Pp. 186. $5.95. Newman It is difficult to sort out the many issues to be raised in a discussion of God Within Process. (I} There is the use of the process thought of Teilhard de Chardin; there are many who would object to this approach in theological discourse. (2) But even if one has a somewhat open mind to evolutionary thinking, it is possible to question whether it can ever find substantive use in God-talk; God is to be kept removed from the arena of process and evolution. (3) And it is possible to go along even this far without thereby committing oneself to accepting the formulations and conclusions developed by the author. I find it necessary to keep at least these three points distinct; my enthusiasm for Baltazar's work is more or 15! BOOK REVIEWS less pronounced, depending upon which of these levels I happen to find myself. Let this review divide itself along the lines of the distinctions just made. (1) I am always anxious to read new statements in the terms of processive thinking. There can be no doubt that the scientific, philosophic, and social atmosphere today has structured itself in evolutionary categories. The evidence for the evolution of biological species is so convincing that the paradigm of evolution has gained widespread application in many areas. It is always to be expected that as a scientific theory becomes more and more acceptable within the scientific community, it will come to be regarded as a scientific fact. Then this scientific " fact " serves as a useful organizer of data in other disciplines; difficulties and misunderstandings arise when we treat this organizer, this paradigm, as a fact in those areas in which it has not established itself as a fact. The evolution of biological species may merit being considered a scientific fact; " evolution " in the speech and examples of men like Chardin and Baltazar is hardly factual in all instances; it is a very useful theory-no less and usually no more. It would be unfair to suggest that the categories of evolution are the only ones which can be extended past their sphere of origin. One of those philosophies which Baltazar finds inadequate today grew from the scientific evidence for matter and form into the metaphysical " insight " of potency and act. Such " insights " (a more felicitous description than " theory " or "paradigm," which can easily sound as if they are not too securely related to the real situation) are no more factual than is " evolution " in most of its applications today. The point is that whoever does not "see it" judges that the insight or the theory is not credible. No amount of evidence can convince one of the ontological validity of potency jact unless and until the mind sees the light and affirms the truth of this organizing insight. This should not preclude discussions in which the convinced argue their case to those who remain unable to assent to this position, but, whenever they fail in their efforts, they should not begin to suspect ill-will or some over-developed skepticism. There is never sufficient positive evidence to force someone to affirm a point of view which might serve as a super-organizer of all reality. Most of the polemic in recent writings by process thinkers (many of whose writings have been overly-polemical) stems from the exciting conflict between two different world-views. Too many men whose thought patterns are in terms of process and evolution begin to speak most unkindly of those still caught up in a " static " view of reality; they forget too easily that their own view is nothing more than a view, a useful reality-organizer of whose truth they are convinced. Baltazar can call " assumptions " based on a static view of reality " false" (p. 9); he should not forget that most of his discourse is likewise built on assumptions which are not proven to be true. And, on the other hand, those still living in BOOK REVIEWS 158 the " static " universe too often cannot at all understand why these process thinkers will not accept the " correct " world-view; they too forget that their " insight " is not a guarantee of absolute and certain truth in their point of view. All this urges caution whenever one puts himself to the task of criticizing the literature and conversation engaged in by those whose outlook and convictions might be radically different from one's own accustomed ways of thinking and speaking. I find evolution and process very useful categories, and I am most sympathetic to them; this does not mean that all my comments and criticisms will be totally objective. I can only try. Baltazar has nobly moved well past the level of mere polemics into the sphere of applications of his categories to religious thought. His book is not merely an attack on "static" thinkers (although it is that too) but is a constructive effort to bring new language to theology; there is no effort to destroy the content of theology but rather to express that content in such a way that more contemporary men might live with a real faith in a real God. However, something must be said about Baltazar's decision to use process thought for religious speech. Is his explanation and defense of process thinking consistent and convincing (always remembering that no rational debate can ever force one to adopt a new world-view)? My first criticism is that Baltazar has depended too heavily on Chardin at a point where Chardin is especially weak. In the Phenomenon of Man {and in God Within Process) one finds clear statements purporting to describe the building-up of the universe from the time so many years ago when there were only electrons, from electrons to atoms to molecules to megamolecules to living matter to sensible life to rational life to believing reason. I read each author to be saying that this process has actually occurred. They are not merely using mythical language to describe one possible route for evolution (if indeed we can extend the notion of evolution past the wide confines of biological species) but are describing what has happened in history. I could accept this description if the language were only mythical; after all, one's world-view must permeate everything in some way. However, I cannot agree with it as it is presented by Baltazar, an actual history. In a logical analysis of reality as we know it today, one could easily devise such a scheme, a type of Porphyrean tree of the universe. However, this successful logical activity does not validate efforts to make the scheme temporal; we cannot take a logical analysis of existing reality and simply say that the most simple parts came first in time, to be followed by the successively more complex parts until we have believing man. My second criticism in this area is more important. Baltazar so very frequently rejects the dualisms of past philosophies; the recurring dualism is that between this world and another world, natural/supernatural, matterjideas or forms, sciencejmetaphysics, however one might express it. 154 BOOK REVIEWS In his efforts to attract the secular theologians to his side, Baltazar argues forcefully against the sort of dualism which places all real value and meaning and being in some other world; we must live in and treasure this world. He rejects metaphysics because it is other-worldly. Baltazar attempts to locate transcendence in the realm of time rather than in space where the classical philosophers found it. He describes the evolution of our time, past to present to future, and then into the eschatological future which is continuous with but qualitatively different from time as we know it. Such a picture is helpful for maintaining the notion of transcendence without the need always to express it in spatial images. My observation is that Baltazar's temporal formulation is just as dualistic as any previous spatial formulations. The same criticisms which he brings against his predecessors can be directed now toward him. How is it different to say that we live now in a world of appearances (p. 129) and that reality is only in the future than to say that we live in a world of appearances and the reality is in another world of forms? If Greek philosophy with its emphasis on escaping this imperfect world is inappropriate for today's man, how can we propose a scheme in which we will be fulfilled in some new future (even if it is in this world)? Baltazar effectively argues against a spatial metaphysics, but he himself constructs a temporal metaphysics. Baltazar is not unaware of this objection, and he claims to answer it by pointing to the evolutionary character of time. Our present time (" timelessness " for Baltazar since we now live only in appearances, in a stage of becoming) evolves into the eschatological future which is a totally new dimension. This is a different time than the time we know now, and so I claim that Baltazar has not overcome dualism in his explanation of transcendence. The consistency of my position is born out when we read Baltazar's description of God. God is in the eschatological future; he is the Fullness of Time. He reveals himself only imperfectly now because the complete revelation of the Fullness of Time would destroy our present " timelessness "; only when we reach the eschatological future will we know God as he is. I cannot quarrel with this; in fact, it is a stimulating and helpful description. However, I would insist that Baltazar keep clearly in mind that he is speaking about our knowledge of God, God's revelation of himself to us; he is not here describing God as he is in himself. Baltazar does not say that God is incomplete now, only to be completed in the eschatological future; it is his revelation to us which is incomplete. God is in the eschatological future, and he is the ground of the evolutionary process. This can only mean that, as we live now in our present, God is in the eschatological future. Baltazar must have our present time ("timelessness") and the eschatological future both existing "now," "simultaneously," but on different levels (so that "now" and "simultaneously " are used only analogically) . How else can God be the ground BOOK REVIEWS !55 of the evolutionary process? And if all this is true, has not Baltazar placed himself into another dualism? He should rejoice that his dualistic picture might gain a sympathetic hearing in today's world, but he cannot claim to have superseded metaphysical dualism (unless time supersedes space). We indicated previously that "evolution" can be extended from its proper sphere, biological species, into almost all other areas of thought. This is to be expected whenever a concept is being tested as a possible organizing theme. However, I think that Baltazar fails to maintain the analogy strictly enough. He moves from " change " to " process " to "growth" to "evolution" to "development" (and back and forth within this range of concepts) as if all these words are interchangeable; they are not. It is unfair to depend upon the connotations of "evolution " when one is speaking merely of " growth." Baltazar frequently calls up the examples of acorns becoming oak trees and of the fetus becoming the child and the child becoming the adult. These are natural growth processes, not evolutionary processes in the commonly-accepted sense of evolution. A more telling criticism is that these are examples of essentially cyclic events; after all, the phase successive to the oak tree is the acorn, and the fetus follows the adult. And we know that those Greek philosophies tended to have a cyclic view of history. The Hebrews and their Biblical literature present a linear view of history, and evolution in its proper sense is likewise linear, directed toward the future. Baltazar's arguments would be more convincing if his examples were better chosen. We can complete this first section by commenting on Baltazar's frequent assertion that the future is in some way contained in the present. I agree with this if full emphasis is given to the phrase "in some way "; we can read the future to a certain degree if we can succeed in reading the minds and hearts of men in the present. A much deeper truth which process thought highlights is that the past is contained in the present and the present in the future. This latter statement can be affirmed at the same time as we realize that real novelty can always happen; to say that the future is contained in the present goes a long way toward restricting future novelty. (2) We have already alluded to the use of process philosophy for Godtalk. In many ways Baltazar has done this successfully. He has opened the door for Christianjatheist dialogue; he has shown points of contact between Christians and Marxists, and he has attempted to make it possible for the scientist and theologian to share the same world and to speak to one another about that world. By his fine analysis of God as the ground of process, Baltazar skillfully avoids the Whiteheadian inclusion of God within the process. God is within Baltazar's process in the context of his relationship to creation, and especially to man; however, it is never suggested that God himself develops or evolves. 156 BOOK REVIEWS (3) Finally, we address the problem of theological content in God Within Process. Any theology which allows its emphasis to fall on the future invariably assigns little space to the event of Jesus Christ. It is true that the Old Testament is promises, but those have been fulfilled in Jesus. It is true that Jesus spoke about coming again; it is also true that Jesus has come and that this first coming is the foundation of our hope in any future coming. It is true that in the earliest days of the Church people expected to see Jesus any day, but it is also true that Christians soon came to realize how rich had been the revelation already made in Jesus. We say today that we are a pilgrim People of God. We look to the coming of God's reign, but we walk on the path pointed out by Jesus, and we find strength for our pilgrimage in the grace of Jesus Christ. Our faith does look to the future, but it also rests on the past. Baltazar gives too little room to Emmanuel, God-with-us. There are some jarring statements concerning the Bible. In spite of Acts 11: Baltazar claims that " Christian" is not a scriptural term. (p. 70) Exodus 3:14 somehow comes out as: "I will be who I will be." (p. However, he has an excellent discussion of " covenant " and has constructively indicated how non-Christians today might be related to the God of the Christians. I am not convinced that all cannot be included in the covenant with Jesus, since he came to all men. Likewise, it could be argued that in the historical process the Old Testament covenants have yielded to the Christian covenant, and so it would be inappropriate to conceive of pagans today as living under God's covenant with Noah. However, the other side is that in the development of the pagan's salvation history, he may have reached only a stage comparable to that enjoyed by Noah; he must continue to grow toward Christ, ever remaining faithful to his covenant with the God of Noah. We can hope that Baltazar will develop this discussion. Baltazar has not spelled out a doctrine of sin. Is it possible for someone to break his covenant, to become unfaithful to his faithful God? Or has Baltazar set up a situation in which every human being can find himself in a covenant with God? Any theology today must address itself to evil, and especially to moral evil. One world is very much aware of its own sinfulness, and it must hear that it can be forgiven. Finally, Baltazar sings the praises of his God who is the fullness of activity. (p. He is contrasting this with the hellenic "static view" of God. The pity is that so many people for so many centuries have thought of God as static, unmoving, the great Stone-face in the sky. The hellenic God is actus purus, which might be translated as "the fullness of activity." Baltazar has not arrived at some startling conclusion about God; all those metaphysical theologians of the past have been speaking about God as " the fullness of activity." I close with this point because it speaks equally loudly to Baltazar and to those who theologize in tradi- BOOK REVIEWS 157 tional metaphysical terms. It is time for each side to listen to the other. This does not mean a forfeiture of convictions about reality; it does mean accepting the tentativeness of any human enterprise, whether it be practiced by oneself or someone else. I am certain that Baltazar and other disciples of Chardin have heard enough about the " dangers " of their approach; so too have others heard enough sharp comments about their " static " world-view. In many ways there is not that much difference in conclusions. I would find it difficult to choose between " actus purus " and " the fullness of activity." WILLIAM J. FINAN, 0. P. Yale University New Haven, Conn. M. B. AHERN. The Problem of Evil. New York: Pp. 96. $4.50. Schocken Books, 1971. The most interesting thing in the world would be to know if God is like any of the ways in which we conceive of him, particularly the way in which we describe his actions and explain his motivations. Almost any argument over evil, and God's involvement with it, sets up rather rigid guidelines for his activity and limits him to specified alternatives. The issue is whether, in fact, God has open to him only the avenues set down in our arguments or whether he is free to act in ways other than those which conform to our particular logics. To say this is not to suggest that God may not accept one of the ways of action we set down for him. Our arguments may be close to his own way of thinking, and even identical at some points. The problem is that we have an anthropocentric way of treating any ironclad logical conclusion of ours as if it exhausted God's alternatives. Mr. Ahem's new treatment of the problem of theodicy has the great virtue of recognizing the wider sets of possible modes of action and purposes in the divine activity and basing the discussion of evil on a recognition of the possibilities open to God in arriving at his decisions. However, Mr. Ahem does pose his problem primarily as one of either the adequacy or the logical cogency of certain arguments already given, as he interprets these. That approach tends to tum the question of evil into a logical analysis of various arguments, whereas the issue is why and how God acted in virtue of what he is like. In other words, the question hinges on gaining greater insight into God's nature more than it does on the form of arguments previously given, each of which has its own assumed notion of God that explains why he might act as described. If other treatments of evil have seemed to decide the question conclu- 158 BOOK REVIEWS sively on one side or the other, perhaps the chief merit of Ahern's treatment is to try to demonstrate that the issue must remain open and inconclusive. God's existence is left as "an open question." (p. vii) Such indetermination and inconclusiveness is much more in the spirit of post-modern man, who has given up his trust in the finality of " modern " reason. There are, as Ahern points out, " several kinds of problems about God and evil, not only one." (p. ix) In this case what we have is not one issue to be argued too conclusively in one direction or another but rather the basic issue of trying to determine what the questions are and in how many ways they might be phrased. Such an approach does not lead to definite conclusions, but it does involve a more realistic appraisal of our situation. This much being granted, however, it is true that Mr. Ahern does go through various formulations of the arguments as if the alternatives presented were mutually exclusive and must be accepted or rejected just as offered. He speaks of " theists " as if they were one group, of fixed mind and agreed in outlook. In Chapter I, Ahern's treatment does split down the " problem " of evil into various forms rather than one, and this makes more sense out of our dilemma than a simplistic notion. That is, if, as he suggests, there are a variety of forms to the problem and not one, then it is more understandable why we are perplexed and still remain so. A single issue might be answered, but if our problem is how to phrase the problem itself, that is more difficult. At times, however, Mr. Ahern is more rigid in his thinking. He states that a "wholly good being" must always be opposed to evil. (p. 3) Yet there is no evidence that God is bound by such strict alternatives. It is agreed that the notion of evil admits of multiplicity. Why cannot God's intentions be less than single and simple too? The truth is that our author seems quite flexible in his conception of the subtlety of the problem of evil and yet quite rigid and strangely traditional in his ways of conceiving of God. Could it not be that fresh insight into the problem of evil comes only as new insight into God's intentions is realized or a new conception of his nature is framed? "Omnipotence" is one of the key terms (Chap. III), but-strangelyMr. Ahern does not stop for a full-dress re-evaluation of the meaning of " omnipotence." All the while he realizes that how this divine attribute is interpreted is central to the solution of the issue. His discussion of evil leads us to the key terms which must be re-thought but does not itself proceed to this needed reappraisal. It thus forms a prolegomena to a fruitful new approach to a question of evil. What Ahern does conclude for us is that there is no reason why these terms (omnipotence, perfect goodness, and evil) need not be contradictory. This depends upon how each is conceived. We have a number of alternatives, and everything hinges on how these are worked out. (p. 14) However, of these three central terms, he does the least to reinterpret perfect BOOK REVIEWS 159 goodness, and it just might be that " goodness " is more complicated than we have imagined. Understanding "evil" might depend on grasping the subtlety and variety of alternatives open to the operation of " goodness." For instance, Mr. Ahern says that " a morally perfect being acts well always." (p. 17) This statement is often accepted, but it is a simplistic notion which needs much reconsideration. At times it is suggested that " goodness " might not be so straightforward, but these hints perhaps need greater exploration if evil is ever to be understood. Mr. Ahern sees that evil changes if perfect goodness is not a divine attribute, but he should go on from this to see that all might depend on leaving goodness in God but at the same time moving on to new ideas of its meaning and mode of operation. Perhaps the primary value of this book lies in its continued assertion that the problem of evil is not one but many (e. g., the general problem, concrete problem, etc.) . Recognizing this complexity is an advantage, since perhaps only if we over-simplify the problem are we likely to misunderstand evil. However, the conclusion to this analysis should perhaps be that our primary energy must now go into exploring just how many ways it is possible to formulate the question of evil. One conclusion might be that God is not as concerned to be " perfectly " good as some men think, or at least that his notion of his own perfection is not as rigid as ours has sometimes been. Mr. Ahern's primary concern seems to be to show that, due to the complexity of the issue, God's existence cannot be ruled out dogmatically but remains an open question. This is an improvement over the usual rigidity of our thinking about God and a worthy conclusion to the study. Yet it leaves totally open the question of just how we might begin to restructure our thinking about God's nature and his intention in new ways. The only answer available, Ahern concludes at one point, (p. 58) is an indefinite one, and perhaps it is good for us to learn to accept such inconclusiveness when we deal with God. However, Mr. Ahern draws back from the suggestion of God's freedom, saying "the risk is too great." (p. 64) It would be interesting to know whether God actually is as timid as our author supposes. No conclusion can be decisive (p. 79) where God is concerned. We must learn the art of speculation and constant suspense. FREDERICK SONTAG Pomona College Clarement, California 160 BOOK REVIEWS Faith and Philosophical Enquiry. By D. Z. PHILLIPS. New York: Schocken Books, 1971. Pp. £77. ££.50. Half-baked uses of Kierkegaard and Heidegger had much to do with Paul Tillich's "symbolic" and curiously atheistic Systematic Theology. Half-baked uses of Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein have much to do with Dr. Z. Phillips'" linguistic" and dubiously theist, though allegedly Christian, philosophy of religion. Faith and Philosophical Enquiry is a collection of thirteen influential papers, first published between 1968 and 1970, which typify ingenious muddle-headedness, but which are like Tillich's writings in their importance as indicators of major modern trends. Phillips shares Tillich's penchant for speaking for the Judaeo-Christian tradition as a whole, while eclectically avoiding anything that might seem superstitious (or even faintly supernatural) to defend in a scientific age. Phillip's tactics put one in mind of Tillich's responses to "challenges" like: "Now that we know so much more about physics and biology than Moses or Jesus or Aquinas ever could, how can we consistently believe in a Transcendent Creator? ". Tillich's relatively explicit responses throw much light on Phillips's real directions. Tillich would reply that such questions Creation dealt a healthy blow to "superstition" and "fundamentalism." stories, like Fall-of-Man stories, are not literal but symbolic. Traditionalist clergy left them crudely and outdatedly symbolic. Updated symbolic and wise Tillichian theology teaches that anthropomorphic, traditionalist (e. g., Thomist) talk about God as a transcendent, purely spiritual, triunely personal ens realissimum distinct from the physical universe created by him debases God by making him a mere Supreme Being who creates and lovingly relates himself to personal creatures. Traditionalist talk objectifies God as a Being among beings. Such dying, unacceptable symbols must give way to live symbols: God is Being-Itself, not a distinct Transcendent Being. God is Ultimate Concern itself, not a concerned, personal Creator. God is beyond Existence and Essence and presumably beyond ever giving any earthly help to those old-fashioned enough to call upon His name in prayer. (Compare Phillips at pp. 108-105). Phillips does not list any Tillichiana in his bibliography. But it is well worth bearing Tillich in mind when one feels lulled by many widely scattered and moving passages in Faith and Philosophical Enquiry which seem to be pronouncements of an ardent Kierkegaardian theist. For sudden echoes of Tillich and his emulators show that these appearances of Christian fideism are misleading. Phillips uses Kierkegaard's contrast of Eternal God and temporal man not, as first appears, for the Sad Dane's Supernaturalism but rather for the earthier Cultural Relativism of Wittgenstein-a-la-P. G. Winch. " The objector who accuses me of denying the objective reality of God may have in mind a statement which I should support-namely the state- BOOK REVIEWS 161 ment that God is not an object. That is a statement of grammar. Those who deny it, I suggest, speak of God in a way which is a logical extension of ways in which we speak of human beings. If God is a thing He is finite; and a finite God satisfies the needs neither of religion nor of theology." (p. 60) The convenient quasi-ambiguity of the words "object" and " thing " here may put some off the scent. It does indeed seem demeaning to a theist to call God a thing or an object as those words are often used in ordinary language. For the theist takes God to be both personal and supreme. In a similar way, when Phillips typically says that God is not a thing among things or an object among objects, (p. 85) or that God in his heaven is not an extra domain over and above our natural world, the Christian may interpret Phillips as saying something highly theistic. (Cf. Chapter Ill) For the theist agrees to the extent that God is not just one being among many, not just "something else" besides created nature: the Transcendent God is the uniquely perfect being, the only ens a se. But what Phillips really means in philosophical terms is that God is not a Substance, that God is not a Transcendent Being. Look again at the baited words: "If God is a thing He is finite." Suppose we write instead: "If God is any substance, if God is the ens a se and ens realissimum but nevertheless can be correctly given the label ' ens,' if God is a distinct individual being, then it follows that He is finite." We would so have written out more clearly what Phillips means, which is presumably the first part of an argument of the form: "If Q then R, but R is incompatible with the needs of religion or theology, so (by Modus Tollens) NOT-Q "!! But why must God be finite if God is an individual or ens, or is a personal individual, or is a thing in the technical sense of a Substance? Possibly Phillips himself is conveniently misled by this demeaning flavor of " thing " or " object " in ordinary usage when we contrast mere things or mere objects, so sadly limited-(" finite ")-because they are mindless, with conscious persons? Possibly also Phillips supposes like Spinoza (and Tillich?) that no substance X can be infinite in any religiously or otherwise important sense if it is distinct from another substance Y, even if Y is finite and dependent on X. Compare the child's fallacy of supposing that there cannot be an infinite (infinitely dense) series of numbers (fractions) between 0 and 1 because there is a number 2 which lies outside the infinite series. Being infinite need not involve being all-inclusive, any more than being all-inclusive involves being infinite. Phillips also seems to embrace the dogma that if X makes Y meaningful, valuable, purposeful, etc., then X cannot have any properties which are somehow faintly analogous to-(" logical extensions of") -any properties of Y. But this dogma is fatal for even Phillips's philosophy of religion. He wants to say that God is the meaning of the world. (Chapter III) He wants to say that both concepts of God and concepts of human institutions and events are intelligibly discussable by insiders. Thus God and man share the property that the concepts of each of them are intelligibly 162 BOOK REVIEWS discussable by insiders. (Cf. Chapters II and IV-VII) Must that be denied too on pain of demeaning God? Another fallacy which is crucial to spot if one is to understand the source of many profoundly confusing, and at present very influentially confusing, remarks spread right across this book is the fallacy behind those already quoted words: "Those who deny it, I suggest, speak of God in a way which is a logical extension of ways in which we speak of human beings." (p. 60) The major implications of this sentence in the whole passage quoted is shown by the way it directly precedes " If God is a thing He is finite." Thus we have the first part of an intended argument which unfolds modo tollendo as: " If P and Q, and if Q then R, but R is incompatible with the needs of religion or theology, so NOT-Q and thus NOT-P." In other words, we have an argument to the effect that, if the medieval tradition of analogical predication in theology were accepted, then we would have to make God a thing in some anthropomorphically demeaning way. (Burne's attacks on Natural Theology are praised by Phillips more than once). Hence we would next have to agree that God is finite, which is theologically and religiously intolerable, so that any talk of A.nalogiaEntis must be scrapped by non-idolaters. Nowhere in the book is there a serious attempt to consider how and why many gifted and careful and devout medievals concluded that analogical predication, controlled by applications of the Via Negativa, could make so much of both theism and theology possible to understand without any anthropometric sacrilege. Indeed Phillips tends towards defaming those medievals when he writes " Religious mystery is connected with . . . the prohibition against idolatry: that is against likening God to anything natural." (p. 142) It is hardly surprising that Phillips makes unfriendly gestures in the course of his book towards Aquinas's Five Ways, towards the neo-Thomist E. L. Mascalls' Existence and Analogy, and towards the Catholic neo-Wittgensteinian P. T. Geach's sympathetic chapter on Aquinas in his book with G. E. M. Anscombe Three Philosophers. The Anglican philosopher-theologians John Hick and Bishop Ian Ramsey are also chosen for castigation: for to Phillips's horror, we learn, Hick believes with the analogists that persons will enjoy an eschatological existence which will be literal existence and not totally unlike present personal existence. (pp. 124 fl'.) Personal immortality does not require demythologizing and re-symbolizing to death! This, it seems, makes Hick like a " superstitious " mother who trusts in a Virgin Mary still living after physical death to protect a baby from observable, physical harm. (Cf. p. 103) Hick and Ramsey are also at fault, one gathers, for joining atheists like Kai Nielsen in criticizing the Winch-Phillips attempt to make features of religious ways of life only assessable by (and intellectually accessible to) people deeply involved in promoting or practising those ways. (See Nielsen's excellent" Wittgensteinian Fideism," Philosophy, 1967, which scores many direct hits on Winch's succes de scandale relativiste, well quoted by Phillips here, The Concept of a Social Science.) BOOK REVIEWS 163 Phillips, like Tillich, sees no disastrous inconsistency between the " Closed Circle " or " Internal Criticism Only " approach to philosophy of religion and the " Being an Insider I'm Free to criticize Any Superstitions like Personal Immortality or Divine Individuality" approach to theology. Nor does Phiilips realise that the Wittgensteinian "Family Resemblance" approach to polymorphous concepts becomes unmanageable as an analytical method if too much intransitivity is allowed to the relation of similarity and there are too many relata so related. Realizing this and making good comparative use of many centuries' work on analogical predication would be a way of taking what is permanently valuable in Wittgenstein seriously for purposes of philosophy of religion. Phillips seems blind to this. There is much else to query in Phillips's method. When comes the implied crosscultural, cross-philosophical objectivity of his criticism of his rivals when his method is supposed so radically to isolate different sets of criteria for rationality as being internal to different approaches to the world? Here is a source of much rank inconsistency and possibly of some pure nonsense. "I'm safe in my Circle but you're not safe in yours!": this is the slogan between the lines, the theme song chanted implicitly throughout thirteen arrogant essays by various square-circular rabbits popping out from supposedly magic Wittensteinian, Kierkegaardian, and "Up-to-Date" Christian hats. Caveat emptor! But those who like provocation might especially enjoy "Faith, Scepticism and Religious Understanding,"" From World to God?," "Religious Beliefs and Philosophical Enquiry,"" Religious Beliefs and Language-Gamas," and the New Welsh Voluntarist Manifesto "God and Ought." JOHN KING-FARLOW University of Guelph Ontario, Canada Reason and Faith Revisited: The Aquinas Lecture, 1971. By FRANCIS H. PARKER. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1971. Pp. 45. $2.50. Professor Parker tells us in the :first paragraph of this stimulating Aquinas Lecture " that a complete return to the age of Aquinas is today impossible, at least for me. Much as I prize, even envy, St. Thomas' synthesis, too much water has gone over the falls of modernity for us to be able to return it all to its original reservoir." (p. 2) Although Parker does not spell this out clearly enough, one of his most crucial disagreements with Aquinas about Reason and Faith concerns the demonstrative cogency of the Five Ways. St. Thomas thought that from certain obvious contingent truths 164 BOOK REVIEWS known by sense-experience, as well as from obviously certain necessary truths known by the human intellect, one can demonstrate God's existence. On the matter of obvious contingent truths Aquinas seems mercifully closer than Parker to Aristotle's general trust in the senses. (For the Stagirite and the Angelic Doctor our trust in the senses' general reliability is not a matter that requires prolonged philosophical agonizing) . It is also significant that Aquinas seems similarly closer to those modern AngloSaxon and Continental Philosophers who query the intelligibility of concepts (or ' concepts ') of a human experience that have no logical ties with concepts of the shared human world. Parker belongs considerably to the hyper-cautious epistemological tradition of Descartes, Hume, and Russell and of their sceptical ancestors. (Parker appeals to his Harvard mentor C. I. Lewis's' doubt '-answering but deeply' doubt '-recognizing pragmatism at pages 21-22). Parker's epistemological prolegomena to his programme for reconciling Faith and Reason (pp. 4 fl'.) are studded with nco-Cartesian sounding expressions like " immediate experience " and " a first order belief that seems to be a record of immediate experience," " a second order belief that seems to follow from some other accepted belief." (Parker's very way of talking about second order beliefs' merely seeming to follow similarly begs certain questions against Aquinas on necessary truths.) We suspect that if Aquinas's and Aristotle's spirits were to visit Parker, they would refer him to vital queries about the intelligibility of much nco-Cartesian philosophical usage of" immediately perceive,"" directly observe,"" seems," " appears," and " experience," queries raised in such contemporary works as J. L. Austin's Sense and Sensibilia, (Oxford: 1962; 14 fl'., 135 fl'., etc.) , Peter Achinstein's Concepts of Science (Baltimore: 1968; 172 fl'.), and L. Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: 1953; Pt. I, 34-35, 172178, etc.) . Their spirits might likewise refer him to Marcel's rejection of Idealism, Heidegger's and Sartre's refusal to' Bracket the External World,' and Marxist arguments that we must start doing philosophy like Aristotle with man as a social animal, confident of a shared world. We do not wish to beg the question against Parker that critics of such nco-Cartesian usage and methods are entirely right. Indeed we have ourselves endorsed elsewhere the value for philosophical humility of often accepting probability instead of seeking certainty. But surely in 1971 one cannot just take it for granted that much of the Aristotelian- Thomist tradition on sense experience and reason has been intelligibly attacked, let alone undermined, by neo-Cartesians and other heirs of scepticism. It is odd for Parker to dissociate himself from extreme followers of "rationalism," yet to pick up their jargon. Thus Parker's attempt to replace Aquinas's approach to the reasonableness of Faith with something more up-to-date gets off to a rather dubious start. But much of the remaining discussion is helpful. Although the following points are not entirely novel, they are freshly and illuminatingly BOOK REVIEWS 165 woven together. (I) In many contexts a false belief may be highly reasonably and quite irreproachably believed because of the contextual problems and evidence. (pp. 7, 41 etc.) (II) There is no a priori logical link between the true proposition (a) that characteristically theistic religious beliefs and characteristically non-religious beliefs are often about different kinds of intended OBJECTS and the question-begging proposition (b) that therefore religious beliefs are typically irrational and non-religious beliefs typically rational. (p. fl7) (III) Religious faith may have a justification which is perfectly rational, whether or not this closely resembles what some philosophers consider to be our paradigms of good reasons in mathematical and scientific proofs. (p. 35) A religion like Christianity may be reasonably believed " Because it gives life and the world a meaning and point which they otherwise lack." (p. 39) (V) Many a rationalist has already committed himself to seeking intelligibility by rejecting extreme sceptical queries about basic " principles," and indeed committed himself to such " principles " as the Law of Identity and the Stability of Meaning which he takes to be logically or semantically necessary truths. (Our double quotes indicate Parker's choice of label.) Such a rationalist is in a bad analogous and perhaps profounder quest for another form of (ultimate) intelligibility: the quest through religious commitment for meaning, point and purpose in life. (pp. flO, 38, 41, etc.) This approach to Faith and Reason seems to Parker to be radically different from ideas in Aquinas and in William James. Is it? We comment: "Sic et Non." Doubtless Aquinas would disagree with the last clause of Parker's " It may be reasonable to believe that the world has a purpose even though that belief may in fact be false." (p. 41) An Aristotelian premise of St. Thomas's Fourth and Fifth Ways is that man is cognizant both of purposefulness in nature and also of certain absolute values, which are exemplified in much that he experiences. Parker's implicit sympathy for the historically very ancient sceptical tradition (which characterizes what he called the "falls of modernity" dividing him from the Medievals) may prevent his enthusiastically endorsing so strong a premise. But he should at least note that his own interestingly allied uses of " ought " and " rational " in this Lecture do suggest commitment to some degree of human knowledge of absolute values and intrinsic purposefulness. And Parker should next note how Aquinas's use of the Fourth and the Fifth Ways (after his giving the earlier three) offers us a systematic way of making sense of our human awareness of limited examples of purpose and value. Just so, what Parker on page 39 calls " the Christian Story " offers us not just some scattered inklings of point and purpose but a systematic sense of the meaning of life. William James seems in "The Will to Believe" to share Aquinas's and Parker's sense of our human need for a systematic teleology. But the distinction that Parker tries to draw on pages 4fl-43 between James's supposed passionalism and Parkerian reasonableness strikes us as thin and artificial. 166 BOOK REVIEWS The present reviewers have discussed at length a good number of the issues vividly raised by Parker's useful explorations and now sketchily resurrected by us in this notice. We beg leave to mention the following works: Reason and Religion (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1969); "Cogency, Conviction and Coercion," lnteT'TULtional Philosophical Quarterly, 1968; "Rational Commitment and 'The Will to Believe,'" Sophia, 1969; "Faith-and Faith in Hypotheses," Religious Studies, 1971; "Gambling on Other Minds-Human and Divine," Sophia, 1971. We are not there entirely in agreement with Parker! But we are glad to see his lively, thought-provoking Aquinas Lecture in print. WILLIAM N. CHRISTENSEN University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada JoHN KING-FARLOW Universities of Alberta and of Guelph, Ontario, Canada Thomism and the Ontological Theology of Paul Tillich: A Comparison of Systems. By DoNALD J. KEEFE, S. J. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1971. Pp. 360. In this book Fr. Keefe presents us with an orderly and scholarly study of two diverse ontological methods of theology by way of comparing Thomism and the systematics of Paul Tillich. He does this in order to determine " the formal structural principles which make theology what it is." (p. ix) Such a work is of special significance in our age because the emphasis upon interdisciplinary studies in general, and upon the correlation of the secular disciplines and theology in particular, makes it imperative to distinguish them with sufficient clarity. Otherwise Christian faith becomes subject to the critical judgment of some humanistic norm, instead of the revealed categories of the Bible which, in the context of a living Tradition of the Church's teaching authority, must be the foundation for discovering their contemporary counterparts. With Tillich the author insists that any method of Christian theology has to be one of correlation on account of the interrelatedness between divinity and humanity which has been revealed in the mystery of Christ. He proposes that the Christian transformation of Aristotelianism by St. Thomas and of Platonism by Paul Tillich provides us with two models of the way in which any humanist discipline might be correlated with theology. Because of the diverse classical ontologies which they transform, these two theological methods are quite divergent. Despite this fact, Fr. Keefe maintains that BOOK lUJVIEWS 167 each system is adequate to its task of rendering revelation intelligible with a remarkable coherence in accord with its proper principles of ontological methodology. By a direct examination of the Aristotelian and Platonic ontologies and methods the first chapter explains the relationship between ontology and theology. The act-potency correlation of the Aristotelian ontological method leads to an understanding of being as immanent essence and of non-being as that which admits of potential intelligibility. St. Thomas perceived that this essentialist understanding of the world is in potency to a theological interpretation of reality. In the revelation of Christ he discovered the existential actualization of essential substance. Christian faith alone is able to save the Aristotelian world-view of immanent essentialism from the hopeless enslavement of finite being and reason. Plato's ontological method, left to itself, is no more hopeful. His Weltanschauung, however, leads rather to a tragic existentialism. Between being and nonbeing he beheld a contradictory opposition which riddles human existence and makes it ultimately meaningless. Tillich brings the substance of Christian revelation to bear upon Platonic hopelessness and transforms his ontological method by the New Being of Jesus as the Christ who has overcome the tragic estrangement of human existence from its true depth in God the ground of all being. His systematic theology still preserves the radical ambiguity of existential man by maintaining the Platonic contradiction between being and non-being. On the other hand, the Thomistic synthesis accepts the Aristotelian contrary opposition between being and non-being which allows for the potential theological intelligibility of the world and so provides an ontological method which can support theological statements that are true literally. But Tillich's dialectical method of correlation between essential and existential being does not remove the ambiguities of man under the conditions of existence. Thus his system leads to a constant deliteralizing of the kerygma in favor of religious symbols which can never be interpreted literally. Thomism, therefore, inquires about man's calling in light of the revelation that Christ's existential grace is universal. Man can learn factually from this revelation which provides a literal revision of Aristotle's pagan view of reality. In his second chapter, "Thomism-A 'Questioning Theology'," Father Keefe explains its theological method as "the hypothetical assertion of the structure of the revelation." (p. 53) From this method flow theological statements which are actually questions that parallel the assertions of faith. Such theological statements are hypothetically true. They are hypothetical because the Thomistic transformations of Aristotelian metaphysics is based upon the assumption that the act-potency correlation is valid. They are hypothetically true insofar as such theological assertions are a possible actualization of the potential understanding of faith. The Thomistic system, therefore, is founded upon formal structural principles 168 BOOK REVIEWS which issue forth in theological statements that are by hypothesis affirmations of faith, i.e., they are in reality questions of faith in the fides quaerens intellectum. If they were looked upon as affirmations of faith, these statements would no longer be per se theological, since the understanding of revelation can never replace the grace of faith necessary to accept the revealed mystery as actually true. The Thomistic systematic theology, then, provides " necessary reasons " for the intelligence of a believer who seeks to penetrate the meaning of a mystery that is contingent, inasmuch as it is disclosed to man because of God's sovereignly free activity in revelation-and-salvation history. In other words, no system of theology can ever demonstrate the fact of Christian faith that the Father's saving love and wisdom had to actualize the substance of creation by means of the Redemptive Incarnation and so rescue the world from an immanent essentialism or tragic existentialism either of which would imprison finite reality in final meaninglessness. Thomism, therefore, is essentially a negative theology (via negativa) which shows the impossibility of the full actualization of the world's potentialities apart from Jesus Christ. According to the author, the Logos incarnate, and not the Logos apart from his human embodiment as Revealer and Redeemer, is the Prime Analogate of being. He reveals in and through his humanity the gratuitous existence of grace which alone can make man the actual image of God. For Thomism the " Adam before the Fall " is interpreted as the ontological condition of possibility for the Fall which regards a future fulfillment in the " Second Adam " and not a past paradise. Since man is created only in Christ, he is actually a sinner solely in view of deficiency from the being of Christ. " Adam before the Fall " signifies literally an affirmation of our existence in Christ and so the ontological priority over the fallen Adam can only be that of the Christ. That is why faith in the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary is an essential part of the Thomistic systematics. She is the ontological guarantee that a human person created in Christ has been fully actualized by her sharing in the gratuitous existence of his grace so intimately as to have been preserved from sin and raised up to the glory of bodily resurrection. The third and final chapter, embracing about two-thirds of the book, is a thorough analysis of the formal structural principles in Tillich's "answering theology." Keefe's conclusion that his system is generally adequate to its theological task of faithfully rendering revelation intelligible is not intended to disparage Thomism or any systematic theology. In Tillich's writings he does find a prejudice that any system must be dialectical and so incompatible with a literal understanding of theological statements. At this point, however, we should try to appreciate Tillich's limited usage of the term " literal " to facts or data that are in some way empirically verifiable. Certainly the Thomistic evaluation of our analogous knowledge about revealed mysteries would also preclude this definition of literal but BOOK REVIEWS 169 does admit of a " proper " meaning that Tillich does not seem to account for in his religious and theological knowledge. He attempts dialectically to mediate between the " heteronomy " of appealing to an irrational authority in matters of faith and the " autonomy " of relativizing the whole of reality, thereby removing any possibility of ultimate concern. His method of correlation is a dialectical medium, a" theonomy," which makes the Christian message in his system a theology that answers the questions arising from a philosophical analysis of man's existential situation. Tillich's Christian theology is grounded in the tensions between the concrete and the universal. Only the affirmation of faith in the Logos Sarx, the Word Incarnate, can keep these tensions in a dialectical balance. For, as the Logos, Christ is absolutely universal and, as Incarnate, he is absolutely concrete. Thus all theological statements can be based upon an ultimate concern with Jesus as the Christ. The sense of ultimacy in Christian faith derives from his universality which embraces every possible relationship, while the sense of concern or existential commitment from the concrete picture of the Christ given in the Gospel. Christ, therefore, is the actual fulfillment of the tendencies and aspirations found in any religion and theology. His system is structured around this central principle of ultimate concern which spells the difference between being and non-being or between ultimate meaning in existence and absurdity. The norm for his Christian theology is the New Being of Jesus as the Christ who is our ultimate concern by bringing salvation to an otherwise hopeless and ultimately meaningless existence. The fragmentary share of man in the New Being through faith preserves preliminary concerns, such as politics and all secular pursuits, from becoming idols instead of vehicles of ultimate concern. Thus to interpret a religious symbol literally would make it an idol since it has been taken from finite material. At the heart of Tillich's system is the discovery of a new significance for being, namely, essence, which is the ontological perfection of existential man, i.e., his complete participation in the New Being. And so, ever to interpret man's existential world of ambiguity, estrangement, and anxiety, as the basis for a " literal " understanding of " essence " would mean the destruction of the radical distinction between essence and existence. Essence always signifies the perfect participation by man in the New Being which alone can reunite him with God the true depth of his being, whereas existence must mean estrangement from God in his system. Existence that would provide the matter of religious symbols which could be understood literally would necessarily mean for Tillich that man could be saved without Christ. The literal significance of words describes the phenomena of daily experience, while religious and theological language must be transparent to the ultimate, the depth of existential being. Tillich's systematics is an " answering theology " in the sense that it formulates Christian revelation in terms that are designed to answer the questions of human existence which arise 170 BOOK REVIEWS out of some experience of ultimate concern, i. e., the ontological shock experienced in some form as the threat of non-being inherently involved in finite existence. Keefe concludes that the differences between Tillich and Thomism are far less doctrinal than systematic. For Tillich the application of the Protestant Principle demands that all myths must be " broken " or deliteralized and held in dialectical correlation with critical thinking. Otherwise, the symbolic myth becomes idolatrous, which is making ultimate the content of a preliminary concern. In Tillich's system the Protestant Principle is the equivalent of the Chalcedonian definition for Roman Catholic theologians in that it rejects the confusion of the divine and human in revelation while insisting upon their correlation. According to Keefe, when Tillich applies the principle to a criticism of the Roman Catholic dogma of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, he is denying what he believes the doctrine to mean, which is in reality not what the dogma intends. He interprets the dogma as the foundation for the adoration of a finite material object. While the Roman Catholic insists upon the "objective " reality of Christ in this Sacrament, he does not understand the " objectivity " of being in the same way as Tillich who restricts it to phenomenal reality available to technical analysis. Either usage may be considered valid, as Keefe points out, but theological dialogue confused. becomes impossible when they In explaining the structure ot Tillich's system, the author emphasizes immediately that the Prime Analogate of being for him is the essential unity of God, man, and the universe, namely, the eschatological New Being. It is the Christ in a Trinitarian context embracing the universe of creation essentially and not existentially. Jesus as the Christ, as united with the depth of being, was always essential and never existential, i.e., he was in existence but not of it. Keefe considers this to be identical with the Prime Analogate of Thomism, but differing from it in that the Thomistic ontological basis is esse, i. e., existence in Christ as the ontological perfection of human nature. Dogmatically, he also looks upon Tillich's interpretation of the mystery of Christ to be basically the same as that of Thomism. But the Thomist problem is how to understand an existential hypostatic union, while for Tillich the union is " essential " and so no problem in this context because essential humanity is supposed to be united with the Logos. His problem is how Eternal God-Manhood (essential manhood} can manifest itself under the conditions of existential estrangement. The paradox of the Word becoming flesh is not the essential union between God and man but the historical union of divinity and humanity. This is why Tillich's entire systematics is based upon the method of correlating the essence of the revelation of the New Being with the existence of sinful estrangement in all other men. Again Keefe makes the assertion that the real difference between Tillich and Thomism is systematic and not dogmatic. BOOK REVIEWS 171 For Tillich to take literally the statement that Jesus Christ is true God and true man hypostatically united would mean that essence and existence are identical. For Thomism, on the other hand, existential statements do not necessarily imply estrangement but rather the substantial composition of essence and existence with the potentiality for further actualization including that of the hypostatic union itself. There is one Roman Catholic dogma, the Immaculate Conception, which Keefe believes that Tillich's system can and should support. Mary's smlessness is an ontological implication of the Christ-event. Since Christ transcends our existential estrangement, the actualization of created goodness in space and time has not been realized in him as in a creature like Mary. She is both in and of existence, and, as a particular human individual, would have her being totally in and by his being which is the Christian revelation. Her creation in non-estrangement would show that creation is not necessarily identified with the Fall as well as show that creation and Christian revelation are really the same. This book is a significant contribution to systematic theology. By carefully distinguishing theology from faith and dogma Fr. Keefe helps clarify its special role as a scientific reflection within the believing community as well as open up ecumenically different approaches to the inexhaustible riches of the Christian revelation. More specifically, his comparative study of two such systems as that of Thomism and Paul Tillich virtually touches upon the main enterprises in philosophical theology, since each flows within the two mainstreams of thought in the intellectual history of theologyPlatonic Augustinianism and Aristotelian Thomism. Each tradition ought to be in a better position of mutual enrichment by sharing insights in their common Christian problem of developing a viable theology in our secularized society. The author observes, interestingly enough, that contemporary Catholic theologies seem to be favoring the existential Augustinianism characteristic of Tillich's Platonic method, while post-Bultmannian Protestant theologians are abandoning dialectical theology and becoming more concerned with the " literal " understanding of theological statements, as has been characteristic of the Thomistic tradition. Actually this book should help foster dialogue between Catholic and Protestant theologians about the validity of God-talk and the real meaning or truthvalue of religious discourse in general. There are some defects in the work worthy of note. The author's extremely heavy style-made somewhat necessary by the nature of his subject-is often complicated the more by unfortunate errors in printing. Documentation in the footnotes, while adequate for most portions of the book dealing with Tillich's system, is noticeably lacking in his treatment of Thomism. Many more references to the works of St. Thomas and also to his principal commentators are required if one can judge with greater confidence his own interpretation of Thomism as a living system today. 172 BOOK REVIEWS For instance, when he makes a statement that Thomism by virtue of its emphasis upon creation in time (p. 103) is incompatible with a theory of polygenism while entirely consistent with an evolutionary world-view, the careful reader rightly expects more documentation and elaboration in support of his assertion. A much more crucial opinion that asks for some critical examination is Fr. Keefe's contention that pure nature enjoys only a conceptual reality. (p. 107) It is not a real possibility but only a conceptual possibility and functions as a counter-concept by which the gratuity of grace can be understood. But if we cannot conceive of pure nature as a real possibility, then the reality of grace itself seems to be somewhat compromised in that its distinctness would not be discernible to us. It would appear more accurate to say that the grace of Christ is ever able to elevate and permeate that which would otherwise be pure nature in us. Potency does not cease to remain in a being even after its fulfillment, just as essence remains itself following upon its actualization by existence. Besides, that which is intrinpossible is extrinsically possible to the divine omnipotence. And pure nature is an intrinsic possibility which would be real on account of God's sovereign freedom in creating. Even though we never encounter pure nature de facto, still the basic realism of abstraction can support its real possibility for the sake of providing a genuine realism to the gratuitousness of grace. Fr. Keefe calls Christ the Prime Analogate of being because "He is the formal cause of the substantial actuality of men." (p. 91) Such a way of putting it tends to confuse certain formalities in the dynamic relationship between faith and reason that is the act of doing systematic theology. First of all, the purpose of the analogy of being-intelligible ontologically to reason-is precisely to elucidate the analogy of faith revealed in the Christian mystery. To appeal directly and exclusively to the revealed mystery of Christ disparages the philosophical function of reason in its fundamental theological task of rendering the analogue as meaningful as possible in its reference to the faith. Also, to speak of Christ as the formal cause of humanity (p. 128) seems to equivocate regarding this genus of causality. When he speaks of Christ as the intellectus of the potential human truth affirmed in faith, one might interpret this as the living relationship between the risen Lord and the believer in the revelatory experience of making an act of faith. But he identifies this intellectus of Christ as the formal cause of the substantial actuality of men. If he is commenting on Thomism in this context, then it seems that a Thomist must take issue with his use of terms. Man's substantial acts refers to his actus essendi or ens simpliciter or existential actualization of his human substance. To make Christ the formal cause in any intrinsic sense of man's substantial actuality would obviously confuse his unique existence with ours. Thus we must distinguish that dimension 178 BOOK REVIEWS of actuality within us which is ens secundum quid (the entitative order of accidents :further fufilling our being and which is really our bonum simpliciter). In this order Christ "informs" us with his grace, providing we understand this to mean that our Christian sanctification is a participation in the fullness of his communion with the Father and carefully interpret the genera of causality as efficient, exemplar (extrinsic-formal), and final. This grounds an intimate union with Christ without confusing individuality. Finally, one wonders whether Fr. Keefe's conclusion that Paul Tillich's system differs from Thomism only qua system, i.e., in its logic, ontology, and use of analogy, is entirely true. His keen clarifications have certainly removed much misunderstanding and so are invaluable to the ecumenical dialogue between various Christian theologians. But it surely is not a service to authentic ecumenism if what is alleged to be common to the different faith-traditions is not so in reality. Fr. Avery Dulles has made the observation that Tillich does not sufficiently purify his philosophical categories in light of the Christian revelation. His systematic theology does not seem to support adequately the reality of the supernatural, the notion of Biblical inspiration, the content of the basic Christian mysteries of man's creation and fall, the Redemptive Incarnation, the Mystical Body, the realism of the Lord's resurrection, and our eschatological hope to share in his glory. I do not believe that Fr. Keefe has quite succeeded in communicating his own conviction that there are not real differences in the Christian faith between the Protestant systematics of Paul Tillich and the Roman Catholic systematic theology of Thomism. He has, however, been very successful in identifying the formal structural principles that make these two systems theological and in paving the way for further dialogue between them in the future. FREDERICK M. JELLY, 0. P. Dominican House of Studies Washington, D. C. Logic for Philosophers. By RICHARD L. PuRTILL. New York: Row Publishers, 1971. Pp. 431. $9.95. Harper & This college textbook was chiefly written to ameliorate the efforts of those who at various academic plateaus are seriously trying to philosophize correctly and effectively. It is a commonly recognized fact that philosophers are generally aware that they have a tremendous dependence on both empirical data and valid processes of reasoning in their attempts to wrest the hidden ultimate secrets from nature. Experience soon teaches the youthful philosopher that the path to truth is filled with logical pitfalls 174 BOOK REVIEWS and detours and that in his world there are more apparent answers than real ones. Philosophers, perhaps more than their confreres in the academic world, usually do not have to be " sold " on the importance of posing any problematic precisely and properly, for badly put questions generate only ambiguous and unsatisfactory answers. Then, too, philosophical methods of investigation and argumentation must not ignore the genuine advances in the field of Logic so as to be logically crisp and scientifically rigorous. To face such a noble challenge philosophers must be fully equipped with the knowledge of approved logical techniques. Dr. Purtill tries to prepare philosophers for this task by offering them this book: " I think logic is as much the philosopher's natural tool as statistics is the social scientist's, . . . (and) more problems than we think may be open to investigation by formal logic." (p. xvi) Dr. Purtill deserves much praise for his attempts to meet this need in the world of the academe. No longer can philosophers take suspect short-cuts or cowardly detours in their philosophizings on the grounds that adequate textbooks in Logic are lacking, for, as Aristotle felt, " one rnust be already trained to know how to take each sort of argument, since it is absurd to seek at the same time knowledge and the way of attaining knowledge " (Metaphysics II) . Of course, the author is also well aware of the responsibilities that are so germane to scientists and theologians; they too could profit not a little from a serious study of this book. In this book will be found a very rich presentation of the myriad techniques of formal logic from Aristotle and the Stoics through the outstanding medievalists to moderns and even contemporaries like Carroll, Quine, and Hintikka. But, if one is well grounded in these logical techniques, one will be most apt to philosophize more fruitfully and even more easily. To give these techniques more intelligibility Dr. Purtill in a customary pedagogical manner offers almost a thousand practical exercises covering all the major aspects of formal logic. Though the book is definitely Carnapian in its approach and orientation, it exhibits constantly a laudable fairness to all systems of logic. Dr. Purtill demonstrates a great respect for Aristotle and his principal contributions to the development of Logic; yet throughout there is a tremendous emphasis on symbolic logic's methods. In Part I there is a clear exposure of the rudiments of proof and disproofs. Besides, many of the problems ancillary to "propositional logic " are expertly analyzed. His endeavors to clarify the notion of "existential import," which is and has been a knotty problem for many modern and contemporary logicians even of the Carnapian school, deserve much praise. On the other hand, he has seemed to fail in his honest efforts to explains the symbolists' distinction in the area of Predicate calculus between " propositional statements " and " propositional functions." In Part II (pp. 203--350) he does a masterly job in presenting through symbolic notation the great advance being made iN modal, epistemic, 175 BOOK REVIEWS and deontic logical systems. His examples, showing how these systems can assist philosophers laboring in the areas of cognition and ethics, are most helpful critically. To this reviewer Dr. Purtill's Logic for Philosophers is a good textbook because his primary purpose in writing it was satisfactorily fullliled: "We are acquiring logical techniques so as to be able to apply them to interesting philosophical problems." (p. Besides, he is sober in his expectations of the analytical potential of logical techniques: "there are a good many philosophical arguments which cannot usefully be analyzed by the techniques of formal logic and, therefore, not by the techniques which you have learned from this book." (p. 848) Despite the many praiseworthy aspects of this book, however, the plethora of typographical errors were lamentable, especially those that may have been somewhat substantive to the understanding of a technique. But, perhaps, the publishers realizing the importance of this book will be more careful in the next edition. DENNIS c. KANE, 0. P. Providence College Providence, R.I. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle, translated by F. R. LARCHER, 0. P., with a preface by J. A. Weisheipl, 0. P. Albany: Magi Books, Inc., 1970. Pp. $6.50. This version of Aquinas's Commentary on the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle has been prepared by Fr. Larcher, an able and skilled translator of medieval Latin, and it is a welcome alternative to the earlier translation of his erstwhile collaborator, Fr. Pierre Conway, 0. P. (Exposition of the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle, Quebec: La Librairie Philosophique M. Doyon, 1956.) Since Fr. Conway's work appeared fifteen years ago, and then only in mimeographed form, Fr. Larcher's becomes the first English translation of this important logical treatise to appear in type and in durable binding, and hopefully it will now find its way onto many library shelves. While preserving Fr. Conway's literal style, Fr. Larcher has inclined somewhat further to the modern idiom and is more readable on this account. He is accurate in his interpretation of the text, in all but a few instances rendering Aquinas's thought with great fidelity. This reviewer thus has no hesitancy in recommending the translation to those who know no Latin themselves, and so are completely dependent on the translator for their understanding of St. Thomas's thought. Some idea of the style of translation and its difference from the earlier 176 BOOK REVIEWS version may be seen in the following brief excerpts from St. Thomas's commentary on Book II, chap. 1: LABOBER CoNWAY He says therefore first that the number of questions is equal to the number of things that are scientifically known. The reason for this is that science is knowledge acquired through demonstration. But things which we previously did not know are those of which we must seek knowledge by demonstration: for it is in regard to things which we do not know that we form questions. Hence it follows that the things we inquire about are equal in number to the things we know through science. But there are four things that we ask, namely, quia [i.e., is it a fact that], propter quid [i.e., why, or what is the cause or reason], si est [if it is, i. e., whether it is], quid est [what is it]. To these four can be reduced whatever is scientifically inquirable or knowable. [pp. 168-164] He says therefore first that the number of questions is equal to the number of things which are known scientifically. The reason for this is that science is knowledge acquired through demonstration. But we must acquire the knowledge by demonstration of those things which were unknown before, and we ask questions concerning those things which we ignore. Whence it follows that the things which are sought are equal in number to those things which are known scientifically. But there are four things which are sought, i. e., quia, propter quid, si est and quid est (that it is, why it is, if it is, and what it is): to which four may be reduced whatever is seekable or knowable scientifically. [pp. 291-292] As can be seen from this, there is a dependence of the one version on the other, not unlike that of William of Moerbeke's improvement of the Latin translation made by James of Venice from the original Greek text. Also visible here is Fr. Larcher's wise decision to leave technical Latin phrases intact, explaining them where necessary with bracketed inserts. Otherwise he does not adorn the text in any way, furnishing us with a bare translation. alone. There are no explanatory footnotes, no cross references, no analysis of the argument (not even the brief outlines given by Fr. Conway at the beginning of each lectio), and most regrettably, no index (which is all the more unfortunate considering that Fr. Conway had already made a start in this direction). Fr. Larcher does not even inform us as to which English translation of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics he used for collating the text and the commentary, though it is obvious that this is G. R. G. Mure's, which first appeared in the Ross edition and has been reprinted in McKeon's Basic Works. Bekker numbers are inserted throughout, however, and these would permit the use of another translation, such as Hugh Tedennick's in the Loeb Classical Library edition. A serious omission, in this reviewer's estimation, is the paragraph enumeration that is found in the Leonine and Marietti (manual) editions; this makes it extremely diffi- BOOK REVIEWS 177 cult to locate references made to the commentary in customary scholarly form. Of less consequence is the omission of the text numbers from Averroes's Great Commentary, which would have facilitated comparison of St. Thomas with late medieval and Renaissance commentators. The translation is generally clear, although there are a few places where it might be improved. For example, the first sentence of Lect. Bk. I, begins as follows: "After clarifying with examples how there is demonstration quia through effect, the Philosopher here shows how there is demonstration quia through things not immediately connected." [p. 77] Here " per non immediata " is translated literally but indefinitely as " through things not immediately connected," whereas the reference is clearly to premises that are not immediate, i. e., that do not contain a proximate cause Again, in Lect. 1 of Bk. II, where Aristotle is discussing an eclipse and St. Thomas speaks of what is happening in defectu lunae, Fr. Larcher refers to this as "the waning of the moon" [p. 167]; the eclipse phenomenon would better be spoken of as "the darkening of the moon," since "waning" (usually associated with, and opposed to, " waxing ") connotes a totally different phenomenon. These are trivial instances, of course, and are not meant to detract from the general excellence of the version. Fr. Weisheipl has provided a brief but good introduction to the work, though not as complete as that written by Vernon Bourke for the English translation of St. Thomas's Commentary on Aristotle's Physics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963). Fr. Weisheipl mentions the commentaries of Averroes, Grosseteste, and Albertus Magnus on the Posterior Analytics [p. ix] but offers no comment on the extent to which these might have been used by Aquinas in preparing his commentary. Again, although he gives brief indication of the various Latin translations that were available at the time of St. Thomas's writing, he makes no detailed use of the four critical editions of these translations now available in Aristoteles Latinus; these could possibly shed light on the importance of Moerbeke's translation for Aquinas's accurate understanding of the Greek text. These criticisms undoubtedly ask for too much, considering Fr. Larcher's and Fr. Weisheipl's intentions, but the fact is that this English translation has now appeared, and no publisher is likely to undertake printing another version for some time to come. It is therefore doubly unfortunate that a more complete job was not done at this time. One suspects, of course, that these deficiencies, if they may be called such, were dictated by economic factors, as is the case with so many scholarly enterprises these days. And considering this, we should be thankful to Fr. Larcher, and to his publisher, for giving us what they have, namely, a reliable (if unadorned) English translation of an important commentary on the exceedingly difficult text of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. WILLIAM A. WALLACE, 0. P. The Catholic Unive-rsity of America Washington, D. C. 178 :BOOK REVIEWS Johannes Quidort von Paris, tJber konigliche und piipstliche Gewalt. By FRITZ BLEIENSTEIN. Textkritische Edition mit deutscher Ubersetzung. Frankfurter Studien zur Wissenschaft von der Politik IV. Stuttgart: Ernst Klett, 1969. Pp. 360. This work was composed as a doctoral dissertation under the direction of Prof. Carlo Schmidt. Along with a solid introduction to the political and ecclesiological theories at the time of John Quidort of Paris, Bleienstein presents a description and classification of all nineteen known manuscripts as well as an edition of the tractate accompanied by a translation in German. Since he has nothing new to add to J. Leclercq's analysis of the sources and external history of the origin of the tractate (Jean de Paris et l'ecclesiologie du XII[e siecle [Paris, 1942]; Introd. and critical edition) , Bleienstein presupposes the pertinent literature in regard to essential points. Working independently and from a new viewpoint, he proceeds to treat the location of the tractate in the history of thought .... Whereas Scholz, Finke, GraBmann, and Leclercq (Un modele d'argumentation theologique) are interested in internal ecclesiastical aspects, Bleienstein immediately approaches the matter as a "state and Church" problem. (p. 19) Thus he arrives at a well-balanced characterization of ecclesia and christianitas (res publica christiana, p. 23) and is able to offer an appropriate introduction to the correct understanding of the " dualistic theory," which John of Paris supports. The author is right to warn against an all too hasty application to elements in the present-day situation which are purportedly grounded in the tractate De regia potestate et papali: the sovereignty of the people, democratic structures, and secularization exemplify the catchwords that have been extrapolated from this work. Through an analysis of the indirect sources (Leclercq presents a summary on pp. 31, 35-37, which Bleienstein unfortunately fails to take over) the position expounded in the introduction could have been more exactly substantiated. John of Paris is not a revolutionary; through his intensive use of Thomas (and, by way of Thomas, Aristotle), through his recourse to Henry of Cremona, Humbert of Rome, Gottfried of Fontaines he returns to pre-decretal material. He can thus enter into opposition against Boniface's followers without any anti-curial pressure. John does not simply reject existing conditions; he succeeds in developing a well-balanced criticism of the papalistic theories in the light of tradition and under the influence of the reception of Aristotle. In this way there arises the image of a " completely autonomous political system, which functions exclusively according to its own laws and does not necessarily require a supernatural superelevation." (p. 31) Bleienstein could verify his statements even more clearly by further research in this field. WERNER J. KRAMER Cusanus-lnstitute University of Mainz BOOK REVIEWS 179 Jesus and Israel. By JuLES IsAAc. Ed. Claire Huchet Bishop; trans. Sally Gran. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971. Pp. 405. $12.50. This book suffers from a sad flaw for which neither author, nor editor, nor translator are responsible. It will, I fear, not be read but, if read, not heeded by the very ones it challenges to a change of mind. Why, for God's sake, did I accept the editor's invitation to review it? At the risk of sounding immodest, I am doing it for just that-for God's sake. No honor is done to Jesus if he is seen as no more than the great antagonist of the rabbis of his time or of his kinsmen in general. One modern exegete, Ethelbert Stauffer, prides himself on having found the key to Jesus' message, life, and death by seeing him as Torahketzer, a " heretic rejecting the Torah." This is only an extreme example of the false picture painted of him by interpreters, great and small, professional or not. Before I go into greater detail, I should like to introduce the author, a renowned French historian. Prior to the Vichy government, he was " Inspector General of Education for France." When the German troops occupied the part of France he lived in, he fled south. Soon after the Gestapo, aided by the Vichy police, began to " round up " all the Jews they could find, Isaac's wife and daughter fell into the hands of these human bloodhounds and were later put to death. Even before this happened, Isaac had begun to explore the reasons for centuries of anti-Semitism. How could hatred of Jews have taken root, indeed waxed strong in nations that called themselves Christian, he asked. The result of his query is this "cry of an outraged conscience, of a lacerated heart." (p. xxiii) What makes the book unusual is the author's unique stance. He concludes the preface to the 1948 printing with this profession: " The reader may wonder to what religion the author belongs. This is easy for him to answer: none. But this whole book witnesses to the fervor that inspires and guides him, fervor for Israel, fervor for Jesus, son of Israel." (p. xxiv) Isaac's devotion to Jesus is made even clearer when, in another passage, he agrees with many modern exegetes that the probable span of Jesus' ministry was but one year and then continues: "That the one year, Jesus' single year, was enough to kindle a flame in the world which would never be extinguished thereafter is a miracle, there are none more convincing." (p. 97) These sentences permit us to look not only at Isaac the man but also at Isaac the author. He is an assimilated Jew who reasons as if he were a Christian. The New Testament is the anvil on which he hammers out his charges. This book, then, as well as other writings of the last twenty years of his life, are severe indictments of Christian teaching of contempt for Jews. Still, Isaac is quoted by the Editor as saying that he does not pretend " that in the old and bitter controversy between Israel and Chris- 180 BOOK REVIEWS tianity, the responsibility, the wrongs and failures are all on one side, the Christian side." This does not prevent him from going on: "In addressing Christians primarily, am I not justified in thinking that the Christian aspect of the problem, the Christian wrongs, Christian responsibility alone should count for them? Or would I be mistaken, then? Is the Sermon on the Mount not law for every Christian?" (p. xvii) This book is made up of twenty-one theses (or "propositions"), one of which stresses that Jesus, for Christians God-in-the-flesh, was "in his human lifetime a Jew, a humble Jewish artisan." (p. 11) Isaac quotes a few pertinent passages from the New Testament, among them Rom. 9:3-5, where strangely enough ton syggenon mou kata sarka is translated as " my kinsmen by race " [italics mine]. The English translator generally follows the Revised Standard Version, "except when other English renditions come nearer the French text." (p. iv) But Isaac's French original clearly says mes parents selon la chair. One need not be an anthropologist to realize that the Jews are not a race, in the scientific sense of the word. Almost everyone knows that there are, for instance, light-skinned and dark-skinned Jews. Granted that " race " is often used in a wider sense, in a book born of the agonies caused by Hitler's racism such a use seems to me utterly out of place. Still, my objection is minor, minor in the sense that it in no way weakens the thrust of Isaac's book. I mention it only to show that even we who are committed to cleanse the air that for centuries has polluted the coexistence of Christianity and Judaism can never be sensitive, discerning enough in our speech. Another important thesis of Isaac's wars against the all too common assumption that Judaism at the time of Christ was degenerate, a body without a soul, when in reality Jewish religious life was rich and intense. Part of the misrepresentation chastised by Isaac is the usual portrayal of the Pharisees as men preoccupied with external observances but totally lacking in inner fervor. Isaac's answer is at once impassioned and impartial. His description of Pharisaic shortcomings is sterner than anything I would like to write but I quote it at length to prove that Isaac cannot be shoved aside as an " apologist," a man intent on whitewashing the Jewish past. The passage is perfect evidence of his justice and utter devotion to truth as he sees it: But to what degree does this disparaging definition apply to the historic Pharisees? Exactly as much as the definition of the word jesuitical to the Jesuits. Of course, Israel did not lack for hypocrites, for affected, sententious, and pretentious puritans; they are denounced and excoriated in the Jewish Talmuds as they are in the Gospels; but what " organized piety can ever wholly escape . . . hypocrites "? Tartuffe belongs to all religions, all times, all countries. It is very true that Pharisee rigorism had its faults: an excess of scruples and subtlety in interpreting the Law led to the hollowest casuistry (thirty-nine kinds of activity forbidden on the Sabbath); an obsessive fear of any impure contact tended to BOOK REVIEWS 181 separate " the saints " not only from the foreigner, the accursed pagan, but from the rest of the Jewish people, the ignorant mass of the ammei ha-aretz or common people, the plebeians; the plethora of external observances, of abstinences, fasts, ablutions, purifications, left hardly any place for the exercise of true piety, which is not a ritual technique but a spiritual life, an effusion of the heart. The influence of the Pharisee rabbis was therefore not without danger for Judaism; and it is not surprising that it elicited sharp reactions on Jesus' part. But once this is said, the facts, the writings, good sense, everything indicates that historic Phariseeism does not admit of a definition synonymous with either hypocrisy or formalism, as so many Christian writers still maintain-and as if the true faith required such a masking of historic truth. "A greater misreading of history," writes R. Travers Herford, the best historian of Phariseeism, " it is scarcely possible to imagine." We cannot doubt that there were men of conviction, of high moral worth, of sincere and pure devotion, faithful to the teaching of the Prophets, among the most influential of the Pharisees. Jewish history and the Talmuds bear this out, as do the Gospels .... Phariseeism had its faults, but it also had its merits (from which Christianity would profit largely): it enriched the Jewish religion, continuing in its evolution, in its spiritual progress, with new beliefs-in the resurrection of the dead, in a judgment beyond the grave; trust in God, hope in His justice, messianic expectation were thereby strengthened; without eliminating the sacrificial Temple rites, prayer and the reading of the Law in the Synagogues moved to the forefront of religious life and in a certain way spiritualized it; finally, the new expansion of Judaism won it numerous adepts-proselytes or God-fearersin the pagan world. When Christianity applies itself to casting aspersions on Pharisee Judaism, it is forgetting everything it owes it; and it is being not only unjust but ungrateful. (pp. 39-40) Isaac's work contains such a wealth of material that no reviewer can do justice to it. It would take pages to discuss adequately so important a topic as "Jesus and the Law." For Renan, Jesus' chosen role was not to reform but to destroy Judaism. But when Renan said this, he had ceased to be a Christian himself. Isaac, therefore, adds statements by Christian theologians who-undeterred by Jesus' own avowal, "I have not come to destroy, but to give fullness" (Isaac's own rendering) -proclaim: "Jesus Christ abrogated the Law. This is what Christianity preaches." (p. 50) It is an intellectual pleasure to watch his sharp mind, with no other help than that of New Testament texts, make mincemeat of the pronouncements by those theologians. Equally devastating is Isaac's treatment of the once common opinion that the Jews "as a whole" rejected Jesus because they were "earthbound," "proud," " materialistic," indeed, filled with "gross carnal aspirations." (p. 133) I have always been stunned by sayings like this: " The Jews rejected Jesus because they loved themselves more than God." (ibid., n. 8) How can a Christian utter these words without a sting of conscience, without fear that they will choke him? Is it possible that he pronounce this verdict without the least apprehension that he might condemn himself? 182 BOOK REVIEWS Obviously, it is. A man's mind can be so twisted that, while signing a death sentence, he may think he is sealing the fate of another and not realize that he is condemning himself. Similarly, it is not only a threat to Jews when a Christian calls them "the people who crucified Jesus," it is spiritual suicide; not only does he press the knife against the throat of Jews but at the core of his own spiritual existence. Isaac deals with the " Crime of Deicide " in several chapters and on one hundred and fifty pages. I wish I could convey the impact of these pages in a paragraph or two but this is simply impossible-! can only beg the readers of this review to study this section; they will be the better for it. Never again will they read the Passion narratives with the mind of an inquisitor or persecutor but with the eyes of a sinner seeking forgiveness. If I may quote from my own essay " Deicide as a Theological Problem": " ... the deepest case against the use of' deicide' and' deicides' is . . . the fact that the two terms pervert the mystery of the Passion. They move the accent from voluntary sacrifice and loving death to murder, from God's gracious deed to man's vicious act. More than that, it is not just a shifting of accent, the whole theology of the Cross becomes mancentered instead of God-centered, sin-oriented rather than grace-oriented" (Brothers in Hope, Vol. V of The Bridge [New York: Herder and Herder, 1970], p. 203 £.). "Deicide" is an abusive term: it brings misery and death to Jews but crippled hearts and a shambled faith to Christians. In fact, every antiJewish theologoumenon is a boomerang. Every attempt to divorce the ministry of Jesus from its Jewish setting, to ignore the Jewish roots of his teaching, to drive a wedge between him and all his contemporaries, invariably leads to an impoverished understanding. There are a number of proofs in Jesus and Israel that Jesus' teaching is deeply anchored in Jewish tradition, even when it goes-or seems to go-beyond it. Anyone who approaches the bond between Jesus and his kinsmen with an open mind, will find in Isaac's treatment of the beatitudes, for instance, many valuable hints, indeed starting points for further study. Isaac's book combats a pseudo-theology that is Gentile rather than Christian. Yet it does much more; it helps the Christian reader meet his Master and Brother in the flesh-in his Jewish humanity. It hardly needs saying that I do not agree with every word in Isaac's book. Still, I recommend it most warmly to all Christians, particularly to all those who, in one way or another, have been called to "the ministry of the Word" (Acts 6:4). More than that, I implore them to study it meticulously; it will redeem them, free them of all self-righteousness and fill them with humility and love. Our thanks and praise go to the publisher, translator, and editor. I wish the praise were unstinted. But it is a pity that there are no indices to help the serious student retrace his steps through the mighty forest he has just BOOK REVIEWS 183 crossed. The translation is for the most part excellent. But why a rendition of the propositions from another source has been incorporated (see p. xiii) I cannot understand; they lack power and follow the French original so slavishly that their meaning is not always clear. For instance, a reader unacquainted with the history of synagogue servises in the post-exilic era might take the sentence: " According to a very liberal custom, ' the carpenter's son' was permitted to speak and teach in the synagogues ... " to mean that Jesus received some sort of special permission; he will be bewildered by the word "liberal," not knowing whether it stands for " generous " or " unorthodox " while, as a matter of fact, interpreting the Torah was open to every Jew capable of doing it. The Editor, a woman of many talents and a strong sense of justice, is Jules Isaac's spiritual heir and the representative of his thought in the United States. She has contributed a foreword and innumerable footnotes, all of which testify to her concern for bringing the " teaching of contempt " to an end. Yet, not all her remarks on Vatican II, particularly on the deicide issue, are judicious. She relies almost completely on Abbe Rene Laurentin's pamphlet published by the Paulist Press and obviously does not know the reviewer's comprehensive history of the Council's Statement on the Jews in the Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II (Ed. H. Vorgrimler, New York: Herder & Herder, 1969, Vol. III, pp. 1-186), where some of the problems are discussed, not by an outside observer but by an eye- and earwitness. Occasionally Mrs. Bishop is the victim of stereotypes, not against Jews but seemingly in favor of them. There are few works on Christian-Jewish relations that will not mention that the medieval world liked to portray the Church as victorious, standing majestically erect with a crown on her head, chalice and banner in her hands, while the Synagogue is blindfolded and bent, the lance in her right hand broken, and the tablets falling from the other. This is an ever recurrent theme, the most famous example of which are the two figures in the South porch of the Cathedral of Strasbourg. Mrs. Bishop chooses as the interpreter of the statues a French author who offers us the old commonplace of Judaism as " a misguided religion, a stumbling block," and so on. (p. 48) Had she taken another look at the figures she might have discovered that the nameless sculptor carried out his commission but outwardly; he chiseled his protest against the common view of the Synagogue as well as his sympathy with her grief into the two stone figures. His Ecclesia is handsome but cold, her face shows no compassion. She seems impervious to the world around her, while his Synagoga, bent though she is by the sorrows of exile, radiates a spiritual beauty. In fact, her total bearing wins the immediate sympathy of any observer who is not guided by preconceived notions. In 1989, a German poet, Ernst Stadler, was moved to hail the work of the sculptor as one of love: 184 BOOK REVIEWS Dass wunderbar in Gottes Brudernaehe Von Niedrigkeit umhuellt ihr reines Bildnis stehe. Roughly translated, the artist wanted " her pure image, though wrapped in lowliness, to stand-oh marvell-in the brotherly nearness of God." These criticisms are small, they concern only blemishes. Still, I consider it important that we who seek to do away with the often vicious stereotypes against Jews do not ourselves use cliches, never make an assertion without trying to verify it, never present a conjecture of ours as a statement of fact, and so on. The battle against anti-Judaism or any other negative stance must be fought, not only on the theological but also on the psychological plane. Our prejudices are certainly born of hostile emotions but they are midwived by careless thinking. It is not only against hatred and rancor we have to guard ourselves, but against that naivete which leads to fast and thus false conclusions. To my mind, one of the outstanding characteristics of Jules Isaac is that, for all his passion, he is a humble, clear thinker. JoHN M. OEsTERREICHER The Institute of Judaeo-Christian Studies Seton Hall University South Orange, New Jersey Studies in Revelation and the Bible. By MARIO W. SHAW, 0. S. B. Indianapolis: Catholic Seminary Foundation of Indianapolis, 1970. Pp. 92. $2.50. This is a collection of occasional papers of varied provenance. One, concerned with the revelation-drama of the Fourth Gospel, was written in 1960; two others concern revelation in the ancient Near East and covenant-revelation in the Old Testament (1962-63). The final ones, dealing with the rupture between Judaism and Christianity, are the most recent (1970). The dates are worthy of note as the bibliographies for each paper have not been updated, though they are selectively thorough up to that time. Hence the work of such as Rene Latourelle or Gabriel Moran on revelation or Dennis McCarthy on covenant or even Raymond Brown's magisterial study of the Fourth Gospel is not mentioned. Perhaps some bibliographical addenda and a more complete revising would have enhanced the value of such period pieces for the average reader. However, the articles do serve as useful summaries of biblical information for the times represented. They are generally well-organized and clear, and the longest essay, that on the Fourth Gospel, is intriguing and readily adaptable in the light of later research. The last sections on the Judaic-Christian rupture are current in thought and bibliography and are rather passionate appeals against anti-Semitism. 185 BOOK REVIEWS Unfortunately, the reviewer was somewhat distracted from the trend of thought in the appeal by the fact that page 90 is entirely blank-hopefully, the defect is unique to the reviewer's copy. Generally, the proofreading has been well done save for " principle " instead of " principal " on p. 38-a common oversight. ALAN SMITH, 0. P. Dominican House of Studies Washington, D. C. Hellenistic Ways of Deliverance and the Making of the Christian Synthesis. By JoHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. New York and London: Columbia University Press. 1970. Pp. $7.95. This little book, with the disproportionately long title and the even more disproportionately high price, represents a rather ambitious project requiring a scholar of Randall's expertise and stature to carry it out. And, in his own way, he does carry it out very well. He has not aimed at a detailed, comprehensive study of the topic but, rather, he has written a series of connected essays which are characterized by conciseness and clarity. Basically, the book may be divided into two parts, the first dealing with Hellenism and the second with early Christianity. The first part impresses one as certainly the better of the two, for it deals with an area in which the author has for a long time given abundant proof of his scholarly competence and in which he seems to be more at home. He begins by discussing the main characteristics of the thought and culture of the Hellenistic world, especially as centered around Alexandria. He then presents a clear and well-drawn picture of the principal secular ways of deliverance, the Epicurean, the Stoic and the Skeptic, the last of which he feels makes the most sense and is the most relevant to the human situation today. The book, incidentally, contains a number of asides and reflections which, whether or not the reader concurs, are worth listening to. The fortunes of the Hellenistic philosophical systems in Rome are next examined with special attention devoted to Cicero, Seneca, Panaetius, Posedonius, and Antiochus. A chapter on the revival of religious ways of salvation and the mystery cults is followed by one on the nearly pure rationalism of Plotinus. All of this is handled by a scholar who knows what he is talking about and who can explain it to others. In treating of early Christianity, however, he seems less at ease, and he is certainly less convincing when, for example, he compares Pauline Christianity with the mystery religions. In discussing early Christian thought the author, now emeritus, relies very heavily, as he frankly admits, on what he learned as a student from his own teachers. In many cases, what was once new and provocative has now become passe. 186 BOOK REVIEWS The book concludes with several chapters on Augustine's completion of the Christian synthesis. While much of what the author writes has been said before, he puts it together very neatly and clearly, adding his own interesting reflections. His analyses of philosophical and religious thought are, with very few exceptions, penetrating and thorough, and they are admirably presented to the reader. Some of his ideas may be controversial and some of his conclusions debatable, but they merit our attention. GEORGE T. DENNIS, s. J. The Catholic University of America Washington, D. C. Work, Society and Culture. By YVEs R. SIMON. Edited by Vukan Kuic. (Appendix New York: Fordham University Press, 1971. Pp. Simon Bibliography). $7.50. Yves Simon was at once a precisionist and a comprehensive and depth student in philosophy, a profound Catholic in his life and thought, and among American Catholics by far the most creative philosopher. He knew how to work and enjoyed it. Two events will indicate his determination to work. When at the age of fifty-eight he was terminally sick, he insisted on being carried onto the stage to deliver from a stretcher a promised lecture on "Jacques Maritain: The Growth of a Christian Philosopher," and when I once asked this sick man whether he was working, he replied: " Good Lord, man, if I wasn't, I'd be dead." In the present study, the sixth posthumous book, he remarks (p. 41) that " if philosophers are good for anything, it should be for analyzing and clarifying concepts which, no matter how vague, convey something of great significance." For example, the concept of joy, love, hope, and of course the concept of " work " which is a constant phenomenon in the life of persons and society. Is work merely manual labor and limited to servants or even to slaves? Are philosophers, research teams, bankers, poets, and prophets to be considered among the world's workers? In his earliest essays on "work" (Trois let;ons sur le travail, 1938), Simon was over influenced by a Grecian and long-perduring aristocratic idea of work, the idea that the manual and servant worker was not merely the prototype of the one doing work but the only one. In the present treatise Simon repeatedly retracts that narrow view (pp. 4, 17, 55-58) and notes that it was criticized by many friends. Not only his habits of thorough and comprehensive study but his charism of seeing that philosophy takes up problems as they are here and now given drive him to consider " work " in the context of modem industrial work BOOK REVIEWS 187 and as linked with the total society and culture, and bring him to consider work, society, and culture in the invaluable light thrown on these realities and concepts by giants who have struggled with them, e. g., Fourier, Comte, Marx, Durkheim and Veblen. He keeps making one well-ordered thought of the problems and of fragmentary solutions in moderns and ancients. I hope Vukan Kuic and others go on editing these important studies and that the editors and Mrs. Simon and son Anthony are working on a biography. An extensive Yves Simon bibliography by Anthony 0. Simon is appended to the present volume. LEO R. WARD University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana Santiago Ramirez O.P., Su Vida Su Obra. By VICENTE MARRERO. Madrid: Consejo Superior de lnvestigationes Cientificas, 1971. Pp. 334. $3.50. Very few Americans, even among those who are familiar with the current philosophical and theological periodicals, know Father Santiago Ramirez's writings. This phenomenon is even more remarkable when one considers the world popularity attained by some of the theologians of the recent Council, such as Congar, Raimer, Kling, and others. Father Ramirez, however, as history will tell, is superior to all of them. As the best theologian of the twentieth century and the foremost commentator on St. Thomas, he surpasses Cajetan, John of St. Thomas, Bafiez, Vitoria, etc., both in quality and in quantity. The theological stature of Father Ramirez, however, is not unknown in Europe. He was professor at the Angelicum in Rome for three years and at the University of Fribourg for twenty-five. The last twenty years of his life were spent in Salamanca totally devoted to writing and theological research. While there he published La Filosofia de Ortega y Gasset, which, against Father Ramirez's wishes, triggered a philosophical-political controversy which lasted for months. Once the storm was over, he withdrew completely from public life and retired to his monastery where he peacefully spent the last years of his life. Father Ramirez was an exceptional professor. He possessed an unusual clarity, a profound insight into problems, a prodigious memory and an amazing theological erudition. Listening to his lectures was enough to make one realize he was not only a good professor but also a genius, the like of which appears only rarely. Perhaps the phrase that synthesizes his theological attitude is illustrated best by his own words, " Science deals with problems that are eternal. It is not wise to deal with the little problems of everyday life to abandon 188 BOOK REVIEWS those that are perennial." Paradoxically, he knew perfectly the philosophical and theological problems of everyday life and accepted from them everything that could transcend the fashion of the day and be eternal, for truth, wherever it may be found, was his only concern. Father Ramirez was a convinced Thomist, because he believed the fundamental principles for any valid theological synthesis were contained in St. Thomas's theology. His Thomism, however, was not servile, for truth is more important than St. Thomas. In questions concerning grace, not only did he feel St. Augustine to be superior to St. Thomas but he also had words of admiration for Suarez, Scotus, Newman, and other modern theologians and philosophers. Father Ramirez knew modern exegesis as well as the positive sources of theology. He placed, however, much importance on the rational analysis of faith, the theological discourse, and maintained that it is impossible to have a good theology without a good philosophy. The erudition of his knowledge is so great and the analysis of the problems so exhaustive that it may perhaps hinder the appreciation of his writings. There are few ready to follow the detailed and exhaustive analysis of the problems. His approach to them, however, is not purely analytical. In the end he always rPduces everything to unity and order, without which there cannot exist a good theology or philosophy. In theology his method is historical. He approaches the problems by going to the sources and by following their historical development, which he considers essential in evaluating and finding their solutions. His three volumes of De Hominis Beatitudine are pioneer works in this sense. When reading them, one does not know which to admire most, the historical approach to the problems, his phenomenal erudition or the rational penetration of the most difficult questions. In the first volume the reader finds thirty pages of bibliography on the problem of beatitude which he asserts to have read, M eos Oculoc Vidit. On tradition and progress he says, " To oppose tradition and progress is equivalent in philosophy to the opposition between illuminism and traditionalism; the former system ascribes everything to reason; the latter to historical change. But none of these doctrines satisfies completely the desire of total explanation, and we should say that the truth is shared by both. Neither reason has an absolute dominion over reality, nor circumstances. A tradition which is merely a simple recollection is the mark of peoples in decline. On the other hand, a progress which is not rooted in tradition is short-lived and disappears." Although Father Ramirez is primarily a speculative moral theologian, as evidenced by his De Hominis Beatitudine published in 1943, he has written many other volumes, the majority of which will be published soon. Among the yet unpublished works perhaps the most original of them is the volume on the passions, which is one of the questions treated rather BOOK REVIEWS 189 infrequently by the commentators on St. Thomas. In addition, he has written two volumes on mysticism. His discussion of this question criticizes John of St. Thomas's commentary on the doctrine of St. Thomas on the gifts of the Holy Ghost for having something of St. Thomas and something of John in it too. Other important works deal with original sin, law, and theological virtue. Father Ramirez was a peritus of the Council and belonged to the commission which discussed the problem of collegiality of the bishops. At the conclusion of this session, which had accepted his views on the subject, Father Ramirez published De Episcopatu ut Sacramento deque Episcoporum Collegio concerning the question, a book which he completed in two months. Father Ramirez also wrote extensively on the nature of philosophy, the natural law, the person, the political doctrine of St. Thomas and the nature of the common good. His short book on the political doctrine of St. Thomas is a model of clarity, order, and profundity. In his book on the natural law and jus gentium, his interpretation departs from the school of Salamanca to which he belonged, thereby proving the independence of his judgment and his love for truth. He says of the Dominicans of the sixteenth century: "Our theologians were less accurate dealing with the speculative and therefore philosophical aspect of the law than in their applications to the practical realm, especially in the international problems, in which they were masters." His studies on analogy cannot be overemphasized. His concern for this problem and the importance he ascribed to it from the beginning of his scholastic work were manifested in four articles he published in La Ciencia Tomista in 1923 which have been classics in the field. This was, however, an early work and after working on the problem for nearly fifty years he has left us his thought in De Analogia which is the best study of this important subject. He reinterpreted St. Thomas against Cajetan who had abolished the analogy of intrinsic attribution. Even more, Father Ramirez goes beyond St. Thomas in a totally original and most valuable work which is recommended to all of our readers. In love with synthesis and order in philosophy and theology, Father Ramirez was fond of saying that the value of any philosophical or theological system is manifested by the order of the parts and the whole and the unity of the system. His admiration for the order of the theology of Aquinas is evident in his book De Ordine which deals with a synthesis of this order and which is, itself, a model of order. The maturity of Father Ramirez's thought appears on every page, to such an extent that one does not know what to admire most, the vision of order in Aquinas or the marvelous interpretation of this order by Father Ramirez. He wrote in the preface of this book: " The doctrine of St. Thomas about order is so excellent that for this alone he deserves to be called the Common Doctor of the Church in philosophy and theology. He possesses on thia subject 190 BOOK REVIEWS more matter for study than all his disciples and commentators together." The work of Father Ramirez can hardly be evaluated as it deserves now until all the unpublished volumes have been made available. Even then the correct evaluation of his writings will not be easy due to the variety and extent of his writings. All those who have the courage to put forth the time and effort required to understand him will find in his work a profundity, clarity, erudition, and vitality probably superior to that of any other theologian since St. Thomas. In this sense the book of Vicente Marrero is excellent. He presents us the man, his life, and his works in an extensive and valuably personal way. The author openly manifests his devotion to Santiago Ramirez and his writings in this book published by the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas of Madrid. ANToNIO MoRENO, 0. P. St. Albert's College Oakland, California The Pentecostal Movement. By EDWARD D. O'CoNNOR, C. S.C. Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1971. Pp. 301. $1.95. Notre Edward O'Connor's book The Pentecostal Movement is without doubt the best general exposition of the present state and attitudes of the Catholic Pentecostal movement. Fr. O'Connor has been inside the movement since its inception, and he has achieved the distinction of being accepted as its major theologian. His book is an attempt to give a more or less complete picture: it includes historical narratives, anecdotal material, theological discussion, as well as many practical pointers. For this reason the work is richly varied and makes for interesting reading, especially since the subject matter itself is so novel to many Catholics. However, it does not escape a certain loss of continuity and the lack of an organic quality of wholeness which (one feels) would be present if the topic were more suited to logical development. What seems the most characteristic feature of the book and the movement it describes is the stress on religious experience. While there is no attempt to deny the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Christian who is not inclined toward Pentecostalism, the emphasis is definitely on the more expressive members of the Body of Christ in whom the action of the Spirit is so strong as to be clearly observable, even to the uninitiated. One is reminded of Karl Rahner's view in" The Nature of Grace," namely, that the overly cerebral approach of the Scholastics has left us a theology of grace which is unappealing precisely because the divine gift cannot be experienced by the persons on whom it is conferred. In fact, the experimental stress of BOOK REVIEWS 191 Pentecostalism does not seem to be closely related to the immediacy and simplicity of the New Testament presentation, and this similarity is repeatedly brought home to the reader. In the light of the modern emphasis on the social or " horizontal " aspect of religion, it is sobering to recall that most of the world's spiritual traditions have as their primary earthly goal the experience of God's presence in the life of the believer; some kind of direct psychological contact is desired. Here the Pentecostal experience is unique among classical spiritualities, because it does not require a long and intense striving on the part of the seeker, rather, (and quite in keeping with the Acts of the Apostles) the presence of God is often made manifest from the outset, in the conversion experience itself and the joy of actual union with him. This may be accompanied by the prayer in tongues or various other charisms which are also closely related to the life of the earliest Christian communities. Fr. O'Connor is eager to allay the fears which may turn us away from the movement, and he endeavors to show that a constant Pentecostal current has been present in the Church from the earliest times. It is true that the institutional aspects most often have overshadowed or even surpressed the charismatic, he tells us, but the latter have managed to have a significance in popular piety and reform movements which has deeply enhanced both the image and the reality of the Church's presence in the world over the centuries. One of the striking characteristics of the Catholic Pentecostal movement is its devotion to the Church and her teachings, and it is thanks to men like Fr. O'Connor that this peculiar standpoint has been maintained. Several of the " Spirit movements " of the past have tended to emphasize the Bible as the sole authority, while the majority have been ultimately determined by the " inner light " or the guidance of the Spirit supplied to the individual members of the community or to its leader. Fr. O'Connor is undoubtedly one of the leaders of the movement, and he seems to be at least partially responsible for its solid dependence on the authority of the Church. Having its specific beginning in American Protestantism at the turn of the century, and being only ten years old within the Catholic Church, Pentecostalism is a modern movement. Perhaps for this reason it seems to be attracting some of the " liberal " elements in Catholicism, though this is in direct contradition to the de-emphasis of transcendence which has been part of the American religious scene. It does seem somehow deeply related to the" Jesus people" phenomenon, with its emphasis on the personal encounter with God in faith corroborated and witnessed in the "gifts" being poured out on the praying community. Its major problem would seem to be built into its very essence; how does one sustain religious feeling? Those who are "in the Spirit" have an obvious sense of excitement and stimulation which easily communicates itself to the curious BOOK REVIEWS observer, but it would seem that no movement, even one which feels itself so directly influenced by the Spirit of God, can possibly maintain this depth of emotional awareness for very long. Recently this writer was called by a college student who had been very active in the movement, had received the " baptism," spoke in tongues, etc. She now had become extremely dissillusioned because of a gradual aridity which had overwhelmed her. She felt unable to pray, alienated from God, and was at the point of giving up all belief in the supernatural. An hour or so of listening convinced me that what was lacking to her was not good will or virtuous living but merely a lack of knowledge. She was totally unaware of the simplest categories of traditional ascetical theology. Her acute state of soul became much less devastating to her when once she had realized that her aridity was not so threatening or unique but rather a period of silent growth which is universally regarded as necessary to spiritual maturity. The frightening aspect of this case is the ignorance of this otherwise sophisticated young woman in matters of the spiritual life, even though she had been associated with the Pentecostal movement for several years and had faithfully attended the " life in the Spirit " courses for several months. Because religion is equated with the personal encounter with God in the waves of the Spirit and the Heavenly Dew, there seems to be no survival plan for getting through the desert. If one is not " praying well," the definite impression is that something is wrong, or lacking; the Spirit is being quenched. Another factor which makes one reluctant to give a total endorsement to the movement is the element of faddism with which it is undeniably connected. I do not speak here of the possible psychological connection with those national movements of the contemporary scene which express the yearning of our youth for religious values. I would rather restrict my meaning to those individuals known to each of us who are always squarely settled on one band wagon or another. The wagons change regularly, though we always seem to miss the actual transition, but we have come to expect a new " thing " for these people every two or three years. Each time it seems to them that their present involvement is the obvious solution to much of the world's problems. Of the people in my immediate acquaintance who are " Pentecostal," not a few of them fit into the category which I have been describing, and it is a cause of some wonder and concern to me whether their involvement with this movement will end in a positive reappraisal of their past religious attitudes or a negative disillusionment with the entire area of prayer and religion. When I attended their national convention at Notre Dame this past summer I hoped to meet with Pentecostals on their own ground, not feigning to be one of them but enjoying the pleasant anonymity which the great numbers provided. No one could shake me of the conviction that the overwhelming majority of those thousands of people were con- BOOK REVIEWS 193 scientious and sincere seekers after God. Nevertheless, to one who has remained an " outsider " (insofar as he has not yet received the baptism of the Spirit) the attitudes and actions of many Pentecostals seem rather strange. We are not prepared to cope calmly with the more bizarre aspects of the " gifts," and our theological training as well as our cultural background has not equipped us to react in a non-judgmental fashion: some of us are prone to be " converted " on the spot, while others will take a very dim view of these festivities. We are quick to give negative labels to that which is alien to us or difficult for us to accept by temperament. In fact, it was a very simple aspect of the Pentecostal prayer-life which was the turning point for me in determining my present attitude toward the movement. I must confess the beginnings of a negative reaction on the second evening of the convention during which I was a concelebrant in a threeband-a-half hour marathon Mass. It was hot and humid, and it came as the evening session of an entire day spent in praying, discussing, and listening to lectures by the leaders of the movement. To me it seemed interminable; an especially disconcerting thing was their penchant for singing hymns of sixteen stanzas: when we had finally arrived at the last, they would as often as not begin singing stanza number one again, and so on all the way through. To make matters worse, when I had finally returned to the motel (praise God for air-conditioning!) and wished to slake my parched soul with a cold beer in the lounge, I was accosted by " the group " just back from the Mass, who strongly and enthusiastically urged me to accompany them to the lawn behind the motel where they were about to have a prayer-meeting. It was then that I made my decision; it was ice-cold and delicious! JAMES M. CAFONE Seton l/all University South Orange, New Jersey Records of Christianity. Volume 1: In the Roman Empire. Edited by DAvm AYERST and A. S. T. FISHER. New York: 1971. Pp. 346. Illustrated. $12.00. Barnes and Noble, History and Christianity. By JoHN WARWICK MoNTGOMERY. Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1971. Pp. 110. $1.25. The first volume of the new series entitled Records of Christianity is a collection of source writings in translation attempting to illustrate various aspects of the history of the Church-especially personalities-from the reign of Nero to the pontificate of Leo I. The aim of the editors is primarily to introduce new students of the period to this material, and in fact most 194 BOOK REVIEWS of the selections are interesting and valuable from that point of view. However, some of the commentary provided by the editors tends to be theologically simplistic and even factually misleading, such as, for example, the statement on p. 188 that " the earliest Christians of Rome held their services in the catacombs." As an introduction to the history of the primitive Church this book is satisfactory, but J. Stevenson's two volumes (A New Eusebius and Creeds, Councils, and Controversies), which cover virtually the same span of time, continue to be the best available anthologies of early Christian writings in English translation both for beginners and for others. John Warwick Montgomery's slender paperback originated as two lectures, under the title of "Jesus Christ and History," which were delivered by the author at the University of British Columbia in 1968. They later became four magazine articles; these four essays, with an appendix in the form of a panel discussion, constitute the present book. The group of four essays is concerned with the Scriptural account of Jesus' activity, particularly in the light of a statement made by a previous lecturer at the University of British Columbia to the effect that 1) although ,Jesus probably did exist subsequent legends have almost totally obscured his true personality; the Gospels were written long after Jesus' lifetime and are historically inadequate; and 8) Jesus' miracles as recorded in the Gospels have a very tenuous relation to reality. Montgomery's efforts are concentrated here on demonstrating that one can have moral certitude about the veracity of the New Testament and on pointing out that the significance of the marvellous parts of that document, including finally the Resurrection, must consequently be discovered by the individual. As such History and Christianity is a conventional apologetic, although written with a vast amount of intelligently disposed conviction. The most serious criticism would be that Christ's unequivocal knowledge of himself as divine is among the conclusions which Montgomery says can be easily drawn from the Gospel texts, whereas in fact this is very much a moot point. Of some importance, however, is the more specific problem of the relation of faith to history aired in these four essays and especially in the appendix: Can a historian approach the New Testament with presuppositions-the presuppositions that all critical historians are supposed to have? And, if some Scriptural events are ultimately unverifiable, do they come under the ken of the historian? The fact is that the New Testament contains much that is inexplicable outside of being labelled miraculous. What does the historian do when faced with the Resurrection? The answer which Montgomery gives, quoting Ethelbert Stauffer, the Erlangen historian, is that he must be receptive to the possibility of such an event: " And why not? For the critical historian nothing is impossible." (p. 76) But whether the Resurrection or any other miracle is historically verifiable is another question. As one of the participants in the final discussion points out, the 195 BOOK REVIEWS concern for the facticity of the events connected with the Resurrection was not reflected in the early Church which used the narrative of the empty tomb not for verificational but for apologetic purposes. Faith continues to require the experience of the Resurrection rather than its proof, yet the New Testament can give us moral certitude about the life of Jesus, and on the basis of this moral certitude faith makes its appearance. The dimension of believer is thus added to that of investigator/historian. BoNIFACE RAMsEY, 0. P. Dominican House of Studies D. C. The Church of Ireland. EcclesilUJticalReform and Revolution, 1800-1885. By DoNALD HARMAN AKENSON. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Pp. $15.00. Recent events in Northern Ireland have focused attention on the religious situation in Ireland. There are approximately 41A, million people on the island taken as a whole. Northern Ireland accounts for I% million of these. It has a Protestant population of 900,000 of all denominations. 345,000 of these Christians are members of the Church of Ireland. This affiliation is shared by 130,000 citizens of the Irish Republic which is 3.7% of a population where Protestants form not quite 5% of the total. The Church of Ireland is, then, a substantial Protestant body in Northern Ireland and in the Republic, the most significant. This significance cannot be converged simply by statistics. Historically, it was the church of the English establishment in Ireland. On a more positive side, it was the church of such clerics as Jonathan Swift and George Berkeley. Most famous Irishmen were at least baptized in the church and the son of one of its clergymen. W. B. Yeats once reminded the fledgling Irish Free State senate that those of his stock were " no mean people." This book, by an associate professor of history at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, is an historical account of the processes by which the organizational structure of the Church of Ireland assumed its present shape. The crucial years are covered in this book. In the aftermath of the Reformation, the Church of Ireland was established as a State church just as was its sister church, the Anglican body, in England. The Act of Union of Great Britain and Ireland of 1801 also brought the two churches into union-but only in name. The Church of Ireland proved more easily vulnerable to moves for disestablishment by reason of the conjunctive forces of liberal opinion in Britain and the ever more politically powerful Roman Catholic Church in Ireland under Cardinal Cullen. Disestablishment 196 BOOK REVIEWS was finally enacted in 1868. This event required a radical restructuring of Church polity and was an enormous crisis for the church. The upshot was a de-emphasizing of the hierarchical principle of church governance in favor of a more democratic structure with a strong lay voice. Though the author explicitly steers away from theological questions, he does mention the concomitant hegemony of evangelical thinking and the abhorrence of Romish tendencies espoused by the Tractarian movement. Sociologically well-informed, this book provides a thorough treatment of the organizational re-ordering of the church of the Anglo-Irish who, of necessity, have had to suffer great trials, because of divided loyalties, and yet have contributed much to the land that their ancestors sought to colonize. WILLIAM HAYEs, 0. P. The Catholic University of America Washington, D. C. BOOKS RECEIVED Appleton-Century-Crofts: A Guide to Philosophical Bibliography a:nd Research, by Richard T. DeGeorge. (Pp. 149, $5.95). Catholic Seminary Foundation Publications: Studies in Revelation and the Bible, by Mario W. Shaw, 0. S. B. (Pp. Cistercian Publications, Inc.: William of St. Thierry. Vol. I On Contemplating God, Prayer, Meditations. (Pp. 199); Aelred of Rievaulx. Vol. I Treatises, Pastoral Prayer. (Pp. 140, $7.50); Bernard of Clairvaux. Vol. II On the Song of Songs I (Pp. 185, $7.95); Guerric of Igny. Liturgical Sermons Vol. I. (Pp. Rule and Life. An Interdisciplinary Symposium, by Basil Pennington, OCSO (ed.). Darton Longman & Todd, Ltd.: The Openness of Being. Natural Theology Today, by E. L. Mascall. (Pp. £3.50). Duquesne University Press: Existence, Existenz, and Transcendence. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Karl Jaspers, by Oswald 0. Schrag. (Pp. $8.95); Idea of Dialogal Phenomenology, by Stephen Strasser. (Pp. 139, $5.95); Progressive and Conservative Man, by Herman H. Berger. (Pp. 191, $7.95). Fides Publishers, Inc.: Theology Today Series. The Theology of Baptism, by Lorna Brockett, RSCJ; Death and Eternal Life, by Michael Simpson, S. J. (Pp. 94, 95¢ each); Sign and Symbol of the Invisible God, by Peter Riga. (Pp. 89, Discovery of the East. Reflections on a New Culture, by Han Fortmann. (Pp. 100, Guide for the Christian Assembly, by Thierry MaertensJean Frisque. (Pp. 359, $5.00). Inter-Varsity Press: Despair-A Moment or a Way of Life? by C. Stephen Evans. (Pp. 135, $1.50). The Language Press: Metaphor: An Annotated Bibliography a:nd History, by Warren A. Shibles. (Pp. 410, The Macmillan Company: The American Nightmare, by Sidney J. Slomich. (Pp. $6.95) . Eiditions Nauwelaerts: Epistemology. (Pp. Ontology. (Pp. by Fernand Van Steenberghen, tr. by L. Moonan from the fourth BF each) . French language edition. Maryknoll Publications: The Church and Revolution, by Fran-;ois Houtart & Andre Rousseau. (Pp. $3.95) . Shocken Books: Theology and Metaphysics, by James Richmond. (Pp. 168, $6.50) . Verlag Ferdinand Schoningh: Der Begrifj religio Bei Thomas Von Aquin, by Erich Heck. (Pp. 336, DM . 197 198 BOOKS RECEIVED United Church Press: Christian Ethics & The Community, by James M. Gustafson. (Pp. 224, $7.95) . University of Kansas: What Actually Happened. 1971 Lindley Lecture, by P. H. Nowell-Smith. (Pp. 25). University of Notre Dame Press: Atheism and Alienation, by Patrick Masterson. (Pp. 199, $7.95). Yale University Press: The Church of Ireland. Ecclesiastical Reform and Revolution, 1800-1885, by Donald Harman Akenson. (Pp. 426, $15.00).