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. 20017 VoL. XXXVII JANUARY, 1973 No.1 RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN'S TRANSCENDENCE C HRISTIANITY PRESUPPOSES in man a religious transcendence that is widely questioned or denied in our age. Christianity has traditionally held that God through Christ has offered man a gift that is not only salvation from the evils afflicting him but is a relationship to God and his fellow man that is a fulfillment and indeed more than a fulfillment of his possibilities. This supposes in man, in his actions as they are rooted in his being, an orientation toward such a relationship and value, not an orientation that man can bring to completion by himself but one in virtue of which God's gift is relevant. And it supposes that, while God's revelation through Christ is a mystery beyond man's power to discover, it is assimilable by him, and it can to some extent be understood and accepted without man having to deny his own valid insights; indeed, it fulfills the native orientation of man's mind. Christianity then supposes in man a directedness that 1 JOHN FARRilJLliY we call a transcendence because it is a movement or orientation (evident in man's actions and emerging from and manifesting his being as subject) that extends beyond the order of scientific knowledge and secular values, beyond man himself to God, not as identified with a power, value, or order in the world but rather as an order of being and perfection incomparably greater than man and the world. This transcendence can be called religious because by it man is directed to a relationship to God that is not simply one of knowledge or of moral integrity but is personal within the community of men. Historical religions generally suppose in man a transcendence, though not always as definitely as Christianity does. There has been in modern philosophies a widespread questioning and denial of this transcendence in man in one or other of its modalities. This questioning seems basically to reflect a pervasive modern experience. While many modern philosophers have questioned many aspects of religion-for example, the value of religion for man, the existence and meaning of God, specific beliefs and practices of Christianity-what seem most basic in their questionings are their views on this transcendence of man. Their other questions or denials are greatly influenced by their views on the limitations they find in man's knowledge and value orientation, or at least by their rejection of a modality of transcendence attributed to man by some earlier philosophies. Similarly, the ways that in our century both Christian theologians have interpreted Christianity and philosophers have interpreted religion have been largely influenced by the ways they have evaluated these philosophical difficulties against man's transcendence. It would seem that, as Rahner and Lonergan among others have emphasized, man's appropriation of his transcendence is one prerequisite for his free and intelligent acceptance of his religious relation to God and specifically of Christian revelation and salvation. To understand how we should present religion and specifically Christianity to men of our age in its meaning and foundations we must attempt to gain positively an understanding of whether and how modern man manifests a tran- RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN'S TRANSCENDENCE 3 scendence to which Christianity has a meaning that is in continuity with a meaning it had for men of earlier ages. To do this we must try to understand and evaluate modem philosophical attacks upon or questioning of man's transcendence. This problem seems serious enough to merit an extended study of the major reasons philosophers have given for calling into question this transcendence. In this article we wish to make such a study and, in doing so, to give some indications of an approach to this question that is in honest and effective dialogue with the current state of the question. Through this study we find two basic ways in which this transcendence is denied or questioned by modem philosophers, each of which has its own grounds. One is a denial of the possibility of metaphysics, and specifically a metaphysics that is open to inferential knowledge of the existence of God. We take metaphysics descriptively and roughly to be a philosophical study of reality as it, in some sense, is in itself, and not simply of reality as it appears or is mediated by language. More specifically, it is a discipline in which one makes assertions about reality, propositions that are grounded or that have humanly available and rationally defendable grounds, because as a philosophical study it is reflective and systematic. Many of these propositions have a character of universality and of necessity about them (e. g., whatever comes to be must be caused by another) , reflecting a knowledge of reality that justifies such propositions, not as statements simply about logic or language but about reality or being. As subject to denial by modem philosophers it has been conceived particularly in the modality of a metaphysics that finds human bases in man and the world for legitimately asserting the fact of God's existence and something of his meaning. What we offer here as a rough description of metaphysics we present as an enterprise that some claim to be possible for man and others deny; we do not offer it as an adequate definition of metaphysics, much less of a metaphysics that would represent a contemporary stage of its development. 1 Many who deny the possibility of meta1 When we use the word metaphysics in this article without further specification 4 JOHN FARRELLY physics deny as a result the meaning of objective talk about God, the reasonableness of belief in a divine revelation as an act o£ a transcendent personal God, and the possibility o£ understanding something of the meaning o£ God or o£ such a revelation by analogy with things or persons we more immediately know. We will suggest that the major basis for modern philosophical denials o£ one or other aspects o£ man's capacity for or orientation to a knowledge that is metaphysical is modern man's experience o£ knowledge according to science and mathematics and his interpretation o£ his capacity by these models. 1£ this is the case, it indicates that the proper approach toward an examination of man's transcendence in knowledge in our time must consider whether man's engagement in scientific and mathematical knowledge manifests and depends upon a kind of knowledge that, if systematized and reflective, is metaphysical. The second major modality o£ human transcendence that has been widely denied or questioned by modern philosophers is man's orientation to an absolute and unlimited value. Many philosophers interpret man as ultimately orientated to values that are secular or finite. On the basis of this limitation of man's values, goals or horizons, Christianity has been interpreted as irrelevant to man's interests, as diverting him from his true humanity, or as an ideology accepted in earlier ages because the means to meet man's true and secular needs were lacking. If man's goals or values are not transcendent in any ultimate sense, the moral demands o£ Christianity or religion are and appear to be morally oppressive. The major bases for these philosophical interpretations o£ man's values, we find, have been modern man's experience of a secular life in which human and secular goals have been given, practically and theoretically, a greater weight than in an earlier age of faith. Whether these we mean one positively related to religion, as open to some knowledge of God. When in this article we speak of man's transcendence in knowledge we mean his orientation toward or capacity for such a metaphysics. And when we speak of man's transcendence in value orientation we mean an orientation to an absolute or unlimited dimension of value. RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN's TRANSCENDENCE 0 philosophical interpretations of modern value experience have been optimistic or pessimistic, they have agreed in denying man's orientation to a valueinfinitelytranscendingman's secular condition. If this is the state of the question, it indicates that the proper approach to an examination of man's transcendence in value orientation in our age must take its point of departure in man's secular value experience and goals to see whether and how these manifest and depend upon his orientation to a transcendent value. Actually these two modes of questioning modern man's transcendence have been mutually corroborating. A denial of the possibility of metaphysics supported for many their interpretation of man's value experience and orientation in a nontranscendent manner. And an interpretation of man's orientation to value in this latter sense reflected upon interpretations of the possibility of metaphysics (or upon the non-transcendent character of the " absolute " found in some forms of modern metaphysics) . We propose then in this article to present major modern philosophical difficulties against man's transcendence in knowledge (as found in metaphysics) and value orientation. We will do this by giving seven major generic difficulties against this transcendence, indicating usually more than one form of the difficulty under consideration. Our view of the current state of the question and of the appropriate approach to it will be presented cumulatively in the following pages; it is only at the end of this study that this understanding will be adequately presented. We are by no means attempting here to be exhaustive; we take for granted an understanding of modern philosophy and the context of an individual philosopher's work, 2 and we limit ourselves to a recall of the major bases on which representative philosophers have questioned or denied the transcendence of man as we have outlined it above. Our interpretations of the views of the philosophers we study are in accord 2 For an analysis and evaluation of the views of Hume, Kant, and Hegel on metaphysics, and the religious context of their philosophical questions, see James Collins, The Emergence of Philosophy of Religion (New Haven, 1967), 6 JOHN FARRELLY with accepted interpretations of their thought, and so they may be brief. If we give more weight to difficulties with man's transcendence in knowledge than with his transcendence in value orientation, it is not because we consider the former the more important but because many of these philosophers articulate their difficulties more in terms of man's knowledge than in terms of his value experience or orientation. 1. One major difficulty posed against metaphysics is a rejection of realism, in the sense of a certainty that we in any real sense know physical reality itself, know it as it is, and know it through the influence of physical reality as formative of our knowledge. In general this difficulty is associated with the disparity between the report of reality given us by science and that given us by common sense; in the midst of this discrepancy, how can we any longer trust implicitly in the perceptions we have of the world about us, or at least how can we build a metaphysics on the validity of our realistic judgments? The existence of illusions and dreams, the wide variety of views on the part of different individuals and cultures, and the perspectival approach to any object of knowledge by man seem to undercut the possibility of a knowledge of reality as it actually is rather than as it is related to the one who knows it. So a certain scepticism exists in our culture about claims to know reality as it is, particularly as the metaphysician's claim is frequently interpreted, as an absolute claim to know all reality as it is, as though the philosopher had a vantage point that was transcendent to his time, his culture, his values, the limitations of his powers of perception and knowledge. The rejection of realism has many bases, some of which we shall consider later. Here we restrict ourselves to recalling the basis found in the discrepancy between what sense knowledge offers us at times and what science tells us about the world (e. g., about the earth revolving about the sun, or the subjectivity of " secondary qualities") . In early modern philosophy the rationalist tradition (e. g., in Descartes) responded to this discrepancy by building philosophy on foundations safe from sceptical attacks against the validity of sense knowledge, RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN'S TRANSCENDENCE 7 and the empiricist tradition (e. g., in Hume) responded to it by arguing that the rationalist's ideas did in fact derive from sense knowledge and that our knowledge is limited to phenomenon. Descartes writes: All that up to the present time I have accepted as most true and certain I have learned either from the senses or through the senses; but it is sometimes proved to me that these senses are deceptive, and it is wiser not to trust entirely to any thing by which we have once been deceived.3 Descartes reaches his bedrock principle in his cogito; he found a criterion of truth in the clarity and distinctness of ideas; and he argued by a process of logical implication. In his arguments for the existence of God he relies upon this type of reasoning. His idea that existence pertains to the essence of God, he says in one argument, is as clear and distinct as his idea that having three angles equal to two right angles pertains to the essence of a triangle. And he concludes: From the fact that I cannot conceive God without existence, it follows that existence is inseparable from Him, and hence that He really exists. . . . The necessity of the existence of God determines me to think in this way.4 By modeling our philosophical knowledge on a general mathematical or geometrical method Descartes hoped to justify a metaphysical knowledge that was safe from the attacks of the sceptics. Modern philosophy owes a great deal to Descartes and the rationalists. They have argued insistently that in some sense and to some degree we can know what things are and know them in a way that allows inferences that have a realistic import. But their explanation of philosophical knowledge on the model of mathematics, while not totally without value, • Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. by E. Haldane and G. Ross, vol. 31 of Great Books of the Western World (ed. R. M. Hutchins, Chicago, 1952), Meditation I, 75. • Ibid., V, 94. 8 JOHN FARRELLY raises serious problems for the validity of their conclusions. Even today, many philosophers identify metaphysics with a mathematical type of knowledge, and so they conclude that it has to do with logic or conceptual analysis but that it makes no affirmations that have a realistic basis or validity. If we grant, as we do, any similarity between mathematical and metaphysical knowledge, we must examine the emergence in man of some primitive mathematical concepts and judgments, asking whether this shows that a realistic interpretation of man's knowledge (even of some of his concepts and universal judgments) is essential to the validity of his mathematical knowledge. Modern mathematics is only a small part of human knowledge, of course, and it is clear that much of it does not take its starting point from realist affirmations about the world and does not make affirmations about the world. But does this imply that not even the most primitive mathematical concepts derive from our knowledge of the world by, in part, sense knowledge, and that not even these concepts express something about the world? Similarly, does it imply that all of our knowledge that has some of the notes of mathematical knowledge is as dissociated from knowledge of the world as developed mathematical concepts are? We must ask about the relation between our most primitive mathematical knowledge (e. g., of things as numbered) and our knowledge of the world that is mediated by the senses if we are to ask effectively whether a metaphysics that is realistic is possible for man, or whether man's knowledge is transcendent in a way implied by a realist metaphysics. A realist metaphysics does not defend the realist value of its concepts and judgments as Descartes does. Hume's phenomenalism is one of the great modern examples of a rejection of realism. Partly dependent upon the distinction between secondary and primary qualities, Hume holds that the objects of our knowledge are basically perceptions. Our knowledge is of our perceptions rather than of material bodies about us. There are two kinds of perceptions, namely, impressions RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN'S TRANSCENDENCE 9 (i. e., those forms which strike our mind with vivacity and liveliness, e. g., the sight of my room) and ideas (i.e., those forms which are relatively weak and are derived from impressions and refer back to them, e. g., the image of my room when I close my eyes). The simple ideas derive from simple impressions, and the criterion of their truth is their reduction to the simple impressions from which they are derived. 5 For example, to see whether I imagine my room correctly I open my eyes, and the scientist conducts an experiment to test his hypothesis. Hume applies this criterion to get rid of " all the jargon which has so long taken possession of metaphysical reasonings and drawn disgrace upon them." 6 If one applies this view to the idea of substance he finds that this idea is derived from a collection of particular qualities; these are united by the imagination and have a particular name assigned to them. In our knowledge of matters of fact, then, we have basically impressions and ideas, many discrete perceptions that are united by the laws of association. We will refer below to his interpretation of man's reasoning concerning matters of fact. It is not difficult to see that Hume here is modeling his interpretation of man's knowledge on that of modem science. Dialectically opposed to rationalism, he takes the experiential and observational aspects of Newtonian physics rather than mathematics as the experience of knowledge from which he constructs his interpretation. And so, to oversimplify, he interprets our knowledge of the world atomistically as discrete perceptions that are united by laws of association. We must ask whether Hume's interpretation of scientific observation, of our perception and of our knowledge of ideas, accords with the facts. Observation in science does not occur outside a framework of questions and a large view of the world brought to the • David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, vol. 85 of Great Books, Sect. II, 455-457. See W. S. Haymond, "Afterthoughts on the Logic of Empiricism," Modem Schoolman 40 (1963), Yl45-6Yl; Haymond, "Hume's Phenomenalism," ibid., 41 (1964), Yl09-Yl6. 6 Enquiry, Sect. II, 457. However, on Hume's own metaphysics see C. Hartschorne, "Hume's Metaphysics and its Present Day Influence," New Schola1ticism 35 (1961)' 152-71. 10 JOHN FARRELLY particular observation; it occurs within a structure, and if it has value, this is due not simply to the observation but to the structure that is brought to bear. We can similarly ask whether " what strikes us " is, to the degree Hume presumes, elements rather than wholes, and sense data rather than material bodies; and whether the holistic character in much of our knowledge is due primarily to association or to the structures of knowledge man brings to bear on physical reality and to higher order invariants in this reality itsel£.7 There are other basic difficulties with realism advanced from interpretations of our scientific knowledge, such as, for example, Kant's view that we do not know the noumenon, because our knowledge is a construction. We will mention this and other attacks on realism in connection with other difficulties below. But it is not necessary to advance all the particulars to recall that many difficulties are related to an interpretation of our scientific knowledge. This fact calls us to approach the question of the possibility of metaphysics through showing what scientific knowledge basically is and what makes it possible. 2. Another major difficulty against the possibility of metaphysics is the fact that it involves judgments or propomtions that have a universality and necesmty about them, not simply as logical or linguistic propositions but as implying and expressing a knowledge of reality in aspects of it that ground and validate such judgments. Propositions of this sort can be found in Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, St. Thomas, and naturalists, to mention a few metaphysicians. For example, some say that whatever begins to be must be caused by another; others make universal statements about reality or man's nature as material. We all have difficulties with some of the universal and necessary metaphysical propositions that we find among philosophers. There are so many of them, for example, among the rationalists and idealists, that seem grounded on nothing more than an antecedent definition of a term; given such a definition, 1 Hume's empiricism, especially as it influenced modem psychology of perception and of knowledge more generally, finds two major critiques from differing viewpoints in the works of Jean Piaget and Eleanor Gibson. RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN'S TRANSCENDENCE 11 it logically follows that a certain trait must be found wherever this reality is found. These propositions then seem to have the character of propositions about language or logic rather than about reality or the subject as such. Moreover, the experiential methods of modern science have made us critical of universal statements, particularly those which a philosopher can make with ease and without any scientific experimentation. We are more confident in leaving an analysis of the structure of reality to the scientists; their method has proved itself, whereas the contradictions among the philosophers make us progressively more sceptical about the value of their universal statements about reality. The more philosophically articulated difficulties on this count seem related to those difficulties we all experience in the face of many metaphysical propositions. It is again Hume who has developed these difficulties in a way that has been enormously influential in later modern philosophy. In examining our reasoning processes he finds that all our reasoning is concerned with relations, either relations among ideas or relations among matters of fact. The first is found in: the sciences of geometry, algebra, and arithmetic; and in short every affirmation which is either intuitively or demonstratively certain. . . . Propositions of this kind are discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is anywhere existent in the universe. 8 It is otherwise with our knowledge of matters of fact. The only means by which we can reason to the existence of matters of fact is through the relation of cause and effect. " All reasonings concerning matters of fact seem to be founded on the relation of cause and effect. By means of that relation alone we can go beyond evidence of our memory and senses." 9 To see the value of this reasoning we must examine the origin of our knowledge of cause and effect and of the relation between them, since the value of any simple idea is dependent on the reduction of it to the simple impression from which it arose. The ideas • Enquiry, Sect. IV, 458. • Loc. cit. 12 JOHN FARRELLY of cause and effect arise from one particular impression that is followed in a regular and temporal sequence by another particular impression. For example, I have the impression or experience of a body of the color and consistency of bread followed consistently by the experience of nourishment; and so I have knowledge of cause and effect. How do I know the relation between them that enables me to say that where in the future the cause is there will be the effect as well? Considered a priori, there is no way in which this relation is known, for otherwise than in the case of demonstrative reasoning, the contrary of every matter of fact is still possible; because it can never imply a contradiction, and is conceived by the mind with the same facility and distinctness, as if ever so conformable to reality. 10 Our expectation of future effects like to past effects from similar causes is wholly based on experience; it is totally derived from our experience of the past connection between them. Though Hume agrees that we can and must in practice predict future effects from causes, still this cannot be certain, for this is extending our past experience, to other objects, which, for aught we know, may be only in appearance similar; . . . [From our past experience] does it follow, that other bread must also nourish us at another time, and that like sensible qualities must always be attended by like secret powers? 11 Hume acknowledges that: were the power or energy of any cause discoverable by the mind, we could foresee the effect, even without experience; . . . In reality, there is no part of matter, that does ever, by its sensible qualities, discover any power or energy.12 Hume finally concludes that the mind gains this idea from habit; by a repetition of similar instances the mind is carried along by habit to expect the effect upon the appearance of the antecedent. The necessity on which this reasoning depends lies not in the objective relation between cause and effect but in 10 Loc. cit. 11 Ibid., Sect. IV, 461. 12 Ibid., Sect. VII, 47iil. RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN'S TRANSCENDENCE 13 the habits man forms through experience. We can have nondemonstrative reasoning about the world based on this relation, because it probably reflects the external relations among things, but this is not certain. This difficulty against our capacity to know the nature of any reality and thus against our capacity to know some reality in aspects of it that are necessary to that reality and universally found in that kind of reality is closely related to Hume's acceptance of the experiential character of Newtonian science as the model on which we know matters of fact. 13 As this science does not pretend to know the nature of things, so we too should abstain from such pretensions. We can see how this follows from what we have previously noted about Hume's empiricism. It also follows from the total distinction he made between what will later be called analytic and synthetic judgments, the first being found in mathematical reasoning and the latter in reason about matters of fact. This seems to be based on the division between the mathematical and the experiential components in modern science. This then is one more indication of the need to examine the knowledge that enables us to engage in scientific reasoning. Does this in fact show that we do not know the nature of any reality, or that there is such a total distinction between knowledge of matters of fact and knowledge of necessity? We suggest that a study of the psychogenesis of our knowledge and concepts indicates that it does not. 14 Another very important basis in modern philosophy for the 18 See Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature. An attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects. (New York, Dutton, 1911), Introduction, vol. I, 6. 14 For recent opinions on this matter, see Stuart Hackett, " Contemporary Philosophy and the Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy," International Philosophical Quarterly 7 (1967), 413-440. For a critique of views reducing analytic propositions to the logical or linguistic order, see H. Veatch, "On Trying to Say and Know What's What," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (1964), 83-96; "The Truth of Metaphysics," Review of Metaphysics 17 (1964), and "St. Thomas and the Question 'How are Synthetic Judgments A Priori Possible?'" The Modern (1965), Schoolman 14 JOHN FARRELLY rejection of the aspect of metaphysics we are now considering is that given by Kant. Without articulating the context in which Kant approaches this problem, namely, his rejection of the possibility of metaphysics (as we described it) with its inadequate arguments for the existence of God to make way for faith based on postulates of the practical reason, we will recall several elements of Kant's denial that we have an objective basis for the necessity and universality found in some of our judgments about reality. Hume's critique of our knowledge of necessity in the relation between cause and effect convinced Kant that on an empiricist basis we cannot have such knowledge. Kant takes it for granted that our senses are acted upon by external things, but this offers us no basis for knowledge of necessity. He also takes it for granted with the rationalists tha.t we do indeed have a priori knowledge, because we do have judgments that are universal and necessary. In the case of understanding the truth of judgments which he called analytic (or in which the predicate is contained in the subject, e. g., bodies are extended) , Kant wrote that "I need not go out of the sphere of my conceptions, and therefore recourse to the testimony of experience is quite unnecessary." 15 He notes that if a priori knowledge must conform to objects, it is difficult after Hume's critique to see how such knowledge is possible. However, the possibility of Newtonian physics cannot be explained unless man does have synthetic a priori judgments, because in this science there is found knowledge that is on the one hand new and on the other necessary and universal. By his Copernican revolution in knowledge Kant presents an hypothesis concerning how the possibility of Newtonian physics can be defended. If objects must conform to our conceptions, we can explain how this science is possible. If objects conform to our knowledge, before the object is given there are laws of the understanding expressed in a priori conceptions to which the objects conform, and knowledge is constructed through 15 Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, trans. J. M. D. Meiklejohn, Great Books, vol. 17. (This is a translation of the second edition of Kant's Critique.) RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN'S TRANSCENDENCE 15 the application of forms of the mind to objects given in experience. Kant pointed out how the success of mathematics and of physics depended upon their acceptance of this hypothesis. Mathematics began its successful career when the man who demonstrated the isosceles triangle found that to understand its properties he could not simply look at the figure before his eyes, " but it was necessary to produce these properties, as it were, by a positive a priori construction." 16 Physics entered this path when Galileo experimented with bodies falling down an inclined plane; in actively experimenting in the context of principles he brought to his experiments, " a light broke upon all natural philosophers. They learned that reason only perceives that which it produces after its own design." 17 With this hypothesis Kant proceeds to work out the conditions of our experience and of Newtonian physics. He applies this view of knowledge as a construction to explain our empirical intuition and our judgments such as those found in Newtonian physics. Kant explains the first by that matter of phenomenon which is given to us a postetiori through the effect of the object upon us, and by the pure forms of sensuous intuition (space and time) which are a priori and by which "all the manifold content of the phenomenal world is arranged and viewed under certain relations." 18 He explains the latter by the application of pure categories or concepts to the manifold of sense to synthesize the data of sense intuition. We need recall no more of Kant's account of knowledge to see that it prohibits both knowledge of reality about us as it is in itself (because we know the phenomenon, not the noumenon) and objectively based judgments about reality that have notes of universality and necessity. The basis of this view of Kant is both Hume's empiricism and his own constructivist view of knowledge. Knowledge is not an insight into reality as it is in itself but rather a synthesizing construction of reality according to laws or a priori categories of the mind. This knowledge has a universality and a necessity about it, because these laws of 10 Ibid., 6. "Loc. cit. 18 Ibid., !28. 16 JOHN FARRELLY the mind are universal conditions of human understanding; but it is not the universality and necessity that a metaphysics such as that we described supposes and claims. (We may add that by stressing the unity of consciousness as a condition for the possibility of knowledge, the fact that we can be selfconscious in all knowledge, Kant provides his idealist successors with the basis for claiming an intellectual intuition of the subject. But Kant himself did not interpret the unity of apperception in this manner, and so did not see in this the possibility of a metaphysics based on an intellectual intuition of the subject.) Kant's view of our knowledge is based upon the constructivist character of Newtonian physics; this is the model on which he built his understanding of our knowledge. Once more, we acknowledge that we can only appropriate our knowledge by and after the experience we have of it. But Kant's approach invites us to what is perhaps a more adequate understanding of the conditions of scientific reasoning. Does this scientific reasoning imply our possession of knowledge of reality about us as it is and by objectively based judgments that have notes of necessity and universality? For example, even granting a constructivist character to scientific knowledge and to human knowledge, is this constructive process a substitute for insight into what reality is in itself, or is it the condition for such insight and its expression? Also, are the categorieS' given to us statically with our human nature, or do they have a genesis in our growth in knowledge? To try to get answers to these questions, we must have a phenomenology of our knowledge as it lies behind scientific reasoning, e. g., the way we know number and physical classes.19 19 Jean Piaget, while accepting in part Kant's constructivist view of knowledge, shows that space, time, cause, and other forms or categories are constructed as a result of a long process that begins in the first days of infancy and that is due to an interaction between the subject and his environment. The constructive character of our knowledge does not, in his view, militate against our knowledge of the noumenon in some real though limited sense. See J. Piaget, Insights and Illusions of Philosophy (New York 1971), 56-58, 103, 109. E. Gibson argues that perception is an exploratory activity and that functionally it is a pickup of information from structures in the world through stimuli. Perception, or the capacity to pick up information, develops with growth and experience; RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN's TRANSCENDENCE 17 We could add here other bases that have been given for a denial that we know reality in some way that gives us grounds for universal and necessary judgments about it, but what we offer in difficulties below will be, I think, sufficient for our purposes. 3. A further difficulty against the possibility of metaphysics is the view that our knowledge is restricted to the order of space and time. Metaphysics such as we have described it supposes a knowledge of an order of being that transcends the physical order, the order immanent to the world of space and time. As we see, for example, in Plato, Aristotle, and St. Thomas, metaphysics based upon a causal knowledge attempts to rise from the world or the subject to some knowledge of the ultimate causal principle of the world and the subject, namely, to a philosophical assertion of the existence of God. All of us have difficulties with many philosophers' justifications of such knowledge and with their reasoning to the existence of a first principle or God from what is more immediate to man. Our difficulties come, for example, from problems mentioned in the first two difficulties treated above, from the divergencies between this philosophical causal inference and its criteria and those found in science, and from an unclarified relation between the first principle arrived at by this philosophical inference and God as known in religion and by faith. Our limited interest here is to investigate the philosophical reasons offered for restricting philosophy to knowledge of man and the world, or for denying in principle that it is open to inference to the existence of an unlimited first causal principle of the reality more immediately present to us. The difficulties we wish briefly to recall here are those found in Hume and Kant, Hegel, and in naturalism. Though we treat these very briefly and, considered in the context of the total cognitive process, it leads to a detection of higher order invariants in objects changing through time and events. See Eleanor Gibson, Principles of Perceptual Learning and Development (Appleton, Century, Crofts, 1969), 77-90, 161, 217-19, 388. Here then we have two experientially based psychologies of knowledge that seriously contest, from differing viewpoints, K111nt's analysis of knowledge. 18 JOHN FARRELLY here, perhaps that is enough for our very limited purpose, namely, to show the necessity of an approach to the question of man's transcendence in knowledge through an articulation of what in fact makes us capable of modern science. Also we should note here that, correlated with these views of the limited domain of reality that can be known by man philosophically, there is an interpretation of the range of values open to man that is quite limited when compared to earlier standards. In one way or another there is found in these men a denial of man's transcendence in value orientation as we previously found this to be presupposed by religion and specifically by Christianity. We will indicate the basis for this denial in Hegel and the naturalists for the purpose of showing that we must analyse what lies at the root of modern man's dedication to secular and human values if we are to adequately investigate that transcendence today that religion and Christianity suppose to exist in man. Hume's difficulties against metaphysics as conceived here are clear from his empiricist interpretation of causality; there is for him no demonstrative reasoning by which man can philosophically affirm the existence of God. Man is inclined to such an affirmation more by his passion than by philosophical reasoning. It is evident too how Kant's position forestalls such knowledge. He has shown the condition for the possibility of Newtonian physics to consist in man's constructive knowledge, namely, in his application of the categories to objects given in experience. Knowledge of things in themselves and of the existence of God, which transcend the sensuous order, is impossible, for "our faculty of cognition is unable to transcend the limits of possible experience . . . it has only to do with phenomena, and ... things in themselves, while possessing real existence, lie beyond its sphere." 20 Our mind inevitably forms the ideas of God, the world, and the soul because of its inner dynamism toward a unification of knowledge, but to consider this process as a valid grounding of the existence of God, the world, and the soul is illusory. 2 ° Critique of Pure Reason, Preface to Second Edition, p. 8. RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN'S TRANSCENDENCE 19 In our reason, subjectively considered as a faculty of human cognition, there exist fundamental rules and maxims of its exercise, which have completely the appearance of objective principles. Now from this cause it happens that the subjective necessity of a certain connection of our conceptions is regarded as an objective necessity of the determination of things in themselves. 21 These ideas have only a regulatory value, but this is not without a positive relation to religion since this leaves an opening for us to gain a conviction of the existence of God based on postulates of the practical reason and the faith that these ground. It is not necessary to point out here how strictly Kant interprets human knowledge by the model of scientific knowledge. Once more, this suggests an approach to the question of metaphysics through the conditions that allow scientific knowledge. That is, we should ask whether the human knowledge that in fact enables us to engage in science has an implicitly metaphysical dimension, namely, a dimension of knowledge and an object of knowledge not in principle restricted to the order of space and time. Hegel and the other German idealists reject this view of Kant. They reestablish the possibility of metaphysics, understood as a knowledge of the Absolute and of all reality in relation to it; more specifically they propose a knowledge of the Absolute through a knowledge of the human subject rather than through a cosmocentric metaphysics. Without articulating Hegel's relation to Fichte and Schelling, we should recall that he, together with his idealist predecessors, considered that they reestablished metaphysics by drawing out the implications of Kant's achievement and overcoming false dichotomies that he had retained. Since many modern philosophers have understood what a metaphysics is by the model of Hegel's philosophy, or have structured their philosophies through their dialectical !'elation to Hegel, it is important for us at least briefly to show how he founded our knowledge of the Absolute. While Hegel "' Ibid., 109. 9l0 JOHN FARRELLY does establish a metaphysics open to knowledge of an Absolute, we should note that this Absolute does not have the transcendence in perfection that is, for example, ascribed to God by St. Thomas on philosophical grounds. Similarly, the transcendence in value orientation Hegel ascribes to man, towards full freedom, is less than that attributed to man by St. Thomas, namely, a transcendence toward the unlimited value that is God. Hegel has what may be called a transcendental method in bringing us to accept: the idea which represents the Absolute as Spirit-the grandest conception of all, and one which is due to modern times and its religion [Christianity and particularly Protestantism]. Spirit is alone Reality. 22 In one sense Hegel justifies metaphysics by the endeavor itself, but in another sense he brings us to appropriate our knowledge of the Absolute and our relation to it by showing that this relation to the Absolute is the condition for the possibility of consciousness as we experience it, and that our knowledge of the Absolute and our relation to it is through a knowledge of the conditions for the possibility of our experience. So in his Phenomenology of Mind Hegel can be understood as adopting a method that has similarities to that of Kant, the acceptance of certain facts of consciousness and the appropriation of the conditions for the possibility of this consciousness. Without in any way pretending to attempt a summary of this critically important work, I would like to recall a few fragments of the basis Hegel gives here for the kind of knowledge of the Absolute that is characteristic of his idealism. He builds positively on Kant's analysis of scientific understanding to conclude that consciousness becomes aware of itself as the source of its construction of the world. 23 But Hegel includes vast areas of man's experience that Kant did not •• G. W. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, trans. J. B. Baillie reprinted in Harper Torchbooks, 1967), 85-86. •• See ibid., pp. ed., RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN'S TRANSCENDENCE include in his reflection on the possibility of metaphysics. For example, he includes an analysis of man's self-consciousness that arises from his assertion of his individuality and his confrontation with another consciousness. And he includes man's reason, a dimension of consciousness in which man experiences a relationship to the other that is positive rather than negative. Reason is aware of finding itself in the world and as molding activity in society to conform to its needs and desires. Hegel takes the experience of man in history, such as in the period of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution, as further stages of consciousness, by the appropriation of which man grows toward full self-consciousness, that final appropriation of the Absolute as Spirit. Thus Hegel adds to Kant's order of pure reason the order of practical reason-with an emphasis on man's active and autonomous activity directed, in the midst of finite conditions and process, toward a goal of " infinite" dimensions, particularly the goal of freedom. 24 He includes man's religious consciousness, and specifically his Christian consciousness, which Hegel interprets as overcoming the dichotomy between man and God found in theism. 25 The main basis on which Hegel found mind constitutive of reality •• See Hegel's statement, " Philosophy appears as a subjective cognition, of which liberty is the aim, and which is itself the way to produce it." Philosophy of Mind, in J. Loewen berg (ed.), Hegel. Selections (Scribner's 1957), 309. And see L. Dupre, " Romanticism had reawakened the consciousness of the eternal conflict between man's infinite potential and his actual, finite achievements. Their harmonious reunification remained Hegel's basic problem." The Philosophical Foundation of Marxism (New York, 1966), 3. 25 See e. g., Hegel's statement: " ... there cannot be two kinds of reason and two kinds of Spirit: there cannot be a Divine reason and a human, there cannot be a Divine Spirit and a human, which are absolutely different. Human reasonthe consciousness of one's own being-is indeed reason; it is the divine in man, and Spirit, in so far as it is the Spirit of God, is not a spirit beyond the stars, beyond the world." Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, vol. 1 (trans. by E. B. Speirs and J. Sanderson, New York, 1962), 33. And: "God is God only so far as he knows himself: his self-knowledge is, further, his self-consciousness in man, and man's knowledge of God, which proceed to man's self-knowledge in God." Hegel, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Science, # 564, in Loewenberg, op. cit., 289. For various interpretations of Hegel's Absolute Idea, see G. Kline, "Some Recent Reinterpretations of Hegel's Philosophy," Monist 48 (1964), 34-75, esp. 72. JOHN FARRELLY in an ontological and not, as in Kant, in only an epistemological sense is his interpretation of Christian consciousness. Therefore, the basis for Hegel's articulation of man's ability to know the Absolute and for his designation of the Absolute as Spirit is the whole order of man's consciousness, speculative and practical, including in the practical order that of the individual and of society, and in the social order that of the state and of religion. He does not so much prove through these stages of consciousness that his interpretation of the Absolute as Spirit is the only one able to account for this experience of man; he shows it by the process of articulating it. And the basis for his acceptance of this interpretation is not simply speculative insight; it is faith, for faith too is knowledge. Speaking of " the principle that in the spirit, as such, the consciousness of God exists immediately with the consciousness of its self," Hegel writes: Inasmuch as this knowledge exists immediately in myself, all external authority, all foreign attestation to it is cast aside; what is to be of value to me must have its verification in my own spirit, and in order that I may believe I must have the witness of my own spirit. It may indeed come to me from without, but any such external origin is a matter of indifference; if it is to be valid, this validity can only build itself up upon the foundation of all truth, in the witness of the Spirit. This principle is the simple principle of philosophical knowledge itself, and philosophy is so far from rejecting it that it constitutes a fundamental characteristic in itself. 26 The acceptance of the Absolute as Hegel understands it is based on a teleological analysis of man's consciousness as directed to man's development of self-consciousness in the sense primarily of man's awareness of his freedom. The Absolute as Spirit is the condition for the possibility of man's activity for this goal in the individual and social process of history. 27 The •• Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, 43. See, on the subject of Hegel's Lutheranism, Karl Li:iwith, From Hegel to Nietzsche (trans. by D. Green, New York, 1964), 19-20. 27 Towards the end of his life, the way Hegel transcends the opposition between freedom and the actual order is quite conservative. He shows that the source of RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN's TRANSCENDENCE 28 acceptance of this interpretation is partially dependent upon the fact that it makes a difference in human life that is desirable; it is founded on the "witness of the Spirit " in this sense. In conclusion, we simply want to note that Hegel together with Kant reflects on the conditions for the possibility of modern science as an approach to the question of the possibility of metaphysics. But Hegel also bases his answer to this question and to that of the nature of the Absolute on his study of man's practical life, the consciousness implicit in this, and the condition for the possibility of this dimension of man's consciousness. Interpreting modern man's orientation in the practical order to a dimension of value, primarily the consciousness of freedom, that is not transcendent in an unlimited way, Hegel interprets the Absolute as more essentially related to man than Christianity or theism as traditionally understood do. 28 We agree that a reflection upon modern man's practical activity and consciousness is as important as reflection upon his more objective knowledge for an understanding of being, of the . Absolute, and even for a complete answer to the question of his knowledge of being and of metaphysics. One of the main questions Hegel's position gives rise to is whether modern man's experience of value and activity for value has the ultimate horizon that Hegel ascribes to it. The meaning and foundations of religion as understood in the West cannot really be critically justified unless modern man's experience of the enhanced value of human life in the world and specifically of freedom has different implications from those Hegel draws from it. human discontent is that men " do not find the present adapted to the realization of aims that they hold right and just . . . ; they contrast unfavorably things as they are with their idea of things as they ought to be. . . . The insight then to which-in contradistinction from these ideals-philosophy is to lead us is that the real world is as it ought to be." Hegel, Philosophy of History, Loewenberg, op. cit., pp. 88i'l-888, 884-885. On Hegel's opposition to transcendence, see Liiwith, op. cit., pp. i'l0-i'l9. 28 We will not consider process philosophies and theologies in our study, but we want to point out here that they are engaged in a problem that was central to Hegel, how to relate God to the process that is history. 24 JOHN FARRELLY Naturalisms, as represented by Karl Marx and John Dewey, reject a metaphysics that is positively related to religion, and man's transcendence in value orientation, and they do so in a way that is in continuity with Hegel, although they are dialectically opposed to him as well. Here we wish simply to see some major bases for their rejection of man's transcendence in knowledge and values. Their rejections of the existence of God and of man's religious relation to him are based on a denial of man's transcendence. To recall something of the grounds for this denial we must remember that both Marx and Dewey began as Hegelians. Their naturalisms developed as corrections of Hegel, but they preserved elements of Hegelianism in their developed systems. There is a similarity between Marx and Dewey both in their interpretation of man as within the natural world, rather than the world as manifestation of Spirit, and in their reasons for departing from Hegel in this matter. Marx's turn in this direction was mediated by Feuerbach, and Dewey's was mediated by Darwin; but it seems that their basis for the rejection of man's transcendence was more their attempt to establish in society man's freedom than it was their reliance upon a speculative view of man and the world. That is, they rejected man's transcendence in values more than in knowledge, and this rejection was based upon their actual engagement in an effort at social improvement and at overcoming social obstacles to this; starting from this engagement they proposed the goal man was directed to and found that a religious orientation of man was opposed to this or irrelevant to it. They interpret their " absolute " more in terms of goal than as source of man; and a large element in their justification of the social future as man's " absolute" is their experience of the urgency of this goal for men of their age. The primacy of the practical order is an inheritance from Hegel, although they push it further, because for them what is to be established is not merely or primarily a change in man's consciousness but a change in the social conditions; true freedom is mediated only through such a practical social change, not by a change of consciousness that leaves dehumanizing conditions largely the same. RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN's TRANSCENDENCE Marx accepted Feuerbach's defense of the primacy of the material and human order against Hegel's primacy of the Spirit. Feuerbach based his rejection of idealism on the fact that man does not generate objects from thought but rather thought from the object, namely, "from matter, from existence, from the senses." 29 Feuerbach calls himself a realist or materialist to express his difference from idealism. His philosophy conforms to the real, complete nature of man; his principle is no mere conceptual being but the "true Ens realissimum-man." One cannot assume that there are mysteries beyond sense experience and what that reveals to us about reality; but when consciousness is wholly directed to nature, its power for knowing is unlimited. In accord with this, Feuerbach interprets man's religious devotion as really orientated to his own nature; and he gives a genetic account of man's projection of his own nature onto an absolute distinct from himself, as due to the evils of existence. Man should turn his energies to the perfection of his own nature; this should be the object of his religious dedication. Marx basically accepted the validity of Feuerbach's rejection of Hegel's idealism. But Marx, through his engagement in practical activity for the defense of the poor against their exploiters, and his use of the Hegelian dialectic to explain the conditions of his day, gave a primacy to the practical order that Feuerbach did not. 30 Thus he interprets man through his engagement in action to produce the means of life. Man can be distinguished from the animal by consciousness, religion, or anything else you please. He begins to distinguish himself from the animal from the moment he begins to produce his means of subsistence, a step required by his physical organization. By producing food, man indirectly produces his material life itself .... What they are, therefore, coincides with what they produce, with what they produce and how they produce. The nature of indi29 L. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (trans. George Eliot, New York, 1957), xxxiv-xxxv. 80 See L. Dupre, The Philosophical Foundations of Marxism, ch. 3-6; Lowith, op. cit., 71-103. JOHN FARRELLY viduals thus depends on the material conditions which determine their production. 31 For Marx, man takes the place of the Spirit in Hegel; history is a dialectical process in which alienation is the driving force; social and productive relationships become the stages of history; and the term of history is a condition in which man overcomes the alienations that affiict him and that are based upon or are expressed by private property. Abolish the alienations imposed upon man by the present economic condition, and man will be reintegrated into work, the material world, and indeed his own nature. As Marx became a naturalist through Feuerbach, so Dewey became one through the impact upon him of Darwin's discovery of evolution. Evolution shows that mind is the product of nature, rather than nature an objectification of mind. And on the basis of this discovery Dewey called for a reconstruction of philosophy after the model of the evolutionary reconstruction of biology. The conception of evolution is no more and no less the discovery of a general law of life than it is the generalization of all scientific method. . . . Philosophy must go to school to the sciences; must have no data save such as it receives at their hands; and be hospitable to no method of inquiry and reflection not akin to those in daily use among the sciences.32 Man as a practical being was primary for Dewey as for Marx. This was the way in which Dewey primarily experienced man in the context of the American culture of his day, a culture energetically dedicated to changing and controlling the physical and social environment to promote a better life for man, one in which the future, rather than the past or present, had the priority, and in which practical and technological intelligence Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, "The German Ideology," in L. Easton, and (trans. and ed.), Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society (New York, 1967), 409. 82 John Dewey, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays (reprint ed., N. Y., P. Smith, 1951), See James Collins, Three Paths in Philosophy (Chicago, Part Two: "Naturalism," 135-251. 31 K. Guddat RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN's TRANSCENDENCE was highly valued. The relation of organism and environment in Darwin's evolutionary discovery gave Dewey the interpretative principles by which he could reflect philosophically in this context. Dewey's fundamental notion of experience is in the framework of man's encounter of conditions which must be met in some manner, and the way in which the conditions are to be met. So his philosophical method starts from the polarity between organism and environment, and it interprets all within this context. 33 His instrumentalist view of human knowledge naturally follows from this approach. Man naturally prizes knowledge only for the sake of its bearing upon success and failure in attaining goods and avoiding evils. The means of converting the dubious into the assured, and the incomplete into the determinate, is use of assured and established things. . . . Thinking is no different in kind from the use of natural materials and energies, say fire and tools, to refine, re-order, and shape other natural materials, say ore.34 As his view of man is similar in many ways to that of Marx, his strictures against ideology and his insistence on the practical function of philosophy are similar. In conclusion, these men's philosophies are primarily constructions to accord with their experience of the values to be established in modern society, constructions that find corroboration from the report on man and the world given by science, particularly the discovery of evolution. (Engels held that evolution offered a justification for Marx's and his own naturalism) . This shows, as we said in reference to Hegel, that the question of man's transcendence demands a reflection on modern man's practical activity and values; if reflection does not show these to have a transcendent horizon, one can hardly justify the relevance to man of Christianity or of a religious relation to a transcendent personal God. Moreover, such a reflection is necessary for an adequate understanding of being and hence, too, of the nature of man's knowledge of being and 33 See John E. Smith, "John Dewey," The Spirit of American Philosophy (New York, 1963), 115-160. 34 John Dewey, Experience and Nature (Chicago, 51, 67. JOHN FARRELLY metaphysics. We also find in these men a reason to ask about the conditions of possibility of modern science, for they interpret the implications of science as foreclosing the possibility of a metaphysics such as we are investigating. 4. Still another difficulty against the possibility of metaphysics today is found in the view that it is a meaningless use of language and thus is not possible. We can sympathize with this difficulty as it is articulated by language philosophers when we are confronted with much metaphysical talk, for example, much that is found in idealistic metaphysics. The meaning of much metaphysical talk is far from obvious. The statements made are so different from those of sciences where meaning can be found in the relation of the statements to the methods and criteria of the physical sciences. The diversity of metaphysical views and the fact that philosophers seem unable to agree on answers can easily lead us to wonder whether the problems they are treating are real problems and whether they have any real means of dealing effectively with these problems -whether, in brief, they can be treated meaningfully. Moreover, metaphysical language is so remote from language as we ordinarily use it; its relation to this use of language is by no means always apparent; it seems removed from the contexts and purposes found in our ordinary uses of language. Therefore it easily seems both meaningless and irrelevant to us. In part, it was this sense of the meaninglessness of Hegelian philosophical language, a sense of being without a criterion by which one could judge the validity of its statements, and a sense that it did not do justice to the concrete, discrete data of experience that led to the emergence of philosophies of language at the beginning of this century. We can recall some of the difficulties with the possibility of metaphysics that come from such sources through centering our attention on Wittgenstein, since he was a central figure in this philosophical movement. We do this simply to help us find an approach to the question of the possibility of metaphysics that is relevant to the criticisms of it that come from philosophies of language. We will recall something of Wittgenstein's approach in general, then RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN's TRANSCENDENCE 29 some characteristics of his early and his later philosophy. In the conclusion we will agree with the legitimacy of an approach to the possibility of metaphysics by way of the question of meaning, and we will indicate some elements essential to such an approach. There are quite varied interpretations of Wittgenstein, but here I am taking the view that, while he did change his philosophical approach in mid-life, his divergent approaches were dedicated to answering the same basic problems, and the answers he gave were basically similar. His problem was in continuity with that of Schopenhauer, who translated Kant's question concerning the conditions for the possibility of knowledge to the question of the condition for the possibility of representation and its limits. As Toulmin writes: One can regard Wittgenstein's own philosophical preoccupations as carrying further the variations on Kant already initiated by Schopenhauer. As a result, Kant's philosophical tasks were restated yet again: (i) exploring the scope-and the intrinsic limits-of language; and (ii) demonstrating the consequences of our irrepressible tendency to run up against, and attempt to overleap, those unavoidable limits .... Wittgenstein was attempting to delimit the scope of the' sayable '-exploring, in his own words, die Grenze der Sprache. 85 Using this approach to the question of the possibility of talk about God, ethics, freedom, and immortality, Wittgenstein in both his early and later philosophy arrived at negative conclusions; such talk is beyond the limits of the sayable. Wittgenstein's conclusion to this effect was apparently not as liberating for him as it was for the logical positivists. Our question here concerns how Wittgenstein arrived at this conclusion. And in asking this question, we are referring not to the " natural history " of his thought or the " form of life " of the culture he grew up in but rather to the basic reasons he gave for the limits he assigned to the sayable. To understand the early Wittgenstein we must recall that he studied physics and applied mathematics and that he did this •• Stephen Tonlmin, "Ludwig Wittgenstein,'' Encounter 32 (January, 1969), 63. 30 JOHN FARRELLY at a time when some major physicists were asking how Newtonian physics was possible. (Hertz's) answer had consisted in showing how the language of Newtonian dynamics is first articulated into a system, and then put to use as an instrument for 'representing' the motions of material bodies. Boltzmann extended this account to the whole of physics. From a scientific point of view all that could meaningfully be asserted were linguistic ' representations ' of the relevant physical phenomena: for the physicist, the ' values' we attach to these phenomenon play no part in their ' representation.' 36 In his Tractatus Wittgenstein extended this "representation" or " picture " view of the way language means to the whole of human discourse, and he used Russell's logical symbolism for this purpose. His development of this position involves the assertions that there must be elementary propositions, that these (as arrangements of names) picture states of affairs, that other propositions to have definite sense must be combinations of such elementary propositions, and that these elementary propositions show the elements of the world. The consequence of this view of how language means is that metaphysics as traditionally understood is meaningless or cannot be said. For example, he writes: Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical. Consequently we cannot give any answer to questions of this kind, but can only establish that they are nonsensical. Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language. 37 •• Ibid., 66. L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness (London, 1961), 4.003. See also 4; 4.11; 5.61; 5.63 (I); 6.42; 6.53. 37 Toulmin in commenting on Wittgenstein's use of the word metaphysics writes: " He used the word in a highly specific sense--to designate the kind of philosophical discussion which ' obliterates the distinction between (i. e., confuses) factual and conceptual investigations' (Zettel, 458)-and his condemnation of metaphysics extended no further than this." Ibid., 60. There is a stronger way to interpret Wittgenstein in the Tractatus. See e. g., George Pitcher, The Philosophy of Wittgenstein (Prentice-Hall, 1964), 141: "One can simply say that the limits of language impose corresponding limits on reality-or, more briefly, the limits of language are the limits of reality, of the world." Also see James Cornman, "Philo- lU!lLIGIOUS ANb MAN 1S TRANSCENDENCE Sl The later Wittgenstein rejected his earlier goal of articulating an ideal language and his view that words mean through picturing. Language for the later Wittgenstein is in order as it is, for it serves its purpose adequately. How then do we find the meaning of a word? We examine the use the word has in ordinary language, because that is where we get it. We ask, " How did we learn the meaning of this word (' good ' for instance) ? From what sort of example? In what language? " 88 For example, in resolving the philosophical problems of the meaning of understanding we should not think of understanding as a mental process. Rather "ask yourself: in what sort of case, in what kind of circumstances, do we say, 'Now I know how to go on,' when, that is, the formula has occurred to me? " 39 Our method should be to " really think out various different situations and conversations, and the ways in which that sentence here: 'I intend to go away' will be uttered in them." 40 The basis of this method for understanding the meaning of a word (examining the way we verify a statement, the use of the word, the situations and conversations in which it is used, and how we learn it) is the fact that: For a large class of cases-though not for ali-in which we employ the word 'meaning' it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language. And the meaning of a name is sometimes explained by pointing to its bearer.41 sophical Analysis and the Future of Metaphysics," iu R. Wood (ed.), The Future of Metaphysics (Chicago, 1970), Here Cornman shows how language has been used to make ontological statements in logical atomism, logical positivism, reconstruction analysis, and use analysis. We will say no more about logical positivism than to recall Ayer's famous words. "A statement is held to be literally meaniugful if and only if it is either analytic or empirically verifiable." The statements of metaphysics are meaniugless since they purport to be about the world and yet they " do not describe anythiug that is capable, even iu priuciple, of beiug obesrved." (Alfred Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic (London, 1936), 9, 14. 38 Wittgensteiu, Philosophical Investigations (New York, 1963), n. 77. 89 Ibid., n. 154. See n. on the criteria we accept for legitimately sayiug that someone understands. •• Ibid., n. 01 Ibid., n. 48. JOHN FARRELLY Words are like tools, having different functions. They are used differently in different language-games/ 2 Considered in its larger context," the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life." 43 It is then to the natural history of our language that we must go to understand it. The implications for philosophy of this method of finding meanings and its basis are largely the same as in Wittgenstein's earlier philosophy. The real discovery is the one that makes me capable of stopping doing philosophy, when I want to .... There is not a philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, like different therapies. 44 " Philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday." 45 What we must do then is bring language back to its everyday use and look on the language-game as the primary thing. What we have rather to do is to accept the everyday languagegame, and to note false accounts of it as false. The primitive language-game which children are taught needs no justification; attempts at justification need to be rejected. 46 We resolve philosophical problems by looking into the workings of our language. One of the main reasons why this dissolves philosophical problems is that through these methods we dissolve the notion that there is one property that a general word means, or that things to which we apply a general word have one property in common. Moreover, a word like "to understand" does not refer to an inner act; we have learned to apply this word in circumstances where we " can go on," and the criterion we find appropriate for using this word of another •• See ibid., nn. 11, 65 f. •• Ibid., n. •• Ibid., n. 188. Also, see n. 809. "What is your aim in philosophy?- To show the fly the way out of the bottle." •• Ibid., n. 88. See n. " The confusions which occupy us arise when language is like an engine idling, not when it is doing work." And see n. 119 on the " limits of language." •• Ibid., Pt. II, !WOe. Also see n. 654-657; 109. RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN'S TRANSCENDENCE 83 person is that he knows how to proceed. Whether we say that the meaning of the word is its use or that we should look to the use of the word rather than its meaning, by this approach our minds are turned away from philosophical puzzles such as, " What is it ' to understand '? " We could go on to an analysis of some more positive uses of Wittgenstein's methods, uses of these methods that elucidate the meaning of religious language. But on the supposition that a reflection on the possibility of metaphysics is an element in a reflection on religion, it is sufficient for our purposes to restrict our example in linguistic philosophies here to Wittgenstein. This sets up a problem for a metaphysics positively related to religion that persists in many linguistic philosophers who give an interpretation of religious language, for many do so while rejecting the possibility of such a metaphysics, or objective language about God. We do not have to show the limitations of the early Wittgenstein' s way of establishing the meaning of language or rejecting metaphysics as meaningless, namely, his universalizing the mode of meaning found in science according to some theoreticians of science. The later Wittgenstein adequately criticized this position. We do agree that one cannot articulate the meaning of metaphysics for modem man without showing its relation to the way science means because, while the knowledge and meaning of science are generally accepted today, that of metaphysics is not. So we must show its meaning by relating it to that of science. We can, for example, ask the question whether for science to have meaning, metaphysics or a knowledge and speech that is implicitly metaphysical must have meaning. The later Wittgenstein turns to the natural history of language and the forms of life in which it is used for an elucidation of meaning. That is to say that he turns to a relation between language and the experience or life context in which it is used. One central question this raises is whether this life context has a transcendent dimension to it, such as religion supposes. Another question it raises is whether we can study the re- 34 JOHN FARRELLY lationship between language and experience more effectively than Wittgenstein did and whether such a study does justify his strictures on metaphysics. There is reason to believe that Wittgenstein was influenced toward his later approach to language by contact with early students of developmental psychology.47 We agree on the need of such a study for an empirically based understanding of how we mean by language; an approach to the question of the possibility of metaphysics should make use of developmental psychology in the work, for example, of Jean Piaget. What does this work show concerning the relation of the language that the child receives to the way it begins to have meaning for the child? Does language have all the primacy that Wittgenstein attributed to it, or does language in many cases begin to have meaning and use for the child only when the child has had experiences of objects, insights, and concepts which the words signify? Moreover, does our recognition of the practical purposes in our use of language, the conventional character of language, and the way we learn language imply that our words do not signify concepts and things and do not depend upon our understanding of concepts and things; or does this " natural history " of language simply place our understanding and our signifying use of words within the full human context of knowledge and communication? If the latter is the case, a study of this " natural history " may enrich our understanding and our use of words without denying that in many cases this depends on insights and mediates conceptual knowledge of things. In short, we agree with the legitimacy of questioning the possibility of metaphysics through questioning its meaning; and we agree that if we are to show that metaphysics has a meaning we must show it in its relation to forms of knowledge that are closer to us (e. g., science) and in its relation to the full context of human life, with all that is contingent in life and language. 5. Another current difficulty against the possibility of meta47 See Toulmin, art. cit., 70-71, where he speaks of Wittgenstein's contacts with the Buhlers. RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN's TRANSCENDENCE 35 physics is found in the way phenomenology grounds our knowledge and specifically our philosophical knowledge. Modern man is aware that the way an object is known depends upon the way the subject relates to it; this makes us all diffident in affirming that we know reality exactly as it is, a claim that seems to be present in metaphysics to an extreme degree. We will examine two quite different phenomenologically based difficulties with metaphysics, Edmund Husserl's and Martin Heidegger's (the later Heidegger's opposition to metaphysics has a continuity with his earlier phenomenological phase). Husserl's philosophy was developed in a direction that entails the impossibility of metaphysics. As Spiegelberg describes Husserl's later position: the fact remains that for Husserl ' being ' exists only for consciousness, and that actually ' being ' is nothing apart from the meaning which it receives by the bestowing acts of this consciousness.48 This of course is ascribed to Husserl's idealistic phase, but an understanding of how he came to this position gives us perhaps the best approach to the difficulties his phenomenology raises for the possibility of metaphysics. Mainly following Spiegelberg here, we can speak briefly of Husserl's early period, of his middle period where he develops phenomenology as the first philosophy and as a strict science, and of his later period beginning with Ideas where he becomes more idealistic. We restrict ourselves to only a few of his most basic affirmations. Husserl began as a mathematician (though he was also a •• H. Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement. A Historical Introduction (2nd edition, The Hague, 1969), vol. 1, p. 143. While Spiegelberg, in his analysis of the later Husser!, gives most weight to his transcendental phenomenology, others would apparently give more weight to his emphasis on the Lebenswelt. If we take this perspective, then, as Edie writes, phenomenology in opposition to traditional metaphysics: "poses the question of the Ursprung der Welt in a more absolute and originaey manner. It asks the question of how the world arises as the world of human consciousness beginning from the absolute and presuppositionless standpoint of actual present experience. It poses, beneath the problem of the kosmos, the problem of the Lebenswelt from which the cosmological explanations of science, metaphysics, and theology arc derived as well as second-order abstractions." James M. Edie, "Phenomenology and Metaphysics: Ontology without Metaphysics? ", in Robert Wood (ed.), op. cit., 80. 36 JOHN FARRELLY student of psychology), and his first book was a study of the philosophy of mathematics in which his objective " was to derive the fundamental concepts of mathematics from certain psychological acts." 49 Influenced by various criticisms of this work, Frege's among them, Husser! in his Logical Investigations reacted against " psychologism " which, in reference to logic, he defined as the view that: ' the theoretical foundation for the construction of logic . . . is supplied by psychology, and specifically by the psychology of knowledge'; to put it more pointedly, psychologism, for Husserl, stood for the view that psychology was both the necessary and the sufficient foundation of logic . . . (Later Husserl) extended it to any attempt to ' psychologize,' i. e., to conv.ert into psychological experience objects of whatever type. 50 Among the bases Husser! ga.ve for his attack against psychologism were the fact that psychological study does not account for the validity and certainty present in a logical principle (e. g., the principle of contradiction) and the fact that making the principle dependent on the psychological characteristics of the thinker results in relativism. What is needed to base logic as a practical discipline of thinking is a theoretical logic, not psychology. Although Husser! turned away from the psychologist's study of actual experiences, he still held that logical entities are given to us only in experiences, and he sought to describe the ideal experiences (whether or not these were based on factual experiences) in which these objectivities are given to consciousness. This project is based on the assumption of a parallel between the structures of the subject's acts and of the objectivities given in it, between the noetic and the noematic aspects of consciousness. The value of this study is that: Once this had been achieved, philosophy would' be in a position to account epistemologically for our supposed knowledge of the logical entities and evaluate its claims, by showing the adequacy or inadequacy for their tasks o£ the basic types of our experiencing acts.51 •• Spiegelberg, op. cit., 60 Ibid., 93-94. 51 Ibid., 1OS. RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN'S TRANSCENDENCE 37 By " phenomenology " Husserl meant his study of these experiences and of the general essence and varied structures of consciousness. Specifically, he held that universal propositions could not be accounted for unless general essences are admitted as objectivities with an ideal existence (not to be confused with Plato's view) sufficient for statements about them. Corresponding to these on the part of consciousness, he held that there are " special acts of generic experience or ' ideation ' which the old-style empiricism had overlooked and in which general essences were genuinely apprehended." 52 With reference to these acts and to perception Husserl developed his analysis of the intentionality of consciousness, a notion he received from Brentano, and of intuition, a nonsensuous intuition giving us access to general essences. This intuition, however, is not divorced from experiences: While it does not require the massing of instances from experience or from experimentation or even restriction to real cases, the intuiting of general essences must be based on the careful consideration of representative examples, which are to serve as stepping stones, as it were, for any generalizing ' ideation.' ... it is always the intuiting of the phenomena, particular as well as universal, in which all genuine knowledge finds its terminal verification.58 In what we refer to as Husserl's middle period he expanded his phenomenological method beyond his earlier logical concerns. He engaged in some concrete phenomenological studiesfor example, on the consciousness of time. And he programmatically described phenomenology as a new critique of reason that offers a basis for philosophy and gives it a scientific character. He showed the conditions on which philosophy can be a strict science, one of which is its abstention from judgments about existence so that it can avoid the natural and naive attitude and offer a knowledge of essences that is strictly certain. Now, it is of decisive significance to know that essential intuition is in no way ' experience ' in the sense of perception, recollection, and equivalent acts; further, that it is in no way an empirical ""Ibid., 106. •s Ibid., 118. 38 JOHN FARRELLY generalization whose sense it is to posit existentially at the same time the individual being of empirical details. Intuition grasps essence as essential being, and in no way posits being-there. In accord with this, knowledge of essence is by no means matter-offact knowledge, including not the slightest shade of affirmation regarding an individual (e. g., natural) being-there. 54 He attacked philosophies that based themselves on the physical and psychological sciences as guilty of naturalizing and objectifying consciousness; and he attacked historicism for its relativism. Beginning with his Ideas, General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, Husserl, while developing still further views he had expressed before, begins to give an emphasis to subjectivity that characterizes his later period and that increases after this book. He insists here on the phenomenological reduction, the necessity of the epoche, the abstention from the natural and naive standpoint, so that we can treat phenomena only as pure phenomena and make no factual assertions of existence. He also introduces the notion of " constitution " which, though different from Kant's constitutive use of the categories, is related to Kant's meaning. Husser! uses the word in a transitive sense to designate a dynamic process of consciousness building up or structuring the object. This itself indicates the direction of his philosophy which: 'reaches back (zurnckfragen, i.e., literally, 'asks back for') to the ultimate source of all knowledge,' with the implication that this source is to be found in the ego. In other words, it [his term ' Transcendental Phenomenology '] expresses Husserl's commitment to a radical subjectivism for which subjectivity is the source of all objectivities, a position which is spelled out only in the period after the ldeen. 55 It appears then that the difficulty for metaphysics that is implied in Husserl's position is due to the manner in which he interprets in detail the need for a " reduction " or resolution of •• Edmund Husser!, "Philosophy as Rigorous Science," Phenomenology and The Crisis of Philosophy, trans. by Q. Lauer (Harper Torchbooks, 1965), 112. 55 Spiegelberg, op. cit., 1£6. RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN'S TRANSCENDEC\CE 39 our knowledge of essence to experience and consciousness. His philosophy has great validity and importance in its call for a turn to the subject and a study of how the world or" essences" arise in the subject's consciousness, for the epistemological purpose of seeing the validity of what the subject affirms. With reference to our own interest here, we agree that metaphysics today needs a study of the "psychogenesis of being." But the specific way in which Husserl interprets his philosophical resolution of our knowledge to its principles in ideal experiences and (finally) transcendental consciousness seems to reflect in part his experience of knowledge as a mathematician and, strange as it may seem, a psychologist in his early life. The very fact that his philosophy so centers upon essences, the degree of certainty that he posits as necessary for philosophy, the independence of knowledge of essences from factual experiences that he holds, and the way he relates knowledge of essences to knowledge of facts on the model of mathematics' relation to the science of facts 56-all indicate that in part he is interpreting philosophical knowledge on the model of mathematical knowledge. And his final reduction of man's knowledge to a transcendental subject has been seen by some as a relapse into psychologism. (Husserl's emphasis in his later life on the Lebenswelt shows, as we have noted, a strand in tension with the reduction in his transcendental phenomenology.) We must grant that an understanding of our mathematical knowledge does have something to contribute to our understanding of the psychogenesis of and (in part) being. But is it legitimate to use mathematics as the model for philosophy to the extent that Husserl has done? Can we adequately account for the emergence of the " world " or " essences " (or even basic mathematical concepts) if the only principle to which we reduce them is the subject, individual or social? Do we account for the actual way in which these arise in man if we do not reduce them as well to realities in the environment 56 See E. Husser!, Ideas. General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. Trans. by W. R. B. Gibbon (London, 1958), Preface (1931), 13: "The science of pure possibilities must everywhere precede the science of real facts." 40 JOHN FA.RBELLY that man knows? Do we epistemologically validate man's knowledge if we reduce the essences he knows simply to ideal experiences and man's constituting consciousness but neglect the actual experiences and the realities in the world that contribute to man's consciousness? To turn away from these factual principles of man's knowledge out of a desire for apodictic certitude and to turn toward a transcendental subject is to attempt unsuccessfully to escape one of the elements that call into question man's knowledge of "essences." If in reality man's knowledge does arise from such factual experiences and the realities of the world, then knowledge is not epistemologically validated unless one shows how the empirical origin of knowledge does not have the consequences that empiricism claims. 57 In brief, Husserl's position in this matter calls us to investigate the principles involved in the psychogenesis of some basic mathematical knowledge, and of " essences " insofar as these are related to the psychogenesis of being. Secondly, if we must resort to factual experiences rather than ideal experiences, we must ask whether the completeness of Husserl's turn away from scientific psychology was necessary or legitimate? If we resort to the data of scientific psychology for the experiences that base our judgments, must we fall into psychologism, or need we reduce the validity of such judgments simply to the subject's act (particularly if we recognize the contribution of the object known) ? To use the psychologist's contribution to philosophy must we accept his interpretive models (and what naturalizing or objectifying of consciousness they imply) as adequate for our philosophical purpose, if they are sufficient for the scientific psychologist? If we use psychology, are we necessarily relating knowledge to the individual 51 This criticism seems to be in accord with the direction taken by many of Husserl's followers, e. g., M. Merleau-Ponty, whose final stage of thought is seen in his posthumously published, Le Visible et L'Invisible (Paris, 1964). See R. Kwant, From Phenomenology to Metaphysics (Pittsburgh, 1966). Also see Edie, art. cit., 95: "In the end, phenomenology cannot escape the ' metaphysical '; it can only bracket it. . . . (For Husserl) the waters of metaphysics leak in only at the two extremes: on the side of the world and on the side of the ego. Everything in between is safe from metaphysics." RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN'S TRANSCENDENCE 41 subject as such, rather than (as Piaget tries to do) to the epistemological subject, that is, the structures o£ knowledge found in men generally when they arrive at certain concepts or levels o£ knowledge? Is the only way to escape the limitations o£ a scientist's models or restricted questions a rejection o£ his data or his interpretations and their significance for philosophical questions, or can we accept these while remaining aware o£ how his results are influenced by his specific questions, methods, and frames o£ interpretation? It would seem, as Piaget argues against Husser!, 58 that the philosopher cannot dispense with the experimental studies o£ scientific psychology in his attempt to analyse the structures o£ consciousness by which man comes to a knowledge o£ essences. I£ Piaget is right, the philosopher cannot analyze consciousness simply by looking into himself and seeing how he functions, because by this he is looking only at adult intelligence, and the adult structure o£ intelligence is itself the result o£ a genesis that has been going on in man since infancy. As a matter o£ £act, some o£ the followers of Husser! have made significant use o£ Piaget's genetic epistemology; and it is most probable that Husserl's judgment on scientific psychology today would have been different from what it was at a time when psychology's interests were narrower, and its interpretations more reductionist than they are for many psychologists today. The difficulties Heidegger's position poses to the possibility o£ metaphysics depend upon his analysis o£ the meaning o£ Being and the way Being is present to man, and upon the implications o£ this for the objective and conceptual approach to Being proper to metaphysics. To indicate the bases for these difficulties we may recall the question that animates his philosophy, his approaches to the understanding o£ Being, and the consequences o£ this understanding for metaphysics. Heidegger writes that all o£ his philosophical work is in function o£ a question that came to him from reading a book by Franz Brentano on the meanings o£ Being in Aristotle. Man does •• See Jean Piaget, Insights and Illusions of Philosophy, 101-115. 42 JOHN FARRELLY indeed have some understanding or comprehension of Being; this is shown in his sentences that use " is " and in metaphysics. Aristotle says, as translated by Heidegger, "A Being becomes manifest (sc. with regard to its Being) in many ways." Heidegger continues: Latent in this phrase is the question that determined the way of my thought: what is the pervasive, simple, unified determination of Being that permeates all of its multiple meanings? This question raised another: what, then, does Being mean? 59 Heidegger, in his most famous book, Being and Time, begins with the fact that man does comprehend Being to some extent. This fact is manifested by the very emergence of the question of Being within us, for we cannot search for something unless we have a pre-comprehension of it. How do we find the basic meaning of Being (not, we should note, the meaning of beings) -that in virtue of which beings appear to us as beings? Using a phenomenological method, Heidegger examines in this book how Being appears, how it is the intentional object of man, how man constitutes it as his object (if, given Heidegger's attempt to get behind the subject-object dichotomy, we may use this word) . He shows the structure of man as the place of the appearance of Being (Da-sein); this structure is pre-reflective; man already comprehends Being before he reflects on this comprehension. It is the comprehension of Being that distinguishes man from any other being; its relation to Being constitutes the structure of Dasein (and reveals that structure to us). (Dasein) is ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its very Being, that Being is an issue for it ... this is a constitutive state of Dasein's Being, and this implies that Dasein, in its Being, has a relationship toward that Being-a relationship which itself is one of Being.60 59 Martin Heidegger, "Preface," in Wm. Richardson, Heidegger. Through Phenomenology to Thought (The Hagne, 1963), x. 60 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. from 7th ed. by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (London, 1969!), 39!. RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN'S TRANSCENDENCE 43 Heidegger also expresses this as follows: "The essence (Wesen) of this entity lies in its' to be' (Zu-sein) ." 61 By "to-be" used here he does not mean existence exactly in the sense of classical philosophy. Rather, as Richardson expresses it, the 'to-' connotes not only the power-to-be (Seinkonnen) but the compulsion-, or drive-to-be, and the ' -be' implies not only entity but the comprehension of Being.62 Dasein is now that to which it is directed in the sense that it is essentially ek-static, standing out from its present condition toward Being, and it is its own potentiality, its own drive-to-be. Being, on the other hand, is correlative to Dasein's existence, so that one can say that, where there is no Dasein, there is no Being. Heidegger analyzes the meaning of Being through an examination of Dasein's relation to the world. He studies here man's dealings in the world and with entities-in-the-world, with things as " equipment " or " gear " or ::J,s entities that man uses for a purpose (e. g., a hammer). But he also finds an approach to Being through a phenomenology of anxiety or dread (Angst) , the unique disposition through which man rises to a comprehension of Being. We need not recall how this anxiety is dependent upon the structure of concern (which itself is a unity that includes existentiality, facticity, and fallenness), how Dasein appropriates this structure through resolve, nor how all of it is synthesized in time. What is important for our purposes here is that it is only through considering the term of Dasein's anxiety that the structure of Dasein and the comprehension of Being to which it is directed are disclosed to us. Heidegger points out again and again that, " That in the face of which one has anxiety (das Wovor der Ang8t) is Being-inthe-world as such." 63 This Being-in-the-world as the end to which Dasein is transcendent is death. Just as Dasein is already its 'not-yet', and is its 'not-yet' constantly as long as it is, it is already its .end too. The ' ending ' which we have in view when we speak of death does not signify 61 Ibid., 67. •• Richardson, op. cit., 39. 63 Being and Time, 230. 44 JOHN FARRELLY Dasein's Being-at-an-end (Zu-Ende-sein), but a Being-towardsthe-end (Sein zum Ende) of this entity. Death is a way to be, which Dasein takes over as soon as it is.64 The negation that is experienced in anxiety is essential as the medium of the comprehension of Being. "In this state-of-mind, Dasein finds itself face to face with the nothing of the possible impossibility (or better: potential impotence) of its existence." 65 Being is disclosed to Dasein through anxiety as 65 Ibid., 310. The translation in parentheses is Richardson's, op. cit., 79. essentially finite, and Dasein itself is disclosed as essentially · finite. In Heidegger's later work he gives a primacy to Being in its relation to Dasein that many phenomenologists do not accept as a legitimate development of his earlier view of Being as the project of Dasein. Being is now understood as active presence in which the initiative and spontaneity is Being's rather than Dasein's. He writes: Presence (Being) as such is always and in some way presence to the essence of man, insofar as presence is a summons which in some way makes an appeal to the essence of man. The essence of man as such is to be attentive, to hearken because it stands within this summons, this presence of Being.66 He defends this view in different ways, e. g., through the message of the poets, especially Holderlin. Through an elucidation of " foundational thought," Heidegger " overcomes " metaphysics. The foundation of metaphysics is man's comprehension of Being. But if we examine the central characteristics of the thought of Being, we see that Being is not comprehended conceptually or by re-presentative thought, such as that thought found in the sciences and in metaphysics. " Being is not an existing quality of what-is, nor, unlike what-is, can Being be conceived and established objectively." 67 Meta••Ibid., 289. Note that Heidegger writes that his position "does not imply any ontical decision whether ' after death ' still another Being is possible, . . ." 66 Heidegger, Zur Seinsfrage. (Frankfurt, 1956), 28. 61 Heidegger, " What is Metaphysics? " in Existence and Being, trans. by R. Hull and A. Grick (Chicago, 1959), "Postscript," 384. RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN'S TRANSCENDENCE 45 physics forgets the difference between Being and entities. It is essentially re-presentative thinking; and, in ignorance of the difference, it takes its representation of Being as Being. Then proceeding within this "errance," it grounds Being considered as entities through the consideration of beings in general (ontology) and through looking for causes of being (theo-logy). By showing the " errance " of metaphysics through its forgetting of the ontological difference, Heidegger overcomes it and gives power to his call to foundational thought or to a return to Being. It is this return to Being that can save the Western world from its present condition, a condition that is the result of metaphysics, that is, the control by technicity. Perhaps what we have recalled of Heidegger's position is sufficient to indicate the bases for his difficulties against man's transcendence, both in knowledge and in his goal or values. In the first place, by his phenomenological method he studied the way man constitutes Being as his object, and he found that it is man's object in the sense of the issue for man. For Heidegger then, as for some earlier philosophers such as Hegel, man's practical activity is revelatory of Being; Being and man's comprehension of Being are shown intrinsically by man's activity such as orientation to his goal and acceptance of this through resolve. We can agree with this and acknowledge the great value of Heidegger's work in bringing this out. 68 Specifically, Being is the issue for man as that about which man is anxious, namely, being-to-death. Being then for Heidegger appears to man as essentially finite and man's transcendence as essentially finite. Granting the validity and importance of this approach to the 68 Heidegger's insight into this may in part depend upon writers as far back as the Middle Ages, such as Meister Eckhart and the mystical experience he reflects (see Spiegelberg, op. cit., I, 296), and Duns Scotus. (ibid., 298-295) . It is interesting to note in reference to this that Scotus accepted the fact of an intellectual intuition into an object as present and as existing. For example, he writes: "Alius autem actus intelligendi est, quam tamen non ita certitudinaliter experimur in nobis; possibilis tamen est talis, qui scilicet sit obiecti praesentis ut praesentis, et existentis ut existentis ... est intuitio rei, ut existentis et praesentis." Quodl. 6 (Opera omnia, Vives edition (Paris, 1891-1895), 25: 248-244). 46 JOHN FARRELLY meaning of Being by way of what is at issue for man, the question remains whether Heidegger's experience of this issue reveals the essential finitude of Being and man's transcendence, or reveals in part the modality by which man is orientated to an infinitude of Being (namely, through death) and in part the way a particular culture or individual constitutes Being as the issue for man? How do we decide a question like this? Heidegger' s analysis is based on the experience in which Being is given to man; but the difficulty is that we can project our experience upon Being, and specifically we can project dimensions of this experience that belong more properly to our experience than to Being, and to our experience not as revelatory of what is most basic and universal in man's transcendence towards Being but as dependent upon what is individual and culture bound. Other questions also can be posed to Heidegger's analysis of Being as the issue for man, questions that would come from naturalism with its emphasis on man's orientation to the social dimensions of life and specifically to activity to change social structures for an improved communal future. One can question whether Heidegger's analysis integrates this aspect of modern man's self-consciousness adequately, whether then his phenomenology of how Being appears as the issue for man must be enlarged today. In the second place, we must note that Heidegger's conclusion from this interpretation of Being as issue or presence to his overcoming of metaphysics depends upon another premise which is open to question. To achieve his overcoming of metaphysics Heidegger must hold not simply that Being is revealed by man's practical orientation to what is at issue for him but also that the revelation of Being is dependent intrinsically only on this way in which Being is man's object. That is, it depends on the view that Being is not an object for man by a way that is intrinsically and directly dependent on his intellectual knowledge through insight and judgment. Heidegger's analyses do not prove his position, however, for he begins with his acceptance of Being as the issue for man, and he then analyzes man as he is related to Being in this fashion. No matter how valid RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN's TRANSCENDENCE 47 Heidegger's analysis of the structure of man may be in this matter, it is only a partial analysis of man's relation to Being as his object if Being is mediated to man as well by way of intellectual knowledge. 69 If Being is man's intentional object properly by way of intellectual knowledge as well as by way of man's project and experience dependent upon this, then metaphysics, an objective intellectual study of being, (to revert to a lower-case letter here out of metaphysical modesty) has not been successfully contested. For in this case a reflective intellectual study of being is properly proportioned to the way being is and is present to man. In part it is true that metaphysics is an objective intellectual study of being mediated to man non-conceptually through what is at issue for man or through presence, and as such there is special reason to call it an objectification of being. But if man knows being as well intrinsically and properly by intellectual knowledge, such objectification is not a distortion of being. That is, if one is aware of the difference between being as present to man non-conceptually by way of his project and being as conceptually expressed, one may without distorting being express it conceptually and metaphysically as one may metaphysically reflect on the good, while aware that man is more properly orientated to the good through his affective inclination than through intellectual knowledge. It would be a distortion of being to reduce it to being as present to man properly through intellectual knowledge, but it would as well be a distortion of being to reduce it to being as present to man properly through affectivity. Further, if this is the case, the word and intellectual understanding we have of God in metaphysics is not shown to be simply a derivative from and an objectification of Being experienced as man's goal or issue, or as presence. The word of God is not simply an objectification of •• I have proposed, as a development of St. Thomas's understanding of the good .md of being, an analysis of how being is man's object both by intellectual knowledge and by affective inclination or will in such a way that being is mediated differently to man in these two cases, and that man's comprehension of being depends intrinsically upon both of these mediations and acts. See " Existence, the Intellect, and the Will," The New Scholasticism 29 (1955), 145-74. 48 JOHN FARRELLY "the Holy" and man's experience of it, as some theologians dependent upon Heidegger have held. That is, if what we suggest is the case, the legitimacy of the metaphysical approach to God (in a way that preserves continuity with that of St. Thomas) has not been successfully invalidated; we are simply enabled to broaden the metaphysical approach and to better recognize its limitations, continuing to assert that it represents a basic and valid understanding of being. We do not say here that we have proved this position against that of Heidegger, but we offer these as questions that must be asked of Heidegger's position and the consequences he draws from it for metaphysics. 6. In the sixth place, there are objections to the possibility of metaphysics as a real knowledge that are grounded on the view that contemporary science is the prime example of what knowledge is and that metaphysics does not have fully the characteristics of knowledge. We shall restrict ourselves here to the views on philosophy offered by Jean Piaget, since they seem reasonable to many people and since we have suggested that a use of his scientific psychology is important in answering the question of the possibility of metaphysics. We shall recall of three arguments he raises in his book Insights and Philosophy against metaphysics and philosophy in general as knowledge. We should note, however, that he has a real respect for the value of philosophy, and he acknowledges its necessity for man. In the first place, he considers that metaphysics is properly speaking not knowledge but wisdom or rational belief. He argues that: the only difference between wisdoms having a rational character and systems of ' knowledge ' is that they add two supplementary elements to the latter: (1) a factor of decision or of engagement, which alone is able to give a ' meaning ' to life and man; and (2) a set of hypotheses which can become knowledge once they are demonstrated, but if one wishes to live according to the ' meaning ' adopted, one is forced to accept them as beliefs without waiting for this verification .... in principle honesty forces me to admit that RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN'S TRANSCENDENCE 49 if I believe without a shadow of doubt in human freedom, it is still a matter of wisdom and not of knowledge, even when verification will perhaps be possible one day. 70 Taking as his example Heidegger's inquiry into Being, Piaget argues that such a study " ends at an inquiry into the foundations of values." 71 A coordination of values does not occur without decision and commitment, and therefore metaphysics that depends intrinsically upon such a coordination may be a rational belief but it is not knowledge. Secondly, he disagrees with philosophy's claim to be a parascientific or a supra-scientific knowledge, a claim that became prominent particularly in the nineteenth century. Husserl is its greatest twentieth-century representative. The basis of this claim is the philosopher's possession of a form of knowledge distinct from that of the scientist, namely, intuition for Husserl, and reflection for some other philosophers. Piaget criticizes intuition as not being publicly verifiable and thus as not being knowledge in the strict sense. It does not allow as science does for objectively based data or evidence that can be replicated and tested by others throughout the world, and so it does not allow for criteria for the validity of a philosophical view that are intersubjective and generally accepted. Reflection is either that reflection present in man as a common subject of knowledge, or it tends toward that controlled reflection present in science with its experimental and deductive methods of verifications. If it is the former, it does not seem to justify philosophical knowledge as something distinct from man's common knowledge or opinion. If it is the latter, that is, if philosophy raises questions which stimulate the development of scientific methods of experimentation and verification for an effective approach to the questions (as present, e. g., in Piaget's genetic epistemology), then to call philosophy reflection does not claim for it a form of knowledge that gives it a permanent status distinct from man's scientific knowledge. Jean Piaget, op. cit., "Postcript to Second Edition," fl18-!H9. Ibid., 119. Heidegger would reject this interpretation, but there is some basis for it. 70 71 50 JOHN FARRELLY Thirdly, Piaget rejects the claim of philosophers to develop a philosophical psychology that substitutes for or completes scientific psychology. He criticizes philosophers for the way they establish their facts (e. g., about the character of man's knowledge) without realizing the complexity of the problems involved or acknowledging their need for scientific psychology in this regard. He criticizes them for the view that there is some subject matter they are dealing with that scientific psychology cannot deal with; whatever can be verified, he holds, can be dealt with by scientific psychology (e. g., such matters as intentions and the subject's activity). And he criticizes some philosophers for the specific areas that they propose as beyond the competence of science to treat. For example, Bergson saw antitheses within reality, one part of which was open to science and the other to philosophy. One of these antitheses was that between organic life and matter; the latter is open to scientific knowledge, while the former is open to philosophical treatment. Piaget shows that since 1907, when Bergson wrote L'evolution ereatrice, changes have occurred in science (transformations in physics e. g., by relativity, and in biology, e. g., by molecular biology and biochemistry) that have been leading scientists to overcome this dichotomy. In this field he refers specifically to the results of cybernetics, which lies exactly halfway between physics and living phenomena, which enable us today, by means of models of a strictly causal order, to take account of specific properties of the organism: regulations of a finalist appearance, equilibrium, etc.72 We agree with Piaget on the great illumination offered to our study of the psychology of knowledge by his models of the knowledge process. We think that his work is important for a contemporary approach to the question about the possibility of metaphysics. His view, however, that metaphysics as knowledge and philosophical psychology are impossible is another matter. Here Piaget is speaking no longer as a psychologist but as a philosopher, because what he is presenting to us is a "Ibid., 98. RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN'S TRANSCENDENCE 51 view of what human knowledge is and what its range is. There is no contesting the validity of many of his criticisms of philosophers (e. g., their neglect of science in establishing their " facts," the inadequacy of criteria that are not, in some sense, publicly verifiable, and their imperialist incursions into science). We could, if it were necessary, make as long a list of the sins of scientists against philosophy, a fact that Piaget would in all probability not dispute. What we would ask here is whether Piaget's negative views on metaphysics and philosophical psychology are based not simply on examples he has seen of such work that merit criticism but also on an interpretation of the range, nature, and structure of knowledge that is based too narrowly on the experience of knowledge as found in modern physical science. Piaget begins his epistemology with the acceptance of the fact of modern science and then tries to explain genetically the structuring of man's knowledge that finds its completion in the scientific method. It seems then that he has not asked for the full range of human knowledge, and tried to explain that genetically, but only a specific dimension of knowledge that may be but a part of it. If we can in turn show the fact that scientific knowledge implies an insight into physical reality that is implicitly metaphysical, then we can ask for the genetic epistemology of such knowledge. It is on this basis that we would try to show that metaphysics is true knowledge, that it has its own publicly verifiable forms of evidence. 73 If this is the case, an interpretation of human knowledge by the scientific structure and its genesis would be an over-assimilation, and it would call for an accomodation of Piaget's analysis of knowledge to one broad enough to allow for philosophy and specifically metaphysics. 73 We should recall that scientific discoveries are made antecedent to their verification, and that consequently if such discoveries are part of scientific knowledge, then scientists attain truth before they verify it, and independently of the way they formalize scientific verification. This is brought out by Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. New York (Harper Torchbook edition), 1964. JOHN FARRELLY Secondly, we can ask whether Piaget's objection to metaphysics as knowledge on the basis that it involves a coordination of values is valid. We do not understand the basis of our knowledge of being to be as exclusively the practical order of man's actions as does Heidegger (who with Piaget denies the possibility of metaphysics), but we do admit that such an order is an integral part of our full understanding of being and so of that intellectual reflection on being that is metaphysics. We do not because of this think that metaphysics must deal irrationally with values as Sartre does. As will be evident from our next and final difficulty against metaphysics, it appears that the science of history depends in part upon man's attitude or commitment and the knowledge this allows. I£, then, metaphysics is impossible, so too is history (and, according to some, even physical science itself, since this, they hold, is based on a faith) . There are different ways, of course, of being dependent in one's knowledge upon an attitude or commitment to life, many of which make impossible that objectivity that is a condition for and a characteristic of true and intersubjective knowledge. But the view that the entrance of valuing into an interpretation of man renders the interpretation non-knowledge manifests a dichotomy between knowledge and values that is very Kantian and very common today, but also open to serious question. Thirdly, granted the enormous value of scientific psychology as Piaget and others practice it and as it uses models such as those offered by cybernetics, we must still ask whether to understand man adequately we do not need a philosophical psychology as a distinct and valid study. Can one on the premise of the validity of scientific psychology reject the validity of explaining man's behavior philosophically, for example, through its relation to him as being, as personal being, and to his environment considered as a dimension of being? Piaget denies " substantiality." 74 One can acknowledge that 74 See op. cit., 71. Also see Jean Piaget, Biologic et connaissance (Paris, 1967), 113, where Piaget denies that the " moi " is a causal or substantial principle. Husserl's criticisms of the naturalizing and objectifying tendencies of science remain RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN'S TRANSCENDENCE 53 substance is an inadequate philosophical view of man, for man is more properly a personal being than an individual nature, while at the same time continuing to hold that being a substance is part of being a man. We can say that it is not entirely clear that Piaget is opposed to philosophy as such since, for example, he will admit at times the legitimacy of certain philosophical questions; perhaps we can say that his main interest is with the process of knowledge and not with the nature of knowledge, and that he holds that the former must be studied by the methods of scientific psychology and articulated by biological and algebraic models. Perhaps his rejection of " :finalism " and substance is for the most part a denial that they are subject to scientific knowledge and its models. In any case we can agree that to show in our time the legitimacy and necessity of philosophical psychology one has to show evidence that the scientific study of man neglects or distorts dimensions of man's behavior or activity if it claims to be the only knowledge of man open to us. We would have to show that to explain knowledge exclusively by the scientific models used by Piaget would be a failure to see the differences between knowledge and exclusively biological behavior or the "behavior" of automata, and thus would be an over-assimilation of the former to the latter. 7. There are several current difficulties against the possibility of a metaphysics that we can gather under the rubric of historical. consciousness. We shall consider three. In the :first place, historical consciousness has led to historicism in some modern philosophers and historians. Wilhelm Dilthey can serve as an example here. He writes that: Every world-view is conditioned historically and therefore limited and relative ... the world views are grounded in the nature of the universe and in the relationship between the finite perceptive mind relevant, even if they need not justify an opposition between scientific and philosophical psychology. We should note however that in opposition to some forms of structuralism, Piaget argues for the existence and importance of the subject as an essential principle in the genesis of structures and as the center of activity. See Piaget, Structuralism (New York, 1970), 139-142. 54 JOHN FARRELLY and the universe. Thus each world-view expresses within its limitations one aspect of the universe. In this respect each is true. Each, however, is one-sided. To contemplate all the aspects in their totality is denied to us. We see the pure light of truth only in various broken rays. 75 For Dilthey, "It is in no way possible to go back behind the relativity of historical consciousness. . . . The type ' man ' dissolves and changes in the process of history." 76 It is only history that can tell us what man is. We can present the basis of this position that is found in different ways and degrees in a number of modern philosophers (or historians, sociologists, and anthropologists who philosophize) as follows. 77 Traditional metaphysics asserts that man can rise to a timeless truth because he has a permanent human nature with a capacity for such truth. Those who accept historicism, however, reject the distinction between a permanent human nature and historical change, and they hold that man's being itself is historical. This view rests on the distinction between the natural order and the order of history which is characterized by freedom, and on the view that man's nature (being) is not distinguished from process (man's actions). Man, then, is self-constituting or self-causing through his actions. The time involved in this process is not that of the natural order but is rather historical time. Fackenheim expresses the nature of the past, future, and present in this view as follows: The past is historical only if, and to the extent that, it is capable of present appropriation and re-enactment. And human being is qua being historical only if such acts enter into its ontological constitution. . . . 75 Wilhelm Dilthey, "The Dream," in H. Meyerhoff (ed.), The Philosophy of History in our Time (New York, 1959), 41. 76 Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften (Stuttgart, 1958) VIII, 6. This is quoted by Richard Palmer, Hermeneutics. Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer (Evanston, Ill., 1969), 117. 77 Our treatment here depends for the most part on Emil Fackenheim, Metaphysics and Historicity (Milwaukee, 1961). Fackenheim attributes this view to Dilthey, Croce, Dewey, and Heidegger, though not all hold it in the same way. RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN's TRANSCENDENCE 55 The historical future is presently appropriated as anticipation. But only if human being is a self-making does this future enter into its present ontological constitution. . . . This historical present is an act of integration in which anticipated future possibilities are integrated with past actualities into present action ... if his being is a self-making, then they [such acts] constitute also what he is.78 The view of man that has emerged for some philosophers from modern consciousness of the diversity of men in different epochs and cultures is such that man's past, future, and present are integrated as dimensions of man's very being, or that man's very being is historical. In this historicist position man in his self-making is dialectically related to a situation which, while distinct from him in one sense, in another sense enters into his ontological constitution. That is, his situation (natural, and even more, historical) limits and enhances the possibilities of his being, gives him possibilities that he would not have in another historical period. But if human being is a self-making, this implies that the scope of human being differs from one historical situation to another; that, to the extent to which it is historically situated, man's very humanity differs from age to age.79 From this it follows that metaphysics, as one of man's actions, is historically situated and that no aspect of it is unaffected by the life of the civilization in which it emerges and of the individual who is the metaphysician. Metaphysics then is simply an attempt by a person to reach timeless truth from a particular historical perspective. And it is superseded by history, because all metaphysical systems are W eltanschauungen relative to their epochs, and it is the historian who recognizes this relativity. The primary problem this view raises for metaphysics today is not its historicism as such. Historicism is now recognized as internally inconsistent, for while it asserts that all metaphysics is historically situated, it holds that its own view is not. Its own view IS a metaphysical one rather than simply an n Ibid., 88-40. Ibid., 66. 56 JOHN FARRELLY empirical generalization from history, for it is an assertion about the relation of man's actions and his being, and it is not simply an assertion about what has actually happened in history. Historicism's critique of metaphysics falls as effectively on its own as on any other. Moreover, recent philosophers generally have withdrawn from the view that man is self-making in the total sense expressed above; one of the contributions of existentialism in this century has been an articulation of the human situation, a situation that man recognizes, e. g., in the prospect of death, and one which calls for man's acceptance of himself and not simply for his making of himself. One primary problem the view of the historicity of man offers to the metaphysician will be discussed below in our treatment of hermeneutics, but one which we should express here is its challenge to traditional metaphysics to explain man as he is now known to be-a self implicated deeply in different historical situations and to some degree self-making. Only a metaphysics or philosophy that can emerge from modem man's experience can be accepted today. And if metaphysics, for example, seems to defend a permanence of man that does not do justice to the enormous diversity discovered today, it cannot be an articulation of reality as we experience it. In that case, it would seem to be defensive in face of contemporary experience rather than integrative of it. Does man's experience of change in his knowledge and in his being, and man's "self-making" count for or against the possibility of metaphysics? Our suggested treatment of the possibility of metaphysics through a use of developmental psychology seems an appropriate method to deal with this problem, because it starts from an acceptance of man as a being in process, and specifically process within an environment of nature and history. Many would claim that modem historical consciousness shows us that, if there is possible some ultimate human science or intellectual discipline, it is not metaphysics. For metaphysics cannot transcend other sciences today as it could in the simpler past of the medieval world or the world of Greek antiquity. RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN's TRANSCENDENCE 57 As the word itself indicates, metaphysics is " after physics "; it asks more widely than physics about what things are, and its answer is in terms of being in an objective sense, a sense modeled on the physical thing. Metaphysics, in this view, is an objectivist and static interpretation of reality. Today not only has physics changed radically but humanistic sciences or disciplines have multiplied. If there is any overall final human viewpoint or science or critical body of knowledge today, it must be one that is meta-historical as well as" meta-physical." Perhaps in hermeneutics we see today a substitute for the primacy of metaphysics. Hermeneutics is tributary to developments that go back at least as far as Schleiermacher, but we can see how it offers a substitute for metaphysics if we look briefly to the contributions of Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer. Dilthey sought to put history and the Geisteswissenschaften on a sound basis by giving a critique of historical reason, somewhat as Kant had given an analysis of the possibility of Newtonian physics. Dilthey could not base the objectivity of history on the same foundations that many historians claimed in the nineteenth century, for he acknowledged the presence in historical interpretation of the historian himself with his experience and his historical situation. He distinguished the form of knowledge proper to the natural sciences (explanation) from that proper to history and the human sciences (Verstehen, understanding) . If we recognize what the historian does and what enables him to do this we can defend the objectivity of his understanding. History depends on the historian's study of texts or other works left by man. Such works are an expression (Ausdruck) or objectification of the lived experience (Erlebnis) of man. This is not to be understood individualistically, for the texts use language, which is common to the author of the text and its interpreter, and they express the socio-historical reality that is disclosed by experience. The historian interprets the texts to understand the lived experience of man of another age. 80 The historian is enabled to understand the experience of the text's author because: 80 Dilthey writes that " above all . . . the grasping of the structure of the inner 58 JOHN FARRELLY experience is held in common with the understander, and the understanding comes by virtue of analogous experience. . . . Understanding is not a mere act of thought but a transposition and reexperiencing of the world as another person meets it in lived experience. 81 As the interpreter and the text's author are both historical, so too is the process of understanding itself and the meaning that it seeks. The understanding begins from a particular historical context and leads to an interpretation of the meaning of a text within its historical context. Meaning here is the relation of the part to the whole within which it is set; it is seen by us from a particular standpoint, and it changes with the broadening of its context. For example, a particular incident in Shakespeare's King Lear takes on new meanings as the play progresses. The meaning, however, is not subjective, for it really is present within the texture of life disclosed by the text and shared in by the historian. Without repeating what we have previously said about Heidegger, it is well to recall two aspects of his work to show the connection between Dilthey and Gadamer. In the first place, Heidegger understood his phenomenology of Being and of Dasein in Being and Time as a hermeneutic, but one on a level deeper than that of Dilthey and necessary for the validity of the latter's work. The possibility and the structure of historiological truth are to be expounded in terms of authentic disclosedness (' truth ') of historical existence. But since the basic concepts of the historiological sciences-whether they pertain to the Objects of these sciences or to the way in which these are treated-are concepts of existence, the theory of the humane science presupposes an existential Interpretation which has as its theme the historicality of Dasein. 82 life is based on the interpretation of works, works in which the texture of inner life comes fully to expression." Dilthey, Gesammelte Schrijten, VII, 322; quoted by Palmer, op. cit., 114. My analysis of hermeneutics depends largely on Palmer's work, and on James M. Robinson," Hermeneutic Since Barth,'' in James Robinson and John Cobb Jr. (ed.) The New Hermeneutic (New York, 1964), 1-77. 81 Palmer, op. cit., 114-115. 82 Heidegger, Being and Time, 449. RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN'S TRANSCENDENCE 59 One can say that Heidegger's study of Being as Dasein's possibility or project, of Dasein's structure through which Being is its project, of Dasein's historical understanding or comprehension of Being, and of how particular assertions are derivative from and secondary to this basic understanding-all give a profounder basis for Dilthey's position that the interpreter can understand the lived experience disclosed in historical texts; and they show something of what historical understanding is. In the second place, the later Heidegger's way of relating Being, understanding, and language has been more influential with Gadamer than the early Heidegger's way of presenting Being as the project of man. For the later Heidegger, Being has a primacy when compared to Dasein that it does not have in his earlier work. Dasein's primal thinking is a response to Being; and this response is the origin of the human word, as the following passage expresses: Primal thinking is the echo of being's favor, in which what is unique clears and lets it happen that beings are. This echo is the human answer to the word of the silent voice of being. Thought's answer is the origin of the human word, which word first lets language emerge as the enunciation of the word into words.88 Language here is not, as in the early Heidegger, the objectification of human existence; rather its subject matter is primarily Being. Hans-Georg Gadamer in his major work Warheit und Methode dedicated himself to the same problem as did Dilthey, namely, the question of what made historical understanding, and the Geisteswissenschaften generally, possible. He was interested in legitimating those sciences or that knowledge we have that is not legitimated by the scientific method. He writes: In my opinion the contemporary relevance of the hermeneutical phenomenon resides in the fact that only by penetrating into the phenomenon of understanding can such a legitimation be provided.s4 •• Heidegger, Was iat Metaphysick? (8th ed., Frankfurt a. M., 1960), 49. The translation is that of Robinson, art. cit., 47. •• Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode (Tiibingen, 1960), xiv. Robinson's translation, art. cit .• 60 JOHN FARRELLY He differs, however, from Dilthey and even the early Heidegger in what he views as the condition for the possibility of this understanding. It is not legitimated by the fact that through our subjectivity we are able to identify ourselves with the subjectivity of the author of an historical text. It is true that we must understand ourselves as well as we are able, but before any self-understanding we have we are already determined in our understanding by the historical and social situation of our time, country, family, and other factors. Moreover, language in the text to be interpreted should not be looked upon as primarily an objectification of man's inner experience. Rather, what the language expresses primarily is the subject matter; it is Being that comes to expression in language. Gadamer accepts the fact of the gap between the text and the interpreter; what hermeneutics studies is the relation between them. If we ask how the interpreter achieves understanding of the subject matter disclosed by the text, Gadamer answers that, "Understanding is always the process of welding horizons that only seem to exist independently." 85 For this "fusion of horizons" (Horizontverschmelzung) to occur, the interpreter must recognize that he as subject is involved in the interpretation; for him to fail to recognize this and the way his historical determinations influence his interpretation would be naive objectivism. He is enabled to interpret validly insofar as there is something unlimited in his horizons of understanding and experience. And there are similarly larger and larger dimensions in the text he is studying. Presuming that the text is answering a question of its author, what enables the author and the interpreter to come to an agreement on the subject matter of the text is the common horizon of experience and understanding that embraces them. In brief then, it is discovery of this common historical horizon that allows the interpreter to interpret the text, or that is the condition for the possibility of historical knowledge. Gadamer's articulation of the conditions for the possibility of 85 Ibid., 355. RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN'S TRANSCENDENCE 61 understanding was affected by the fact that it was developed with reference to the specific question of texts. But Gadamer insists that it is not limited to such a narrow sphere of application; if his articulation is divorced from what is specific to textual understanding, it has a universal applicability as the condition for the possibility of all understanding. The lack of immediate understandability of texts handed down to us historically, or their proneness to be misunderstood, is really only a special case of what is to be met in all human orientation to the world as the atopon (the strange), that which does not 'fit' into the customary order of our expectation based on experience. Hermeneutics has only called our attention to this phenomenon.86 In reference to this view, we can say in the first place that hermeneutics has great value for articulating the underlying method of history and what renders it possible as knowledge or understanding. 87 This is an experience of knowledge today as definite as that found in the physical sciences and not reducible to it. We must acknowledge that historical knowledge and what renders it possible has something to contribute to our understanding of our human knowledge, and specifically to the question of the possibility of metaphysics. The question of the possibility of metaphysics has been argued in the past at times by reference to models of human knowledge taken from 86 Gadamer, "On the Scope and Function of Hermeneutical Reflection," Continuum 8 (1970), 83. This article is a translation of Gadamer's " Rhetorik, Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik," in his Kleine Schriften (Tiibingen, 1967) I, 113-130, by G. B. Hess and R. E. Palmer. Another basis for the universal applicability of the hermeneutical method is found in Gadamer's view of the "universality of human linguisticality as a limitless medium which carries everything within itnot only the ' culture ' which has been handed down to us through language, but absolutely everything-because everything (in the world and out of it) is included in the realm of ' understandings ' and understandability in which we move." Ibid., 83. And: "Being tha.t can be understood is language." Wahrheit und Methode, 450. 87 See Henri Marrou, The Meaning of History. Trans. from fourth ed. (1959), by R. J. Olsen (Dublin, 1966). This gives an account by a practicing historian of what lies behind the historian's knowledge that supports much of what Dilthey and his successors affirm. Something similar happens in a psychiatrist's work, both in his therapy and in his development of a theory; see Erik Erikson, " The Nature of Clinical Evidence, "Insight and Responsibility (New York, 1964), 47-80. 62 JOHN FARRELLY mathematics and the physical sciences; it would seem as legitimate to use our experience of knowledge in history to reflect on the possibility of metaphysics. Can this experience of historical understanding and what renders it possible lead to making hermeneutics the basic human science? Gadamer could perhaps be interpreted in this sense, as we saw above. 88 But it would seem that Gadamer's view of hermeneutics is largely dependent upon Heidegger's view of being and man's understanding of being, and so it would presuppose for the humanistic sciences man's understanding of being. Gadamer's view then, like Heidegger's, raises the question of man's transcendence in his orientation to value: is man's horizon within history or beyond history? 89 If it is in virtue of being and man's relation to being that men have a common horizon, then the possibility of the humanistic sciences depends upon an implicit pre-comprehension of being, insofar as they are possible through a " fusion of horizons." And if this pre-comprehension or implicit knowledge of being involves the two-fold dimension for man that we suggested in our reflection on Heidegger's overcoming metaphysics, it would seem that an implicitly metaphysical knowledge would be the condition for the possibility of history and the human sciences. Although hermeneutics is not the prime science, one could ask from the analysis of the conditions of historical understanding and Heidegger' s understanding of being whether for the metaphysical understanding of being today there must be a grasp of man as subject in history and through this of what his horizon as subject acting in history is. In continuity with 88 Also, Gadamer writes in art. cit., that hermeneutics must maintain itself "especially over against the claims of modern science to universality, and thus to its tendency to absorb hermeneutical reflection into itself. . . . And it must do this not only within the realm of modern science but also over against this realm, in order to show a universality that transcends that of modern science." 89 See Emerich Coreth's justification of the primacy of metaphysics in "From Hermeneutics to Metaphysics," International Philosophical Quarterly 11 (1971), and his book Grundfragen der Hermeneutik (Freiburg, 1969). He writes (art. cit., : "Man experiences himself at any time and in all changing conditions of history in the reality of being that comprehends and transcends himself and reveals an absolute element, an absolutely ultimate and unconditioned horizon." RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN'S TRANSCENDENCE 68 what earlier modern philosophers have said, about the importance of man's practical activity for an understanding of being, hermeneutics poses the question of the implications for the meaning of being that are found in man's orientation as subject to historical horizons. As the final difficulty we shall consider here, it may be said that a theologian today need not be concerned with metaphysics. After all, his job is to interpret the texts which mediate God's revelation to us and this is a hermeneutical task, not a metaphysical one. Moreover, what men are interested in today is having the meaning of the saving message articulated to them, not simply an objective treatment of what the revealed mystery is in itself as was characteristic of metaphysical theology of the past. If a human science is needed in this articulation of the meaning of revelation, there are other sciences today more effective than metaphysics in serving this purpose. Phenomenology, for example, can be very helpful here, for through its analysis of experience it can help us to understand the meaning of religious symbols and attitudes, of salvation, and many other dimensions of human and Christian experience. Psychology can give us insights into the meaning of man, and sociology into the meaning of religion for men socially. History's importance for theology is evident to all today; it shows us, for example, how articulations of the mysteries of the faith were developed and what these mysteries meant to Christians of past ages. There was a time when metaphysics may have had the primary role as the" handmaid of theology," but that time is past, for it does not answer the question of meaning that is primary today. These difficulties are symptomatic of an inadequacy in scholastic metaphysics, of an anti-metaphysical strain in Protestant theology, and the philosophical difficulties discussed above against the possibility of metaphysics. But is there the dichotomy between the question of meaning and the need for metaphysics that the objection implies? In brief we can make three points. In the first place, where a metaphysics is excluded from 64 JOHN FARRELLY theology, science or man's current culture has frequently assumed the status of a metaphysics and has determined what theology could affirm to modern man and what it could not. The principle of interpretation of Scripture has consequently been at times an unexamined metaphysics that has reduced what the word of God could tell us to the limits of naturalism or man's current self-understanding. Also as a result of this, Scripture has been in some cases interpreted simply symbolically, so that, for example, "God" is taken as a symbol for Being in the Heideggerian sense, a sense that, if fully accepted, undermines the traditional Christian faith in the transcendent and personal character of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The theologian today needs a reflectively possessed valid metaphysical position so that he may see the metaphysical premises operative in theological interpretations of Scripture and be able to judge them. Secondly, the fact that it is meaning that man most wants today from the theologian does not imply that metaphysics is no longer an integral part of the theological task. Indeed, what God and the Christian mystery can legitimately mean to man is based in part upon who God is and what the Christian mystery is, so that the question of meaning is articulated by the theologian through analyses that are in part metaphysical. Third, granted that phenomenology and the sciences-physical and human-have much to contribute to theology today, one can ask whether their contribution is a substitution for a metaphysics, or whether it is largely an essential means to bring metaphysics up to date, to let it emerge from man's contemporary experience of the world and of himself rather than to be bound to a premodern experience and understanding. Is it simply some scientific account of man that is needed today or a humanly based account of man that is reflective and systematic and that relates him to the world and to God? It would seem to be the latter because the question of the meaning of the Christian mystery to man depends upon an understanding of man and his transcendence. The relevance of the Christian mystery to man depends upon who man is and whether and how he is orientated RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN'S TRANSCENDENCE 65 to God. This involves metaphysical questions, and metaphysics today depends in part essentially upon the understanding of man. Metaphysics today is not objectivistic. And philosophical psychology today must analyze man's relation to being. So the question of metaphysics preserves its importance for the theologian. In conclusion, we will recall the context of our study and the consequences of our findings. The context in which we examined the preceding difficulties has been that of Christianity and historical religion more generally. Christianity bases itself upon God's revelation and offer of salvation through Christ, and man's capacity (under God's saving power) to receive this through human experience, understand it to some extent, respond to it as of ultimate value to him, and structure his life in relation to God so revealed. While Christianity is distinctive, it is not isolated from other historical religions. Religion more generally is based in part on a divine revelation, man's intimation of divinity so revealed through religious experience and the value of such a manifestation and focus of life for man. Christian theologians have widely acknowledged the existence of human bases (not restricted to Judaeo-Christian religion) for a revelation of God, for the validity of man's central intimations through such religious experience, and for the value of religion for man. However, that man's intimations of God may be valid implies a certain openness in man to such a revelation, and that religion be a value for man implies man's orientation to a dimension of reality beyond the secular and the finite; that is, it supposes a transcendence in man. This transcendence has been widely denied in modern philosophy. And these denials have influenced greatly the way that theologians and philosophers of religion have interpreted Christian revelation and revelation more generally, the validity of religious intimations, the value religion offers to man, and the way and reasons for which man structures his life by religion. Since the modern philosophical difficulties against man's transcendence have been so influential, we have attempted to gain an adequate understanding of them and their bases. 66 JOHN FARRELLY Our analysis of the difficulties against man's transcendence indicates that those who wish to reflect critically on the grounds and meaning of man's religious relation to God must reflect on man's current experience of himself, his knowledge and his values. It is from this experience that we must ask the question of man's transcendence. A large part of our present difficulties may be due to the fact that for too long those philosophers who acknowledge man's transcendence have either taken it for granted or have attempted to critically ground it in ways not sufficiently appropriate to the modern experiences that have led to its denial. We cannot take our point of departure, for example, from a pre-modern experience of knowledge or of values; no matter how valid a pre-modern philosophical articulation of man's transcendence may be, it will not be accepted today unless it is seen to be explanatory of our current experience, to emerge from this and to be demanded by it. In the question of man's transcendence in knowledge we should investigate man's knowledge in relation to his environment as this gives rise to the kind of knowledge found in modern science, and ask whether and how we find in this a psychogenesis of being, or man's orientation to and capacity for a metaphysical dimension of knowledge. We start from knowledge not because we are asserting that we know reality as constituted by us in a way distinct from the way reality is (this is already an interpretation of knowledge) but because the difficulties against man's transcendence emerge from different interpretations of man's knowledge. In beginning here we are not beginning with knowledge as self-enclosed but rather as open to the environment and to man himself as our experience of knowledge manifests it to be, because modern philosophical interpretations of knowledge have been based upon the acceptance of the validity of some pre-philosophical forms of our knowledge. If some of them have led to phenomenalism, for example, this has been a secondary assertion, an interpretation of a prephilosophical knowledge accepted as valid. I suggest that for this study of the psychogenesis of being serious attention be given t.o the genetic epistemology of Jean Piaget and his RELIGIOUS REFLECTION AND MAN'S TRANSCENDENCE 67 associates. Piaget's work, which is widely recognized as the most outstanding twentieth-century psychology of knowledge, studies the genesis in man of those forms of mathematical and scientific knowledge on which so many philosophers have based themselves to disqualify metaphysics. While we have reservations with some aspects of Piaget's work, it has great bearing on many modern anti-metaphysical interpretations of man's knowledge. We suggest that Piaget's developmental psychology of knowledge be used with specific relation to the question of the possibility of metaphysics, a question broader than the one Piaget expressly treats, but to which it is relevant. Similarly, in reference to the question of man's transcendence in value orientation, we should reflect on modern man's experience of and attitude to values and ask whether and how this shows him to be orientated to an absolute value. That is, we should ask how man's orientation to individual and social secular values emerges in his life and whether and how there is implicit here his orientation to some absolute value that transcends a simply secular or human dimension. For this we suggest that we would find help in the developmental psychology of man's successive horizons of value and structures of personality, as this is found, for example, in Erik Erikson. This reflects modern man's experience and an interpretation of this experience on a level less ultimate than that of a philosophy or metaphysics of man. Of course, to examine this question, we must ask not only whether and how factually modern man orientates himself toward an absolute value but how such a self-orientation is related to his being, that is, whether it is a manifestation of his being or a betrayal of his being. Developmental psychology will not bring us all the way to an answer to this question, but it can help us catch the experience of modern man honestly, to see the developmental character of his emergence toward larger horizons, and to explain why some can fail to see the larger horizons to which they are actually orientated. Since the transcendence that religion, as we understand it, supposes is man's personal transcendence and not only one in 68 JOHN FARRELLY knowledge or values taken somewhat separately, an adequate reflection upon man's transcendence calls for an attempt at integration of the two forms of man's transcendence indicated above. We have seen in the difficulties against man's transcendence a frequently repeated modern sense of dichotomy between man as one who knows and one who experiences and responds to value; man's transcendence is not adequately articulated unless this problem is faced. Moreover the processive character of man's self-orientation and self-constitution as subject has been thought to militate against any metaphysics of being, because of the supposedly static and objective character of being. Developmental psychology can help us here to grasp man's experience of process and of himself as subject, and it can pose the problem whether and how man structures himself in relation to ultimacy and whether a philosophy of being is necessary for the articulation of this. JOHN FARRELLY, St. Anselm'.y Abbey Washington, D. C. 0. s. B. THE GENERAL INDEX TO THE THOMIST VOL. XXXVII (1973) INDEX OF AUTHORS PAGE BENNETT, JoHN B., Whitehead and Personal Identity BERTMAN, MARTIN A., The Function of the Rational Principle Aristotle 510 686 BoYLE, JoHN P., Lonergan's Method in Theology and Objectivity in Moral Theology 589 BRYSON, KENNETH A., The Metaphysics of Emile Meyerson: A Key to the Epistemological Paradox 119 CENTORE, F. F., A Note on Wittgenstein as an Unwilling Nominalist CROFTS, RICHARD A., The Common Good in the Political Theory of Thomas Aquinas DALCOURT, GERARD J., The Evolutionary Approach to Ethics DEADDER, JAMES W., The Role of negative Absolutes in Moral The- ology DoRTER, KENNETH, Science and Religion in Descartes' Meditations ENo, RoBERT B., S. S., The Work of Optatus as a Turning Point in the African Ecclesiology 155 341 306 313 668 FARRELLY, JoHN 0. S. B., Religious Reflection and Man's dence GINI, A. R., William James: Facts, Faith, and Promise HAUGHT, JoHN F., Eschatological Encounter with God LISSKA, ANTHONY J., Deely and Geach on 1 489 in Thomistic Epistemology 548 MASON, RoBERT, Rahner and Heidigger: Being, Hearing and God 455 MmsER, JEREMY, Why Did the Son of God Become Man? MoRENO, ANTONIO, 0. P., Some Philosophical Considerations on Biological Evolution 417 MuRNION, WILLIAM E., St. Thomas Aquinas's Theory of the Act of Understanding 88 NILSON, JoN, Transcendent Knowledge in Insight: A Closer Look 366 PETER, CARL J., A Word on Behalf of Method in Theology RAMSEY, PAUL, Abortion: A Review Article 174 REINHARDT, KuRT F., Nietsche: A Review Article RICHARDS, RoBERT J., Substantive and Methodological Teleology in Aristotle and Some Logical Empiricists RossNER, WILLIAM, S. J., Toward an Analysis of " God is Love" 633 ScHINDLER, DAVID L., History, Objectivity, and Moral Conversion 569 STEWART, DAVID, Aristotle's Doctrine of the Unmoved Mover PAGE WALL, KEVIN, 0. P., Hegel: The Theological Roots of his Dialect WILHELMSEN, FREDERICK D., Subject Analysis in the Philosophy of Communications WIPPEL, JoHN F., Commentary on Boethius's De Trinitate WooDs, EARL R., Ockham on Nature and God . 734 743 133 69 INDEX OF BOOK REVIEWS ANDERSON, J. N. D., Morality, Law, and Grace (A. Milmore, 0. P.) BAARS, CoNRAD w.,Loving and Curing the Neurotic (J. R. Cavanagh) BALDWIN, J., Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi (A. Smith, 0. P.) BERGER, HERMAN H., Progressive and Conservative (J. J. Califano) . BoRMAN, KARL (ed.), Nicolai de Cusa Omnia Opera III: De Coniecturis (J. E. Biechler) CHARLESWORTH, M. J., Philosophy of Religion: The Historic Approaches (J. C. Livingston) CHARRON, GHYSLIAN, Du Language, A. MaTtinet et M. MeTleauPonty (J. M. Edie) CHRISTIAN, WILLIAM A., Oppositions of Religious DoctTines (J. C. Livingston) CoLLINs, GARY R., Psychology Series joT Church Leaders. Vol. I. 392 260 411 245 620 396 807 396 Man in Transition: The Psychology of H1tman Development. Vol. II. Effective Counseling (W. J. Nessel, 0. S. F. S.) 262 ---, Fmctured Personalities: The Psychology of Mental Illness (W. J. Nessel, 0. S. F. S.) CURRAN, CHARLES E., The Crisis in Priestly Ministry (T. U. Mul- 790 laney, 0. P.) 383 DEAKINS, RoGER LEE (tr. & ed.), Il Mora: Ellis Heywood's Dialogue in MemoTy of Thomas More (P. van K. Thomson) 413 DEDEK, JoHN F., Human Life: Some Moml Issues (W. E. May) 243 DEELEY, J. N., The Problem of Evolution: A Study of the Philo611 sophical Repercussions of Evolutionary Science (F. F. Centore) DEGEORGE, RICHARD T., A Guide to Philosophical Bibliography and Research (W. A. Wallace, 0. P.) . 821 DEsAN, WILFRID, The Planetary Man (J. B. Davis, 0. P.) 249 Dow, JAMES C., Aquinas on Metaphysics. A Historico-DoctTinal Study of the Commentary on the Metaphysics (V. Bourke) 241 DuPUIS, J. S. J. (ed.), The Christian Faith in the Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic Faith (N. Halligan, 0. P.) 825 DuRWELL, F. X., The MysteTy of Christ and the Apostolate (R. R. Masterson, 0. P .) 263 ETEROVICH, FRANCIS H., Approaches to NatuTal Law: Fmm Plato to Kant (J. V. Dolan, S. J.) 615 FARREN, DAviD, The Reurn of Magic (J. J. Nicola) 631 FRANCE, R. T., Jesus and the Old Testament (M. Hopkins, 0. P.) 412 PAGE GEATCH, P. T., Logic Matters (A. J. Lisska) 811 GooDMAN, LENN (tr.), Ibn Tufayl's Hayy Yagzan (B. H. Zedler) GRISPINO, JosEPH, The Bible Now! (T. P. McCreesch, 0. P.) GROOTEN, J., New Encyclopedia of Philosophy (W. A. Wallace, 0. P) GuTIERREZ, GusTAVO, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation (S. P. Schilling) HARTSHORNE, CHARLES, Whitehead's Philosophy. Selected Essays, 1955-1970 (A. Parmentier) 409 . 396 HicK, JoHN, Philosophy and Religion Series (J. C. Livingston) HoPKINs, JASPER, A Companion to the Study of St. Anselm (V. M. Roberts, 0. S. B.) HoLLENCAMP, CHARI,ES, Science is Philosophy (A. Moreno, 0. P.) HouTART, FRANQOIS, The Church and Revolution (D. E. Byrne, Jr.) KocH, JosEF (ed.), Nicolai de Cusa Omnia Opera III: De Coniecturis (J. E. Biechler) 620 KoziK, IGNATIUs S., The First Desert Hero: St. Jerome's Vita Pauli (L. E. Boyle, 0. P.) . LADRrERE, JEAN, Language and Belief (L. Dupre) 805 LLAMZON, BENJAMIN S., The Self Beyond: Toward Life's Meaning 791 (M. Stock, 0. P.) MAcKINNON, EDWARD A. (ed.), The Problem of Scientific Realism 407 R. J. Blackwell) MILNER, AusTIN P., The Theology of Confirmation (L. M. Hughes, 0. P. & J. Toner, 0. P.) 613 An Encounter with Christ MoFFITT, JoHN, Journey to 405 Beyond Christianity (W. Cenlmer, 0. P.) NEMESSZEGHY, ERVIN, The Theology of Evolution (L. M. Hughes, 0. P. & J. Toner, 0. P.) 613 NEuNER, J., S. J., ed., The Christian Faith in the Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic Faith (N. Halligan, 0. P.) NIELSON, KAI, Contemporary Critiques of Religion (J. C. Livingston) 396 NoGAR, R. J., The Problem of Evolution: A Study of the Philosophical 611 Repercussions of Evolutionary Science (F. F. Centore) PENELHUM, TERRENCE, Problems of Religious Knowledge (J. C. 396 Livingston) PETULLA, JosEPH, Christian Political Theology: A Marxian Guide (C. N. R. McCoy) PINNOCK, CLARK H. (ed.), Toward a Theology for the Future (D. A. Scott) 386 PLOSHMANN, GEORGE KIMBALL, Plato (G. Anagnostopoulos) . 793 PoTVIN, THOMAS R .. 0. P., The Theology of the Primacy of Christ according to St. Thomas and its Sc1·iptural Foundation (G. Kerwin, 0. M. I.) 768 QUINN, JoHN M., 0. S. A., The Thomism of Etienne Gilson. A Critical Study (A. A. Maurer, C. S. B.) 389 PAGE Repertorio de historia de las ciencias eclesiastica en Espana (C. B. Schmitt) Reply to Vernon Bourke's Review of Aquinas on Metaphysics by the author (J. A. Doig) RmA, PETER J., Problems of Marriage and Sexuality Today (W. J. Hayes, 0. P.) RusE, MICHAEL, The Philosophy of Biology (F. F. Centore) . RussELL, JoHN, The Theology of Evolution (L. M. Hughes, 0. P. & J. Toner, 0. P.) . SAHAS, DANIEL J., John of Damascus on Islam, The "Heresy of the Ishmaelites" (B. Kotter, 0. S. B.) . ScHMAUS, MICHAEL, Dogma 4: The Church, Its Origin and Structure (J. M. Donahue, 0. P.) . SHORTER, AYLWARD, The Theology of Mission (L. M. Hughes, O.P. & J. Toner, 0. P.) . ThRRuwE, ANNA A., Loving and Curing the Neurotic (J. R. Cavanagh) THIBAULT, PIERRE, Savoir et Pouvoir. Philosophie thomiste et politiques clericale au XIXe siecle (T. J. A. Hartley) VAN BUREN, PAUL M., The Edges of Language: An Essay in the Logic of Religion (M. J. Kerlin) voN RINTELEN, FRITZ JoAKIM, Values in European Thought (J. B. Davis, 0. P.) WALGRAVE, JAN HENDRICK, 0. P., Unfolding Revelation: The Nature of Doctrinal Development (J. Miller, 0. P.) . WALLACE, WLLIAM A., O.P., Causality and Scientific Explanation. Vol. I: Medieval and Classical Science (W. R. Shea) . WEATHERBY, HAROLD L., Cardinal Newman in his Age: his Place in English Theology and Literature (R. E. O'Donnell, S. J.) WEINGARTNER, RUDOLPH H., The Unity of Platonic Dialogue (G. Anagnostopoulos) WELLS, DAVID F. (ed.), Toward a Theology of the Future (D. A. Scott) 623 826 790 882 613 781 779 613 260 784 618 411 378 393 775 793 793 OCKHAM ON NATURE AND GOD I SHOULD LIKE TO discuss the Ockhamist argument for the existence of God from efficient causality. In particular, I intend to focus on the relation, in Ockham, between the universe and God, insofar as that relation can be elaborated by reason without the aid of Revelation. Briefly, I desire to indicate the kind of being in which Ockham's proof for the existence of God terminates. The principal philosophical enterprise of the Middle Ages is usually referred to as Fides quaerens intellectum. This means, I take it, that mediaeval thinkers, possessing the Christian faith, desired to penetrate it, to draw out its implications, and to discover in their experience the vestiges and traces of that of which the faith speaks. The mediaeval thinker, at least up to the fourteenth century, wanted to illuminate his experience by the light of his faith and to understand his faith through the reflection of its object in his experience. Knowing by faith that the world was related to God in certain ways, he wanted to discover in his experience evidence of these relations, and, in general, the manifestation of this God in whom he put his faith. The principal means used to accomplish this was philosophy. Now, of course, the term "philosophy" had a pagan connotation for these men. The ancient philosophers tried to attain by the power of human reason the beatitude that was attainable only through the grace of God. The question confronting the mediaeval theologian, to call him by his proper name (and this includes Ockham), was how much of Divine Things can human reason know. How much can the mind unillumined by Revelation know of the origin of the world, the existence and nature of God, and the destiny of man? Our task here is to bring out the answer to one of these questions by one mediaeval theologian. I 69 70 EARL R. WOODS Concerning the proofs for the existence of God, it is important, especially for the Christian thinker, to determine as precisely as possible what sort of being he would denominate as "God"; that is, one must first ask what kind of being one would recognize as God. For the Christian thinker, it is not sufficient simply to arrive at a first cause in some order or at an ultimate principle of explanation beyond which it is not necessary to go. If that were all there was to it, then this area might not be the subject of dispute it is. It is quite conceivable that the atheist or materialist could admit the existence of some such first principle, although he would deny that it is God in any usual sense of that term; it could be the universe as a whole, or some primaeval cloud of gas rotating in space, or some elementary particle. If naturalism (namely, the position which holds that " nature is all there is ") is to be avoided, then more than a mere first cause or ultimate ground is required. The real task is to identify such a cause or ground. One must show that it is neither nature nor a part of nature. The mediaevals for the most part held that transcendence was necessary. It is with this in mind that I should like to examine Ockham's proof for the existence of God. Do the principles upon which his argument rests enable him to transcend the limits of nature? Can the first cause at which he arrives be readily identifiable with the Christian God? II Ockham's philosophy has been the subject of considerable controversy. This is especially the case with regard to the question as to what place he should be assigned in the development of mediaeval philosophy. Is he a radical innovator or the representative of a well-established tradition? Is his thought a sign of the breakdown of mediaeval philosophy or no? Both sides of the controversy are provided with eminent representatives. It is sufficient to note that in his Unity of Philosophical Experience, E. Gilson discusses Ockham in a chapter entitled " The Road to Scepticism." 1 B. Geyer char1 New York: Scribners, 1937, pp. 61-91. OCKHAM ON NATURE AND GOD 71 acterizes the thought o£ the Venerable Inceptor as critical and scepticaP On the other hand, E. Moody insists on the Aristotelian character o£ Ockham's thought. 3 Further, P. Boehner maintains that Ockham is carrying on a venerable Franciscan tradition going back to St. Bonaventure. 4 Although the adjudication o£ this dispute is beyond the limits o£ this article, I should like to suggest that both sides are defensible. It would appear that the kind o£ God at which Ockham' s proo£ £or the existence o£ God arrives is remarkably Aristotelian. This means that his alleged scepticism is nothing other than a manifestation o£ his view that philosophy (largely the philosophy o£ the Philosopher) is really quite inadequate when it turns to the consideration o£ Divine Things. This is not to say that the Venerable Inceptor is an unquestioning disciple o£ Aristotle; on the contrary, Ockham, like many other mediaeval theologians, re-thought and interpreted the principles o£ the Philosopher in some striking and original ways. Moreover, Ockham was not backward about criticizing Aristotle when he thought he deserved criticism. Nevertheless, I mean to suggest that the universe open to human reason in Ockham is a universe which is adequately describable in terms o£ change; it is a universe in which there is a constant succession o£ forms in matter; and that the only first principle or God that is discoverable is a first cause o£ the products o£ change. This, I take it, is essentially the universe o£ Aristotle. This is why I designate the being, which Ockham's proo£ £or the existence o£ God attains, as Aristotelian. I£ this is so, then we may say, I think, that Ockham is clearly in line with those thinkers who took to heart the Condemnation o£ 1277 and its warnings about the limitations o£ Aristotelianism. It is even possible to think o£ Ockham's natural theology as an extended comment on the words o£ Scotus in his Ordinatio: 2 Friedrich Uberwegs Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophic, Zweiter Teil: Die patristische und scholastische Philosophie. Ed. by B. Geyer (Berlin, 1928), p. 571. • The Logic of William of Ockham (New York: Russell and Russell, 1965), Chapter One, passim. • "The Spirit of Franciscan Philosophy," in Franciscan Studies, N. S. II (1942), p. 220. EARL R. WOODS Note, nothing supernatural can be, by human reason, shown to be in the wayfarer; nor can anything supernatural be shown to be necessarily required for his perfection .... It is therefore impossible to use human reason against Aristotle .... 5 Ockham therefore may be considered in some sense to be a part of the Franciscan tradition of St. Bonaventure, John Peckham, and others, whose attitude toward Aristotelianism was decidedly reserved. They did not think highly of its prospects for contributing to an understanding of the faith. Ockham, I believe, would agree. The difference between Ockham and the others was that, for him, there was really no philosophical alternative to Aristotelianism. The old Augustinian tradition, which had been the mainstay of the earlier Franciscans, was in a bad way, and, in any event, Ockham had little time for many of its characteristic positions. Aristotelianism was just the best philosophical tradition around, and if it was not of much use in the elucidation of the Christian faith, that merely indicates the limits of human reason. So we can perhaps say that Ockham was both sceptical 6 and traditional; indeed, in his case, the latter entailed the former. This then is what I should like to show in this article. The Ockhamist approach to God is similar to Aristotle's in the sense that both can only attain to a first cause of change. I say their proofs are similar, but not identical. Whereas, in Aristotle, we perhaps do arrive at a being that is not a part of nature, in Ockham, it is by no means clear that we do so. This is in fact the second conclusion I wish to suggest: in Ockham, we do not necessarily transcend nature in proving the existence of a first cause. Ockham therefore does not avoid • Joannis Duns Scoti, Ordinatio, Prol., p. 1, q. 1, in Opera Omnia, studio et cura Commissionis Scotisticae (The Vatican: Typis Polyglottis, 1950), Vol. I, p. 9: "Nota, nullum supernaturale potest ratione naturali ostendi inesse viatori, nee necessaria requiri ad perfectionem eius. . . . Igitur impossibile est hie contra Aristotelem uti ratione naturali." • By calling Ockham " sceptical," I mean that his philosophical principles, especially when he turns to the consideration of God, do not carry him as far as the principles of many of his predecessors. He is not a sceptic in the sense that he denies that the human mind can know any truth. OCKHAM ON NATURE AND GOD 73 naturalism. Ockham is able to prove the existence of a first cause but not the existence of God in anything like the Christian notion of the Divine. In this fashion therefore can we perhaps resolve the dispute among scholars as to whether Ockham has a proof for the existence of God. On the one hand, there have been those who have denied that there is such a proof; 7 on the other hand, it has been pointed out, quite correctly, that Ockham explicitly presents an argument for God's existence. 8 Both sides are right to a certain extent. This is evident from the works of Ockham himself. In the Ordinatio, d. 2, q. 10, he asks and answers in the affirmative, the question "Utrum sit tantum unus Deus?" 9 In a later work, the Qu-aestiones super octos libros Physicorum, q.136, the question is formulated" Utrum possit sufficienter probari primum efficiens esse per conservationem? " 10 He replies affirmatively with the same proof as in the Ordinatio,· but it is to be noted that in the later work the term " Deus " occurs neither in the question nor in the discussion. In Quod. II, 1,11 Ockham makes his whole attitude quite clear by admitting that, while we can arrive at a first cause, we have to recognize that that cause could be a heavenly body. Our task is to show how the Venerable Inceptor arrives at such a conclusion. Let me now outline my procedure. Ockham defines efficient causality in terms of being, as we shall see. This means that in order to understand the principle of efficient causality in Ockham we must know something of his analysis of being. We will find that the only analysis of being he admits is in terms 7 For example, David Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought (New York: Vintage, 1962), pp. 322-323. 8 P. Boehner, "Zu Ockhams Beweis der Existenz Gottes," Franziskanische Studien, XXXII (1950), 50-69. 9 Guillelmi de Ockham, Scriptum in Librum Primum Sententiarum, Ordinatio, Dist. II-III, ed. S. Brown, 0. F. M., adlaborante G. Gal, 0. F. M. (St. Bonaventure, N. Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1970), pp. 337-357. 10 Ed. by P. Boehner in Ockham: Philosophical Writings (Edinburgh: Nelson, 1962)' pp. 122-125. 11 Strasbourg, 1491. 74 EARL R. WOODS of change. Consequently, causality for Ockham, as in Aristotle, is a principle of changing being, not of being per se. Naturally, as a Christian, he admits creation, but this is only known de fide. First, therefore, we will consider Ockham's analysis of being, then his doctrine of efficient causality, and finally, the implications of all this for his proof of God's existence. III Since the proof for the existence of God in Ockham is through efficient causality, and as he defines causality in terms of being, 12 let us see something of Ockham' s analysis of being. There is no question of a full presentation of Ockhamistic metaphysics, for that is beyond the scope of this article. 13 Our purpose here is to show that Ockham's analysis of being is similar to Aristotle's. It is essentially an analysis of being as changing and not of being per se. Ockham does not admit of any principles which Aristotle did not admit, and, in a general way at least, accepts those principles which Aristotle accepts. It should be pointed out that he seems to depart from Aristotle on occasion, as we shall indicate in due course. Our attention will be directed only toward Ockham's consideration of real being, not possible or mental being. The analysis of being in the mediaeval tradition was generally an attempt to describe the intrinsic structure of really existing things. The product of this sort of inquiry was the identification of those principles which determine a thing in its existence, or nature, or its similarity to or difference from others, or its changeability. The principles so discovered were naturally 12 Tractatus de Praedestinatione et de Praescientia Die et de Futuris Contingentibus, q. 1, Ed. by P. Boehner (St. Bonaventure, N. Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1945), p. 17: "Causa ... accipitur ... pro re aliqua habente aliam rem tamquam suum effectum, et dicitur causa ad cuius esse sequitur aliud, quia ipsa posita ponitur effectus et non posita non potest poni." 18 For a good account of Ockham's metaphysics, see P. Boehner, "The Metaphysics of William Ockham," in The Review of Metaphysics, I (1947-48), 59-86. Reprinted in Collected Articles on Ockham, Ed. by E. Buytaert (St. Bonaventure, N. Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1958), pp. 878-899; it is to this reprint that I will refer, when mentioning this article. Also see P. Lucey, Metaphysics and the Philosophy of William of Ockham (Rome: Pontificia Universitas Gregoriana, 1954). OCKHAM ON NATURE AND GOD 75 supposed to exist in the real world in some way. Now Ockham has very definite notions about what could exist outside of the mind. For him, the term "being" (ens), when applied to real being, signifies the concrete singular entities outside the mind. 14 Everything outside the intellect is an entity, and this applies to real beings and the principles of real beings. In Ockham, there are no principles outside of the mind save entities. The consequence of this is that all such principles are really separable. In this, Ockham certainly differs from many of his predecessors. Neither essence and existence in St. Thomas Aquinas, nor the common nature and "haecceitas" in John Duns Scotus are conceived of as entities, although they are thought to be really present in and in some way distinct in the real world. They are presented as the principles of entities, in that they are supposed to constitute somehow the ontological structure of things, but they are not entities themselves. They are therefore by no means separable in the real world; that would be absurd. Ockham's view, as we have seen, is otherwise. He denies therefore that we are able to verify any extra-mental distinction that is not real (implying the separability of the things so distinct). The Scotistic formal distinction, whereby two principles may be non-identical but not be entities, is ruled out of court. 15 His reason for insisting that the only distinction in extra-mental reality is one allowing the separability of the things distinguished is found in his criterion of distinction. To his mind, there is no adequate test of determining if two things are distinguished except our ability to assert contradictories of them. So, we can say that a man is rational and a jackass is not rational and thus distinguish them. If we admit the Scotistic formal distinction, however, we would have no real defense against someone who might say that a man and a "Quod. V, 21; also Ord., d. 2, q. 6, p. 196. '" Ord., d. 2, q. 1, pp. 14-17. When the faith demands some distinction stronger than the logical, and weaker than the real, as in the doctrine of the Trinity, Ockham does admit the formal distinction. In the Trinity, the Divine Persons cannot be really distinct (that would be tritheism), nor can they be logically distinct (that would be modalism) ; hence, some distinction, such as the formal distinction, is necessary (Quod. I, 3). This is known, however, on faith only. 76 EARL R. WOODS jackass only differ formally and not really. 16 It is better therefore to retain only the real distinction. Consequently, when Ockham takes up the problem of the principles of real being, among the questions he will ask is whether any of the candidates proposed can be taken as entities; and the test he will use is separability. In this way he will be able to admit the principles of Aristotle, such as form and matter (which, rightly or wrongly, he interprets as entities), and reject such principles as essence and existence, (which cannot be so interpreted). Let us now see how he does this. The text I wish to use is from the Summa Logicae, III-II, c. 27.11 The question at issue is the relation of existence ("esse existere ") to the thing ("res") . Is the existence of the thing a distinct entity from the essence (" essentia ") of the thing outside of the soul? His answer is that " existence " has the same signification as " thing " and that it does not differ at all from essence. And it seems me that there are not two such things, nor does "existence" signify something distinct from the thing. 18 It is evident that Ockham considers that " essence," " existence," and " thing" have exactly the same referent, the extramental entity. They are not distinguished as entities and therefore are not distinct principles. He gives several reasons, of which we will list two. The first reason illustrates our position concerning the essential Aristotelian character of his analysis. Because if it is distinct, it is either substance or accident. Not accident because then the existence of a man would be quantity or quality, which is manifestly false.... Nor can it be said that it is substance because every substance is either matter or form or the composite or the absolute substance; but none of these can be said to be existence, if existence is something other than the entity of the thing. 19 Ord., d. 2, q. 1, p. 16. by P. Boehner in "Meta. of Wm. Ockham," in Col. Art., pp. 889-90. 18 Ibid., p. 889: " Et mihi videtur quod non sunt talia duo, nee esse existere 10 11 Ed. significat aliquid distinctum a re." 10 Ibid., p. 890: "Quia si sic, aut esset substantia aut accidens. Non accidens, OCKHAM ON NATURE AND GOD 77 Ockham assumes that the Aristotelian categories subsume all of reality, and what cannot find a place within these categories, or within their principles (that is, matter and form, which are the principles of substance) is either nothing, or at least indistinguishable from them. The second reason we are taking up is an application of the theory of distinctions. Further, if they are two things, there would be no contradiction if God were to conserve the entity of the thing in the nature of things without the existence, or conversely, the existence without the entity, both of which are impossible.20 This argument, based on the power of God, holds that God can maintain anything in existence independent of anything else. If essence and existence therefore are real things, it should be possible for God to conserve the existence of a thing without its essence and vice versa. This naturally reduces the distinction between essence and existence to nonsense, and Ockham therefore has no qualms about dismissing it. I think we need not pursue this matter any farther. As we have already noted, the only principles Ockham admits are those found in Aristotle, namely, substance and accident, and form and matter. These are necessary for the explanation of change. This means that Ockham's analysis of being is really an analysis of changing being. As for the remaining Aristotelian principles, namely, act and potency, we shall see later that, while accepting them, he reduces them to form and matter. To illustrate these points, it is sufficient to quote a few texts. With regard to substance and accident, it is clear that he conceives them to be separable. quia tunc esse existere hominis esset quantitas vel qualitas, quod est manifeste falsum ... Nee potest dici quod sit substa!lltia, quia omnis substantia vel est materia vel forma vel compositum vel substantia absoluta; sed nullum istorum potest dici esse, si esse sit alia res ab entitate rei." •• Ibid.: "Item, si essent duae res, non esset contradictio, quin Deus conservaret entitatem rei in rerum natura sine existentia, vel e converso existentiam sine entitate, quorum utrumque est impossibile." 78 EARL R. WOODS . " accident " signifies a thing distinct from the substance in which it inheres, and without which, that substance is able to exist, at least by Divine Power. 21 An accident will, through Divine Power, be able to exist and be conserved " without its subject." 22 These texts are as explicit as they can be on this point. The necessity of positing these principles is found in the need to account for the alteration we find in certain subjects, which are at one time hot and at another time cold, or at one time white and at another time black. 23 In short, it is in the analysis of change that these principles are revealed. Form and matter are likewise allowed to be real principles and, at the same time, to be entities. The texts again are quite clear. I show that matter and form are positive things and that they are distinct ... 24 ... matter is something actually existing in the nature of things which is in potency to all substantial forms ... 25 To the second principal argument, I say that united in a thing there are many things which are really distinct, and yet making one thing; such are matter and form, subject and accident, and things of this sort. 26 21 De Sacramento Altaris (Strasbourg, 1491), c. 32: " ... accidens significat rem distinctam a substantia inherentem illi rei, scilicet substantiae, et sine qua potest ilia substantia saltern per potentiam divinam existere." 22 Ibid., c. 12: " Poterit accidens per divinam potentiam sine subjecto existere et conservari." Quod. VII, 7. Summulae Physicorum (Venice, 1637), I, 8, p. 10: "Ostendo quod materia et forma sunt res positivae, et quod sunt distinctae . . ." C. K. Brampton has challenged the generally accepted assumption that the Summulae Physicorum is an authentic work of Ockham, in his article, " Ockham and his Authorship of the Summulae Physicorum.,'' in Isis, LV (1964), pp. 418-426. An able reply, however, was provided by J. Miethke in his "Ockhams Summulae Physicorum, eine nicht authentische Schrift? ", in the Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, LX (1967), pp. 57-68. In general, I agree with Miethke, and so I see no reason to abandon the common view on this matter. I have not hesitated therefore to make use of the Summulae. For the sake of those who find Brampton more convincing than I do, however, I have provided additional documentation in a couple of important instances (see notes 26 and 29 below). 25 Ibid., I, 15, p. 18: " ... materia est quaedam res actualiter existens in rerum natura quae est in potentia ad omnes formas substantiales. . . ." 26 Ord., d. 2, q. S, pp. 89-90: "Ad secundum principale dico adunata in re sunt 28 24 OCKHAM ON NATURE AND GOD 79 As in Aristotle, these principles are necessary in accounting for substantial change. 27 As for the remaining Aristotelian principles of act and potency, it appears that Ockham, while accepting them, considers them to be identical with form and matter, at least in their strict signification. Act is taken . . . in one way . . . strictly for an act informing another and coming to it anew. 28 In this same text, he also notes that " act " may signify any real being as opposed to merely possible being. In this sense, matter may be called act. Matter, however, insofar as it can receive form, is also called potency. Potency is the substance of matter, that is, potency is the substance which is matter .. ,29 It should be clear from the above texts that these principles are mainly concerned with change. I think it is evident from what we have said that the only intrinsic principles of being that the Venerable Inceptor accepts are those of Aristotle; and, like Aristotle, they are revealed in the analysis of change and are intended to make sense of change. With this in mind we can now turn to the doctrine of efficient causality in Ockham. aliqua multa distincta realiter, facientia tamen unum in re, sicut se habent materia et forma, subjectum et accidens, et huiusmodi." This is one of those points on which Ockham certainly departs from Aristotle. The latter clearly does not regard matter, for example, as an entity. See De Generatione et Corruptione, I, 5, where Aristotle says that matter is separable only in discourse or definition (logos) . Indeed, it is doubtful that Aristotle regarded any of the principles discussed as entities (excepting separated forms). 27 Sum. Phys., I, 8, p. 10. 28 Ibid., I, 16, p. 19: " Actus capitur . . . uno modo . . . stricte pro actu informante aliud et advenient sibi de novo." 29 Ibid., p. "Potentia est substantia materiae, id est, potentia est substantia quae est materia . . ." The identification of act and potency with form and matter is also made in the Summa Logicae, III-II, c. (ed. by Boehner, see note 17 supra), p. 890: "Item si essent [essence and existence] duae res, aut facerent per se unum, aut non. Si sic, oporteret, quod unum esset actus et reliquum potentia, et per consequens unum esset materia et aluid forma . . ." 80 EARL R. WOODS IV Since Ockham accepts only Aristotle's principles of being, it is natural to expect therefore that Aristotle's doctrine of causality will receive a favorable hearing from the Venerable Inceptor. This is especially so as Ockham defined causality in terms of being. In Aristotle, being is analyzed primarily in terms of form. 3 ° For him, therefore, efficient causality is basically concerned with the communication or production of form. 31 Aristotle had no notion of creation, and so he only had to account for why things become the kinds of things that they are; he did not have to explain their very existence. Now we shall see that, although Ockham, as a Christian, believed in the fact of creation, he did not believe that that fact could be discerned by human reason, unaided by Revelation. This implies that, for the mind, causality is basically a principle of change, not of being. Ockham holds that the only causes are the four enumerated by Aristotle. 32 We are concerned here solely with efficient causality, since that is the instrument which he uses to prove the existence of God. For Ockham, a cause is that from which the being of another follows.33 When efficient causality is in question, therefore, we must ask what is meant when he says that the being of another follows. It is clear from the following rather lengthy text that he means being as following from change. Each of the examples given is a species of change. "Efficient cause" is taken in three ways-strictly, broadly, and very broadly. Strictly taken, a cause is efficient when it causes a newly existing thing, so that nothing of that thing preceded; for example, fire generates fire or the sun heats, for in these cases a substantial or accidental form newly exists. Broadly taken, a cause is efficient which makes something to be such a kind which it was not before, whether in making a new thing, or in conjoining a preexisting part, or taking away parts, or changing something in a Metaphysica, VII, cc. 4-6. Ibid., cc. 7-8. 82 Ord. (Lyons, 1494-1496), d. 35, q. 5, N. 33 Cf. supra, n. 19l. 80 31 OCKHAM ON NATURE AND GOD 81 similar manner. So it is said that a builder is the cause of the house because he composes the parts among themselves, and yet nothing in itself totally new is acquired . . . Very broadly taken, a cause is efficient if it effects change, whether by making one thing from many things, or causes something to have a figure different from what it formerly had (either by altering or taking away its parts), or only moving it locally. So we say that an intelligence is the efficient cause of the motion of heaven, that is, it moves heaven, but causes no new thing in heaven.84 This division of causality is not of mutually exclusive elements, but rather each member of the division is of greater generality than, and at the same time encompasses, the member which . immediately precedes. Thus the broad sense includes the strict sense, and the very broad sense includes both the broad and the strict senses. Now how are we to understand this division? These kinds of causes are found in nature by our ordinary experience; .namely, they are the kinds of causes known to Aristotle. (It is largely Aristotle's physics, or what Ockham took to be such, that is being summarized in the work quoted. 85 ) All of the types of causality mentioned in this passage are causes of change, as is obvious from the examples. Efficient causes, in the first sense, are those that bring about generation, corruption, and alteration. The second sense includes augmentation, diminution, and, in general, the production of anything achieved through the addition, subtraction, or arrangement of •• Sum. Phys., II, S, p. 85: "Est autem advertendum, quod causa efficiens tripliciter accipitur: stricte; large; et largissime. Stricte dicitur causa efficiens, quando causat rem noviter existentem, ita quod nihil illius rei praecessit, sicut ignis generat ignem, et Sol calefacit, ibi enim forma substantialis et accidentalis noviter est. Large dicitur, causa efficiens ilia, quae facit aliquid esse aliquale, quale prius non fuit, sive rem novam faciendo, sive partem praeexistentem coniugendo, sive partes auferendo, vel aliis modis consimilibus transmutando, et sic dicitur quod artifex est causa domus, quia solum componit partes domus ad invicem, et tamen nulla res secundum se totam nova est acquisita . . . Largissime dicitur causa efficiens pro omne movente, sive illud movens faciat unum ex multis, sive transmutando partes, sive auferendo, faciat alterius figurae, quam prius, sive etiam solum transmutat illud localiter. Et sic dicimus quod intelligentia est causa efficiens motus Caeli, id est movet Caelum, et tamen nullam rem novam causat in Caelo." •• Ibid., Proem., p. 1. Ockham remarks that he accepts all here which is not repugnant to the Christian Faith. 82 EARL R. WOODS already existing parts. The third sense adds local motion. This is therefore a summary of the different sorts of causes of change; there is no reference to creation here, or the production of being per se. Now it may be objected at this point that the passage quoted is from a work on the philosophy of nature and so there was no need to discuss creation. VVe have not proven therefore that Ockham holds that the human mind, without revelation, only understands efficient causality in terms of change. We must concede that the point is well taken. If we are to show that the fact of creation is not evident to human reason according to the Venerable Inceptor, we will have to rely on more than this text. We intend to do this. Our purpose in citing the above passage was to illustrate how Ockham was able, while defining causality in terms of being, to understand it solely as a principle of change. It is doubtless true that Ockham, as a Christian theologian trying to understand the faith, would require a notion of causality that would include creation; so he defines causality in terms of being. Our task now is to show that creation 36 is unknown to reason without the light of faith. It is obvious that the human mind cannot show that anything is created, according to Ockham. The reason is that all effects given in our experience seem to be quite explicable in terms of generation and corruption, namely, in terms of change. It is unnecessary therefore to bring in creation as a mode of causality. Further, there are some objects, such as separated substances and the heavenly bodies, that seem to be uncaused; therefore creation is not needed to account for them. . . . it cannot be sufficiently proven that there are any effectibles besides generables and corruptibles, the sufficient causes of which are the lower natural bodies and the celestial bodies. The reason is that it cannot be sufficiently proven that a separated substance or any heavenly body are caused by anything efficiently. 87 86 " Creation " is taken, among other things, to designate a causal act needing no previously existing matter. Change requires such matter. See Quod., II, 9. 87 Quod., II, I: " ... non potest probari sufficienter quod sint aliqua effectibilia praeter generabilia et corruptibilia, quorum causae sufficientes sunt corpora naturalia inferiors et caelestia corpora, quia non potest probari sufficienter quod substantia separata quaecumque, nee aliquod corpus caeleste causatur a quocumque efficiente." OCKHAM ON NATURE AND GOD 83 The importance of this text for the understanding of Ockham's natural theology can hardly be doubted, and we will return to it later. The point to note now is that change is able to account for those things in our experience which are caused; consequently, causality is a principle of change. It is plain therefore that any proof for the existence of God in Ockham which is based on efficient causality can only reach a first cause of change, not of being. Further, anything that cannot be shown to be a product of change cannot be shown to be caused. Such is the case with matter. 38 Ockham cannot therefore show that God is the cause of all things. Matter, separated substances, and the heavens cannot be shown to be caused. Let us now turn to his proof for the existence of God. v Our discussion of Ockham's proof for the existence of God will concern itself with the kind of being in which it terminates, and especially with the question of whether Ockham really transcends the limits of nature when he arrives at a first cause. We do not therefore intend to give a thorough-going analysis of its structure. The proof, which develops out of a discussion of the famous argument for the existence of God presented by Duns Scotus is fairly straightforward. We may summarize it as follows: whatever is produced is conserved as long as it exists; since this thing is produced, it is conserved so long as it exists; with respect to its conserving cause, we may ask whether it is produced or no; if not, we have reached a first conserving cause, and thus a first efficient cause, since all conserving causes are efficient causes; if it is produced, then it is also conserved by another, and of this other we may make the same inquiry. Now we must either go on to infinity in the series of conserving causes or we must stop somewhere with a first cause; but the former is impossible, since it would entail the actual and 38 Sum. Phys., I, 15, p. 18: " Sed materia est ... de se ingenerabilis et incor- ruptibilis. . . ." 84 EARL R. WOODS simultaneous existence of an infinite multitude, which all acknowledge to be impossible. Thus, there must exist a first conserving, and so, a first efficient cause. 39 The general lines of the argument are clear enough. It is similar to many proofs from efficient causality found in the Middle Ages, such as the Second Way in St. Thomas. What does set it apart is the principle upon which it is based" whatever is produced, is conserved, as long as it exists." Ockham is the first, as far as I know, to use conserving causality in his argument. He never discusses the principle, and how he would ground it is a matter of conjecture. 40 He does regard it as manifest. however. Why does the Venerable Inceptor feel compelled to use this principle? In order to answer this question it is necessary for us to make clear just how a proof for the existence of God from efficient causality was expected to arrive at its goal. This goal was a first cause. To arrive at a first cause it had to be shown that an infinite series of causes was insufficient to account for any given effect. This could be done in two ways: first by showing that there could only be a finite series of causes, the 39 Ord., d. 2, q. 10, pp. 355-356: "Et ideo potest argumentum sic formari: quidquid realiter producitur ab aliquo, realiter ab aliquo conservatur quamdiu manet in esse reali; sed iste effectus--certum est-producitur; igitur ab aliquo conservatur quamdiu manet. De illo conservante quaero: aut producitur ab alio, aut non. Si non, est efficiens primum sicut est conservans primum, quia omne conservans est efficiens. . . . Si autem illud sic conservans producitur ab alio, igitur conservatur ab alio, et de illo alio quaero sicut prius, et ita vel oportet ponere processum in infinitum vel oportet stare ad aliquid quod est conservans et nullo modo conservatum, et tale erit primum efficiens. Sed non est ponere processum in infinitum in conservantibus, quia tunc aliqua infinita essent in actu, quod est impossibile. . . . Sic igitur videtur per istam rationem quod oportet dare primum conservans et per consequens primum efficiens." The proof is repeated in the Quaest. Phys., q. 136, ed. by Boehner, Ockham: Phil. Writ., pp. 122-125. •• See the plausible suggestion of J. R. Burke, The Nature and Kinds of Causal Relations according to William Ockham, unpublished Ph. D. dissertation (Fordham Univ., 1968), pp. 42-43, UO. Building on Fr. Burke, we might conjecture that, since Ockham regards form and maUer as entities, and since matter is in potentiality to all forms (Sum. Phys., I, 15, p. 18), thel'e is no reason why it should be conjoined to this form rather than another, unless through the influence of an external cause. Ockham seems to suggest this in Sum. Phys., I, 7, p. 8: "Omne compositum componitur ex partibus, sine quibus esse non potest, et dependet ex causis, sine quibus una pars compositi alteri non unitur ... .'' OCKHAM ON NATURE AND GOD 85 first member of which being the first cause, by definition; or, second, granting the existence of an infinite series, by showing that such a series would not suffice, unless some first cause outside of the series were posited. We are only concerned with the attempt to rule out infinite series altogether, as that was the path followed by Ockham. The Venerable Inceptor attempted to do this by showing that all of the causes exist simultaneously. If there were an infinite number of them, this would mean that there exists in act an infinite multitude. Ockham, along with the mediaevals in general, held this to be impossible. He does not discuss it but merely refers to the "philosophers" (perhaps having Aristotle's Metaphysics, II, !2, in mind) . Scotus tried to show the simultaneity of causes with his notion of essentially ordered causes. This, however, is a matter into which I do not wish to go, since it is very complex and would take us too far away from our topic. Besides, I intend to 1 deal with this problem in Scotus and Ockham at another time. Let us therefore simply summarize Ockham's position, along with the core of his criticism of Scotus. 41 The principal objection that Ockham makes to Scotus's discussion is that the latter uses productive causality. Ockham holds it is impossible to show that any series of productive causes is not infinite. A productive cause gives existence, either in the substantial or accidental order. Once the effect is posited, however, the cause is no longer needed. It could cease to exist, without making any difference to the effect. It would be impossible to show, therefore, that the members of a series of productive cause exist simultaneously. They could exist successively. In this instance, there could be an infinite number, without an actually existing infinite multitude. This would be quite possible, in Ockham's view. If one interprets the causal series as conserving, however, it clear that all of its members "The discussion of Scotus is found in his Ordinatio, d. fl, p. 1, qq. 1-fl, Opera Omnia, Vol. II, pp. 154-161. In Ockham, the discussion is in the Ordinatio, d. fl, q. 10, pp. 847-850 and in the Quaest. Phys., qq. 18fl-184, ed. by Boehner in Ockham: Phil. Writ., pp. ll5-ll8. 86 EARL R. WOODS must exist simultaneously. A cause can only effect if it exists. A conserving cause, therefore, exists simultaneously with its effect, namely, what it conserves. I£ it ceased to exist, it would no longer be a conserving cause because it would no longer be a cause. The same is true for all members of a series of conserving causes. They must all exist simultaneously, and, since an actually existing infinite multitude is excluded, there can only be a finite number of them. The first member of such a series would naturally be the first conserving cause. Thus does Ockham prove the existence of the first cause. How far can Ockham go toward identifying this cause? He has arrived at a first conserving cause; and, from what has been said previously, we can say that it is a first conserving cause of change, or, more exactly, a first conserving cause of the products of change. It is therefore clear that the function of the first cause in Ockham's philosophical universe is similar to that in Aristotle's. Can we say, however, that Ockham has transcended nature? It seems not. All that we require is a being, or beings, which, while exercising a general causality, do not themselves seem to require a cause. As noted above, 42 the heavenly bodies seem to fulfill the requirements. Everything caused in our experience could very well be the product of generation and corruption, of which the sufficient causes could be terrestrial and celestial bodies. Concerning the latter, it cannot be shown that they have any cause. 43 They need not even have a cause of their local motion outside of themselves, since Ockham does not accept the principle: whatever is moved is moved by another. 44 Thus Ockham could well say that, while we do arrive at a first cause, that cause could be a heavenly body. I say that we do stop at a first efficient cause and there is no regress to infinity. It is sufficient that a heavenly body be posited 42 P. 82 supra. •• Ibid. 44 See the Reportatio, II, q. 26, M. Ockham does not regard the acquisition of a new place as demanding an efficient cause in the strict sense, but only in a very broad sense. See the Sum Phys., II, 8, p. 85, cited supra, pp. 80-81. OCKHAM ON NATURE AND GOD 87 because we do experience concerning such that they are the causes of others. 45 In Ockham, it cannot be shown therefore that the human mind can transcend nature. We noted above that Ockham does not even use the term " Deus " in the proof for the existence of a first cause in the Quaestiones super octos libros Physicorum. 46 The philosophical universe in Ockham is, as in Aristotle, a realm of change, of forms succeeding forms in matter. 47 All that has to be explained is why these changes take place. The creating God of Christianity is not manifest here; the notion of the old Franciscan school that the universe is the image of God finds little scope in Ockham. One could perhaps argue in Ockham's defense that he did manage to reveal something of God, in that the God of Christianity is, among other things, the first conserving cause. Since the God of Christianity is in fact outside of nature, Ockham did indeed transcend nature in arriving at a first conserving cause. In reply to this, however, it may be said that we require the faith to assure us that we have transcended nature; otherwise, the human mind cannot know it. In conclusion, we might suggest, assuming what we have said in this article has any merit, that Ockham anticipates something of the modern attitude toward nature. It would seem that modern science could only arise when nature began to be studied for its own sake, and not for what it reflected of something else, namely, God; in Ockham, nature reveals very little of God. Further, with the inability of the human mind to transcend nature, the latter, for man, becomes a selfsustaining system both in its existence and processes. This also is, I take it, an anticipation of the moderns. EARL R. WooDs St. John's University Jamaica, N. Y. 45 Quod., II, 1: " Dico quod stan dum est ad primum efficiens et non est processus in infinitum. Et illud efficiens potest poni corpus caeleste, quia de illo nos experimur quod est causa aliorum." •• Supra, p. 73 and note 10. •• Ockham again differs from Aristotle in that the latter seems to transcend nature, whereas it appears that the Venerable Inceptor cannot. ST. THOMAS AQIDNAS'S THEORY OF THE ACT OF UNDERSTANDING N EO- THO MISTS HAVE generally held the interpretation that St. Thomas explained understanding as a vital act in which the intellect moved itself to know another as other. That this interpretation still holds sway is evident from Leslie Dewart's statement that: . . . for St. Thomas, for instance, cognition occurred when one being acted upon another, if the other was a knower-that is, if it had the power to take advantage of this activity upon itself to posit within itself an immanent act the formal nature of which was to render him (intentionally) one with the known, that is one with that which was originally other, to which the knower was united precisely as other .1 From Dewart's statement it is obvious that the interpretation of Aquinas's theory of understanding in terms of vital act is closely associated in the minds of those who hold it with the belief that Aquinas conceived of knowledge as the way for a knower to become another as other. However sound that belief may be, it is certainly questionable that Aquinas ever analyzed understanding as a vital act. Bernard Lonergan showed some time ago that not only did Aquinas never employ the notion of vital act to explain understanding, but he never even used the notion at all. Self-movement in the soul or in any of its potencies was a notion so alien to Aquinas's thought that he precluded it from life in general and in any of its manifestations in either God or man. 2 In fact, Lonergan added, in Aquinas's 1 Leslie Dewart, The Foundations of Belief (New York: Herder & Herder, 1969), p. 74 (emphasis in the original). • Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Divinarum personarum conceptionem analogicam (Ad 88 THEORY OF THE ACT OF UNDERSTANDING 89 time the advocates of vital act were his adversaries, the so-called Augustinian theologians, and the leading proponent o£ the notion in the years immediately thereafter was Peter John Olivi, a bitter critic of Aquinas. 3 Yet, except for the ratification of Lonergan's reinterpretation by a couple of his followers, 4 there is little indication that the interpretation of Aquinas's theory of understanding in terms of vital act is any less dominant today than before Lonergan first challenged it. Therefore, I propose to show, first, how necessary the notion of vital act is to the Neo-Thomistic theory of understanding, but how contrary it is to St. Thomas's. Then I shall indicate how Bernard Lonergan's reinterpretation of St. Thomas's theory of understanding led him to deny that Aquinas had ever employed the notion of vital act in it. Finally, I shall present an interpretation of how St. Thomas actually arrived at the notion of act that he used to explain understanding. The cumulative effect of this argument will be to show, I believe, that Aquinas based his theory of understanding upon his own reflections and not upon the postulate of a vital act in the intellect. 5 THE NEo-THOMISTIC INTERPRETATION THEORY OF UNDERSTANDING OF ST. THoMAs's IN TERMs oF VITAL AcT In Neo-Thomism the interpretation of St. Thomas's theory of understanding has been virtually indistinguishable from an analysis of understanding itself. Partly this has been because Neo-Thomism originated as a movement from Leo XIII's manusum auditorum. Rome: Pontifical Gregorian University, 1957), pp. 248-52; De Deo Trino. 1: Pars systematica (third revised edition of Divinamm personarU'rn ... Rome: Pontifical Gregorian University, 1964), pp. 268-72. 3 Divinamm personarum, pp. 247-48; De Deo Trino, p. 267. • Frederick Crowe, " Complacency and Concern in the Thought of St. Thomas," Theological Studies, 20 (1959), 14-16; cf. footnote 33; William Stewart, "Abstraction: Conscious or Unconscious? The Ve1·bum Articles," Continuum, 2 (1964), 411. 5 This article is a reworking of part of a dissertation entitled The Meaning of Act in Understanding: A Study of the Thomistic Notion of Vital Act and Thomas Aquinas's Original Teaching, which I defended at the Gregorian University in 1969; an excerpt has been published by the Officium Libri Catholici, Rome. 90 WILLIAM E. MURNION date that Catholic philosophers and theologians follow the method, teaching, and principles of St. Thomas since he represented a peak which human reason could scarcely hope to regain, and it has been sustained by a series of decrees and monita culminating in Canon 1366, # which had the effect of making St. Thomas '"Doctor Communis in Ecdesia." 6 Thus it was not until Leslie Dewart came along that anyone schooled in the Thomistic tradition ever dared undertake a fundamental critique of St. Thomas's thought, either in light of modern developments in philosophy and theology or from the perspective of his own independent thinking. But another reason for this unhealthy compound of interpretation with analysis has been the rather common failure o£ Neo-Thomists to distinguish between the two tasks implicit in the Leonine mandate, "vetera novis augere et perficere." True, a Chenu or a Gilson or a Lonergan may have been careful to differentiate between the exigencies of the historical research necessary to establish what the vetera really were and the demands of the theoretical reflection required to develop and perfect the vetera with nova/ but many another Thomist, of less sophisticated methodology, has attempted to interpret St. Thomas's thought in the process of conceiving of his own philosophical theories, with the result that theory has tended to predetermine interpretation and interpretation to foreclose theory. This approach has been characteristic o£ those who have propounded the theory /interpretation of understanding as a vital act. Typical of such N eo-Tho mists is Jacques Maritain. Though Maritain has devised a unique distinction between formal and objective concepts and has created a terminology all his own, he has, nevertheless, analyzed understanding in terms o£ vital act, and his analysis contains an interpretation of St. Thomas's °Karl Rahner acknowledged this situation in his introduction of J. B. Metz's Christliche Anthropozentrik: Ueber die Denkform des Thomas von Aquin (Munich: Koesel-Verlag, 1962) by the paradoxical assertion that one must be ready "Thomas zu widersprechen und so von ihm zu lernen " (p. 20, emphasis in the original) . 7 Cf. Bernard J. F. Lonergan, "The Concept of Verbum in the Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas," Theological Studies, 10 (1949), pp. 888-89. THEORY OF THE ACT OF UNDERSTANDING 91 thought on understanding. The simplest way, therefore, to sketch the Neo-Thomistic interpretation of St. Thomas's theory of understanding in terms of vital act is to summarize Maritain' s analysis of understanding and then to show how it fits into Neo-Thomistic rational psychology. Maritain thinks of understanding as essentially an act of conception, and so he regards the concept as the basic unit of scientific thought. 8 His entire theory of understanding, therefore, is designed to show how the intellect in the act of understanding can so formulate its concepts as to represent to itself objectively the things it intends to understand. 9 This is possible for the intellect to do, Maritain asserts, because intelligence, or the act of understanding, has of itself the vitality of knowledge and can consequently become vitally the object of the intellect. 10 Thus, in the concept, which is the fruit of intelligence, the intellect vitally proffers its object to itself. 11 In the act of understanding, therefore, Maritain claims that the intellect knows a thing objectively because it conceives of it in such a way that it becomes it as an object. 12 It should be clear, however, that though Maritain takes great pains to allege St. Thomas's authority for many other aspects of his thought, nowhere does he refer to St. Thomas's writings 8 Jacques Maritaiu, Distinguir pour unir ou les degres du savoir (fifth revised Desclee de edition. Bibliotheque Francaise de Philosophic, 3e serie. Paris: Brouwer, 1948), pp. idem, La philosophic bergsonienne (second edition. Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1930), p. xxxvi; idem, Sept le9ons sur l'etre et les premiers principes de la raison speculative (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1934), pp. 38, 54-55. • Ibid., pp. 175-91, 778-80, in support of this point Maritain cites de Verit., q. 4, a. ad 7; de Pot., q. 9, a. 5; q. 8, a. 1; Quodl, VIII, a. 4; IV Cont. Gent., c. 14, n. 3500, and a number of texts from the works of John of St. Thomas. Cf. et. Sept lerons pp. 38, 66-67; Reflexions sur /'intelligence et sa vie propre (fourth edition. Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1938), p. 19. 10 Ibid., pp. especially p. footnote 1: " ... I' intelligence qui connait, et qui est primitivement vide de toute forme, a par elle-meme la vitalite caracteristique de la connaissance, et par elle-meme capable de devenir vitalement !'object .... " 11 Ibid., pp. " Fruit de I' intellection en acte, i1 [le concept] a pour contenu intelligible l'objet lui-meme, mais ce contenu intelligible, qui comme objet et pose devant l'esprit, comme concept est vitalement profere par l'esprit .... " 12 Ibid., pp. 155, 92 WILLIAM E. MURNION in support of his contention that understanding is a vital act. Probably he got the notion of vital act from John of St. Thomas, for he openly confesses his debt to John's thought/ 8 and John did rely upon the notion of vital act to explain the nature of immanent actions, including the operation of understanding.14 It must also be admitted that Maritain's explanation of understanding is orthodox Neo-Thomism. 'For Neo-Thomists have a generally agreed that understanding is essentially a matter of conception/ 5 and though someone like Gilson will refuse to explain the mechanism of conception/ 6 most (Gilson included) assume conception is unconscious since they believe the intellect can know only what it has conceived/ 7 and many claim that St. Thomas explained the mechanism of this unconscious process by deduction from the principles of potency 13 Ibid., especially pp. 769, 77'i!, 773, 777-79, but cf. "Jean de Saint-Thomas" in the "Index des Noms Cites" (p. 913). An entire school of Neo-Thomists regarded John of St. Thomas's interpretation as authoritative; a clear presentation of the thought of this school can be found in J. Peifer, The Concept in Thomism (New York: The Bookman Press, 195'i!). 14 Joannes a S. Thoma, Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus, ed. B. Reiser (3 vols. Turin: Marietti, 1930- ) II, 15'i!a, 177b, 'i!'i!4b, 'i!68b-'i!69a, 308a-309b. Cf. R. Morency, "L'activite affective selon Jean de Saint Thomas," Laval theologique et philosophique, 2 (1946), 143-74; idem, "Nature de ]'action immanente," Sciences ecclesiastiques, 5 (1953), 107-24; I73-83. 15 Etienne Gilson, in Being and Some Philosophers (second edition). Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, I95'i!) , writes: " To know is to conceive knowledge .... The incontrovertible texts quoted by Fr. Regis In I Periherm., lect. I, n. 5; lect. 3, n. 11; lect. 5; lect. 6, n. 'i!; lect. 8, n. I7; In Boeth. de Trin.;. q. 5, a. 3, and others from the spurious In II Periherm. make it abundantly clear that, in the language of St. Thomas, every cognition is a conception.' . . ." (pp. I90, 22'i!); Paul Siwek, in Psychologia metaphysica (sixth revised edition. Rome: Gregorian University Press, I962), says that every Scholastic but Sylvester of Ferrara agrees that intelligere and dicere (verbum interius) are the same act, and he cites de Verit., q. 4, a. 2 ad 5; IV Cont. Gent., c. II; Sum. Theol. I, q. 27, a. I in support of his statement (p. 349). 16 Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas, trans. L. K. Shook (New York: Random House, I957), p. 'i!19. 17 Ibid., pp. 'i!19 ff., 476. Cf. Leon Noel, Le realisme immediat (Louvain, 1938) pp. 221-2'i!, and H.-D. Gardeil, Initiation a la philosophie de S. Thomas d'Aquin (third edition. 3 vols. Paris: Editions du Cerf, I958) III, I01-to take representatives of just two different schools of Neo-Thomism. THEORY OF THE ACT OF UNDERSTANDING 93 and act. 18 Once they take that turn, it is only a few more steps to the conclusion that Thomas's explanation hinged upon the notion of vital act. First, Thomas is supposed to have thought that by movement Aristotle meant an impetus flowing from a mover to a mobile in such a way that the action of the mover and the passion of the mobile entail real changes in each of them. 19 Then, though some lip-service is paid to the Aristotelian axiom that whatever is moved is moved by another, it is nevertheless asserted that life is formally a self-movement-even more specifically that it is a kind of self-movement called vital act, by which the potencies of the soul move themselves to their own operations. 20 18 Cf. George Klubertanz, The Philosophy of Human Nature (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1953), p. 34: Roger Verneaux, Philosophie de l'homme (second edition. Cours de philosophie thomiste. Paris: Beauchesne, 1956), pp. 6, 8. More remarkable though than any explicit statement of this sort is the absence in Thomistic manuals of any phenomenology of understanding, except occasionally as a confirmatory argument " ex experientia," and the inclusion of the psychology of understanding within a so-called rational psychology concerned with life as selfmovement, and itself c A. CROFTS belongs to the right of a given multitude, it is not unjust that the king be deposed or have his power restricted by that same multitude if, becoming a tyrant, he abuses the royal powerP While admitting the right of resistance, Thomas was quite deferential to the prerogatives of the ruler even when the ruler abused his power, " thus princes and prelates, although they be wicked, are honored as standing in God's place, and as representing the community over which they are placed." 18 Thomas always qualified his statements on the advisability and appropriateness of political resistance. Just because a ruler abused his power did not automatically mean that he should lose it. While resistance on the part of the community may under special circumstances be legitimate, in no case should a private citizen take it upon himself to resist or slay a tyrant. 19 Thomas regarded sedition as a mortal sin: Sedition is opposed to justice and the common good. Therefore by reason of its genus it is a mortal sin, and its gravity will be all the greater according as the common good which it assails surpasses the private good which is assailed by strife.20 Resistance becomes sedition when it is more harmful to the common good than the rule of the tyrant it seeks to overthrow. However, this guideline would be of limited help to a person contemplating in a concrete situation whether or not he should resist lawful authority. It would require the calculation of an equation filled with unknowns based upon the future consequences of actions. In the spirit of Thomas one would have to conclude that if there is any doubt submission rather than resistance should be the choice. Likewise, tyrannicide " is not in accord with apostolic teaching." 21 The right of resistance is limited or qualified by two major 17 18 Summa Theol., II-II, q. 69, a. 4. Cf. OK, p. 27. Summa Theol., loc. cit., q. 63, a. 3. Gilby suggests that Thomas grew "more deferential about the prerogatives of the exercised improperly." (p. 289) 19 Phelan introduction to OK, p. 17. •• Summa Theol., loc. cit., q. 42, a. 2. nox, p. 26. sovereign, even when they were POLITICAL THEORY OF THOMAS AQUINAS 161 factors. First, political resistance may result in more harm to the common good than the tyranny of an unjust ruler. Second, the resister must recognize the possibility that a wicked ruler governs in a tyrannical way by divine permission as a means of punishing the people for their sins. 22 Thomas does not make it clear how the mind of God is to be known (does God endorse or support a specific wicked ruler as punishment for human sinfulness?) so that a decision about resistance can be made. Thomas granted the right of resistance, but it must be so carefully considered in each specific situation in the light of the above qualifications that the grant was more theoretical than real. With regard to the second question posed above, Thomas responded that the best form of government is that which contributes most to the common good. But, in any case, the basic source for the exact form of government should be the pattern revealed in the eternal law: " since then the eternal law is the plan of government in the Chief Governor, all the plans of government in the inferior governors must be derived from the eternal law." 23 Thomas discussed the best form of government by juxtaposing good government/common good and tyrannical government/private good. In his treatise On Kingship Thomas states this quite clearly: If therefore, a multitude of free men is ordered by the ruler towards the common good of the multitude, that rulership will be right and just, as is suitable to free men. If, on the other hand, a rulership aims, not at the common good of the multitude, but at the private good of the ruler, it will be an unjust and perverted rulership. 24 As the best form of government is recognized by the fact that it works for the common good, so the tyrannical forms of government are recognized by the fact that they work for private good: Moreover, a government becomes unjust by the fact that the ruler, paying no heed to the common good, seeks his own private good. •• Ibid., p. !!9. •• Summa Theol., I-II, q. 98, a. 8. ••oK, P· 7. 162 RICHARD A. CROFTS Wherefore the further he departs from the common good the more unjust will his government be. But there is a greater departure from the common good in an oligarchy, in which the advantage of a few is sought, than in a democracy, in which the advantage of many is sought; and there is still greater departure from the common good in a tyranny, where the advantage of only one man is sought.25 In theory Thomas favored monarchy as the best form of government, but more specifically he supported a limited or constitutional monarchy. The best government combined elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and even democracy: Accordingly, the best form of government is in a state or kingdom, wherein one is given the power to preside over all; while under him are others having governing powers; and yet a government of this kind is sared by all, both because all are eligible to govern, and because the rulers are chosen by all. For this is the best form of policy, being partly kingdom, since there is one at the head of all; partly aristocracy, in so far as a number of persons are set in authority; partly democracy, i.e., government by the people, insofar as the rulers can be chosen from the people, and the people have the right to choose their rulers.26 In the treatise On Kingship Thomas presented a slightly different view. There he described three good forms of government which in descending value were monarchy, aristocracy, and polity (rule by many but not all) . Monarchy was the best form because it completely unified the political community for the purpose of the common good. Each of these three had their exact opposites which were tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy respectively. Tyranny was the worst form of government because it tended to replace the common good with a private one. Oligarchy and democracy were not as bad because they involved more of the community in government and thus tended to broaden the good toward which they strove. 27 In •• Ibid., pp. 14-15. •• Summa Theol., I-ll, q. 105, a. 1. For Thomas's views on the best kind of government see Alexander Smetana, The Beat Form of Government according to Aristotle, Cicero, St. Thomas, and Locke (Washington, 1950). " 7 OK, p. 8. POLITICAL THEORY OF THOMAS AQUINAS 163 this treatise Thomas was writing about the ideal or theoretical situation, but in more concrete terms he favored a limited monarchy which both limited the amount of power that one man could hold and also involved more people in the ing of the government and thus would be more likely to ensure action resulting in the common; good. The third question posed above was the extent to which popular sovereignty or the consent of the governed was volved with the common good of the state. Popular sovereignty means " a rule that is for the common good, is representative of the people, and is derived for the ruler immediately from the community itself." 28 Thomas emphasized the importance of popular sovereignty but the interpreter must not ascribe to the political theory of Thomas a democratic tone that sounds too modern. Thomas was not a democrat; he believed that the source for political authority was not so much popular sovereignty as it was the divine will.29 It is not enough to conclude simply that the state functions toward the common good. A definition of the meaning of the common good and the relationship of the individual to it is also required. For Thomas the common good is the unifying factor of society and the ideal upon which civilization is based. Its foundation is in the eternal purpose of God who rules the universe " under the aspect of the common good." 30 Interpreters of Thomas differ as to the historical sources of his understanding of the common good. Did he borrow the concept from Greek or from Roman sources? I. T. Eschmann, the author of several articles on this subject, notes that with only two exceptions Thomas quotes Aristotle when referring to the common good. However, Eschmann does not reach the expected conclusion from this evidence: •• This definition is taken from Wilfrid Parsons, " St. Thomas and Popular Sovereignty," Thought, XVI (1941), 474. •• A. P. D'Entreves, The Medieval Contribution to Political Thought: Thomas Aquinas, Marsilius of Padua, Richard Hooker (London, 1939), pp. 39!-33. 30 Summa Theol., I-II, q. 19, a. 10. Cf. Cox, p. 49, and Louis Lachance, L'humanisme politique de saint Thomas d'Aquin: individu et etat (Paris, 1965), p. 253. 164 RICHARD A. CROFTS This might lead us to believe that we are faced here with an Aristotelian-Thomistic doctrine. Nothing is farther from the truth and nothing could be more misleading for a right understanding of St. Thomas' teaching, since from the outset it would prevent our viewing the problem in its correct historical perspective. Historically speaking the principle of the superiority of a common good and related doctrines are a legacy to Scholasticism from a Roman and patristic heritage. 31 On the other side of the academic fence is Thomas Gilby who minimizes the Roman influence: The idea of the Common Good was a Greek preoccupation. The public interest was not clearly defined by the Romans from the legal point of view; to them origins were clearer than ,ends. The influence on him of the Roman law was not to be compared with that of Aristotle. 82 It is not enough to say that Thomas's political theory is highly dependent on the concept of the common good. As Smetana in his interesting study on the best form of government points out, Aristotle, Cicero, Thomas, and Locke all agreed that the criterion for good government was the common good, but differed on its meaning. 33 Probably the most difficult part of this essay is the attempt to define in a concrete and practical way the content that Thomas had in mind when he used the term " the common good." Certainly he intended more than a simple rehearsal of what Aristotle had meant. The common good is more than the well-being of each individual added up to make the good of the whole. The common good is not just the collective sum of the individual goods, and thus is not to be thought of in simple mathematical terms. 34 At Eschmann, "Thomistic Glossary," p. 124. Gilby, pp. 131, 161. With the exception of the fact that Thomas quoted Aristotle rather than Roman law, Eschmann seems to have the stronger case. 33 Smetana, p. 113. 34 Summa Theol .., II-II, q. 58, a. 7. Of the common good Gilby writes: "It was not a collective-value, the greatest good of the greatest number, the welfare of the whole considered as a mass-effect, but the personal good of each and all which ultimately implied the vision of God and the lasting companionship of friends." (p. 129) 31 32 POLITICAL THEORY OF THOMAS AQUINAS 165 the same time, the common good does redound to the benefit of each individual since the maintenance of order aids or permits the perfection of human nature. Thomas supplemented Aristotle by associating the supreme good (God) more closely with the common good: Now the supreme good, namely God, is the common good, since the good of all things depend on him; and the good whereby each thing is good, is the particular good of that thing, and of those that depend thereon. Therefore all things are directed to one good, God to wit, as their end.85 The common good is the perfection or achievement of individual man, according to his nature, in relationship to the supreme good, which is God. In the minds of some critics, Thomas's stress on the value of the common good results in some minimizing of the value and dignity of the individual. Ernst Troeltsch, whose analysis is frequently brilliant if not always persuasive, is dismayed by the aristocratic tendencies in Thomas's thought. 36 D'Entreves asks if Thomas's emphasis upon the common good is not incompatible with the Christian conception of the value of human personality. 37 There are several responses to such criticism of Thomas. It will not do to suggest that Thomas " spoke in two parts, as a theologian for the supremacy of the person, as a social philosopher for the supremacyofthe community." 38 Such a bifurcation must cause unpleasantness for Thomas. Slightly more helpful is to note that the interdependence of mankind 35 Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles, trans. by the English Dominican Fathers, 4 vols.; New York, 19S!4), III, 17. 36 Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, trans. by Olive Wyon (S! vols.; New York, 1960), p. S!98: "Even in a man of such deep ethical feeling as St. Thomas it is amazing to see how unquestioningly he accepts the Aristotelian point of view that the aristocratic and ruling classes are the logical result of Nature." 37 D'Entreves introduction to SPW, pp. xviii, xxxi. Also the same author's Medieval Contribution, pp. S!8-S!9. I do not see in Thomas the way, as D'Entreves seems to suggest, in which the individual is lost in the mass in a way that contradicts the Christian gospel. There is little of a " rugged individualism " to be found in the teachings of Jesus. •• Gilby, p. 241. 166 RICHARD A. CROFTS is a fact that must be increasingly recognized. The best response is given by Bigongiari in his introduction to some selections from Thomas: Thomas is " more concerned with the stability of the state than with the upholding of individual political rights." 39 Jacques Maritain, who lives in the spirit of Thomas, delineates the place of the individual the common good according to the Angelic Doctor. The human person both transcends every created good and has a distinct and significant place in the service of the common good. 40 Thomas is far more interested in political duties and obligations of the individual in society than in the political rights and privileges to which the individual lays claim. Related to the question of the value of the individual is the question of equality among people. Thomas thought of equality in geometric rather than arithmetic terms; that is, equality depends not on quantity but proportion. Equality is achieved when an individual is rewarded on the basis of the importance of his position in the community or his contribution to the common good, rather than on equal distribution in the narrow sense of the word. 41 When something is alloted to a person out of proportion to what he deserves ("respect of persons ") , the principle of equality is violated and sin results. 42 Thomas's use of the term equity further clarifies what he intended. Equity is observed, not when every person is treated equally (in the sense of identically); but when each person is treated and individual cases determined on the basis of justice and the common good. Thus the spirit, and not the letter, of the law is to be observed. Therefore in legal cases differing punishments for the same crime could be meted out under the principle of equity. 43 Thomas also related the function of law to the common good. •• Dino Bigongiari's introduction to The Political Ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas (New York, 1953), p. xxxi. 40 Jacques Maritain, The Person and the Common Good (New York, 1947), pp. 5, 54-55. 41 Summa Theol., II-II, q. 61, a. !'l. 42 Ibid., q. 63, aa. 1-!'l. •• Ibid., q. 120. POLITICAL THEORY OF THOMAS AQUINAS 167 He defined the law as " nothing else than an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community, and promulgated." "The end of law is the common good." 44 In his work on the philosophy of Thomas Etienne Gilson suggests that law tells " what the individual must do with a view to the good of the community of which he is a part." 45 An important part of the function of the law in working toward the common good of the community was the prohibition of vices: Wherefore human laws do not forbid all vices, from which the virtuous abstain, but only the more grievous vices, from which it is possible for the majority to abstain; and chiefly those that are to the hurt of others, without the prohibition of which human society could not be maintained. 46 When discussing those who make the law Thomas wrote in a way that has led some to see popular sovereignty in his thought: A law, properly speaking, regards first and foremost the order to the common good. Now to order anything to the common good, belongs either to the whole people, or to someone who is the viceregent of the whole people. And therefore the making of a law belongs either to the whole people or to a public personage who has care of the whole people.47 Bad law results " when an authority imposes on his subjects burdensome laws, conducive, not to the common good, but rather to his own cupidity or vainglory." 48 Bad law can also result when the law is administered according to the letter and not the spirit. There are some times when for the sake of the common good certain dispensations or exceptions should be made. Since the law as written can not cover every possible case it should be interpreted with a liberal and not a literal "Ibid., I-II, q. 90, a. 4. •• Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. by L. K. Shook (New York, 1956), p. 265. •• Summa Theol., I-II, q. 96, a. 2. "Ibid., q. 90, a. S. •• Ibid., q. 96, a. 4. 168 RICHARD A. CROFTS spirit. 49 Thomas was not so conservative as to suggest that the law can never be changed but he did believe that frequent change detracted from the authority of the law: Consequently, when a law is changed, the binding power of the law is diminished, insofar as custom is abolished. Wherefore human law should never be changed, unless, in some way or other, the common weal be compensated according to the extent of the harm done in this respect. 50 It is the duty of the ruler to govern the people according to the precepts of justice and the common good: " a king is one who rules the people of one city or province, and rules them for the common good." 51 But the ruler's purpose is not justice for the sake of justice, or the common good for the sake of the common good; rather, he had a higher purpose: Therefore, since the beatitude of heaven is the end of that virtuous life which we live at present, it pertains to the king's office to promote the good life of the multitude in such a way as to make it suitable for the attainment of heavenly happiness .... 52 A favorite image of Thomas was to compare the ruler to the shepherd who concerns himself with the welfare of his sheep. 53 He also conceived of the ruler as the representative or minister of God. To be able to fulfill his duty the ruler must have authority: There must exist something which impels toward the common good of the many, over and above that which impels toward the particular good of each individual.· Now there could be no social life for many persons living together unless one of their number were set in authority to care for the common good.54 Thus, even as politics is natural to human nature and necessary for the development of persons to their full potential, so also 49 References to this point abound in the Summa Theol. See for examplesr I-II, ,a. I. q. 96, a. 6; q. 97, a. 4; II-II, q. HW, a. 1; q. 50 Ibid., I-II, q. 97, a. 51 OK, p. 10. 52 Ibid., p. 64. 53 Ibid., pp. 7, 9. •• OK, p. 6. POLITICAL THEORY OF THOMAS AQUINAS 169 is political authority, residing in the ruler, given by God, a necessity for the welfare of the community. St. Thomas made a significant advance in the Christian tradition of political thought when he related the ideal of the common good to the obligations of citizenship. The individual had definite and clear civic responsibilities to fulfill in the political community. Time and again Thomas returned to the principle, taken over from Aristotle, that public good is to be preferred over private or individual good: As the Philosopher declares, the good of the many is more godlike than the good of the individual, wherefore the more a virtue regards the good of the many, the better it is. Now the common good is always more lovable to the individual than his private good... ,55 One's own welfare was not to be regarded when the political community needed a virtuous act for its common good: " Where fore it is a virtuous action for a man to endanger even his own life, either for the spiritual or for the temporal common good of his country." 56 Perhaps the primary duty of a good citizen was political subordination or obedience: Now the order of justice requires that subjects obey their superiors, else the stability of human affairs would cease. Hence faith in Christ does not excuse the faithful from the obligation of obeying secular princes. 57 But Thomas made his real advance in the concept of citizenship when he added certain other specific responsibilities besides obedience. Perhaps the most interesting of these additions is Thomas's view on the holding of private property which, although he did not condemn it outright, he made a part of man's civic responsibility: •• Sum'11Ul Theol., II-II, q. 141, a. 8; q. 26, a. 4. •• Ibid., q. 31, a. 3. For other references to this subordination of private good to public good see I-II, q. 90, a. 3; II-II, q. 47, a. 10; q. 68, a. 1; q. 117, a. 6; q. 185, a. 2. 57 Ibid., II-II, q. 104, a. 6. In ibid., q. 65, a. 4, Thomas makes the interesting observation that " it is more grievous to strike or injure a person in authority than a private individual, because it conduces to the injury of the whole community." 170 RICHARD A. CROFTS In cases of need all things are common property, so that there would seem to be no sin in taking another's property, for need has made it common. For, since one man is a part of the community, each man in all that he is and has, belongs to the community. 58 Thomas condemned suicide, interestingly enough, not because it violated the canon law of the Church or Scriptural teachings, but because it violated the principles of the common good and civic responsibility. Using Aristotle as his authority Thomas argued as follows: "Now every man is part of the community, and so, as such, he belongs to the community. Hence by killing himself he injures the community." 59 In other words, the citizen does not have the right to kill himself and thus deprive the community of the contribution he might make to its common good. As with the bad ruler, the bad citizen is the man who acts out of self-interest. Gilson summarizes Thomas's argument: "Legal justice is thwarted by illegality-a contempt for the common good which disposes the vicious to pursue only their own immediate individual interest without any thought to the possible effects of their acts upon the general interest of the community." 60 When the law, the rulers, and the good citizens combine, each fulfilling their respective role in the working of the state, the result is the common good for which each element exists and through which each individual may be led to his supreme good which is God. The state by means of the common good provides the proper conditions for man to achieve the vision of God or his eternal bliss. A brief illustration of a concrete way this combination works for the common good might be helpful. Unhealthy, harmful, and disturbing members of the community are removed by punishment or execution for the sake of the common good. In language reminiscent of Biblical imagery Thomas expressed 58 Ibid., q. 66, a. 7; I-II, q. 96, a. 4. Comments about Thomas's "communism" would surely be shocking to some. 59 Ibid., II-II, q. 64, a. 5. 60 Gilson, p. 309. POLITICAL THEORY OF THOMAS AQUINAS 171 the belief that sinful members must be removed from the community lest they corrupt the whole society: " Therefore if a man be dangerous and infectious to the community, on account of some sin, it is praiseworthy and advantageous that he be killed in order to safeguard the common good, since ' a little leaven corrupteth the whole lump.'" 61 " The life of a few pestilential individuals is a hindrance to the common good, which is the harmony of the human community. Therefore such men should be cut off by death from the society of their fellows.'' 62 Thomas's favorite image was the physician who cut off one member of the body to save the life of the whole: As the physician in his operation aims at health consisting in the ordered harmony of the humours, so the governor of a state, in his operation, aims at peace, which is the ordered harmony of the citizens. Now the surgeon rightly and usefully cuts off the unhealthy member, if it threatens the health of the body. Justly, therefore, and rightly the governor of the state slays pestilential subjects, lest the peace of the state be disturbed. 68 It has not been the purpose of this study to examine the relationship of Thomas and Aristotle, although such an investigation on this point would be fruitful. The extent to which Thomas borrowed directly from Aristotle and the extent to which he reformulated and somewhat altered what he borrowed are interesting questions. It seems clear that Thomas placed his Aristotelian political theory on a Christian theological foundation. What for Aristotle was man's happiness was for Thomas his heavenly beatitude. 64 For Thomas, theology and the Church took, precedence over philosophy or moral theory, and this influenced his own view of Church-state relations. Because theology (or the Church) deals with superior ends or purposes, it holds a superior rank over philosophy (or the state): The secular power is subject to the spiritual, even as the body is subject to the soul. Consequently the judgment is not usurped if Summa Theol., ibid., a. 2. Ill Cont. Gent., c. 146. 63 Ibid. 64 Maritain, p. 5, and Copleston, Aquinas, p. 198. 61 62 172 RICHARD A. CROFTS the spiritual authority interferes in those temporal matters that are subject to the spiritual authority or which have been committed to the spiritual by the temporal authority. 65 Here again Thomas's aloofness to the contemporary political situation is clearly observable. It would, seem that somewhere in his writings Thomas would have commented on the political implications of the continuing struggle between Church and state, but he never discussed these issues in a specific and concrete way. That would appear to be both the strength and weakness of his political theory. Because he did not write to a specific situation Thomas's political theory can still be usefully read today; but because he did not give it specific application its practicality can be questioned. In conclusion, several aspects of Thomas's political theory might be noted. Thomas is not particularly original or creative but is a highly significant political theorist. There is little in his political theory that was distinctive or new. Yet Thomas synthesized, combined, and expressed the results in such a way that his contribution to the development of political theory is important. Of course, the fact that his system has been adopted by such a large part of the Christian tradition adds to his significance. Drawing upon numerous sources Thomas came to strong convictions concerning the political and social nature of man. Man was distinguished from animals by the fact that he could have far more meaningful social and political relationships. The basic focus of this article has been to show that at every point in Thomas's political theory the concept of the common good plays a significant, if not determinative role. The state exists for the common good. The ruler provides political authority and power to ensure stability and order and to see to it that the common good is actively sought. All citizens have responsibilities to do their part in reaching the common good. Finally, the common good is neither the collectivism of a •• Summa Theol., IT-IT, q. 60, a. 6. POLITICAL THEORY OF THOMAS AQUINAS 178 totalitarian government, nor the " rugged individualism " of a conservative political outlook. For Thomas the individual remains of crucial importance, but the individual exists in social relationships which bring to bear both civic and Christian responsibilities on his activities and decisions. The state is not an organism that swallows the individual; rather, the state exists in order that the individual can become what God intended him to be. Likewise the individual seeks the beatific vision but cannot overlook his specific obligations and duties to work for the common good even at his own expense. Like Copleston, one can admire Thomas's "moderation, balance, and common sense." RICHARD A. CROFTS The University of Toledo Toledo, Ohio ABORTION: A REVIEW ARTICLE I A T THE MEETINGS of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago, 29 December 1970, the Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences sponsored a symposium on " Problems in the Meaning of Death." One of the speakers, Professor Robert S. Morison 1 of Cornell University, observed: " Squirm as we may to avoid the inevitable, ... we must shoulder the responsibility of deciding to act in such a way as to hasten the declining trajectories of some lives, while doing our best to slow down the decline of others." Morison's proposal was: " ... We have to do this on the basis of some judgment on the quality of the lives in question." This means that " we should now face the fact that [the] value [of an individual human life] varies with time and circumstance." It means also a comparison of the value of various lives with one another at various points in their " trajectories" in terms of their social worthiness, their enhancement of the general quality of life, or in terms of the social costs of maintaining them. Morison's is, therefore, a social calculus -albeit one that is richly sensitive to respect for individual human life-in which the limit-rule of classical utilitarianism, " each to count for one, no one for more than one " regardless of its state or condition, is of disappearing importance. 2 Toward the end of his remarks Morison appealed to the analogy between his proposal for rationalizing our treatment of the dying in terms of judgments on the quality, social worthiness, and social costs of their lives and the fact that increasingly " men and women have shouldered the same kind of responsibility-but apparently with considerably less horror and dismay-at the beginning of the life-span." Recent developments, he points out, have greatly broadened the " indications " said to justify abortion " to include Robert S. Morison, "Death: Process or Event?" in Science, Vol. 173 (August 1971), pp. 694-8. 2 Such, indeed, is the unavoidable outcome, in the logic of the matter and in the history of morals, of the competition between the " greatest good altogether" and the greatest good of everyone in utilitarian theory. 1 174 175 ABORTION what is essentially the convenience of the mother and the protection of society against the dangers of overpopulation "; to include also " basing the decision of whether or not to abort purely on an assessment of the quality of life likely to be lived by the human organism in question." Here again, the comparison is of times and circumstances; it is also a comparison that pits one life against another life in respects that are not claimed to be or allowed to be a parity between claimants. Actions so fashioned may still add up to a greater good in general, provided we first admit that some lives count for less than one, or are not to be counted. Morison's appeal to the structure of current arguments in favor of benign liberalized abortion to support opening the question of benign liberalized euthanasia is an instructive one. It may serve as a touchstone for unpacking and assessing the arguments in support of either conclusion. For surely, if the moral reasoning is essentially the same, and correct, both practices should be and likely will be the outcome. If the moral reasoning is the same, and incorrect, both practices may still be the outcome. But if the moral reasoning is the same (correct or incorrect) , men and women cannot, without depriving themselves of their wits (consistency) , espouse the one and not the other conclusion also. In any case one can learn more from one unflinching thinker like Morison than from half a dozeu other men. In undertaking to assess the present state of abortion debate (so far as there has been one), and in moving Morison forward as my King's pawn, I of course do not mean to try emotionally to persuade any pro-abortionist from his or her opinion by frightening him or her with euthanasia. Nor do I mean to suggest a merely external or causal social connection between the current practice of abortion and the coming practice of euthanasia (which is the usual meaning of the wedge-" argument ") . Instead, my opening gambit is meant to direct our attention to the structure of the moral arguments. Fundamental to ethical reasoning is the requirement that cases be treated similarly if they are similar in all relevant and important moral features. That is the principle--the hammer-behind the wedge, if there is any tendency for one practice to follow another. We should attend to the moral reasoning, even if there was no such tendency. Morison made extended use of Daniel Callahan's monumental study 8 of the biological, social, legal, and moral issues that bear on abortion decision and practice. In short, before Christmas of 3 Daniel Callahan, Abortion: Law, Choice and Morality Macmillan Co., 1970). (New York: The 176 PAUL RAMSEY the year in which that book was published its moral argument had been used in apology for largely utilitarian reasons for euthanasia, however hesitantly and probingly set forward. We shall have to ask whether Morison correctly parses the grammar of Callahan's moral argument. Morison writes: The same considerations that apply to abortion would appear to apply, in principle, to decisions at the other end of the lifespan. In practice, however, it has proven difficult to approach the latter decisions with quite the same degree of detachment as those involving the life and death of an unborn embryo. It is not easy to overlook the fact that the dying patient possesses at least the remnants of a personality that developed over many decades and that involved a complicated set of interrelationships with other human beings. In the case of the embryo, such relationships are only potential, and it is easier to ignore the future than to overlook the past. It can be argued, however, that it should be easier to terminate a life whose potentialities have all been realized than to interrupt a pregnancy the future of which remains to be unfolded (italics added) . So Morison took from Callahan the view that the moral issues in a decision to terminate life in its early stages " cannot be settled by appeals to absolute rights or standards"; and he promptly applied that reasoning to decisions to terminate life in its final states. Did Morison misuse or aptly apply Callahan's argument? One could wish that the word " absolute" had not been introduced in either case, or that the word could be jettisoned from future discussion. At issue is (only) equality of rights of which every life is a bearer, not the absolute or supreme value of human life as such. Equality is enough in cases of conflict, and where necessity requires it in order to save life, to justify abortion (and also other sorts of killing) as in no sense wrongful killing. At stake is (only) whether we are going to compare lives in conflict and say that one is of less worth than another because of its state or condition, or because of social worthiness or social costs. To know that that is forbidden, one does not need to believe that human life is an absolute value or the highest value on earth and in heaven. One has only to know that individual human lives are of equa1 worth in order to know that one ought not be subordinated to another, or one be taken (arbitrarily and without necessity) and the other left. II Callahan's book is concerned with establishing an "indicationspolicy," establishing a " legal policy," establishing a " moral policy" in regard to abortion. In all three areas he is overridingly concerned ABORTION 177 with the desirability of a consensus-as the word "policy " evidences. This goal may be granted for policy in regard to medical indications and policy in regard to law. It is, however, hardly an evident sine qua non in regard to discussions of the morality of abortion. Ethical analysis of any issue is concerned with determining right and wrong action, not first of all with consensus; nor is it dependent on achieving the goal of making its conclusions. persuasive. So it is quite proper for a philosopher to say he has not heard a cogent refutation of his argument for the existence of God, even if it has ceased to be persuasive to most of his contemporaries. Indeed, he ceases to be a philosopher-or an ethicist-if he changes his mind because some, most or all of his contemporaries remain unpersuaded. Of course, anyone who engages in moral discourse appeals to a community of shared values. He proposes reasons why others should accept his judgments. Callahan is correct if-but only if-by " consensus " he means to s.ay that moral discourse presupposes that there might be agreement and wishes to evoke that agreement (without as part of his argument depending on its actual achievement) . We shall here take up for review only Callahan's understanding of the ingredients of a "moral policy." In particular, attention will be directed to (I) his idiosyncratic list of the referents to which the evaluative term "the sanctity of life" applies, and to (2) his espousal of " the developmental view " of how and when a human life begins and of how (strangely, these are separable questions), once among us, a human life gradually acquires value, rights, protectability equal to any other life. It is the combination of Callahan's missteps on these two points which accounts for the misguidance he has given us concerning proper moral reasoning in the matter of abortion. While granting that the " dignity " of human life or "respect " for life are substitute formulations for the principle of " the sanctity of life," Callahan insists on the importance of conserving and continuing to use the latter expression. It is the " one fundamental basis for an approach to moral consensus " in Western culture. The expression " still lives, is still .affirmed, still has a deep cultural reasonance .... " Its appropriation, often, by nonreligious people testifies to its utility as a basic norm. (pp. 308-9) Having established that, and set his own programme accordingly, Callahan promptly gives the principle of " the sanctity of life " (or alternatively, p. 328, he perceives in the consensus-use of this concept in our present culture) a meaning and referents it never had on land or sea in the whole course of the Western moral tradition with which he ostensibly wants to keep continuity (" with- 178 PAUL RAMSEY out drastic revision," p. 309). I suggest that the meaning of "the sanctity of life "-the job it does-in Callahan's scheme amounts to a displacing and a replacing definition, not even a reforming one. Perhaps Callahan simply accepts a cultural displacing definition. In either case, the debate should not be over whether there are only intrinsic or also extrinsic source of life's sanctity. (pp. 313317) Nor is the issue the "moral-rule system" (pp. 323-4) someone may believe to follow from this most general norm; that can continue to be debated. The chief issue is the meaning Callahan (or various sub-communities in the present-day) give to "the sanctity of life" by the multiple referents to which such sanctity is ascribed. Quite diverse rule-systems pop out, or were already implicit in, Callahan's characterization of many forms of life besides the individual soul as deserving of this high appellation. Or rather, the multiple lifesanctities yield multiple and competing rule-systems; no more. Not only the multiplicity of the kinds of human life ascribed " sanctity " but also the order in which Callahan takes them up seems-at least prima facie-to predetermine the balancing judg·· ments likely to be the upshot in case of conflict between rulesystems. First sanctified is the survival and integrity of the human species, " the survival of collective human life," the " right " of the human species to exist-not the sanctity of the individual human being. If, on the supposition that for every right there is a duty, one asks whether God has a " duty " to insure collective human survival, the answer is rather that " the most important broad rule is that the human species ought to work for its own survival." (p. 328) From this, of course, it follows that " any abortion rule (for or against) which threatens the survival of the species (and entire subcommunities of that species) will be subject to the negative judgment of 'the sanctity of life.' " (p. 330) 4 Logical enough, on Callahan's idiosyncratic usage. When, however, collective survival was not an ultimate human task; and, come what may, a human being was the repository of sanctity, the rule was that anyone who caused one of the least of the little ones to suffer offense had better be cast into the middle of the sea with a millstone around his neck (Mark 9:42). • Later on, after toying with the " morally, legally and politically repugnant " possibility that a " forceful invasion of a woman's body, a coerced operation " might be required by national or species survival, Callahan draws back and writes: " But clearly one is speaking here of a moral problem that goes beyond those which the human species has experience in dealing with; it takes us into an unexplored moral cave (which will remain unexplored here)." (p. Indeed, that is a " moral cave," residually required by the notion of species-rights-which then had better be expunged and replaced by a proper eschatology. ABORTION 179 Then there is the survival and integrity of family lineages, (p. 330) to which are ascribed "sanctity "-again not the individual human being, bearing a proper name, in the procreating generations of mankind. Next comes "the integrity of bodily life." (p. 331) I do not known what to make of Callahan's assertion here that "the most general rule " is that the individual human being ought to be allowed to live and enjoy the protection of his fellow human beings, in comparison with his former assertion that " the most important broad rule " is the collective survival of the species. Perhaps he means that species-life-sanctity will be more highly valued than another in one or another sub-community consensus; and that the rulesystems will vary acordingly. Clearly, however, Callahan's late arrival at the traditionally received meaning of the " right to life" does not change the conclusion to be drawn from his ordering (or his accidental ordering, or variable agreements as to the ordering) of the forms of life having sanctity. This is evident from the following italicized words: " ... The 'sanctity of life' implies not only the preservation of human life collectively, but also the preservation and protection of individual human life." (p. 331, italics added) Thus, Callahan's novel proposal is that " ' the sanctity of life ' implies a spectrum of values ranging from the preservation of the species to the inviolability of human bodies, from man in the aggregate (present and future) to man as individual (present and future). The discrete rule systems each serve an aspect of human life: (a) species-life; (b) familial-lineage-life; (c) body-life; (d) person-lif.e; and (e) body-individuality life." (pp. 333-34) In passing, he notes the fact that, traditionally, an in-principled or rationally irresolvable conflict between the rule-systems that flow separately from each of these kinds of life-sanctities has been avoided by adherence to an evaluative ranking of them. In particular, "traditionally, the individual's right to life would seem to have taken precedence over other rights .... The reason for this precedence ... has undoubtedly been the common sense perception that an essential condition for the exercise of any human rights is the existence of human beings as the subjects of these rights .... " (p. 335) That is sufficient to demonstrate that Callahan's definition of " the sanctity of life " (or his perception of its meaning in our culture), especially with its many referents, amounts to a radical replacement. He chooses a novel alternative: " If conflicting rules each serves the sanctity of lives [in any one of those meanings], then a choice which gives priority to one over the other could still 180 PAUL RAMSEY serve and pass the final test of the principle from one perspective but fail it from another." (p. 335) That means that conflict between the rule-systems falling under each of the sorts of life-sanctities will have to be resolved by appeals to something besides " the sanctity of life." That principle tells us nothing, except generally to favor life in all its manifestations. Conflicts in moral decision must be resolved by appeal to other and lesser principles, and in particular by moral policy-formation. Thus, the word " sanctity" covers a retreat from past ethics that used the term; and it also fails to illumine or guide choice. In the latter defect Callahan glories. ". . . The main value of the principle is that its meap.ing is indeterminate." While claiming that the principle is productive of "an over-whelming bias " in favor of human life, in favor of "firm rules protecting life (in all its aspects)/' and indeed while claiming that the indeterminacy of the principle is " what gives it the power to stand in judgment on the ruies" (italics added), that power does not extend to the resolution of conflicts in any principled way. The aim is rather " to avoid irreconcilable conflicts," to avoid also conflicts reconcilable by extension of the principle; in short, to set up intractable conflicts among the sanctities and leave room for the free decision of moral policy-makers, decisions made on some other grounds than the sanctity of life itself. (pp. 337-8) Callahan defines a " moral policy " as " any culturally, philosophically or religiously chosen, given or accepted way of devising, relating and ordering moral rules" (p. 341); "whatever the accepted method of ordering the rules might be." (p. 342) This yields the greatest possible latitude among moral policies that can claim to serve the sanctity of life. " For instance, a moral-policy decision to extend protection of individual human life to the utmost conceivable limit-giving precedent to the 'right to life '-would suggest drawing the line on the beginning of human life very early in the conception process and very late in the dying process. Another moral-policy decision, however, might be one which sought to strike a balance between individual rights and the needs of a community to survive. In that case, the beginning of human life might be designated as taking place relatively late in gestation (making abortion permissible) and death, as occurring relatively early in the dying process (making an early cessation of artificial support permissible)." (p. 342) In any case, Callahan seems to admit that one life-sanctity can prevail over another in any direction. Moreover, a temporary ordering of the rule-system takes place only because the "exigencies of circumstance" require rapid shifts in policies, (p. 343) and by virtue of calculations based on ABORTION 181 lesser principles-" ' least suffering,' ' lesser evil' and the like " (p. 335) -never on the basis of a life that is the locus of chief sanctity. Notably, when Callahan referred to past ethics of the sanctity of life, with the precedence it assigned to the sanctity of the individual's life, he wrote rather of the "right" to life. The " right to life " is an essential condition of the exercise of any human rights, and there must be human beings for there to be any subjects bearing rights. (p. 335) One does not normally speak of the species or a family lineage as the subjects of a right to life, although we do speak of a right to procreate or of a family's property right, for example. The language of " sanctity" does the same job, however, as the language of " rights," provided one pays attention to the meaning and referent of the word wherever used in the tradition of Western ethics. 5 Human beings are a sacredness, under God, in the biological order; a sacredness also in the social and political order. Great worth is ascribed, of course, to the communities that nurture human beings. The terms for that are "orders of creation," God's " mandates," " vocation," the " estate " or " covenant " of marriage and between the generations, etc. But, whether man's communities are said to be a glorious blessing or a " vale of soul-making," the focus of God's call and sanctification is upon human beings in their time and place and societies. For this reason, the common good should flow back upon every member of those societies. Each should be included. Everyone must count and be counted. From this flows the quest for equal justice and equal rights for all regardless of their state or condition. There is a relic, therefore, of the original and true meaning and referent of " the sanctity of life " in the requirement in classical 5 James 1\I. Gustafson has argued that "sanctity of life "-language often translates out as "value " rather than as " right." He contends that " if one speaks of the fetus' 'right to life,' it is more difficult to justify an abortion than if one speaks of the value of the life of the fetus in relation to a whole host of other values which might be jeopardized to some degree if the fetus is permitted to live." Against him Callahan argues (p. 325) that the language of rights is " translatable " into the language of value, indeed is "reducible" to the latter. This shows that, for Callahan, the primary language is value language. That is what he means by "sanctity." His objection to the language of "rights" is that it "seems to take life and nascent life off the balancing scale altogether, obviating the need for value calculations." That rather begs the question. Note here, however, that the " right " to life and the " sanctity " of life are expressions from translatable language ;;ystems. Perhaps, the latter is primary to the former; religious people ordinarily so believe. But Callahan gets to his " host of values " by changing the ordinary meaning of the word "sanctity" and its referent. 182 PAUL ·RAMSEY utilitarianism that " each should count for one and no one for more than one," that there be just distribution, that the " greatest good " (or " least suffering " or " lesser evil ") be of all concerned, never a balancing calculation of the "greatest good altogether," some counting for less than others. What Callahan has accomplished by his idiosyncratic use of "the sanctity of life," and by virtue of its " deep cultural resonance " still among us, is a large opening toward the abandonment of that principle. This happens when he discovers-certainly without theological warrant-that there are other life-sanctities that may be equal to or even override the sanctity of the individual human soul (or to say, ethically, the same thing, human being or life). In our ethical heritage, " conflict of life" -situations and quandries have not been "·Conflict of sanctities" in Callahan's sense of their unordered rule-systems. III Callahan again erodes the foundations of an equal justice, and opens the way to a comparative evaluation of human lives to the detriment of those of lesser worth, by his espousal of what he calls " the developmental school's " answer to the question, When does human life begin? Rejected are the "genetic proof" that an individual human life having full worth begins with conception, on the one hand, and, on the other, the "social consequence" school's way of evaluating human worth. To ask the question, When does human life begin? is, in the context of the ethics of abortion, to ask the question, When does equally protectable human life begin? Callahan seems at times to accept this ·correlation. Then we might suppose that the developmental school's answer to that question is the proposal that, on the best interpretation of the biological data, human development is a continuum. By incremental degrees we become human beings; by the same incremental degrees and at the same pace we acquire equality. In fact two individuals conceived at the same time would always be equal: equally potential, equally actual human beings at any point on the two trajectories of continuous development; and, correlated with that, the two human beings would be at every point equal in value. If human development is a continuum, contrast in evaluating lives could only arise between individuals who are at earlier and later stages of the trajectory of gestational development (and, it should be noted, neonatal development as well). But this is not what the developmental school affirms. One ABORTION 183 would have thought so, from the statement that "it is the stage of morphological development which is crucial." (p. 378) One would have thought that the claim was that along a continuum of morphological development we acquire our individual human being and along the same scale acquire value. Instead it is a far stranger notion, namely, that it is only worth that is gradually accumulated. Representatives of the developmental school, Callahan writes, are for the most part willing to grant that " fertilization genetically establishes ' individual human life.' " But they raise the question whether the actualization of that form of human life is " really critical in establishing the basis for abortion decisions.'' (p. 386) " While the genetic and developmental school agree that individual human life begins at conception, they disagree about whether full value ought to be assigned at once to the life thus begun." (p. 397) That means, in essence, that the developmental point of view picks up an option Callahan stated earlier: " It is a further possibility that, while we may say that human life ' begins ' at ' x ' point in the development process, we may not feel compelled to say that it is necessarily to be fully valued or fully protected at that point (but rather at 'y' point).'' Thus a negative answer is given to the question " whether a determination that life begins at a given point entails that it ought to be valued at that point." Still to be settled is " the degree to which life, once begun, should be valued ... .'' (p. 378) That, in turn, means that, for all the prominence given to the question, When does life begin? Callahan sets it aside. He does not simply give a gradualistic morphological answer to it. Instead the question: When does equally protectable human life begin? weighs anchor from the question, When does human life begin? and floats away. It floats away upon the turbulent and uncharted seas of "philosophy" and "moral policy." " ... Once some actualization is acquired," Callahan writes, " it is open to people to vary their norms on just how much actualization should count." (p. 390, italics added) That is his astonishing answer to my contention that many alleged arguments for the morality of abortion would be equally good arguments for infanticide! In any case, it is the criteria (for comparatively evaluating admitted lives) which are "developmental.'' Callahan wants "a way of choosing which would allow us to weigh the different values of different human lives in a nonarbitrary way; we would, to be exact, compare these lives on the scale of ' personhood,' a scale more nuanced than that provided by a totally genetic norm of 'humanity.'" (pp. 388-9) (There are also "nuanced" comparisons 184 PAUL RAMSEY to be made along that scale between a neonate and a ·baby at one year of age.) The answer to Callahan at this point is that there are no " nonarbitrary " ways of weighing the different value of different human lives, if first one abandons the principle of equal rights and equal justice ascribed alike to everyone. However, some comparisons could, of course, be less arbitrary or less frivolous than others. Some readers might suppose that the developmental position is a contrivance made up by putting together the various answers given in the past to the question of life's beginning and value. Conception, the 40 and 80 days, quickening, birth: these and developmental achievements disclosed to us by modern knowledge might simply be arranged on a scale of growing humanity and growing worth. Even so, a developmental point of view summarizing past or possible positions on life's beginnings would have to light upon, and for good reason light upon, some point ' y ' in the scale after which equality among human lives has been established. This is an omission all the more glaring in a position that is willing to say human life begins at ' x ' point in the developmental process, while it is unwilling to say that life is to be fully valued or fully protected at that point (but rather at' y' point). What, we may ask, is that point? So far as I can see Callahan leaves this question wide open. If we may construe him to mean to stop developmental comparison at viability or birth, he does not say so. Nor, more importantly, does he give good reasons for doing so. The crucial point to see is that the "developmental criteria" school, (p. 890, italics added) the " nuance " school, does not arise from reflection on the many past or possibly well-grounded beliefs about life's beginning, or from putting together the truth that may be claimed for each. The developmental school is rather an entirely novel invention, resulting from omitting the most essential claim made by each and every one of those exercises in drawing a line on life's beginning. Wherever the line was drawn (or could plausibly be drawn, so long as our tradition of ethics perdures), there at the beginning of individual human life begins the dignity and sanctity of that human life with its moral claim to ·equal respect and equal protectability. So it would appear that Christian teachings about the morality or abortion have changed from time to time; it has changed with changing beliefs about when life begins. So also, in common law, when quickening was believed to be that point, the unnecessary destruction of a fetus after quickening was a form of homicide. What we have before us in Callahan's book is the novel proposal that developmental value ABORTION 185 can be ascribed to human life in separation from the question of the beginning of that life, and that the evaluations upon admitted lives accepted into our " moral policy " can be unequal and relative. Turning to the " genetic school," the first thing to be said is that it is one of several possible positions that do not break the connection between life and equal worth. Some may believe that the " proof from genotype " is in the light of modern knowledge the most plausible line to draw on the beginning of life. Still in studying Callahan's book, it is best to treat the genetic school as exemplary of all those positions that do not separate between the origin of life and the origin of equal worth. The use of developmental criteria of worth contrasts not only with the genetic school's view of the beginning of life and worth, but as well with segmentation, implantation, fetal brain waves, the achievement of complete if rudimentary major organ systems, the capacity for self-movement, or even birth (or viability) as the line drawn on when the human community should acknowledge that there is present among us another member claiming equal protection and inviolability. Many of Callahan's arguments against the genetic school apply with equal force to any of the foregoing "schools." None could tolerate " developmental criteria " or comparison of human lives after the point it draws on life's beginning (and the beginning of that life's worth equal to any other). In short,there is need for a set of good reasons ("signs of life") for stating that a new life is " born " no less than for a set of good reasons for stating that a man has died. There is need to define the outer limits of the human community, within which equal justice and equal rights prevail, and everyone counts for one and none counts for more than another, no matter how recent his arrival or soon his departure date. That is the import of the " moment " of death; it is also the import of the question, When does life begin? The developmental school would fuzz both issues. It seems to believe that a human life can increase in comparative value after it has being and can decrease in comparative value as its end approaches. If one does not exactly slide into life and slide out of it, still one slides in and out of equal protectability. One group of charges against the genetics school can simply be dismissed as question-begging. The charge, for example, that this position simply shows " the influence of a moral policy ... which would like to prevent the assigning of different values to different individuals according to the degree to which genetic potentiality is actualized." (p. 383) To that the proper retort is " Yes, indeed!", with the additional comment that this is the upshot also of any view which holds that human life begins later-whether 186 PAUL RAMSEY " mediate animation " somewhere in the gestational process, or "mediate animation" a.fter birth (say, six months or when the power of speech is exercised) . Also question-begging is the claim that the developmental school " provides a way of weighing the comparative value of the lives at stake " in abortion decisions. (p. 396) Of course it does! It also (unless 'y' point =birth= equal protection " is argued for as a second, decisive mediate line to be drawn) provides a way of weighing the lives of parents against the life of a mongoloid baby who cannot survive without a heart or bowel operation. Question-begging also is the "argument " that the genetic point of view " lacks the capacity to do nuanced justice " in cases of conflict, because it "makes its central ·focus the avoidance of all basis for discrimination among lives " (p. 396) ; that it takes the only real question to be whether the conceptus is to be counted as human life, and "renders unnecessary the asking of any further questions" about quality of lives. (p. 399) So also does any view that at any time the equal sanctity of lives is established. Of course, there remains the possibility that aborting the conceptus may still be justified. Concerning Callahan's preference for the developmental school because it recognizes " real dilemmas even when they are not so severe as to pit life against life," (p. 399) we can ask: Who does not recognize such dilemmas? The question is whether we should solve them by disqualifying lives that are defective. 6 Concerning the argument that " by the logic of the genetic school the outcome of any abortion decision is de jure decided in advance: a pregnant woman is, by definition, a woman carrying a human life within her ... ," (p. 400) the reply is that that fact certainly does not decide all abortion decisions in advance. If any of the foregoing are arguments, I am at the present moment riding the globe in one of our space satellites. One cannot bottom the defense of a point of view upon its fecundity in " nuanced" comparisons of one life with another when the issue was whether nuanced judgments are at all appropriate as between equally sacred lives. When the serpents with their tails in their mouths-the circular "arguments "-are removed, there is not much left to Callahan's objection to the genetic argument (which I take simply to be 6 Callahan gives weighty argument against abortion for the sake of a defective fetus (pp. 453-4) when that alone is in consideration. When lives are set in balance, however, the weight seems likely always to go against a life defective in potentiality or quality. ABORTION 187 prototypical of any of the mediate views which hold-contrary to the developmental school-that with life's beginning begins equal worth). Callahan seems to have a point against John T. Noonan's statement that " a being who was conceived by human parents and is potentially capable of human acts is human." With its concession to potentiality not yet actualized, that is not a very strong statement of the argument from genotype. Therefore, Callahan's suggestion that Noonan is speaking only of "humanity in the abstract as an attribute of a being," and his contention that Noonan's is only "a stipulation about what should be counted as 'a man'," (p. 381) have a certain plausibility. Less weighty is Callahan's attempt to refute Noonan by throwing contingent doubt around whether the zygote will actually develop into a being " capable of human acts." " Only time can tell." Noonan's is a policy of acting as if every fertilized ovum will necessarily develop into a being with the attribute of "humanity." Since, because of extrinsic events, that is not necessarily so, Callahan goes so far as to say that the chances of killing a human being in a given case of abortion is only " far greater" than in case we kill a form of life that does not have human potential (p. 382)! " ... The class of beings with the human genetic code has this potency; but this does not tell us whether any particular being within this class has it." (p. 383) Surely, that is like saying that, while the class of beings in a hospital nursery for newborns has potentiality of human speech, this does not tell us whether any particular being within this class will die or not before he develops his own capacity to speak. Are we treating the class of newborns simply as if they now have the potentiality for communication in human language? But then, what are we to make of Callahan's own view of life from conception? For his own part, Callahan earlier said that " the mere lack of present actualization of human potentiality would not be sufficient warrant for withdrawing the appellative 'human ' from a being morphologically or genetically human." (p. 365) There he was not speaking of " humanity in the abstract," such as might be ascribed to sperm or ova or to cells of the placenta or the cells that continue to live after a man has died. Clearly, Callahan acknowledges the particular humanity of the genetically and morphologically human being after its leap into existence at conception. That was no stipulation about what counts as a human life; only that life is not equally protectable. My own statement of the genetic argument was a stronger one, having not to do alone with potentiality for future human acts but with the present actuality of human individuality " deter- 188 PAUL RAMSEY mining " the developed person-to-be. I wrote that genetics seems to prove that from conception the individual is already the one he is going to become, that thereafter the individual is " becoming the one he already is." That, of course, meant through all environments, intrauterine and extrauterine. My phraseology may have been too concise, not to say (I fondly hope) poetic. Still it is strange that Callahan can suppose that reference to environmental influences can in any measure be a reply to the genetic argument. (p. 383) Could anyone be so stupid as to suppose that genotype is all that goes into the person throughout life, without the flowering of genotype and influence of environments? The argument from genotype (or from any later, mediate point) consists of a reference to the individual human being who, after he comes to be, moves through all environments (affecting his "phenotype"). In any case, the argument is certainly not merely a moral policy of treating the individual as if he was from the beginning a unique human individual engaged in the process of becoming through various environments. Or is Callahan going to assume the burden of demonstrating when in the course of human development, and in what environment, any genotypical individual (which he does not deny is from the first a human life) becomes an individual human life accomplished enough phenotypically to be Callahan's equal? IV While my statement of the argument from genotype was a stronger one than Noonan's (because the latter invokes the notion of potentiality 7 in ascribing human life), my adherence to it was never full or certain. Callahan does not sufficiently take this into account. It is true that when first writing on the subject I said that the moment when identical twinning could occur affords a ' significant modification ' of the argument from genotype. On the basis of that expression Callahan thinks he discerns that I put forward the " moment " of possible segmentation " in a somewhat less than enthusiastic way." (pp. 379-380) I grant that the word " modification " was too weak; it later 7 Callahan affirms that " the genetic school rests so much of its case on potentiality that the importance and role of development in producing a fully developed human being is not given sufficient attention." (p. 395) I would say that the argument from genotype, if correct, rests none of its case on "potentiality." The case rests rather on an actual entity or being who thereafter is a self-developing life through various environments. In any case, I find nowhere where Callahan has argued for when we clearly have among us " a fully developed human being." ABORTION 189 was replaced by statements to the effect that segmentation provides a " rebuttal argument " to the proof from genotype. But for the fact of identical twins in human reproduction, the genetic argument for when life is transmitted would prevail; since, however, there may be two individuals having the same genotype from segmentation onward, the genetic argument is rebutted. That is to say, if the parents, of identical twins, Jill and Joyce, ask themselves from when they came, in the light of modern knowledge they are not likely to say earlier than segmentation. To the "potentiality" of twinning parents would not ascribe those proper names; they would not say they are parents yet. But if they could know there are two individual lives within, and if they knew their sex, parents would likely name the two actual individuals to whom they have already transmitted life-with hope for all environments to come. In drawing a line upon the beginning of individual human life we cannot expect theoretical certainty. All we should expect are good reasons, based on scientific facts that can only afford us a practical certitude. For this reason, I do not believe that the rebuttal force of the argument from twinning can in turn be rebutted by an appeal to mystery. This is the appeal made by Joseph T. Mangan, S. J. 8-after saying that "it would be a disservice to exaggerate the importance of precisely how our heavenly Father brings about the animation of the two human persons who develop as identical twins." He assumes an individual life began at conception, and then sets out to penetrate in some measure the mystery of how a twin could come later. Since, however, the good reasons for believing the former proposition (" from conception ") are not theoretically conclusive demonstrations, but only a practically plausible (or more plausible) interpretation of the biological data, the mystery might as well be what our heavenly Father was doing between .conception and segmentation when Jill and Joyce began as distinct individuals. Because Mangan holds firmly to immediate animation (or hominization), he permits the argument from segmentation to introduce only a slight revision in his position. " The identical-twin difficulty," he writes, "is hardly decisive in determining that hominization occurs after conception, except in the case of one of the identical twins." So he allows " mediate animation " or " delayed hominization " in the case of one of the identical twins; which one, we do not know. Supporters of immediate animation 8 Joseph T. Mangan, S. J., "The Wonder of Myself: Ethical-Theological Aspects of Direct Abortion," in Theological Studies, Vol. 31, No. 1 (March 1970), pp. 190 PAUL RAMSEY must introduce a second soul, created and infused later than the first, to take care of the case of identical twins. One individual, present from the first, remains in one of the segmented parts. The other part, when fully separated from being informed by the first soul, receives another ensoulment. That is to say, it is impossible to believe either that (I) different individuals (souls) Jill and Joyce had the same, unifiedly active bodily life for the seven to fourteen days between conception and segmentation; or (2) that the individuals (souls) we name Jill and Joyce came from the division of a precedent individual human life (soul), which we might name Jilljoyce. We must, therefore, assume that Jill or Joyce have different ages. One is seven to fourteen days older than the other; which, we do not know. Mangan's notation is that his interpretation is "at least solidly probably true." If I may use that language, I would say that the more solidly probably true opinion is that Jill and Joyce began their individual human lives not earlier than segmentation. Still I can see how someone reviewing the same evidence can remain convinced of the argument from genotype, bolstered by the impressive facts about what takes place in genetic orginality at conception and by explanations (such as Mangan's) of how a second individual might arise later. Still, parents of identical twins, if given modern knowledge about segmentation, would not likely think of Jill or Joyce (one or the other) beginning earlier, unless they were already convinced that life begins with conception. Then they might only revise that interpretation somewhat, in the way Mangan proposes. Likewise, if moralists were confronted with a supposable manner of human procreation that in every instance resulted in identical twins, it would not occur to them in the light of modern knowledge to trace life's beginning to a time before segmentation. They would then incline to leave shrouded in mystery, as another stage in the whole mystery of the transmission of life from life, what our heavenly Father was doing between conception and segmentation. There is an additional occurrence in nature which-however rare-clinches the rebuttal of the argument that genotype is the line to draw on the beginning of human life. Not only may one fertilized egg become two individuals (segmentation), but also two fertilized eggs may become one individual. There is fluidity and indeterminacy in either direction during the earliest days following conception. Two fertilized ova that ordinarily become fraternal twins (let us call them Jack and Jill or George and Joyce-differently sexed as fraternal twins may be) may rarely not result in those two individuals. Instead, it sometimes happens-however ABORTION 191 unique the two genotypes started on their way at conceptionthat the stability of the individuation established at conception is not yet settled enough to prevent the flowing together for those two genotypes and the production of a third that was not there before and which is a novel genotypical combination of the two who were there before. This (rarely) may happen at some point before or during the time identical twinning might have taken place instead. Shall we say that Jack and Jill or George and Joyce, launched on their way at conception were simply corrupted or lost like many a zygote, and replaced in our heavenly Father's providence by a third individual human life (soul), whom we might name Jackjill or Georgejoyce? I think not. That is too great an appeal to mystery used to prop up the view that life begins at conception. One would have to suppose, as Andre Hellegers pointed out, that "one of the two souls [or both] must have disappeared without any fertilized egg having died." 9 For these reasons I have not simply cited segmentation in rebuttal of the argument from genotype. Instead, I have appealed to " the time at or after which it is settled whether there will be one or two or more distinct human individuals." That was to take account of the fact that not only may one become two; two may become one, over approximately the same span of time. Mangan seems to believe that " mosaics " (the scientific description of one individual .from two genotypes) is a matter of remote future human contrivance, like cloning. Mosaic mice have been produced; perhaps mad scientists will do the same in man. But this phenomenon is an occurrence, however rare, in the nature of human reproduction. This along with segmentation shows the uncertainty of human individuation ( ensoulment?) at conception. Germain Grisez's 10 appeal to "individuation" is, strangely enough, not as compelling as Mangan's appeal to mystery in attempting to answer the rebuttal argument based on the scientific facts of identical twinning and mosaics. Grisez says, quite rightly, that two individuals may begin to be present before observable splitting occurs, " duality " may be established before the two individuals actually divide; and he speculates, " it would be interesting to know just when the split occurs that leads to identical twins." One such speculation is that there is already a genetic factor in segmentation. (p. 25) If it can be shown in the future that 9 Andre Hellegers, "Fetal Development," in Theological Studies, Vol. 81, No. 1 (March 1970), p. 5. 10 Germain Grisez, Abortion: The Myths, the Realities, and the Arguments (New York: Corpus Books, 1970). 192 PAUL RAMSEY " splitting " is already established from conception, that, I would say, would pull the rug out from under the argument from segmentation. What is weak in Grisez's case is his response to the presently assumed scientific facts, namely, that " the duality which leads later to formation of twins is not already determined in the zygote." (p. Yl5, italics added) Against that presumed fact Grisez's appeal is simply to an abstract concept of individuation. He correctly argues that the biological concept of individuality is not the same as the uniqueness of a " genetic package." From this, Grisez reasons, the zygote and blastocyst until the 7-14 days in which segmentation may occur is an " individual " distinct from the parents; and then the twins are " individuals " in distinction from one another and from that 7-14 day old "individual" from which they sprang. " The individuality of twins in relation to their parents clearly is established at conception, although their individuation in relation to one another may occur somewhat later .... The individuality of the components of a mosaic in relation to one another is terminated some time after conception but their individuality established at conception in reference to progenitors is not altered when the mosaic is formed." (p. Yl74) On such a notion of " individuality " Grisez need not worry about " souls " " splitting," or minute bodies yet without souls. Instead he wants to have it both ways. On the one hand, he argues (as if it is relevant to the human case) that "two individuals can develop from one ... much as two individual animals of many lower forms of life can develop by the division of a single, existing individual" (the halves of earthworms, I suppose!). On the other hand, he takes up, with seeming seriousness, the suggestion that " we should think of identical twins as grandchildren of their putative parents, the individual that divided being the true offspring, and the identical twins children of that offspring by atypical reproduction." So in order to retain belief that life begins at conception, Grisez (contra Hellegers) adopts the view that " a certain number of human individuals ... cease to be shortly after conception," and at that point two others begin by asexual reproduction. (p. Yl6) In the case of mosaics, Grisez relies on the fact that implantation cannot occur without definition of function, so long as the two morulae are distinct from each other they are distinct individuals, and " once combined the two cease to be as such and form one new individual "-like a "grafted plant." With considerable astonishment we may ask whether any such " individuality " is the life we should respect and protect from conception. In trying to prove too much, Grisez has proved too little of ethical import. ABORTION 198 I know nothing with which to compare Grisez's suggestion that the zygote-blastocyst is our child, the identical twins our grandchildren, except a recent scientific article which, tongue in cheek, argued that humanity comes in two ever recurring stages of reproduction, diploid (individuals with 46 chromonomes) and haploid (sperm and ovum, "individuals" with Q3 chromosomes). Putting these scenarios together, our sperm and ova are our chidlren, the zygote-blastocyst our grandchild, and identical twins our greatgrandchildren-each clearly individuated from the other, all equally protectable. To be preferred is Mangan's appeal to the mystery of what our heavenly Father may have been up to. Also to be preferred is the suggestion of an undergraduate student of mine-one of the "Jesus people "-that Jill began at conception and then God took out of her side (like the rib from Adam from which Eve was created) excess cells of the same genotype into which to infuse the soul of Judith. The point here to be made is that conception or segmentation or perhaps other points are serious proposals about when life begins. The " genetic school " is only exemplary of that concern in approaching any discussion of the morality of abortion. The point that should here be made is that Callahan has not pursued with proper diligence the question, When does life begin? Nor has he held that question to its proper meaning in the context of the morality of abortion. The point is not that I or anyone else subscribes to the genetic school; but, I suggest, the point is that I posed the question correctly when first suggesting that there may be good reasons for departing from the genetic school. I then wrote: "If there is a moment in the development of nascent life subsequent to impregnation and prior to birth (or graduation from Princeton) at which it would be reasonable to believe that an individual human life begins to be inviolate [sic], that moment is arguably at the stage of blastocyst. . . . Blastocyst . . . affords serious moralists a fact concerning nascent life that may and must be taken into account. ... " And I definitely stated that segmentation may support classing the moral issue of the expulsive action of intrauterine devices and the " morning after " pill as not bortion, but rather as contraception, or an attack upon prehuman organic matterY That is, an attack upon something that as yet is only 11 Paul Ramsey, "The Morality of Abortion," in Daniel H. Lab by, ed., Life or Death: Ethics and Options (Seattle, Washington: The University of Washington Press, 1968), p. 63 n. The scientific language and analysis of that chapter and footnote are more exact in the revision printed in John Rachels, ed., Moral Problems (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), p. 5 n. 194 PAUL RAMSEY potentially an individual human life. However large the quantum jump between abstract humanity of sperm and ovum and humanity of the zygote, the latter may not yet be Jill or Joyce. v Subsequently, I set forth the good science-based reasons for yet a third possible line to draw on the beginning of life (in the meaning that should have in the context of the morality of abortion). In addition to the argument from genotype and the argument from the time after which (given the fluidity as yet of zygote and the cleaving cluster of cells) it is settled whether there will be one or two or more human individuals to come, I added the argument from the achievement of morphological humanity and major, functioning organ systems in the late embryo-very early fetus. 12 I may have explained the case for regarding human life as of equal inviolability from the late embryo-very early fetal stage only "in a somewhat less than enthusiastic way." If so, that was for two reasons. First, the achievement of morphological signs of humanity seems to be more a development than an arrival on the scene. It is not as decisive a rebuttal of the argument from twinning or from genotype as twinning is a rebuttal of the argument from genotype. Second, I like a clear line (and there is some need for a clear and definite line) when it is a question of determining when a new and equal member of the human community, a bearer also of an inviolate right to life, shows his presence among us. Morphological humanity and the achievement of major organ systems functioning together in the unity of organized life affords us only a " span of time." When you think about it, however, this may be the reality we must compose into crucial decisions about life's sanctity. After all, a man dies over a span of time; he may come to be in the same way. In the first case, we need sound reasons for stating that a man has died, that he has died all the way as an organized human life. In the second case, we need sound reasons for stating that a man has been " born " among us. (The respect to be accorded to life in its modality of coming-to-be, or the-doubtless less and qualitatively quite different-respect to be accorded to what remains as a corpse or the abstractly human life that continues in the cells, is not at issue here.) Callahan's view bears superficial resemblance to that of Joseph 12 Paul Ramsey, "Reference Points in Deciding about Abortion," in John T. Noonan, Jr., ed., The Morality of Abortion (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), pp. 69-79. ABORTION 195 F. Donceel, S. J., who argues that a distinction should be made between " immediate animation " (from conception there is individual human "life') and "delayed hominization" (when there is a human soul, or-ethically speaking-a bearer of worth and right to life equal to that of any man) .13 But while Donceel points in the direction of answering the question, When does fully protectable, humanly ensouled life begin? and while he clearly recognizes that this is the crucial question of ethics, Callahan fails to attend at all to that question. He leaves that, too, on a sliding developmental scale and seems not to be aware of the gravity of his omission. If one rejects " hominization " at conception (or rejects the genetic school), he must assemble reasons for believing this takes place at some later point. That cannot be left open-ended-delayed and delayed, or in process of approximationin ethics. Donceel rejects Platonic-Cartesian dualism and argues in favor of the Aristotelian distinction of vegetable, animal, and rational souls or principles of life and in favor of Thomistic hylomorphism, which requires that the human soul (or, ethically speaking, fully protectable human life) be the form of a highly organized body. He counters the historical thesis that Christian teachings in regard to the unborn have varied with knowledge or supposed knowledge and denies that the persuasiveness of " immediate animation= hominization" has increased because of the knowledge we have gained in recent years of reproductive biology. Instead this has been due to a creeping Platonism or a creeping Cartesianism. Such dualism regards the soul as a pointless and spaceless substance capable of inhabiting a minute unorganized body (the zygote), the "sculptor" of the statue to come and not the form of the living statue of a man, an efficient cause only and not the formal cause of the life in question. The human soul can exist only in a highly organized body. The soul is the first act of physical, organized body. As the sensitive soul replaces the vegetable soul, or the human the sensitive soul, there are thresholds reached and ontological shifts. As the soul (and then the human soul) stands higher in the hierarchy of beings, the matter which receives it must be more highly organized. Even God cannot infuse the human soul into a subject that is insufficiently disposed to it. The trouble is that the foregoing excellent philosophy does not take us very far toward the making of moral decisions that are so crucial because on them equal justice depends. 10 Joseph F. Donceel, S. J., 'Immediate Animation and Delayed Hominization," Theological Studies, Vol. 31, No. 1 (March, 1970), pp. 76-105. 196 PAUL RAMSEY At one point, quoting past authorities in the matter of delayed hominization, Donceel requires in organic disposition sufficient for the access of human life only " heterogeneous parts." For that the late embryo-very early fetus easily qualifies, not only in heterogeneous parts but the functioning together of all major organ systems in organized unity (including EEG evidence of brain activity). That is achieved before abortions are ordinarily now done, or known to be needed or desired. Parenthetically, Donceel does not seem to know how complex and wondrously organized are the zygote and the early cluster of developing cells. It is true, of course, that " at the start of pregnancy there is not yet a fully organized human body." It may also be true to say that " whatever is growing in the mother's womb is potentially, virtually, a human body "-if by that one means a morphologically recognizable human body or " a highly organized body, a body with sense organs and a brain." But in another sense of " body," we may question-before going on-how to exclude from the organization and unified function of the developing cluster of cells sufficient disposition for the infusion of soul (that individual's human life, which thereafter has only to develop, not thereafter to ·come into being) . The genes of the later cells are not simply the product of mechanical division. The genotype is not simply a blueprint of a finished house to come later. It is a blueprint already at work forming and finishing its own house. The first cell is the " body" of its genotype; the genotype is the first principle of the cell. The later cells are different cells with their genetic composition produced by the self-replicating power of the original genotype. Development is synonomous with gene action, sending out messengers for the production of cells that are soon going to develop into differentiated tissues, as the cluster -elongates and begins to assume shape. As Callahan noted, there is an autonomous " biological dynamic" (p. 375) within the developing conceptus from the beginning. By contrast, Donceel draws the wrong conclusion from the fact that each of the early cells has "totipotency." He seems to conclude from this that the cluster of cells has no unified life. What if some scientist could in the future trigger the development of a human individual from one of the subsequent cells, not from the zygote? Or what if a scientist in future can take a tissue cell, reverse its differentiation, restore totipotency and grow a human life from that (cloning)? None of this denies the fact that the cells are from the beginning " doing their own thing " together. Unknown to us some cells are destined and may be programmed ABORTION 197 to become one sort of tissue or organ, other cells are going to turn off their totipotency and differentiate in another way. This certainly begins to happen in the embryoblast-pole of the nidating life; most assuredly in the very early embryo. Is this not body organized enough to make it difficult to exclude soul or human life? Indeed, at one point, Donceel allows that " given the theory of preformation, hylomorphism might be reconciled with immediate animation." He had in mind the discredited theory that in sperm or in ovum there was a " homunculus," the preformed life. He wrote of that theory: " ... If matter is so highly organized from the very start, there is no difficulty in admitting that it is from the beginning animated by a human soul." I suggest that what we know of the genotype and the life of the early cluster of cells, and most assuredly of the early embryo, strongly suggest a creditable theory of " preformation," compatible with hylomorphism, with soul informing body. 14 Genetics teaches us that bodily life is highly organized from the start. In the main, however, Donceel requires far more than heterogeneous parts or genetic preformation. Matter would not be " highly enough organized to receive the highest substantial form, the spiritual, human soul " until the brain is "·fully developed " and "the cortex is ready"; " ... the availability of these organs: the senses, the nervous system, the brain, and especially the cortex." Concerning that proposal the following observations can be made. If the cortex has to be fully developed, that is achieved at about one year of age, as evidenced by rhythmical EEG readings and the power of speech. The fact that Donceel might extend the "free-fire zone" so far seems supported by his statement that man's higher, immaterial, spiritual faculties need, "as necessary conditions of their activity, the cooperation of the highest sense powers, imagination, memory, what the Scholastics called the ' cogitative power '." That is beginning to sound to me like a a dualism that creeping Platonism or Cartesianism-practically, locates hominization much later than and independent of most signs of human bodily life perceptible to ordinary observation. Of course, Donceel may not mean fully developed cortex. If, instead, he draws the line on the beginning of human life at some point in the early development of the cortex, if this is: required to condition the activity of the individual human soul or life and "Compare Joseph T. Mangan, S. J., "The Wonder of Myself: Ethical-Theological Aspects of Direct Abortion," Theological Studies, Vol. 81, No. 1 (March 1970)' pp. 128-181. 198 PAUL RAMSEY the early EEG evidence of brain activity is not deemed sufficient, then Donceel has opened up a " free-fire zone" well beyond the time of viability (not, as before, a "free-fire zone" that includes infants well after birth at "normal" gestational age). In the one case, neonates who are premature and in the other case born would not yet qualify as sufficiently disposed for ensoulment. (By " free fire zone " I do not mean to suggest that a believer in hylomorphism, that the soul is the form of an organized human body, will not show great respect for potentially but still prehuman life. I mean only to say that these possible versions of " delayed hominization" will not find pre-hominified "life" to be fully and equally protectable morally.) A comparative evaluation of lives to the detriment of those in whom rational humanity is not yet established would be invited. And from what is known about the development of the cortex, that could be quite late in the development of nascent and neonatal life. Doneeel's position has the virtue, in contrast to Callahan, of searching for the place to stop making comparative evaluations according to developmental criteria. Still I believe that his more latitudinarian suggestions are wrong, and that in interpreting the biological data he has not made the most astute or careful application of hylomorphism as is possible. I brought up morphological development as a third arguable, and possibly defendable, point or span at which first originates a nascent individual human life that places upon us the claims we acknowledge to be due to any individual of our kind. 15 Callahan -1 suggest-resorts to morphological development in, order to shuffle off that question. For this reason I say that readers of his book should understand the so-called genetic school simply to represent any position whatsoever (whether of " immediate" or " mediate " animation, including the most outrageous theories of post-natal animation) which assumes the burden of saying definitely (for practical good reasons, not deductive or theoretical certain reasons) who counts for one of us and nd less than any of us. The genetic school can be taken to symbolize any point of view which defines the outer limits of the human community in which there is fairness and equal justice, and any point of view that 15 Other possible lines drawn on the beginning of an equally inviolate human lifequickening, viability, birth, full cortical brain activity, speech, personhood-do not seem to me to have the persuasiveness of either genotype, earliest individuation, or the late embryo-early fetus' apparent humanity. Formally, however, I grant that there may be factually-based good reasons tending to support these positions. This is what the abortion debate should have been about. ABORTION 199 refuses to step on the slippery slopes of comparatively and competitively evaluating human beings according to " developmental criteria " and " nuanced " estimations of personhood. couples A source for sober reflection is John Fletcher's study of undergoing amniocentesis in this " the first generation of parents who have had an informed choice about abortion for genetic reasons." 16 The focus of Professor Fletcher's inquiry was whether parental values are modified by the availability and success of amniocentesis, .followed by aborting detected defectives. These parents were " caught between loyalty to the life of their child and loyalty to the norm of ' healthy ' life." His finding was that " they did not consciously suppress affection for the fetus or deny there was a human life at stake." They were able to hold firmly to a yearning for children while employing the technical utility of prenatal diagnosis. (p. 466) Since a general " yearning for children," specifically for a healthy child, explains their presence in diagnosis in the first place, the question remains whether the " parent-child bond " was not already seriously eroded by the notion of interchanging one child for another. The poignancy of these parent's decision surfaced most clearly when they reflected on (1) the implied threat to and rejection of an already existing child suffering from genetic defect; (" He could think-they want to put me out of the way, too. And he could think, no one should to suffer the way I do. I suppose it would be more of the second.") and the problem of finding a way to explain to the healthy child, later on, that they once contemplated his destruction if the diagnosis had been negative (" There is no good way to explain to your own child that you might have had a part in deciding to end his life." For example, " We did what we did because of your sister. If she had not been sick, we would not have done what we did with you. We owed it to her not to risk having another child like her, since we couldn't have survived it.") (pp. 470, 474) Yet Fletcher refuses to concede that the parent-child bond was weakened in these couples. He wants a negative answer to the questions: " ... Does the procedure itself, because it inclines the parents to contemplate the abortion of the fetus before they are fully informed as to the results of the test, erode that ' basic trust ' which is so fundamental . . . ? . . • Does the use of this technique and its accompanying awareness of elective abortion subvert the deputyship of parents . . . ? " (p. 473) 16 " The Brink = The Parent-Child Bond in the Genetic Revolution," Theological Studies, Vol. 33, No. 3 [September 1972], pp. 457-485. 200 PAUL RAMSEY Fletcher is aware of these parents' supreme confidence in medical technology. When asked in the follow-up whether any of them had considered the possibility of a "technical failure (false negative)," leading to the misfortune of the birth to them of a defective child, only one had given this possibility a serious thought. (p. 472) As reported, Fletcher does not seem to have asked them if they ever thought of the possibility of a " false positive" finding, leading to the destruction of a normal child. Would not that question be a better way to test the strength in them of the deputyship of parents? When asked about the " Baltimore Case " (a Mongoloid baby allowed to starve to death by parental refusal to allow an operation to remove its bowel obstruction), one of these "first generation" amniocentesis-parents replied, " The only difference-is that we knew earlier." (p. 475) Fletcher pointedly insists that the subjects of his study had "active roles as parents [which] began earlier in the course of pregnancy." (p. 477) Brought to consciousness is "the newest human stage of life," a new period of human " childhood." (p. 485) Fletcher is well aware of these parents' " moral suffering," their " state of being threatened by normlessness, even as one is caught between two forces or principles, both of which are right." (p. 478) He believes genetic abortion ought to be only " an interim and temporary measure, affording ... some space in the long-range task of discovering treatment to genetic diseases in utero." (p. 458) He acknowledges that these parents were aware of" some alteration in the formation of trust in their relation to tested and untested children." (p. 478) Yet in the upshot Fletcher can only appeal to these parents' undeniable subjective assumption of personal responsibility for their decision, tested by the fires of truth-telling to their children. He writes: "At this stage of the development of genetic medicine, only if parents are able to tell children, tested or untested, 'We made the decision to enter testing because of specific and known risks, and we made the decision ' will the parent-child bond not be weakened." (p. 480) That may be a standard sufficient for a counsellor and for a participant-observer in an amniocentesis program. But it is scarcely sufficient ground for ethical judgment. Therefore Fletcher can only call for caution in counselling as against the cool logical of the geneticist J. V. Neal, to the effect that " early abortiOn based on prenatal diagnosis can be viewed as the modern ·counterpart of infanticide based on congenital defect." That sort of frankness, and not amniocentesis itself according to Fletcher, creates a climate of threat to parent-child ABORTION 201 relations. (p. 480) "Nothing," he writes, "could be more destructive of the trust required in parent-child relations than for genetic testing to be understood as motivated by infanticide." The question for ethics, however, is not whether "the cause of infanticide" is in fact the justification of prenatal diagnosis" within the moral code which presently governs the relation of medicine to the family." That may be a passing matter of mores. The question rather is whether " a positive diagnosis and the undue hardship or misery which would come to a particular family " (which Fletcher says are "the only warrants, at present, which justify abortion following prenatal diagnosis ") are not precisely also warrants for infanticide. (p. 481) Perhaps an ethical counsellor ought not to withhold from " first generation" amniocentesis-parents the fact that they are agreeing to participate in "the modern counterpart of infanticide based on genetic defect." The parent-child bond cannot, ought not be sustained as an illusory deputyship, a trust basically altered in its quality and content to include killing the child for his own sake (or for the sake of his sister!). To believe and act in" the cause of infanticide" one need not be a baby-hater, or cruel, or an arrogant wielder of paternal or maternal rights. He may only have a yearning for children under the promise of healthy children guaranteed by death-dealing means. One may as well be honest about it. Fletcher's "brink" on which the parent-child bond is poised is in fact a slope. The " good reasons " for the destruction of the fetus, on the brink, for the sake of a substitute healthy child will be the same " good reasons " later on at the bottom of the slope for the destruction of defective infants (who slipped through the earlier screen, or who result from mutation in parents who never thought prenatal diagnosis was indicated in their case)-to relieve the infants themselves of suffering or for the sake of their sisters. The present writer has on occasion stipulated that, as a formal matter, an argument for abortion must not also justify infanticide under the same conditions and .for the same reasons. With every passing month it becomes clearer that that was a persuasive requirement, one which ever more ceases to persuade. A physician, a member of the faculty of the University of Virginia Medical School, discussing the " Baltimore " sort of case in The New York Times Magazine, asserts three times in a brief article that he regards parental refusal to allow an operation on a Mongoloid baby as "a woman's second chance to have an abortion." That says in one word: there is no serious line to be drawn between abortion for genetic reasons and infanticide for genetic reasons. PAUL RAMSEY The latest issue of Philosophy and Public Affairs No. 1, Fall carries an article by Michael Tooley, assistant professor of Philosophy at Stanford University, entitled "Abortion and Infanticide," in full defense of the latter practice. Using the selfconsciousness test of when a member of a species has a right to life, Professor Tooley concludes that (1) " there is no serious need to know the exact point at which a human infant acquires a right to life"; that is a "lesser worry," because as a practical matter cases in which infanticide is desirable can be determined within a short time after birth. For this author, the truly " troubling worry" (since in his view there may be self-consciousness without the acquisition of language) is what we may now be doing to animals; in killing kittens we may in fact be " murdering innocent persons." (pp. 64-65) To date we would say that killing a man is worse than torturing him, while to torture a kitten for one hour is more reprehensible than killing it. In future, that judgment may be reversed. Tooley has taken the one decisive step: to torture a neonate for one hour would clearly be more reprehensible than to kill it. Perhaps we should go further and say that killing a kitten is worse than either. Whither goes the deputyship of parents can also be read from the U. S. Supreme Court's astonishing statements about the only moderately "compelling" state interest in protecting viable fetuses in the last trimester or even the last ten weeks of pregnancy. "If the State is interested in protecting fetal life after viability, it may go so far as to proscribe abortion ... " If? May? The State may do so to protect (only) "the potentiality of life," i.e. a viable baby! If the State elects to do this, we are further told, it is because after viability, the fetus may have "the capability of meaningful life outside the mother's womb" (Jane Roe v. Henry Wade, italics added). Where formerly the question 1973, 41 LW was whether a Caesarian section was indicated to save both the mother and the unborn (that was the original and only sensible meaning of " interrupting " a pregnancy) , parents now may be allowed the arbitrary freedom to choose abortion by hysterotomy to kill a life that could have been saved with no less difficulty. One can well imagine Professor Fletcher writing an identical article ten years from now. His will be a sensitive study of the first generation of parents who have had an informed choice about infanticide fov genetic reasons. Destruction following a full checkup in the first ten days following birth is now the promise offered parents caught between loyalty to the life of their child and loyalty to the norm of " healthy " life. There indeed is evidence that the parent-child bond still endures. None of the parents agrees ABORTION fl03 with the latest scientific opinion that a child is not a child unless he measures up to a certain standard. All of them are poignantly distressed about (1) the implied threat to or rejection of an existing defective child they neglected to destroy in infancy; and about how they are going to tell a normal child, later on, that they contemplated his destruction in the nursery if his tests had proved negative-for his, his sister's, and their own sakes. That will, indeed, be evidence that the parent-child bond still endures even in the .face of the technological possibilities of benign infanticide. Then, we may suppose, a latter-day J. V. Neal comes forward to announce ·coolly and logically that infanticide in the nursery for congenital defect is only a modern form of the practice of a sane society which at much later stages practices destruction of lives deemed not worth living, or lives whose existence seriously threaten their sisters or parents (including adventitiously damaged individuals and not alone genetic defectives who may have th€' fortune to slip through genetic screening in the nursery). To this Fletcher could only reply, "Nothing could be more destructive of the trust required in parent-child relations than for genetic testing in the nursery, followed by infanticide, to be understood as motivated by a desire to get rid of sub-normal people in general." The test for the intactness of the deputyship of parenthood will be whether parents are willing to tell their healthy year olds, We made the decision! With that notion of responsibility in his intellectual arsenal, on yet another " brink " Professor Fletcher may still be able to conclude that " in those cases where the existing parent-child or marital bond could be said to be in serious jeopardy, it does not become an ethically insoluble tragedy for the parents to elect infanticide." ( cf. p. 483) Instead of trying to live within the ambiguity of calling genetic abortion either a possible medical " treatment " or a possible manifestation of the" parent-child bond," the Nuer tribe in Mrica could instruct us in how better to deal with genetic anomalities. The Nuer treat monstrous births as baby hippopotamuses, accidentally born to humans and, with this labelling, the appropriate action is clear. They gently lay them in the river where they belong. 17 In order to preserve the deputyship of parents in the bond with their children, we could solve the problem by the definitional routeprovided we can deprive ourselves of knowledge of human prenatal and postnatal development which the Nuer never had. 17 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Rutledge and Kegan Paul, 1966, p. 39; E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Nuer Religion, Oxford University Press, 1956, p. 84). 204 PAUL RAMSEY VI What then, it may be asked, is Callahan's objection to the "social consequence school"? At this point I must confess to some difficulty in formulating a strong and incisive answer to that question. Readers of this review-article may take this to be evidence that I have misinterpreted him all along. It seems clear, however, that Callahan's chief objection is that the social consequence school is too subjectivistic, too relativistic. It defines " the human" as it wishes, so as never to preclude any abortion that is socially useful. Such a moral policy would " make all biological data irrelevant." (p. 392) The definition of " human " is tailored to the desired moral policy, so that any being is non-human whom we find it socially useful to define as non-human. (p. 393) Callahan rejects also the view that the early fetus is of little worth because it has had very little human effort invested in it, (p. 391) and rejects any suggestion that the woman arbitrarily" declares personhood on the fetus " by giving it birth. (p. 463) Callahan clearly sees the absurdity of equating having value with being wanted, (p. 456) or in saying " a conceptus is valuable=interest is taken in a conceptus." (p. 459) In the end, therefore, Callahan's moral policy is grounded in the facts of human development. It is not made out of no cloth. Neither society nor a woman nor a moral policy .confers sanctity upon the fetus. From the beginning it is a form of life having sanctity. Yet Callahan's is also a point of view that seems not to preclude proabortion decisions of many sorts. His moral policy confers degrees of value on personhood or on the actuation of human potentiality in the fetus. This conferral may not be arbitrary in the sense of being purely the product of wishes. Still in abortion dilemmas, when one life is pitted against another or against lesser goods of conscious life, the correct moral policy, in Callahan's view, as we have seen, affords great latitude in making comparative evaluations. Still, when (1) bringing into ·Competitive balance the various lifesanctities and when (2) contrasting lives that are at different points on the trajectory of biological and personal development, Callahan insists on saying that from conception there is an individual human life. That life makes moral claims upon us; there is a presumption in its favor even when overridden. That, the woman should tell herself in deciding for an abortion. She makes her decision among conflicted values. If she makes a responsible moral decision, she will not act on the premise that whatever she wishes makes it so. (e. g., p. 497) ABORTION 205 James Gustafson has written that this is "abortion without tears." Perhaps. But it is possible to read the moral policy here set forth in an entirely opposite way: ample abortions always with tears. 18 That is, if Callahan's book persuades any proabortionist to have a sense that she is contradicting something of great value (even if not exactly doing wrong) even while she is deciding and doing the deed. It is possible to read this book as a very Protestant statement of the impenetrable ambiguity of every moral decision, of the ,evil in all we do, and of the need for the courage of faith in violating some sanctities that others be served. Only Callahan was not to the manner born, and this may be the reason Gustafson misses the tears. Apart from mournfulness, perhaps Callahan has gone too far in surrounding and formulating the meaning of a right abortion decision to satisfy a stalwart Reformer who is resolved to be always repenting. I suggest that he has not gone far enough in sorting out right from wrong in the matter of the right to life. The reason he has not is that he started from an incorrect premise, namely, that there can be inequality between life-sanctities, pitted against one another in conflicts which can be penetrated and resolved or ordered by no sort of principled ethical reasoning. That, finally, is the flaw in his defense of abortion on request as a legal position. (p. 488 f.) He argues for the removal of legal sanctions because to legalize abortion would do no substantial harm to the ·Common good. That is a well-established test-even a Thomistic ground-for determining when there needs to be a law on some moral issue. Callahan requires that it be shown that a permissive abortion law would "pose a threat to the peace, security and safety of the whole society," (p. 474) and that means "harmful to the life of the living." (p. 475, italics added) That, in one word, shows that Callahan has not taken seriously the question, When does life begin? in the context of moral and legal abortion policy. He has not really undertaken to define the outer limits of "the living." (In "moral policy" he does not defend " birth " as that point-the point of " mediate animation.") What is or is not a substantive threat to the " common good " depends entirely upon who counts as a participant in that common good, who are "the living" whose safety should be insured. We 18 Compare: " It is possible to imagine a huge number of situations where a woman could, in good and sensitive conscience, choose abortion as a moral solution of her personal or social difficulties. But, at the very least, the bounds or morality is overstepped when . . . personal choice is deliberately made easy and problemfree." (p. 496, italics added) 206 PAUL RAMSEY were promised more connection between moral policy and legal policy: the latter "should be determined in great part by moral policy." (p. 305) In the use of the collectivistic term "society," and in limiting the common good to injury to " the living," is disclosed the flaw in Callahan's enquiry into the morality of abortion. He never set out to discover who was " living " enough to count for no more and no less than one of us in claims to equal justice. It can hardly be allowed that, unlike other proponents of abortion on request, Callahan's case for the same legal policy" does not bespeak a loss of interest in or devaluation of fetal life." (p. 469) What is more, it not only bespeaks such comparative detrimental evaluation but as well the institutionalization in law of a single absolute: " ... the inner world of a woman-her goals in life, her perception of the world, her own felt needs. Women have a right to this inner world, and a right to live out its implications as they see it in their own choices and behavior." (p. 479) How does that differ from a legal policy " determined in great part " by a moral policy founded in only one of life's deepest sanctities? One has only to read Callahan's description (pp. 488-9 and 490) of an" ideal law" to see, from what he expects to follow, that any presumption in favor of unborn life has dropped entirely out of sight. The paper delivered by Dr. Robert S. Morison at the 1970 meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science contained an analogy between Callahan's views on abortion and his own proposal for comparative calculation of the worth of dying lives that was more extended than in the published article cited above. Callahan, who was chairing the symposium on " Problems in the Meaning of Death," seized the occasion to disavow his "authorship" of Morison's views: I can't resist making a comment myself since I was cited here. It is, in fact, the case that I did flirt with the notion in my abortion book that the value of the fetus increases with time, that I did flirt with a notion of a sliding scale of values. I think now I am sorry I did. My critics have got the better of me on that one. . . . It seems to me that once one begins trying-either to determine costs and benefits, or to determine the relative value of lives, one is in great trouble. I saw a comment of Dr. Bentley Glass quoted in a Chicago paper today to the effect that we might be facing the time when we will need enforced abortions, when people will not have the right to bear deformed children, and the like. I would hate to think that anything I wrote could lead to a view of human life and human rights akin to what he was saying there. I would consider that a personal disaster. If I have not entirely misread him, Callahan did more than " flirt " with the notion that " the value of the fetus increases with ABORTION time " and more than " flirt " with " the notion of a sliding scale of values." He entered fully upon the course of developing a moral policy that allows and encourages " determining the relative value of lives." Morison was not wrong in his reading. If now Callahan regards that reading and the use made of his book as a "personal disaster," what is to be done? I suggest that Callahan owes it to us to place on the public record a restatement of his view of the morality of abortion that is plainly not susceptible of this interpretation. It is, I know, folly for me to suppose that books and writings and "debate" of any sort have consequence in augmenting or slowing the surge of an abortion mentality in all our advanced technological societies. But, as one theoretician and writer to another, I would say to Callahan that for every " liberal " proabortionist who has been persuaded by him to have a few qualms and to think about the presumption in favor of the unborn, there are twenty who had qualms from their upbringing and tradition of ethics who have been persuaded by this book that abortion can readily be justified. Many of these are ministers, and leading voices in the Protestant churches. Perhaps they only rationalized a position they were bound to take anyway. From my experience on the lecture circuit I must say that Callahan's learned and obviously morally sensitive book has exerted considerable influence in the current abandonment of past ethics, Protestant and Catholic. I say again, that was probably rationalization of a mentality whose true source is the promise of technology to deliver us from every quandary. Still, the book has been widely read as Morison read it. If Callahan regards that as a "personal disaster," I know no remedy-insubstantial though it be-than another book which will set the record straight. To that end, I think I have shown that such a book will have to be more than a revision or a clarification. It would have to be a retraction of the structure of the present moral argument and its replacement by another. VII Callahan's account of Roman Catholic teachings on abortion is, I must say, rather inadequate. This is all the more a deficiency because (except for the rule of double effect resolving hard cases) that was the common Christian position until just lately. He can write at the outset concerning these teachings that " the welfare of the conceptus takes full precedence," reserving to a mere parenthesis the information that "this interpretation of the teaching is denied." (p. 409) One would have thought that the procedure of PAUL RAMSEY choice would be to begin with an explication of those teachings in their terms: which means the interpretation that they are based on the full equality of maternal and fetal rights, neither taking precedence. Where an equal justice might come into view, Callahan can only say that " normally speaking, the right to life takes primacy over other rights, since without life no other rights can be exercised." (p. 417, italics added) So also John Locke, who would not have added "normally speaking." What that means, I do not know. The primacy of the right to life certainly precludes relative rights or comparative qualities of personhood. It precludes also "lives" that gradually acquire increasingly to protectability. legitimate Callahan says, of course, that abortion problems arise because "other important rights" appear to be in conflict with the right to life. (p. 418) But he does not press on into a discussion of conflict-of-life questions, or to demonstrate which " important " values are to be said to be on a parity with life. He does not undertake such rigorous thinking through the issues because of his antecedent judgment that such hard problems can be avoided by adopting a more " nuanced " view of the qualities of personhood. All this, while accusing traditional teachings of question-begging, because the argument proceeds from a basis in equal justice due to each life! Callahan even asserts that "the Lordship of God," i.e., everyone's equal title to life, (pp. 417, 422) takes the decision out of human hands. That can only mean: takes the decision to value lives unequally out of human hands. Adherence to equality of rights to life is itself, of course, a decision (like any other moral decision) entirely in human hands. No wonder, then, that Callahan regards the traditional tool (" double effect ") .for helping moral agents to resolve conflict-ofparity-value dilemmas as largely a matter of insuring "clean" subjective consciences and not as a requirement simply of sincere concern for obj.ective right- or wrong-doing. A theology that would countenance the death of both fetus and mother, he writes, must be "geared heavily to a preoccupation with preserving individuals from sin or crime. Its real interest . . . turns out, in effect, [to be] the good conscience of those who might but do not act to save her." (p. 429) Instead of arguing that traditional formulations erred in allowing both to die, or arguing that the physical tragedy of death to both is not to be preferred to the moral evil of killing one life (a strange omission in an author who thinks that the life valued in the past was only a "physical" life), Callahan turns the whole matter into rules to ease or quiet possibly scrupulous consciences. ABORTION 209 Preserving individuals from sin and crime has obviously been secondary to seeing that sin and crime be not done (and also secondary to keeping overly scrupulous individuals from thinking that all abortions are sinful) . Individual consciences cannot be clarified either way unless there is a way to tell the difference between wrongful and the justifiable taking of human lives. Callahan wants those consciences clarified in terms of comparative personhoods and other ingredients of a variable "moral policy." Therefore he is quite unable to see that " double effect " resolution of conflict-cases is anything other than a "weighing" that "entirely favors the fetus," (p. 426) instead of an attempt to deal with parity values tragically in conflict. Then it seems to him that it is the " good conscience of those who act " (pp. 425-6) that takes precedence over objective moral claims. 19 Indeed, he goes 19 Any moral judgment can be made to appear to be a self-referential concern over "clean hands." Thus, Professor Thomas Nagel rejects the notion that "prohibitions" depend on a kind of "moral self-interest, a primary obligation to preserve one's own moral purity, to keep one's hands clean no matter what happens to the rest of the world." Two confusions lie behind this view. "First, it is a confusion to suggest that the need to preserve one's moral purity might be the source of an obligation. For if by committing murder one sacrifices one's moral purity or integrity, that can only be because there is already something wrong with murder. The general reason against commiting murder cannot therefore be merely that it makes one an immoral person. Secondly, the notion that one might sacrifice one's moral integrity justifiably, in the service of a sufficiently worthy end, is an incoherent notion. For if one were justified in making such a sacrifice (or even morally required to make it), then one would not be sacrificing one's moral integrity by adopting that course: one would be preserving it." " Moral absolutism is not unique among moral theories in requiring each person to do what will preserve his own moral purity in all circumstances. This is equally true of utilitarianism, or of any other theory which distinguishes between right and wrong. Any theory which defines the right course of action in various circumstances and asserts that one should adopt that course, ipso facto asserts that one should do what will preserve one's moral purity, simply because the right course of action is what will preserve one's moral purity in those circumstances. Of course utilitarianism does not assert that this is why one should adopt that course ... " (Thomas Nagel, "vVar and Massacre" in Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 1, No. 2 [Winter, 1972] pp. 132-3). R. M. Hare agrees with Nagel on the essential point when he writes that "though Nagel is perfectly right in saying that it is incoherent to suggest that one might 'sacrifice one's moral integrity justifiably, in the service of a sufficiently worthy end,' it is not incoherent to suggest that one might sacrifice one's peace of mind. And moral integrity and peace of mind are easily confused if one equates having sinned with having a sense of having sinned" ("Rules of War and Moral Reasoning," Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 1, No. 2 [Winter 1972], p. 180). 210 PAUL RAMSEY so far as to say that " the primary obligation is fulfillment of the moral law, which exists independently of obligations owed to particular human beings." (p. 4Q5, second italics added) Nothing could be further from the truth than that last statement! Callahan can only mean that he is opposed to a "moral law" existing independently of a comparative evaluation of the obligations owed to particular human beings in regard to their rights to life. For the heart and soul of the so-called rule of double effect was a stalwart effort to accord equal justice to all concerned in the issue when not everyone can be saved. Concern over "good conscience" in avoiding murderousness was always secondary to, or at least correlated with, a primary concern that murder should never be done. Callahan-so far as I can see-skirts that issue by holding that admitted individual human lives may not yet be equal to one another, by allowing that there may be graduation into qualitatively superior claims, and by never saying when he would defend the proposition that equality of moral claims has been attained in the course of human development from sperm to term, from womb to tomb. At whatever point that is said to be established, moral reasoning in accord with direct and indirect effect is the way in which equal justice must necessarily be expressed (minimally, it is true; yet maximally also) when not everyone of the conflicted lives concerned can be saved or served. This is the way to understand the traditional view that if one is in doubt about whether a conceptus is human, " respect for life requires us to treat it as if it were." That is " the safest way " not for scrupulous consciences to take, but the right way to take (even when justifying the destruction of that possible life) because it is "most compatible with the moral aim: the protection of all innocent human life." Callahan says this, (p. 419) but in context one suspects that he understands " safest " to be self-referential, not oriented upon the objective good. Who ever said that " the only result of moral consequence " in abortifacient acts is "the death of the fetus (as, in principle, the traditional position does)"? (p. 428) The traditional position Hare also suggests that instead of adopting the term " absolutist " it would have been better for Nagel to use "the old name 'deontologist'" (ibid., p. 174). Here again, theological ethicists who grasp at excuses to justify their pell-mell rush to abandon rigorous ethical reflection, any and every ethics of principles, and universalizable prohibitiva, would be well advised to read contemporary philosophical ethicists more carefully. Natural law theory-now in such disrepute among to be by no means the only or the best theoretical liberal Catholics-happens expianation of or warrant for general moral norms. ABORTION simply demanded to be shown what other conflicting results are of parity consequence. For an opening for persistent moral reasoning one might even dte Pius XII, in permission of indirect abortion, to the effect that " under those conditions the operation can be lawful, like other similar medical interventions-granted always that a good of high importance is concerned, such as life, and that it is not possible to postpone the operation until after the birth of the child, nor to have recourse to other efficacious remedies." ( q. p. 415, italics added) The present writer is the first to grant-nay, to affirm-that Catholic moral teaching is in a bind because of repeated assertions that any " therapeutic " abortion is forbidden-when what is meant is any direct therapeutic abortion, for the treatment of the mother alone, bereft of any indication that remaining respect for the life of the child enters into the formation of the life-saving action that is justified. Still it is not the category of " doubtful life" that can lead to significant revision of the traditional teachings. That would have to be compared with whatever doubt there may be about the other human values in question or doubt about their attainment by the operation (not with any supposable doubt about the inherent parity of the lives in balance) . " Doubtful life " can rarely if ever be the warrant for choice. In any case, Callahan is more forthright: he finds individual human lives to be of inherently different value, not of different dubiety that they are human lives. By the same token, he then could not but fail to persevere in probing the moral question what should be done when lives with equal title are in conflict. With Germain Grisez 20 we move onto a plane of moral reasoning admirable for its ·Coherence. This, I think, cannot be denied by a fair-minded reader even who may resist Grisez's conclusions and deny his premises (that there is individual human life in the womb, from conception; that every life claims equal protection). For Grisez, the question to be solved is " whether it is ever morally right for any human person to kill another one and, if so, under what conditions." Within this general question falls the moral problem of abortion. The question is whether any killing of man by man is justifiable, and what features of cases or sorts of situations make such a choice right and necessary. Abortion is not a unique problem; it is a species of a general moral problem. One " must apply to the special case of the unborn any ground that justifies killing, to see which justifications for abortion, if any, are 20 Germain Grisez, Abortion: the Myths, the Realities, and the Arguments (New York: Corpus Books, 1970). PAUL RAMSEY valid." (p. 305) " ... Ethical consideration of abortion must not treat it as an isolated case, as if it had nothing to do with the whole question of the ethics of killing human beings." (p. 306) There are several advantages of this approach, not least of which is that one is not tempted to beg questions in the matter of abortion. One does not arbitrarily or without offering good reasons or for trivial reasons set the boundary of the human community, or a boundary to the moral issues arising from conflicted lives. Least of all is one tempted to exit from tragic dilemmas by ascribing measurable or immeasurable differences of worth among individual lives acknowledged to be human. Finally, one does not use persuasive rhetoric to commend without analysis the possible morality of abortion by talking, instead, about the killing in war, etc., etc., that has been warranted in traditional morality. (That sentence itself does not belong in moral discourse, much less the emotional appeals to which it refers.) Instead, one directly addresses the question of "the justifiable [or unjustifiable] doing of the deadly deed." (p. This is Grisez's programme, and we shall attend to that section of his book. No end can justify the means " when the means in question involves turning against a good equally basic." (p. 319) That would seem to preclude ever taking human life in the course of saving human life. Indeed, there are only three alternatives. (1) One can remain an equalitarian and stand aside from cases of lives in conflict. One can abandon equalitarianism, and justify directly taking human life by first "regarding life as a measurable value, one that can be compared to other values and calculated to be of less worth." (p. That, on my reading, is Callahan's move. Or (3) one can, while not standing aside, remain an equalitarian and be driven to moral reasoning in conformity with " the famous principle of twofold effect." (p. Grisez's statement of four stipulations of the principle of twofold effect is prosaic enough for a manual; when fulfilled, " the deadly deed is compatible with a right moral attitude; it will not involve turning directly against the basic good of human life." (p. Also standard is Grisez's explanation (of doing good while traversing the necessary destruction of an equal good) that "to intend something is either to aim at it as at one's precise purpose in acting or embrace it for its positive contribution to the achievement of that purpose." (p. Thus, the evil effect-killing a man-cannot be embraced (or the good of that life be turned against) as a means or for the precise purpose of saving another life which is of no more than equal worth. Grisez goes deeper, however, in explaining that "intend" means ABORTION 213 more than " foresee," more even than " willingly cause." (p. Intentions that are praise- or blame-worthy shape our behavior "to achieve some definite transformation of our lived world." Many things foreseen are done but never ordained to that purpose. More than to foresee, we " willingly cause" those other effects. That means we " bring them upon " us; the denial of good " incurs upon " the intended transformation of our lived world. Still we " willingly cause " (which is more than foresee or " incidentally " bring about) the destruction of one life while intending to save another. (p. Yet we do not directly turn against or deny the equal worth of the one of the conflicted goods that is in fact destroyed. That, I suppose, is what was always meant by distinguishing between "directly voluntary" and "indirectly voluntary." It may be a greater candidness in language if, with Grisez, we say that even the " indirectly voluntary " is " willingly caused," and not only the saving of the life that is saved. For many people seem to believe that the famous principle of twofold effect is a piece of legerdemain for saying we did not kill, did not cause, or did not willingly cause the destruction of the life that necessarily could not be saved. It is, rather, a systematic way of discriminating between " deadly deeds " that are justified and those that are not, both voluntarily caused by the same moral agent (e. g., surgeon or soldier) ,-the deadly deed not merely " permitted " as an "accident" to the other, saving result, but both knowingly and willingly caused. A formulation of one of the stipulations in the traditional rule of double effect is that " the evil effect must not be the means to the good effect, for then evil will fall within the scope of one's intention, and evil may not be intended even for the sake of an ulterior good purpose." (p. This condition is generally interpreted, Grisez writes, " in a way that excludes the justification of any action in which in the order of physical causality the good effect depends on the evil one." (p. 330, italics added) He considers the amendments proposed by Peter Kauer, William H. Van der Marek, and Cornelius J. Van der Poel and finds them wanting. Each tries to " transcend the determinate character of a human act as means to a good sought in and through the act." (p. 333) The determinate character of actions as means cannot be " transcended " or elided into the justifying ends of action, since we are talking about definite actions that have manifold effects. Nevertheless, Grisez proposes his own amendment, and this we have to examine. He, too, wishes to reconstrue the order of physical causality (i. ·e., the excluded dependence of the good 214 PAUL RAMSEY effect on the evil) so as to make quite clear that this does not require that the good aspect of the act be accomplished before or simultaneously with the evil. It is, Grisez writes, " too restrictive " to demand that " in the order of physical causality the evil aspect of the act not precede the good." (p. 333) The order of physical causality of an action and its consequences (which, note, means the human initiation of action and its consequences) remains intact even when the evil effect comes in time before the good effect. That does not necessarily mean that one has turned directly against the good of the human life which may be destroyed first in the temporal sequence. Grisez's proposed revision (as so far stated) would seem to be applicable to several sorts of cases. First, the shield case. A criminal is holding an innocent human being in front of him while continuing to shoot bystanders in Times Square, and there is no other recourse than for a policeman to shoot straight through the hostage to bring the man down and stop him from continuing to kill many more people. That action first kills the hostage, then kills the criminal. I take Grisez to mean to say that, even so, the death of the hostage was not brought within the scope of the policeman's intention, even if that effect was chronologically the first effect "willingly caused." Secondly, let us consider certain sorts of birthroom conflicts of life against life which formerly (like craniotomy) would have been deemed to be direct and therefore unjustified killings and which (unlike ·Craniotomy) have not been prevented by advancements in medical practice (e. g., Caesarian sections). I have in mind the repeatable (if rare) case of a pregnant woman who has a misplaced, acute appendicitis and who will die from its rupture unless a physician goes straight through the uterus (i.e., kills the baby first, then saves her life). Also, there are cases of aneurysm of the aorta in which the wall of the aorta is so weakened that it balloons out behind the pregnant uterus. Again, the physician must first kill the fetus in order to deal with the aneurysm that threatens the mother's life. In both these sorts of cases the baby is in the way, it "shields" the mother from the necessary cure. 'What it is doing is doing nothing (as in the case of the shield in front of the criminal) and that must first be stopped, the obstacle constituted by the unborn child must first be removed, before surgical action can be taken that then accomplishes the good effect of saving the mother's life. Past moralists might have described these saving operations as "emptying the uterus," having the twofold effect of killing the baby and saving the mother's life. Or else past moralists would ABORTION 215 have approved the temporal sequence of killing the shield in the course of stopping the criminal while disapproving of killing the baby who " shields " the physician from the target of his lifesaving action. Grisez needs no such euphemism as "emptying the uterus," and he consistently denies that temporal sequence can be the meaning of accord with " the order of physical causality " in grasping the meaning of the demand that men never bring the evil effect within the scope of their intention. What is " willingly caused " first does not settle whether or not human agency has turned directly against the basic good of human life. What is willingly caused first does not settle the meaning of " dependence " of the good on the evil effect. Still, for a reason yet to be. stated, Grisez probably would not justify abortion in the cases just mentioned. The case of a woman suffering from primary pulmonary hypertension, who cannot oxygenate both herself and the fetus to term, seems more analogous to craniotomy cases. There is no " shield "analysis visibly setting the killing of the baby and the saving of the mother's life within a sequence of effects of a single action. Still I suppose that Grisez's liberalizing revision of twofold effect encompasses this case; but not, as we shall see, some of the foregoing cases that can be visualized in analogy with the shield case. The fact that in the hypertension case one must first " willingly cause " the death of the fetus in the course of, then, saving the mother's life need not entail that one embraced "the evil aspect" in " the order of physical causality " or turned directly against the good of the child's life who in no case could be saved. Grisez's theoretical statement of his innovation is simply that "the initiation of an indivisible process through one's own causality renders all that is involved in the process equally immediate"; "the moral agent who posits a natural cause simultaneously (morally speaking) posits its foreseen effects." The test as to whether this is actually an indivisible course of human causation is whether no other human act need intervene (one's own or another's) or could intervene to bring about the good effect. H not, then sequentially proximate and remote consequences of the action set in course are equally immediate morally. The crux is not " the diverse physical disposition of elements " of behavioral aspects of the act, but "the diverse dispositions of the agent's intention with regard to the intelligible aspects of the act." (p. 333, italics added) That should be enough " personalism " in moral analysis to satisfy liberal Catholics: the order of physical causation does not mean "physicalism"; it rather means the ordering of the human agent's intention in "willingly causing" diverse and 216 PAUL RAMSEY manifold effects that are "intelligibly" (not necessarily sequentially) related. Yet not every one of the illustrations I have offered (drawn from actual and typical medical cases) clearly qualifies by the test: " no other human act intervenes or could intervene." In some of the foregoing cases, one's own ·further action, or another's, is needed to produce the life-saving, good effect. In the case of the shield held by the criminal in front of himself and in the case of a mother suffering from primary pulmonary hypertension, the action that kills need not be followed by another action to produce the conditions that, in the first case, stop the criminal's continuing destructive activity or, in the second, enable the woman to get enough oxygen (both deemed good consequences). The same is true in the case of radiation therapy to cure some internal cancerous condition: the radiation may kill an unborn baby before it effects the cure. Still no other human action need intervene to effect that cure. That makes it evident that the foreseen death of the child was not within the scope of the physician's intention. In the ·case of misplaced acute appendicitis or the special case of aneurysm of the aorta, however, additional actions not only can intervene but must be intervened if the mother's life is to be saved. The prior action (the evil aspect that removes the "shield" between a physician and his healing work) removes an obstacle in the way of, thereafter, positing a separate life-saving action on his part. Can we say that both together are diverse dispositions of the agent's intention with regard to intelligible (negative and positive) aspects of the totality of his action? I judge that Grisez would say no in the appendicitis and aneurysm cases, while accepting the shield case, the hypertension case, and the radiation case as instances of his revised rule. The former are to be .compared to the supposition that a policeman knows he has bullets that will only kill the hostage (the shield) and knows that, when that is out of the way, he must shoot again to bring down the criminal. The evil effect falls within the scope of the intention of the first act, the good effect falls within the scope of the intention of the second, intervening act; and the first (the evil, turning directly against a basic good) is means to the second (the good). We shall have to ask: is there any way to avoid Grisez's analysis of the cases he disapproves, without setting sail upon a tumultuous sea of subjectively good purposes (finalities) and abandoning the task of analysing the rectitude of actions? First I ought, perhaps, to confirm my interpretation of the application of Grisez's ethical reasoning to the ·foregoing cases by reference to the text of his own discussion. "Sacrificial adultery" ABORTION cannot be justified because as an effect the saving of someone from concentration camp was not in the adulterous act itself as a remote effect posited simultaneously (morally speaking) by the agent. Instead, the release requires someone else's subsequent human action intervening to bring about that good consequence. By contrast, to throw oneself in between one's child and an assailant is in one (morally simultaneous) sequential action immediately to accept destruction of self and remotely the saving of one's child. (p. 384) To deny one's faith to save one's life in time of persecution cannot be justified (even if those were parity values) because the martyr-victim cannot avoid intending the denial of faith precisely as such. This is made clear because the persecutor's intervening action, not the martyr's, takes his life or does not take it. A storekeeper's act of defending his life by killing an armed hold-up man is justifiable because " the various aspects of the outward act are indivisible." That killing is not directly intended (the robber's basic life-value is not directly turned against) because no other action intervenes or is needed to intervene to save the storekeeper's life. (p. 335) Capital punishment cannot be justified on the grounds that it deters others from crime. Even if factually correct, that argument is ethically invalid because " the good is achieved in other human acts, not ini the execution itself." (p. 836) 21 United States' present readiness to use murderous, counter-population nuclear deterrence cannot be justified by the effect of this readiness in a quite separate act, namely, the subsequent and intervening choice of a potential nuclear enemy to be deterred. (pp. 888-9) In the operation to remove an ectopic pregnancy it does not matter that the germinating life is destroyed first, because " the very same act, indivisible as to its behavioral process, has both the good effect of protecting human life and the bad effect of destroying it." The sequence is irrelevant because no additional actio!\ need be posited to save the mother's life. (p. 840) On the other hand, even if a woman's threat of suicide is serious and an abortion would prevent it, the good effect of abortion would be achieved only by preventing another act (which other therapy might also prevent). In that case, abortion itself would be a means chosen, the unborn child's life-value would be denied, to an 21 I do not see why the contention that capital punishment prevents the criminal from future crimes of his own cannot be, on Grisez's terms, a valid argument. That remote effect was achieved in the execution itself. The executioner posited the immediate and the remote effects simultaneously morally. No other action intervenes to achieve the alleged good consequences. One may not like that argument on other grounds, but-within Grisez's scheme--it "works." PAUL RAMSEY ulterior end. In contrast, Grisez finds it easier to justify craniotomy. Because that saves life with no further intervening actions, the death of the fetus does not come within the scope of a physician's intention. (p. 341) In this manner Grisez seeks to maintain the principle that it is never morally right to act directly against the basic good of human life. He gives an account of the justifiable doing of the deadly deed which allows that a moral agent may initiate an order of physical causation in which the evil effect comes first and the good effect comes later, of which it still can be said that, morally, the moral agent posited both simultaneously. The crucial test for telling whether this is so or not is whether any subsequent action (the agent's or another's) would be required to bring about the good consequence. Therefore I judge that Grisez would justify killing in the shield case, in the case of primary pulmonary hypertension, and in the case of radiation therapy, sketched above. He could not justify action "behavioristically" directed against the fetus in the case of misplaced acute appendicitis or in the special case of aneurysm of the aorta, because the act of removing and destroying the fetus is not part of the act that has healing effect. Saving the mother's life in these cases is an altogether separate action that must be intervented later. How then save her life without first acting directly against the basic good of the human life of her unborn child? The death of the child would be "embraced for its positive italics added) of the contribution to the achievement" (p. precise further purpose of saving the mother's life. Clearly, the only way to object to Grisez's conclusions is to defeat his test requiring that no other human action intervenes or could intervene. Here, 1i must say, is something of an impasse. Yet I agree with Grisez that it would be foolish-and a foolishness leading to wickedness-to say that all that matters is whatever conduces to the finality of undifferentiate " human flourishing " or " total net good." Those are incoherent notions. Grisez hoped to avoid the excessive constrictions of the traditional understanding of the order of physical causation which required that the evil effect never precede the good effect. In allowing the evil aspect of the action to precede the good Grisez proposes to test whether the agent can correctly be said morally to posit both at once, by asking whether another human act could intervene or need be intervened to produce the good effect. That, I want to say, is too constrictive. A radical moral distinction or chasm between the shield cases and cases of radiation therapy and primary pulmonary hypertension (where no additional ABORTION 219 human action intervenes) and the cases of misplaced acute appendicitis and of aneurysm of the aorta, as described (where additional healing action must intervene to produce any good effect), would not be confirmed by common sense or intuitive moral judgment. That is reason enough for at least raising the question whether Grisez's formulation is correct, whether it may not be revised without going so far as to say that an ethics of action has simply to be elided into an ethics of good consequences, into an ethics of doing good on the whole. These also are actual cases that constitute the doctor's dilemma, even after craniotomy has been removed as a moral problem by the practice of Caesarian sections. I must take up again a suggestion I made when first wrestling with issues in the morality of abortion. 22 At the time, I called my proposal a justification of " direct " abortion in the craniotomy case (or like cases, such as the above) where the unborn child is killed with observable physical directness, there being no intervening diseased organ (such as a cancerous uterus) to target. I have since been instructed by Richard A. McCormick, S. J.,23 that my analysis of the act of physical direct killing in that case could, if correct, be readily brought under the meaning of the "indirectly voluntary." 24 I proposed in that case that "the intention of the action is directed toward the incapa.citation of the fetus from doing what it is doing to the life of the mother, not directed upon killing a human life as such. The death of one of us is foreseen and certain, but the objective of the act is the incapacitation of the fetal one of us from carrying out the material aggression which it is (naturally enough) carrying out upon the life of the mother. Grisez dismisses this proposal because he takes it to be a description of the fetus as a "materially unjust aggressor." (p. italics added) His ·fault is that he has more learning than I. I never said " unjust." So I was not " stretching a category that was designed for an altogether different situaton." (p. 303) Perhaps I invented the category all on my own. I certainly was not apply22 Paul Ramsey, "The Sanctity of Life-In the First of It," in The Dublin Review, Spring 1967, esp. pp. 13-17; reprinted as "The MoralitY' of Abortion" in Daniel Labby, ed., Life or Death: Ethics and Options (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968), esp. pp. 80-86. 23 Richard A. McCormick, S. J., "Past Church Teachings on Abortion," Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America, Vol. 33 (1968), esp. pp. 137-140. 2 ' See my acknowledgment of past confusions and indebtedness in the revision of this article/chapter now published in James Rachels, ed., Moral Problems: A Collection of Philosophical Essays (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), esp. the paragraph added pp. flfl-3. 220 PAUL RAMSEY ing a category that required that unjust aggression, though not formal, be ascribed to the fetus. I was speaking only of an absolutely necessary constraint upon life-saving actions if they are to be put forth and we are not to stand aside and let both lives perish. " Materially unjust " aggression entered not into my consideration, only the actual aggression in craniotomy cases of one innocent human being upon another when only one life could be saved. Moreover, Grisez's introduction of "unjust" aggression, if only material, is odd, since in the case of capital punishment he holds that " if human life is really a basic good, I do not see how its inherent dignity can be altered by the wickedness of him whose life it is." (p. 323) If we should dismiss from consideration a " formal " criminal aggression, we ought a fortiori to exclude consideration of the "material injustice" of one life's " aggression" on another life. It is the aggression, the material aggression, and not any considerations of the " justice " of it, that matters when only a definite one of the lives can be saved and under no circumstance the other also. 20 Indeed, strictly speaking, the woman is no less " aggressing " upon the life of the child; there is predictably fatal competition between the two lives; neither will succeed; both will die. Under those carefully ·circumscribed conditions, my suggestion was that the proper description of an action that saves the one life that can be saved is "stopping the (in this case, obviously innocent) aggression." The same in the case of the onrushing assailant, or the enemy in Aquinas's formulation of the rule of double e:ffect.26 I agree with Grisez that any killing of man by man must be "indirect" (and that is secured if the incapacitation of an aggressor is the target and not his death). Grisez should, if he is consistent, agree with me that the injustice of an assailant does not go to the point of assuring that we do not turn directly against the basic good of human life in killing him. In any case, I wanted to say that an observable, physically direct killing of an unborn child could be understood to have the intention of stopping its lethal action upon its mother's life and not to have the objective of killing that child as such apart 25 If eitheT the mother or the child could be saved but not both, and if we assume that both have equal title to life, we then would have to randomize the choice of which to save. We also must then say that the mother may heroicly choose to sacrifice her life in order that her child may live but that this decision cannot morally be demanded of her. 26 Summa Theol., II-II, q. 64, a. 7. ABORTION from its fatal function. Instructed as I have been by Fr. McCormick that such killing of the fetus can be deemed " indirectly voluntary " and not direct, I must return to my reserved opinion that "there may be some point in still calling this (in the meaning of the action's physical force or target) direct justifiable abortion." 27 In saying that, I was dimly aware of the ·fact that the crucial question is not (as Grisez believes) whether the death-dealing act may precede the life-saving component of the same human action. The crucial question is whether in (justifiably) doing the deadly deed, the target is upon that life or upon what it is doing to another life. While the life is taken with observable directness, the intention of the action is directed against the lethal process or function of that life. To stop the fetus's death-dealing action (or to remove the fetus's fatal "shielding" non-action) describes the rectitude of the action of a physician in any surgery he puts forth, under the aspect of necessity, to save the one life that can be saved. It remains only to argue that this is a sufficient description. Because I wanted not to probe " intentions " further, my impulse was to stress that in the order of physical causation this amounts to a justification of observably direct abortion. The abortion is done directly, I wanted to say, while targeted as a human action upon stopping the fetus's functional relation to his mother's death. Befuddled as that may have been, the importance of what I was trying to say can now be seen from the further test, the additional scrutiny of " intention," that Grisez requires. If mine was a sufficient description, in the sort of case in question, of justifiably doing the deadly deed, of willingly causing indirectly the death of a child, then my claim must be that there is no need to ask further whether a subsequent human intervention is needed to save the one life that can be saved. It is sufficient to know that one is turning and acting against a death-dealing action going on in the world, or against a " shield " tragically in the way of the physician's intervention of the only possible action that will save the one only life that can be saved in these cases. It is sufficient to know this to know that one does not turn directly against the basic good of human life in the aneurysm case and in the misplaced acute appendicitis case (where the only possible saving action comes by a later human intervention). True, by one action the physician removes a "shield" 27 Paul Ramsey, "The Morality of Abortion," in James Rachels, ed. (Moral Problems. New York: Harper and Row, 1971), p. PAUL RAMSEY that is passively yet fatally in the way of his healing work. True, he does not posit a healing action that, with moral simultaneity, proximately kills and remotely saves the mother's life, as in the case of craniotomy, radiation therapy, hypertension. All these cases should be resolved in the same way. This would be evident if we concentrate our ethical analysis on the child's functional relation to its mother's death (and its own) and upon properly describing the intention of the action we posit in removing it. The direction and intention of the deadly deed is upon stopping or removing the child's deadly connection with the death of his mother, there being no other recourse. We do not need to ask whether the mother's life is saved by a subsequent action made possible by the first or whether the child was killed by an action that went on in time to save the mother. We need not be distracted, by asking Grisez's test-question, from holding resolutely to an apt description of what we are now doing in incapacitating or removing the fetus: we are not turning directly against the basic value of the child's life. The target rather is that child's fatal function (active or passive). In that precise act the death of the child "incurs upon " the intended transformation of our lived world, which is sufficiently described as the incapacitating or removal of the fetus from doing what it is doing in the lived world of the mother. The clarifying question is not Grisez's. The clarifying question is whether we would save the child's life if we could, if it were not inexorably bringing about the death of his mother (and his own) or fatally in the way of actions to save her. One could even mount a golden-rule argument and ask if we were in the fetus's place (not whether we would want to live by bringing about our mother's death, but) whether we would want to die while causing our mother's death or being in the way of the only medical interventions that could have saved her, there being none of benefit to the fetus. These are the conscience-clarifying tests, not Grisez's. By my description of justifiable acts of abortion (those that are not observably indirect because there is an entitatively distinct medical ·condition or diseased organ such as a cancerous uterus to attack) , I mean to say that " it is not precisely the infant's death that benefits the mother but its removal from her." It is the infant's removal and not precisely its death that is the intention of acts of abortion in every one of the foregoing cases. One need not ask, let alone answer negatively, the question whether any other human action intervenes or need intervene for those benefits to accrue. One need only know that that removal must necessarily be done else both will die. ABORTION Grisez wrote (p. 340) the words within quotation marks in the previous paragraph in order to commend to the reader his view that the bad effect of destroying human life and the good effect of protecting it may be sequential components but must be components of " the very same act." That further scrutiny of the physician's intention (which I think is too constrictive and not needed in the cases we are discussing) turns out most astonishingly to afford few if any limits upon acts of " removal." Grisez begins with a hard test for whether the death of the fetus is intended as a means opening the way for a subsequent life-saving act. He ends by conceiving " removal " to fall within the scope of the agent's intention in many cases where removal cannot be said to be necessary. My view is that "removal" is what is done and is justified in all cases where " necessity " foredooms that only one life can be saved, whether in a single indivisible behavioral process or by a series of subsequently intended actions. Grisez's test (whether another human intervention is needed to save the life) is, on the one hand, too constrictive in regard to the cases under necessity. It then, on the other hand, turns out to afford little or the wrong action-guidance in cases where there is no necessity to do the intended action. His moral reasoning would forbid the necessary life-saving series of actions (of which" removal" is one) in those of the foregoing cases in which another intervening action is needed to bring about the good result. At the same time, the distinction between whether it is precisely the infant's death or its " removal " that benefits the mother allows " removal " in far more cases than necessity requires. This, I fear, is subjectivism gone riot in scrutinizing intention. Instead of limiting the description " removal " to cases of necessity or forced choice between saving one life or allowing both to die, Grisez imagines a probable future development-the artificial placenta or womb-and thereby he generates distinctions between intending the infant's death and intending its removal in cases under no such necessity of choice. Indeed, " the very meaning of abortion," when parsed in this way, "need not be feticide." Even if now the two have not yet been separated in fact, they could be and soon will be by the perfection of an artificial womb. Therefore even now, " what could be separate in fact obviously cannot be identical in meaning." (p. 341) I can read this in no other way than Grisez's subscription to the view that, even now, in every abortion a woman's or the physician's intention may be directed to the removal of the fetus from her and not to precisely the infant's death. The sole test-question would be whether the infant's now certain death is precisely wanted. Therefore, the statement that PAUL :RAMSEY "if one does not take an alternative in which the good effect is achieved without the deadly deed, then killing falls within the scope of one's intention" (p. 341) can be rewritten to read that "if one would take an alternative (the artificial womb) in vfflich the good effect is achieved without the deadly deed, then the killing does not now fall within the scope of one's intention." Grisez applies this reasoning to the case of rape. Why not to the case of pregnancy following incest, on the same page, and all other cases as well? In the case of the woman pregnant from forced intercourse, Grisez writes: " ... It is not clear that her precise concern is to kill the child. She simply does not wish to bear it. If the artificial uterus were available, she might be happy to have the baby removed and placed in such a device, later to be born and cared for as any infant that becomes a social charge. Now, clearly, one could not object if that were done. May the death of the child that is in fact brought about by aborting it actually be unintended in this case? I believe that the answer must be yes." (p. 343) If so, then almost all abortions are " unintended," and the issue of the morality of abortion reduces to the malice in the hearts of a few baby-haters. Grisez's viewpoint can finally be compared only with that of Judith Thompson among recent writers on abortion. Grisez asks whether in abortion the death or removal of the fetus is intended, and to answer this question he imagines an artificial womb and uses this possibility in the analysis of seeming abortifacient intentions. Judith Thompson asks 28 whether abortion need involve any disvaluing or denial of the personhood of the life within a woman. She challenges whether that person's right to life is stronger and more stringent than the mother's right to decide what happens in and to her body (who, if not, may "remove" that person), and she imagines a situation more fanciful than Grisez's artificial uterus but to the same purpose: You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, "Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you-we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the 28 Judith Jarvis Thompson, "A Defense of Abortion," Philosophy and Public Policy, Fall 1971, pp. 47-66. ABORTION violinist is now flqgged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only fur nine months. (pp. 48-9) Now, of course, Judith Thompson treats getting pregnant as rather like opening a window and letting " people-seeds " which are all about in the atmosphere lodge and take root in one's carpets and upholstery. (p. 59) For her there is no implied obligation in a woman's voluntary participation in sexual intercourse. Of course, Grisez would not agree with that. Still, on the matter of abortion their views are the same. For Thompson, " unplugging " the violinist is not a case of unjustifiable homicide, although death results from that action. For Grisez, the " removal " of the fetus need not mean (in any abortion, I contend, except those that aim to "prevent" defective child-life) to intend precisely the death of the unborn child that results. It is true that Grisez, while using the thought-experiment of an artificial uterus to establish that abortion may be " removal " and not intended feticide, nevertheless affirms that abortion would still be some other sort of serious moral violation. The fact that a rape victim may intend only the removal and not precisely the extinction of her " unwanted " child " does not mean that abortion in such a case would be ethically right." (p. 343) That only establishes that her action would not be feticide, as Judith Thompson wants only to say that " unplugging " need entail no lack of respect for famous violinists. In Grisez's argument, the woman may be guiltless of the strongest violation (feticide) yet guilty of violating " one of the simpler modes of obligation . . . -that which requires us to do good to another when we can and there is no serious reason not to do it." (p. 343) In this he is supported by the fact that (unless one abstractly supposes the perfection of an artificial uterus) the woman, by removal, would be visiting upon her child a very great likelihood of serious impairment. Nevertheless, Grisez disagrees with Judith Thompson, if at all, only in the degree or weight of their assessment of the moral requirement that remains once feticide and inherently disvaluing violinists are removed from the description of these acts. For Judith Thompson allows that " there may be cases in which it would be morally indecent to detach a person from your body," (p. 59) and she discusses what a Minimally Decent Samaritan, a Good Samaritan, and a Splendid Samaritan might do in the case she supposes. Still the fact that one morally ought to allow a person to use your body for the time needed does not establish that he has a right to it for the time needed. (p. 60) Much the same PAUL RAMSEY seems to me to be the upshot of Grisez's reduction of abortion from feticide (which may or may not be justifiable) to generalizable "removal" (which clearly can be justified for less than parityreasons). Notably, Grisez wrote not of rights or justice but of a duty " to do good to another when we can and there is no serious reason not to do it." He spoke of no absolute claim but of an electable obligation. While calling it " one of the simpler modes of obligation," it is still a duty of charity (if that is not an incoherent notion). It is no mean accomplishment to have established that the conservative Catholic philosopher Grisez is willing to lie down in the same Procrustean bed with the liberal Judith Thompson. Whether that is a consummation devoutly to be wished I do not know, nor precisely the ethical conclusions to be drawn from that coincidence. My present opinion is that both traditional and contemporary rationalistic moral analysis can readily fail to appreciate the natural among those "courses of action" which Aristotle 29 believed should be taken into account in determining the good for mankind. PAUL RAMSEY Princeton University Princeton, New Jersey •• Nichomachean Ethics, 1097b. NIETZSCHE: A REVIEW ARTICLE F RIEDRICH NIETZSCHE WAS unlucky in his relationship with women, from the earliest stages of his life to the very end. Most of them either intentionally or, more often, unintentionally misunderstood or misinterpreted his thoughts and his works, even long after his death. The latest example of such-seemingly non-intentional-misinterpretation comes from the pen of Rose Pfeffer/ an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Dowling (formerly Adelphi Suffolk) College. Acording to the biographical note on the jacket of her book, the author received her education at the University of Leipzig (in East Germany), where she majored in Germanic Languages and Literature, and at Columbia University, where she received her Ph. D. degree in Philosophy. It is a painful task to review a book that so grossly misses the mark. Any responsible review.er would like to dwell on the positive aspects of a new book on Nietzsche and deemphasize its negative points. Unfortunately, however, in this case the merits are few while the shortcomings and actual faults are many. A somewhat confused and confusing " Forword " by Professor James Gutmann of Columbia University is followed by the author's own Preface. Pfeffer expresses her satisfaction that some very recent studies have begun to acknowledge Nietzsche as a systematic philosopher but have failed to stress this point. . . . One important exception is Martin Heidegger's brilliant analysis, which emphasizes the systematic unity and interrelation of the major concepts in Nietzsche's philosophy. But Heidegger's penetrating interpretation is largely subjective and can be understood only in terms of his own philosophic views, as I will try to show in Part II of this book. (p. 14) As a matter of fact, this assertion is in no way borne out in Part II, for the simple reason that Pfeffer shows at best a nodding acquaintance with the philosophic position of Heidegger in general and with the two volumes of his Nietzsche lectures in particular. These lectures were published in 1961 by Neske in Pfullingen (West Germany). What is borne out is the author's failure to understand in depth either Heidegger or Nietzsche, and the epithet " sub1 Nietzsche: Disciple of Dionysus. By Rose Pfeffer (Lewisburg: Pp. versity Press, Bucknell Uni- KURT F. REINHARDT jectivism" .applies to Pfeffer rather than to Heidegger, who in the early as well as in the later phases of his philosophic thought has been waging a valiant fight against subjectivism in philosophy. To this reviewer the simplistic manner in which Rose Pfeffer tries to reduce Heidegger's thinking to the level of the conventional lingo of what Schopenhauer aptly referred to as Die Professorenphilosophie der Philosophieprofessoren (the professorial philosophy of philosophy professors) appears pathetic. All the more so since the reviewer counts Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger among his most revered teachers at the University of Freiburg in the early twenties of this century. Rose Pfeffer herself admits that the claimed " unity " of Nietzsche's philosophic thought " grows out of multiplicity, change and complexity" (p. 14) and that it "remains open-ended and problematic." But she forthwith contradicts her own words by apodictically stating that those interpreters who call Nietzsche's philosophy "deliberately anti-systematic" are wrong. In her obviously unrepressible desire to impute to Nietzsche a hankering for "systematic thinking" she resorts to quoting a passage from Nietzsche's Literary Remains (the highly controversial Nachlass), dated December, 1888, that is, an idea jotted down at a time when Nietzsche was no longer in possession of his mental faculties, since the final collapse followed only a few weeks later! Thus the author tries in one or another way to force Nietzsche's " tragic world view " into the Procrustes-bed of a " system," without, however, being able to adduce any cogent arguments to support her claim. She even frankly confesses (p. 17) that her procedure " is, in some sense, an arbitrary one." It is revealing that she has to have frequent recourse to such expressions as " in my opinion," " I believe," " it is my conviction," " I contend," etc. On the same page she writes: Since, in my opinion, a systematic interconnectedness exists between Nietzsche's basic ideas, any other of these ideas [i.e., other than " the tragic world view"}such as the will to power, the eternal recurrence, or the overman--could have served as a basis for demonstrating the coherent structure of his thought. In speaking of the relevance of Nietzsche's thought for our own time the author endorses what she calls Nietzsche's experience of " the absurdity of the human condition, wherein nothing exists to which we can sincerely commit ourselves." (p. 18) Since this ambitious volume is dedicated to Pfeffer's two daughters, this kind of endorsement strikes the reader as strange indeed, because it is an indication of the fact that the author is out of touch with millions of young people in Europe and in the Americas, who are NIETZSCHE conspicuous for their wholehearted commitment to any number of worthy causes! Even in those quarters where the young people can no longer find shelter in the providential designs of a supernatural power, the commitment to "man on his own" (to use Ernst Bloch's phrasing) is sincere, vital, and strong. Actually, Nietzsche never speaks of the " absurdity " of the human condition, and it is precisely his ever-present hopeful longing for "the higher man," the Vbermensch, that sets him apart from the vulgar atheism of those " existentialists " and " humanists " who owe allegiance to Jean-Paul Sartre. It is therefore contrary to the truth to assert (p. 18) that Nietzsche "offers a vision of life that is significant for twentieth-century man, because it is based not on comfortable illusions [viz., those offered by Christianity] but on the experiences of despair, suffering and the reality of evil." (ibid.) Parts I and II of Pfeffer's study suffer from the identical faults and erroneous contentions; these have their ultimate source in the author's failure to evaluate correctly the dialectic interrelationship of the Dionysian and Apollonian principles and to assess accurately the role this dialectic plays in Nietzsche's life as much as in his works, from the beginning to the end. Karl Schlechta's exposure of the non-authenticity of the Nietzsche N achlass and of the fraudulent manipulation of a significant part of his letters addressed to mother, sister, and a number of friends, is briefly noted and then brushed aside as being irrelevant. The reason given for the wholesale neglect of the testimony of those who, like Schlechta, the Horneffer brothers, Erich Podach, Friedrich Wiirzbach, and others, spent years of research in the Nietzsche Archives in Weimar, is the contention that no student and reader of Nietzsche who has " no direct access to the original material in the Nietzsche Archives can arrive at a definitive conclusion." (p. n) If that were the case, then it would be all the more important to listen to the voice of those who have had such direct access and who have, in addition, proven by their research that they are trustworthy Nietzsche scholars! The dire consequence of neglecting to do this is Pfeffer's extremely subjective method of procedure and, among other things, the inclusion in her book of all the material that has been proven non-authentic, owing to the fraudulent manipulations of Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche and her collaborators in the Archives. After her return from Paraguay, following the death of her husband and the shipwreck of their supposedly " racially pure " colony Nueva Germania, Elisabeth established herself as the self-appointed executrix of her demented brother's writings, including the voluminous accumulated stray notes that her brother had jotted down in often illegible script on 230 KURT F. REINHARDT his long walks in the Swiss Engadine mountains. These literally thousands of scribbled notes constitute a large part of the Nachlass, from which Pfeffer quotes ad lib as though they were authentic and absolutely reliable documents. Many of Elisabeth's helpers in the editing of the N achlass were hirelings who shared Frau Forster's commitment to National Socialism and Anti-Semitism. Pfeffer grudgingly concedes that " any ordering of this vast, scattered, fragmentary material ... must inevitably be problematic and subjective," but she adds, with not even a modicum of logic: "But however sceptical we may remain, the elimination of the Nachlass in a publication of Nietzsche's works would deprive the reader and Nietzsche scholar of an unquestionably rich reference source." (ibid.) A rich source indeed for the fabricators and elaborators of the Nietzsche Myth! Such knowledgeable Nietzsche scholars as Arthur Danto, R. J. Hollingdale, Karl Lowith, and even Walter Kaufmann have therefore carefully distinguished between Nietzsche's authentic works and the bewildering fragments of the Nachlass. Pfeffer refers to Nietzsche's early work The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, which was written at a time when Nietzsche was still spellbound by the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and by the personality and the music of Richard Wagner, as "Nietzsche's most overrated book." (p. 88) Yet later in her study and in a different context she frequently quotes from this early work to substantiate her claim that Nietzsche was indeed "the disciple of Dionysus." Today there is well-nigh unanimous agreement among Nietzsche scholars that what Nietzsche had discovered on the basis of his research in Greek philosophy and literature remains .essentially valid, notwithstanding the contents of the Preface which he added to the new edition of 1886 under the heading An Attempt at Self-Criticism, wherein he calls the work "impossible, confused " and " a work of adolescence." Pfeffer herself speaks of " the deep and fascinating insights " contained in this " most overrated " of Nietzsche's works. (p. 84) The assertion that Nietzsche "develops his own metaphysics" is in flat contradiction to Nietzsche's often repeated rejection of Western metaphysics in toto, because he regarded it as saturated with the spirit of Platonism and " Christianism "-a misconception which Nietzsche had adopted under influence of Schopenhauer's and Wagner's slanted perspective and which he unfortunately never outgrew. Heidegger, whom Pfeffer cites as her crown witness to the contrary, fully shared Nietzsche's negative evaluation of Western metaphysics (but not his jaundiced view of Christianity and Christian theology). NIETZSCHE 231 Among the many faulty notions and rash judgments in which Pfeffer's book abounds, none is more conspicuous and more disastrous than her inclusion of and her copious quotations from a volume titled (by Nietzsche's sister!) The Will to Power, as though it were not only his most important work but even his opus magnum. As a matter of fact, it has been conclusively established that a work with this title was never written by Nietzsche and thus simply does not exist. Both the title and the concoction of this volume in Nietzsche's collected works and its inclusion in the editions authorized by Frau Elisabeth ForsterNietzsche are thus attributable exclusively to Nietzsche's sister. In the chapter that deals with Nietzsche's foretelling of "the advent of Nihilism, that uncanniest of all guests," we find the sentence: " Philosophical nihilism pervades all of Nietzsche's works, from the earliest to the latest periods of his creative life." (p. 67) The truth is that Nietzsche was engaged in all the stages of his life, until the onset of his mental illness, in a variety of attempts at diagnosing correctly what he considered the sickness of the modern age as well as the symptomatology of the sickness he had come to see as inherent in the history of Western thought in general and Western metaphysics in particular. This sickness he named Nihilism, and he made a supreme effort in his life and in his works to "overcome" the temptation and the threat of Nihilism in himself and in the present age in his visionary and groping anticipation of the Vbermensch of the future (" man is something that must be overcome ") and in the symbol of the cyclical cosmic process of Die ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen (the Eternal Recurrence of the Same), a symbol which he owed to what he referred to as "the Vision of Sils-Maria" (the village in the Upper Engadine, where he spent his happiest summers and where the philosophically and poetically most striking sections of Thus Spoke Zarathustra were conceived and written) . Typical of Pfeffer's uncertainty with regard to her own sweeping generalizations and her oversimplification of exceedingly complex issues a])e such pronouncements as the following two, to which many more could easily be added: "Schopenhauer's pessimistic conception of life as eternal suffering, from which the reasonable man seeks escape through annihilation of his ever-striving individual will . . . has much in common with some aspects of the Buddhistic doctrine of Nirvana." (p. 70) Or: "I belieye (sic) that Schopenhauer's total philosophy cannot be termed nihilistic" and that " in his ethical theory one indeed finds positive elements." (p. 71) While the former quote reveals the author's unawareness of the fact that Schopenhauer was one of the first European KURT F. REINHARDT thinkers who had acquired a knowledge of Sanskrit and who was intimately familiar with Buddhist philosophy and religion and who subsequently embodied in his own thought many of the basic concepts of Buddhism, including the concept of Nirvana, the second statement is disarming in its painful vagueness and naivete. The several references to medieval philosophy and to fundamental concepts of Christian theology are appalling in their innocence and ignorance. A telling example is the contention that " the medieval philosophies of Duns Scotus and William of Ockham " are to be placed alongside such " less strictly defined " forms of Nihilism as embodied in the " sceptical positions ' 1 of Pyrrho and " the critical analysis " of Hume. It is hardly less appalling when we read: The pronouncement of the death of God must have been a familiar theme for Nietzsche, the son and grandson of Lutheran ministers, who, in his early youth, must have heard Luther's chorale " Gott selbst ist gestorben" sung many times in church. (p. 74) This quote speaks for itself and thus needs no comment. In the section that discusses at length Nietzsche's "Dionysian Faith" (chap. 10) the author once more shows her lack of even a rudimentary understanding of what Christian theology and philosophy are all about. She attributes to Christianity something she calls total " transcendence " (evidently meaning total other-worldliness as applying to all Christian denominations), and she seems completely unaware that in the Christian frame of reference the stress on " immanence " is as important as the emphasis on " transcendence " or, in other words, that the Christian belief in a transcendent God is just as strong as the belief in God's immanence in his creation and in every individual human being; that the Christian God is not only the Creator but also the Sustainer and that without this sustenance creation and creatures would fall back into that nothingness from which they have sprung. Pfeffer thus attributes to Christian theology the view espoused by Deism, that is, the concept of a Creator-God who abandons his creation and leaves it to its own proliferations. (cf. p. 225) Christian theology, after all, is a serious business, and when an author is ignorant of its implications, he (or she) ought to refrain from passing either laudatory or condemnatory value judgments, judgments which have no fundamentum in ref It would be easy enough to continue in this vein indefinitely, pointing out errors, calling attention to the fuzzy style, the multiple repetitions, and the often awkward translations from the German. However, I find it more productive to present in all brevity the 233 NIETZSCHE Nietzsche image as it emerges after having been "demythologized." These concluding observations, then, are trying to set forth the findings established by the most recent Nietzsche research at the hands of informed and responsible scholars. * * * * * * The " Nietzsche Myth " reached its apogee at the commemoration of the philosopher's ninetieth birthday on October 15, 1934. Nietzsche had died in 1900, after ten years of total mental derangement, at first under the " guardianship " of his mother and, after her death, of his sister. A sort of Prelude to the ensuing tragi-comical farce was the visit in Weimar of the leading ideologue of the National Socialist Party, Ernst Rosenberg. He was formally welcomed by Frau Forster-Nietzsche. The ceremonies of the day were solemnized by the presence of all the bigwigs of the Party and the attendance of leading representatives of German philosophy, arts and letters, and the natural sciences. The Fuhrer, too, had come but was not present at the commemoration. Instead he paid a personal visit to Nietzsche's sister and spent some time "meditating" in front of the Nietzsche bust in the Archive. When Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche died in 1935, Adolf Hitler honored her memory by being present at the funeral. In his eulogy, the classical philologist, Walter F. Otto, declared: There are moments in the life of nations when an Urwelt (a primeval world)their own Urwelt-powerfully asserts itself, recalling the well regulated and domesticated life of the nation to the stormy swirl of eternal becoming, renewing the strongest hearts in boundless joy and woe, while the mouth of genii utters wild and reckless words-singing jubilant and terrible hymns to that reborn depth wherein life and death intertwine. This is the Dionysian spirit. . . The heart of the soul recovers its native tongue and is filled with Dionysian rapture. . . . It proclaims that the name of that unique Gestalt which the German spirit will call into life with the force of its deepest longing, is no longer Helena . . . but Ariadne, the eternal love of the suffering god. This schmalz and bombast ties in neatly with the contents and the main theses of Rose Pfeffer's book. Here we have one glaring example of the reckless attempt to manufacture a Nietzsche mythology, built upon the patheticmelancholy fact that Nietzsche in his delusion of mind had experienced himself as the reincarnation of Dionysus, " the god in emerald beauty," whom we meet at the very end of Nietzsche's Dionysus Dithyrambs-in the last lines that the philosopher ever wrote and at a time when he was no longer himself! 234 KURT F. REINHARDT There have been few figures in the history of ideas whose image has been so persistently distorted as that of Nietzsche. Among the few who recognized his genius for what it was were Heinrich von Stein, a prominent aesthetician, Erwin Rohde, like Nietzche a classical philologist, and Paul Deussen, the most authentic interpreter of Schopenhauer's philosophy, among the Germans; Franz Overbeck, the distinguished Protestant theologian and Nietzsche's most loyal and learned friend, among the Swiss; Georg Brandes (Georg Cohen), the famous Danish literary critic, and August Strindberg, the greatest among Swedish playwrights, novelists, and poets. Writing in the second half of the nineteenth century, Nietzsche anticipated the crucial problems facing the second half of the twentieth. He diagnosed with uncanny accuracy the syndromes of our own political, social, moral, and spiritual crises and illnesses, speaking a language familiar to the young people of today and to those who have remained young in spirit. They, like Nietzsche, rise in revolt against the politics of a brutal " Will to Power," against the idolization of " national sovereignty " and the arrogant claims of the omnipotent nation-state. They are those "dragon-slayers" whom Nietzsche had envisaged in his second " Unseasonable Meditation" on The Good and the Harm Done by History to Life (Vber den Nutzen und Nachteil der Geschichte fur das Leben). Nietzsche's perceptive perspective of the "new man" of the future was totally misunderstood during his lifetime. He was hailed after his death as the prime spokesman of an anti-social and anti-human selfish individualism, who advocated the breeding of a pure "Aryan-Germanic" race of "blond beasts " and " supermen." Thus the thinker, who to the day of his mental breakdown had militated against the evil myths of chauvinism and racial anti-semitism, suffered the ignominious fate of being proclaimed the precursor of National Socialism and Fascism. Nietzsche's philosophy culminated in the ever-repeated demand for a "transvaluation of all traditional values" (Umwertung aller W erte) , and this demand he expressed with a passionate radicalism unparalleled in Western thought; "radicalism" understood, etymologically correct, as a search for the " root " (radix) of all things and beings, their ultimate "ground." In this unrelenting effort he called to the aid of philosophic thought his own profound psychological insights as well as his familiarity with the natural and biological sciences, including anthropology, physiology, and medicine, to the extent to which these disciplines had advanced at that time. Genuine science as such was for him " gaya scienza," NIETZSCHE Frohliche Wissenschaft (Joyful science), as he titled one of his major works. Science, as Nietzsche saw it, must remain capable of laughing at itself, a capability which Nietzsche used as a criterion also with respect to all other human pursuits and to every human being, including himself and his work, without thereby wishing to minimize the seriousness of his own thought. He at one time expressed the desire to have affixed to the door of his house the inscription: "I live in my own house, have never aped anyone and have always laughed at any ' master' who was incapable of laughing at himself." We owe the first thoroughly revised and "demythologized" edition of Nietzsche's authentic works and selected letters to Karl Schlechta who, after years of research in the Nietzsche Archives in an edition in three volumes on Weimar, published in 4018 pages (Miinchen: Carl Hanser Verlag) . The third volume contains a painstaking philologic-critical apparatus (pp. which r.e-evaluates Nietzsche's personality and work and thus presents a completely updated Nietzsche image. Of pivotal significance in the Schlechta edition is the laborious sifting and re-editing of the Nietzsche Nachlass, that is, of that part of Nietzsche's writings that had given rise to the most outrageous misinterpretations. Nietzsche's sister stands exposed as the arch villain in a conspiratorial plot. It was not Schlechta's intention to present a definitive historical-critical edition, a monumental task that is currently being undertaken by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin: W. de Gruyter Verlag, 1969 ff.). Schlechta avoided the repeated and always misleading attempt to "systematize" Nietzsche's ideas. The Nachlass is reproduced in the same disorderly fashion in which Nietzsche had left it, in innumerable scribbled notes and note-books. The reader thus gains a better understanding of the manner in which Nietzsche thought and worked, and he begins to understand also that Nietzsche's philosophy grew out of lived experience rather than out of abstract conceptualizations. It is therefore not the true Nietzsche whom we meet in the volumes of the Musarion Edition the 19 volumes of the Alfred Kroner Edition (1895-1913) or, more recently, in the two volume edition of the N achlass by Friedrich Wiirzbach (Miinchen: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1969), and the one volume " selections " from the 18 volumes of the inadequate translations of the Oscar Levy Edition, edited by Geoffrey Clive (New York: The New American Library, Mentor Books, 1965). It simply will not do to" arrange" Nietzsche's thought in neat rubrics of several " main themes." All such attempts fail to do justice to the immense complexity of Nietzsche's thinking processes. 236 KURT F. REINHARDT In Joyful Science Nietzsche describes his method as "experimental." He calls such experimental thinking "perspectivistic " in that it switches in ever repeated tentative thrusts from viewpoint to viewpoint, without, however, losing track of the core of this kind of search and research. He greatly admired those brilliant French and German Freidenker of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who had developed to perfection a similar aphoristic style, such as La Rochefoucauld, Chamfort, Voltaire, and Lichtenberg. The Nietzschean type of philosopher must be a daring adventurer. He must think and live with open horizons rather than in a closed encapsulated world. Since no possibility can be excluded a priori, why, Nietzsche asks, should not "something grow out of its opposite, reason out of unreason, life out of death, truth out of untruth? " There is no doubt, however, that Nietzsche's thought, especially during the critical eighties, began to center in the idea of a Hauptwerk (an opus magnum) that was to embody his most revolutionary ideas, as they began to crystallize in retrospect. We find evidence of this consuming desire in the new Prefaces he wrote in 1886 to those of his works which appeared to him as milestones of his intellectual evolution. He notes with some astonishment that his life and work, when viewed prospectively, seemed to make no sense but, when viewed retrospectively, everything converged in a meaningful pattern. That Nietzsche did not achieve the wished-for synthesis was not due to his" .experimental" method but to his ever recurring hesitancy to reveal his innermost thoughts, because he was apprehensive of the inevitable consequences of a thoroughgoing Umwertung aller Werte. In the second Unseasonable Meditation Nietzsche's ultimate criterion is Life. What serves Life is morally good. What degrades and debases Life is morally evil. The treatise ends with the expression of a sanguine hope for the regenerative forces of youth. And this hope rests not on the presupposition of " the death of God" but, rather, of "the death of metaphysics" or, more precisely, "the death of the God of metaphysics." To the question as to what was going to take the place of the " dead God " of metaphysics Nietzche answers by extolling what he calls Amor Fati and what the Greeks had called ananke, that is, a fate (Geschick) that determines the orbit of Being and of human existence. And it is only today that we enter into the constellation which Nietzsche decribes. Nietzsche's futuristic vision is not, as is that of German, French, and English romanticism, retrospective but, like the vision of Teilhard de Chardin, a prospective utopia. In Nietzsche's view, the inevitable consequence of the victory NIETZSCHE 237 of atheism will be the total responsibility of man for the future of mankind. And this total responsibility makes Nietzsche demand the self-transcendence of man toward the Vbermensch. In sum, then, what Nietzsche envisaged as the sequels of the death of "the God of metaphysics" was decay, destruction, revolution, and unleashed naked terror. With the crumbling of the traditional moral norms, everything would of necessity become strangely unfamiliar, totally "alienated." Trust would be replaced by distruct, suspicion, and sceptical doubt. In a world of total estrangement men would succumb to the compulsive drive of either enslaving others or of becoming slaves themselves. Nihilism, "that uncanniest of all guests," will then enter the house of the world and the abode of man. "This future," writes Nietzsche, " speaks already in a hundred portents, this fate is everywhere in incontrovertible evidence" (in Literary Remains of the Eighties). Thus Nietzsche saw the cause of "the advent of Nihilism" not in Christian theology but in Western metaphysics, a branch of philosophy that was for him the classical model of human escapism. And as soon as man's faith in metaphysics was shattered, the fictitious Hinterwelt and therewith " truth " as such evaporated. What remained was a process of becoming without ultimate meaning, multiple means without an end, without a goal: there was no longer any telos. Since Western metaphysics is seen as nihilistic in its very essence and, therefore as the root principle of an enfeebled and degenerate life, Nietzsche opposed to it his idea of what for him constituted a strong and healthy life, that is, a life that has no need to justify itself by metaphysical abstract conceptualizations, because it is itself the standard and measure of everything else. This answer is obviously incomplete and unsatisfactory. It did not satisfy Nietzsche, and he therefore was looking for a more compelling principle that would make it possible to distinguish between a decaying and an ascending life. And thus in The Genealogy of Morality the criterion becomes the greater or lesser amount of suffering that a life is capable of accepting and enduring. He writes: Aside from the ascetic ideal, man ... has until now had no meaning .... "Why, then, does man exist at all? " This question remained without an answer, because the will to assert himself as human and as a son of this earth was lacking. . . . This precisely was the meaning of the ascetic ideal: something was missing, and man was surrounded by a huge abyss-he did not know how to justify, explain, affirm himself; he was haunted by the problem of the meaning of his existence .... He was a sick animal. His problem, however, was not his suffering as such but, rather, his not knowing an answer to the cry " why suffering? " Man . . . does not negate suffering as such; he rather wills it and even seeks it, provided the reason KURT F. REINHARDT for and the meaning of his suffering is shown to him . . . , and the ascetic ideal offered a meaning, up to now the only meaning (Genealogy of Morality). Suffering, Nietzsche held, was an integral part of being-human. It confirms man's superior rank in the hierarchy of creatures, and his answer to the question "why suffering?" reveals the Christian roots from which most of his convictions grew. He reasons that man's suffering relates to an aboriginal "break" (Bruch) in human nature, a break that is experienced by man in a division he experiences in himself and in his world. The "ascetic ideal" imparted meaning to this experience of alienation; it offered a possibility of extricating the individual from his own and his world's fragility by seeking and finding refuge and " salvation " in a world of eternal and true Being. Unable to change reality, which holds him in its grip, man turns defiantly against it, simultaneously denouncing and renouncing it: He interprets his animalistic instincts as guilt before God, as . . . insurrection .. the Initiator of the world; he locks himself against the "Lord," " the Father," up between "God" and "the Devil," ... God becomes his Judge, his Executioner, his hangman, and all this is seen against the prospect of an after-life . . . , against a background of eternity. (Ibid.) As Nietzsche sees it, the precondition ·for man's exodus from two millennia of captivity is, first and foremost, the conquest of the spirit of revenge and retribution. And yet, even after this reversal of values, human suffering remains, and the question, " why suffering?," remains unanswered. What, then, has Nietzsche to offer that could fill the void left by an abandonment of the "ascetic ideal"? Atheism is nonviable, since it is a catastrophe that makes plain the castastrophic nature of the entire history of the West. Nietzsche finds a firm hold only in a complete "transvaluation" (Umwertung) of the ascetic ideal, in what he calls "the Will to Truth." And what does the Will to Truth teach us, aside from the injunction to overcome the spirit of revenge and retribution? Unless, says Nietzsche, man is to fall back on his animality, the " spirit of negation" itself must be overcome. Vulgar atheism must be transcended by an affirmation of what Hegel and Marx had called "the negation of negation." However, with his abandonment of the Hegelian Christology, Nietzsche was compelled by his premises to demand self-annihilation as a necessary phase in the progressive elevation and eventual transfiguration of Life. The man whose self-affirmation includes his self-effacement, his freely offered self-immolationhe is the Vbermensch. He is the one who dares take his stand " beyond good and evil." NIETZSCHE 289 Unbeknown to Nietzsche, with these demands of a new morality " beyond good and evil " he had rediscovered an almost forgotten tenet of the Christian heritage. For the " overcoming of the spirit of revenge" is one of the central injunctions of the Gospel, the truly "Good News." It is the Christian in the biblical understanding of the term who refuses to split creation into two mutually exclusive hostile parts. When St. Augustine turned his back on the Manichaean heresy he thereby renounced an absolute metaphysical dualism. And one of the main themes in his De Civitate Dei is the strong affirmation of the intrinsic goodness of God's creation as a manifestation of the infinite goodness of the Creator. The thrust of his argument is the assertion that it is evil men who make an evil world. The Christian was liberated by Christ from the letter of " the law" and was taught to love his enemies and to bless those who curse him. He is as wholehearted in his "negation of all negation " and his all-encompassing affirmation of Life-eternal Life-as Nietzsche's Zarathustra. And when Nietzsche, failing to give a cogent reason for this kind of implicit faith, writes: "In short, and alas, what we are in dire need of is this kind of total health," the Christian agrees. Finally, I should like to quote a passage from a profoundly perceptive book by the German scientist-philosopher and Nietzsche scholar, Heinrich Schipperges of the University of Heidelberg, who writes: Nietzsche sees only two possibilities: either the breeding of the Ubermensch or the taming of the beast in man. In both instances, however, what is required is the highest kind of self-discipline, the basis of every creative life. . . . Man either rules or obeys. Both ways are beset with great dangers. As Nietzsche states in Ecce Homo: "Dangerously healthy, but healthy nonetheless!" ... Actually, Nietzsche believed only in the great and simple life-style of Apollonian man, even where he ... had to experience the agony of Apollonian life, even where he had to cry out that God was dead, even where he referred to himself as " the last disciple of Dionysus," that great tempter-god. It was his most painful experience to observe that the action of a Buddhist differed radically from the action of the non-Buddhist, while " the Christian " acts like all the rest! It had become clear to him and caused him intense suffering that Christianity was in its true essence not a theory but a practice of life and of living: a means to discover the Kingdom of Heaven in the human heart and, in short, to live in simplicity like little children (trans. from Lebendige Heilkunde. Von grossen Arzten und Philosophen aus drei Jahrtausenden. Olten and Freiburg im Breisgau: Walter Verlag, p. 816 f.). Nietzsche regarded the creation of an updated ethical code as indispensable for the future of man and of mankind: "The breeding of an animal that dares to make promises-is not this the 240 KURT F. REINHARDT paradoxical task which nature has in store for man? Is not this the real problem of man?" (Genealogy) Nietzsche never doubted that the " ascetic ideal " was one of the truly great affirmative forces of life and of history: "The ascetic priest, this apparent enemy of life-precisely he is one of the preserving and creative forces of life. . . . His ' Nay ' to life, as by magic, brings to light an abundance of tender 'Yeas.'" (ibid.) As for every philosophy, .every anthropology, and every ideology, so also for the philosophy, anthropology, and ideology of Nietzsche, the answer to the question, "What is man? " is crucial and decisive. Nietzsche's answer to this question is likewise pivotal for his entire philosophy. This answer reads: "Man is the as yet unstabilized and unfinished animal." This means that man is engaged in an autonomous process of becoming, of creating and forming his Self, while all other species are relieved of this burden by nature; it means that man can utterly fail in realizing his manhood, because he is to a large extent the maker of his own present and future, of his " salvation " and his " perdition." KURT Stanford University Stanford, California F. REINHARDT BOOK REVIEWS Aquinas on Metaphysics. A Historico-Doctrinal Study of the Commentary on tke Metaphysics. By JAMES C. DoiG. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 197Q. Pp. 451. Guilders 5Q,75. This long monograph is remarkable for a number of things-not all of them good. It is a serious effort to interpret Thomas Aquinas's Commentary. Doig undertakes to compare the diverse metaphysics of Aristotle, Avicenna, Averroes, and Albert the Great with the doctrine of the Thomistic Commentary. This is a grandiose project: it would take a marvelous mind and very mature scholarship to collate five such ontologies. In the case of the four predecessors of Aquinas, Doig's interpretations are unconvincing to me. At the end of the second chapter, for instance, we find a summary of the positions of Avicenna, Averroes, and Albert. Five points are stressed: the material object, the formal object, the constructive method, the movement of each metaphysics (i. e., from starting-point to conclusion in each) , plus the way that each thinker proves that God exists. To be quite fair to Doig, he does discuss other metaphysical issues elsewhere, but there is little effort to get at the fundamental relation between knowledge and reality in each thinker, their views on the nature of causality, or on the analogy of being. At one point (pp. 34-35) the Neo-Platonic elements in Avicenna's views on divine attributes and emanation are dismissed as irrelevant to what Aqujnas does in his Commentary. These things are not irrelevant: one cannot understand the metaphysics of any of these men in the Middle Ages without some awareness of the influence of NeoPlatonism. Doig finds Averroes and Albert rather close in much of their metaphysical thinking, and he knows how critically Averroes rejected Avicennism. I wonder about this alignment of Averroes and Albert. If Albert's exposition of the Metaphysics was an early work, then Albert would be expected to know little about Averroes and much about Avicenna. However, we do not know the date of Albert's commentary: it could have been produced at any time between IQ55 and 1Q75. Indeed, we do not know whether Albert's preceded Thomas's commentary! It is also very difficult to talk about Albert's "metaphysics," for he seems to have held several metaphysical poesitions. To save time, I simply refer the reader to Bernard Muller-Thym's book, The Establishment of the University of Being in Meister Eckhart (1939), where we find a very different account of Albert's ontology. In the long run, we may wonder at the value of a comparison 242 BOOK REVIEWS of the work of Albert and Aquinas, when we do not know the chronological relations of their commentaries, and when we are in such ignorance of the manner in which Albertine metaphysics may have influenced Thomas. Another area of doubt on this study centers on the text of Thomas's Commentary on the Metaphysics. We have no critical edition of this work; the Spiazzi text is merely a modified reprint. Solid interpretation will have to wait for the Leonine texts. The newly printed editions of Thomas's expositions of the Ethics and the Politics, made under the direction of R. A. Gauthier, strongly suggest that a critical edition of the Sententia in libros Metaphysicarum will provide us with a text that is significantly different from the present ones. I am in general agreement with Doig's account of the chronology of Thomas's Commentary. He thinks there were two redactions, one from 1265-7 ·in the Papal States, and a second from 1270-2, when many of Thomas's writings were revised or reproduced in fair copies at Paris. Thomas's exposition was based on several Latin versions of the text of Aristotle, not on one text provided by William of Moerbeke. Whether five versions were really used by Aquinas, as Doig suggests, I do not know. What Doig does in interpreting Thomas is far more important than all of these preliminaries. In effect, he claims that Aquinas's Commentary: (1) was "written in the light of one metaphysical system." This depends on the special way in which Doig reads Thomas. (2) Doig says that Thomas's Commentary "was directed against the interpretations of Aristotle given by Avicenna, Averroes, and Albert." This claim has some partial truth, but in the case of Albert it is unclear. (3) Further, "Aquinas attributed to Aristotle a metaphysics which is not held by the ancient Greek." This is correct but not because of Doig's interpretation of either metaphysics. (4) Finally, "Aquinas accepted this metaphysics as his own." A more complete study of Thomas's other works would be needed to convince me of this conclusion. What lies behind all of this is Doig's understanding of intellectual conception and judgment. He is sure that " the ' is ' of judgments never means exists," (p. 347) and he can be quite critical of Aquinas (1) for not having understood this in his early period, and (2) for not saying it in his later writings. Thus (p. 349, note 1) we read: "Aquinas never explicitly gives the doctrine I expose" and then (in note 2) "Aquinas' thought, if not his words, agrees with my exposition." To this I say: I would like to know the method that enables an interpreter to read the mind of an author in this way. The kernel of Doig's view of judgment is based on his reading of certain texts in the Commentary (In IV Met. lect. 17; n. 736; In V Met. lect. 9, nn. 889 et 895; In VI Met. lect. 4; see Doig, p. 349) which he takes to mean that the judgment expresses a truth function: " My understanding of John as 'man' is true." Exegesis of these texts is impossible here, but BOOK REVIEWS I ask any interested reader to see whether Thomas says this. It is correct that Thomas uses intelligere in these passages but that does not mean that the operation is conception. The judicative function is an intelligere, as Julien Peghaire showed in Intellectus et Ratio (1986). For a recent review of this whole problem of the meaning of judgment in Aquinas, I would refer to Benoit Garceau, Judicium, vocabulaire, sources, doctrine de saint Thomas d'Aquin (Montreal-Paris, 1968). I would not accept all of Garceau's conclusions, but I think his survey of different interpretations is very complete. Doig does not list or use Garceau. The fact of the matter is that Doig approached his task with an obvious preconception. He is dead set against any suggestion that metaphysical esse is expressed or known in the judgment. Gilson and his associates are wrong on this point, in the view of Doig. Indeed, in the course of his discussion Doig disagrees with almost everyone in the Thomist establishment (Fabro, Forest, Geiger, Maritain, Marechal, Owens, Phelan, De Raeymaeker, Van Riet, and Van Steenberghen) except Charles Hart and Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange! What is important in Doig's mind is the concept of being, taken both essentially and existentially. His book should stand as an example of how not to interpret a philosophical classic. VERNON J. BoURKE St. Louis University St. Louis, Missouri Human Life: Some Moral Issues. By JoHN F. DEDEK. New York: Sheed & Ward, Pp. 180. $5.95. Dedek, professor of moral theology at St. Mary of the Lake Seminary in Mundelein, lllinois, offers a discussion of four moral issues profoundly affecting human life: abortion, genetic engineering, euthanasia, and war. His consideration of each of these questions is prefaced by a chapter on methodology, with attention centered on two principles: the sanctity of human life and the principle of double effect. Dedek contends that human life, although sacred and inviolable, is not an absolute value and that man's stewardship over human life implies a practical dominion, at least to the extent that man has the responsibility for making decisions regarding the termination of life. He then reviews some recent efforts at revising the principle of double effect and argues that the position taken by Bruno Schuller seems to be the most reasonable. For Schuller the principle of double effect does not rule out the direct intent to do something physically evil, e. g., killing a man, provided there is a proportionate reason which can serve as a "preference principle." In 244 BOOK REVIEWS such instances, Schuller and Dedek maintain, the evil intended and effected is only physical, not moral. After a chapter on the history of the attitudes of Catholic theologians toward abortion Dedek next surveys the views of contemporary moralists on this issue (e. g., Ramsey, Haring, Mangan) and offers his own view. He believes that the phenomenon of twinning makes it at least doubtful that human life is present until the end of the second or beginning of the third week of pregnancy. He then makes the tentative claim, justified by applying Schuller's preference principle, that " the purposeful destruction of a fetus is not a moral evil in the presence of a proportionate reason." Dedek, turning attention to problems posed by recent and proposed biomedical procedures, rejects artificial insemination by donor and cloning as too destructive of the human. He indicates, however, that artificial insemination by husband, artificial inovulation, the use of surrogate mothers, and artificial placentas may be morally permissible. The chapter on euthanasia gives readers a good survey of the views of men such as Ramsey, Fletcher, Ford, Healy, McFadden. Dedek argues that the distinction between active euthanasia (hastening death) and passive euthanasia (choosing not to use extraordinary means to prolong life) is valid. In a final chapter Dedek defends limited warfare as being morally justifiable, adopting for the most part arguments developed by Paul Ramsey. Dedek's work is an informative survey of current positions; the conclusions Dedek reaches are modestly proposed and defended by reasonable arguments. Nonetheless, in my opinion, Dedek's acceptance of Schuller's preference principle points to a trend current among many Catholic authors today (e. g., Knauer, McCormick, Van der Poel, Van der Marek) that needs to be questioned seriously. According to these writers, it is morally permissible directly to will and effect an evil (what is termed a premoral or nonmoral evil such as death, disease, mutilation, etc.) in itself if there is a proportionate reason. As McCormick puts it, it is morally permissible to intend and effect the evil in se ad ordinem ad finem proportionatum (Theologwal Studies, June, pp. 74-75). McCormick believes that this is likewise the position of Josef Fuchs. Yet J; think that Fuchs' insistence on the unity of the moral act and the need for the evil effect to be a partial aspect of the one act keeps him from being together with the men listed, and Dedek, on this issue. It can be suggested that these writers look more closely at the analysis of the sources for the goodness or malice of human acts provided by Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. a. and likewise reflect on the revision of the principle of double effect suggested by Germain Grisez, while at the same time keeping in mind Fuch's insistence on the unity of the human act. I think that there is a danger in the " preference principle " advocated by Schuller and adopted by McCormick and Dedek, a danger that this principle can function in an BOOK REVIEWS ethical system as something analogous to the " exception-making criterion " so brilliantly analyzed by Paul Ramsey. WILLIAM E. MAY The Catholic University of America Washington, D. C. Progressive and Conservative. By HERMAN H. BERGER. Translated from Dutch text by Henry J. Koren. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1971. Pp. 191. $7.95. The Idea of Dialogal Phenomenology. By STEPHAN STRASSE. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969. Pp. 136. $5.95. This book is a Progressive's attempt to analyze the intellectual polarization in the Catholic Church. The author makes no attempt to claim neutrality in the conflict. He states at the outset that his inquiry is written from the perspective of one who has already opted for Progressivism. The crisis that is occurring in Catholic Theology today is the result of a prior crisis in philosophy which Catholic Theology is finally catching up to. The Philosophical Crisis was marked by the Marxian overcoming of the Greek and Medieaval belief that there are eternal speculative truths to be discovered and contemplated, etc. The contemplative life, however, is the opiate of the philosopher which prevents the philosopher from coming into his " authentic " role as creator of truth. The authentic philosopher is one who recognizes that all of the achievements of the past are present in him because they play a role in his environment, and he proceeds to give them a new context and meaning that they could only have as a result of the individual philosopher's unique lived history. Thus, "Truth has as many forms as there are human beings and why uniform truth is just as objectionable as standardized humanity." (p. 32) Man, in a way resembling the thought of Merleau Ponty, must be understood as a self project and project of the world. In this way the individual displays a victory over the species because he recognizes that his " individual history" becomes a "place" where truth comes to pass that cannot be brought to light by anyone else. According to the author, the Conservative Man, who is reducible to the fundamentalist man, lives in a fictitious world where there are eternal truths and common natures to be discovered. The Conservative Man deludes himself into the belief that there are first principles that can be the basis for concluding that there is a " true " way for man to relate himself to 246 BOOK REVIEWS God and other men, a common basis for moral reasoning, etc. The myth here is the false belief that man can ever overcome the state of living in the realm of the problematic, that is, that man can attain to a resolution of a philosophical or religious question. The author hints that this false belief must be the result of some kind of psychological defect which he fails to identify. The Conservative position in opposition to the Progressive position results of necessity in the self-negation of the individual in his truthfulness in favor of the truth of the species which can never be authentic. The author proceeds in his own fashion to demonstrate the impossibility of maintaining the Conservative position by reducing it to the absurd. His argument rests on the model of "man as an original reader." The question is whether one can attain to a true understanding of a text. The author contends that there cannot be a true or universal understanding of a text because each man brings his own original historical situation to the reading of the text. The unavoidable intermingling of the text and the reader's situation always results in a unique interpretation and understanding of the text. Further, in this interpretative act, there is always more truth attained to than is contained in the text itself. Thus there are as many truthful interpretations as there are original readers, and there are as many original readers as there are Progressive men. Truth by its very nature is " pluriform." In this way ·the reader becomes a place where truth comes to be which cannot come to be anywhere else. Only in this way can the text of an ancient origin become contemporary. The Progressive Man is distinguished from the " rebel " in that the rebel will not admit the truthfulness of other interpretations at all, whereas the Progressive Man admits the validity of other interpretations as the occasion for his dialectically becoming more perfectly aware of his own truthfulness reflectively. The secularization of modern man and his world which is a result of man's transcending the Conservative position has made man unashamedly at home in the world. " God has been overcome as a moral, political or scientific working hypothesis." (p. 115) However, man also becomes aware of the finitude of his overcoming of the world. His individual interpretation is always unique and limited. Therefore it is possible that man could realize that he is not the measure of all things. Man's finitude makes it possible for man to encounter God as a stranger, that beyond the limits of his present dialectical development. The Conservative Man by holding on to that which has already been overcome really prevents himself and others from attaining to the future of religiousness. According to Berger the conflict between the Conservative and Progressive Man becomes most perfectly expresesd when one considers their moral philosophies and their concepts of God. The Conservative Man's morality is marked by the belief that man's happiness consists in attaining to a union BOOK REVIEWS 247 with God and that to attain to this union requires the giving of oneself to God. The goods of the soul are said to complete man more perfectly than the goods of the body, etc. Action should be consequent upon the contemplation of truths. This morality is marked by a philosophy of self-denial of the religious man. Thus one becomes and results in the concerned with the discovery of, and bringing one's action into conformity with, universal moral or religous " rules " or norms. This is the morality of Augustine and Aquinas who were under the misconception that man could discern virtues that would perfect man as man. In opposition to the above morality of conformism is the morality of the Progressive Man which is a morality of self-realization. Here the philosopher recognizes that the individual must live according to his own standard and law, the employment of his own freedom insofar as he differs man is one who has the courage to act from all other men. The in a way in which he is a law unto himself. This enables him to realize his uttermost possibilities a Ia Hegel, Nietzche, etc. The God of the Conservative Man is a small God for small-minded people. He is the one the little people call upon for consolation and guidance. Above all they look to him for a moral norm. They seek to serve his Will and therefore they deny their own, fearful that God is jealous of man's creativity. The authentic religious man of self-realization is one who knows selfdenial is meaningless and " that man must extend his control over the entire range of the world; God must be expelled from that domain." (p. 185) In the world, the authentic man in dialectic with other authentic men brings each other to a " mutual redemption." However, since the possibilities of self-realization are always greater than men can actualize, man may become aware of his finitude and that man's self-realizing transcendence cannot be offered to man by man but only by a God. This is the case because only God can offer man immortality which completes his act of self-realization. _Thus God is not the source of truth, moral or. otherwise. This God has been overcome, he is dead. God becomes that which resides beyond the limits of man's act of transcendence ever receding as man succeeds. God does not enter into the life of the autonomous self-realizing man but is the idea which spurs man on. God does not enter into this human task, but it is God who offers man his task. Berger in his autocephalic approach to philosophy and man's religiousness appears to assume what he has to prove, namely, that man and other beings do not manifest identifiable natures and that there are no discernible first principles of moral reasoning. The author's argument from the authority of Marx and Nietzche, or the fact that their thought is recent, is questionable. Also, one might ask if the problems of man as a knower are reducible to those confronted as an interpretation of a text. Further, it appears that the author rejects universality on the one hand 248 BOOK REVIEWS only to claim universality for his own situationist approach to God and morality on the other. His opposition between self-denial and self-realization seems contrived. Why could not one choose self-denial as the most perfect form of self-realization? The impossibility of resolving philosophical or religious questions renders progress in these realms an act whereby one traverses an infinite series. Berger's option for an anthropocentric rather than a theocentric view of the world and man's religious relationship to God appears to render absurd the intention of the Lord's Prayer that God's will be done on earth or St. Paul's belief that in God we live, move, and have our being. Somehow the Dominican life of commitment to " veritas " and " contemplata aliis tradere," and even the faith of a Brittany peasant, seems so much richer than that which is possible within the limits of Berger's philosophy. The Idea of Dialogal Phenomenology, which developed out of a series of lectures delivered at Duquesne University, deals. with the crucial problem in the phenomenological movement of the inability of Transcendental Phenomenology to solve the problem of intersubjectivity. According to the author, phenomenology, whether by intention or not, has taken on a monological style of thinking. It has tended towards becoming an ego-logy which finds itself unable to avoid solipsism. This is the case because, even though phenomenology is a philosophy of intuition, it always relativizes or brackets the given in intuition. This has led to certain epistemological postulates about the nature of intentionality and the genesis of consciousness which always grant primacy to the individual ego in the constitution of the world {or worlds) as an object of consciousness. The reason why the phenomenological movement has failed to resolve the problem is because it has accepted uncritically the classical epistemological postulates of phenomenology. Dialogal Phenomenology is offered as an original way of thinking about this problem, and thus a new mode of analyzing intentionality, etc. is attained. The starting point of Dialogal Phenomenology is that the constitution of the world (or worlds) arises only out of a dialogue between me and others. The world or worlds which arise in one's consciousness which differs both materially and formally-according as one designates the contents of a world and according to what the structural principle is by which a world is understood-can only arise out of a process of a dialogue of a subject with other subjects. This is " the primary datum " of experience. In other words, there is reciprocity which arises out of the fact that the "I" and "you" can act both as subjects and objects of experience. We can permit one another to experience one another. It is through a mutual playing of these respective roles that the problem of intersubjectivity does not arise. Thus " I " and the " you " can become attuned to one another or be truly present to one another and parallel world structures may be developed. BOOK REVIEWS 249 Throughout the whole process of man becoming aware there is always another ego that plays an essential role in one's world becoming delineated both materially and formally. First, there is the mother who provides pleasure, security, and the capacity to overcome powerlessness. Here there is emotional empathy. The emotional state of the child is dependent upon the emotional state of the mother. The child is an awareness which is on the way to becoming an ego awareness; the process cannot come to be without the mother. There is an awareness of being in the world together with mother. From this first intentional horizon one proceeds to share a world with father, with teacher, etc. Each encounter of a "you" is always an encounter of a " you " who is older that I, one who opens one's intentional perspective and gives a different determination to one's world. In this context a child who is born must be viewed as an animal to be freed. The child grows in freedom as a result of the opening up of his horizons by the others he encounters. These relationships are rendered meaningful because one finds that faith in the " you " is always an accompanying datum in these cooperative acts of world consciousness. In this process it appears that I am always seeking a "YOU " which transcends all other " yous " that will render my understanding of the world complete. The question is "If the ' YOU ' does not exist, why do I continue to seek it "? The author accurately portrays the problem of intersubjectivity in the phenomenology movement and within that movement points to an interesting direction. However, whether he successfully solves the problem depends upon whether his parallel structures, etc., attain to an adequation of the mind to reality. JosEPH J. CALIFANO St. John's University Jamaica, New York The Planetary Man. By WILFRID DESAN. New York: Pp. 880. $9.95. MacMillan, 197Q. By author's admission this study is tentative, introducing a mode of conceptualizing man as participant or individualized humanity; this would be one way, at least, to phrase a notion that is rich and quite original, especially in its ethical implication. If theological thought of the season revolves around method as propaedeutic to further thought, it is refreshing to realize that method need not be developed solely from a critique of mind. Desan's work is a first effort at evolving a new dimension for Western thinking, one avoiding hurdles set up by traditional ontological, 250 BOOK REVIEWS ethical, and epistemological requirements. It is good to be reminded in this way that there are alternative approaches to reality, or advents to philosophy of man which do not consider-because they need not respectthe knowledge problem so obsessing thought in our tradition after Descartes and still, in phenomenological and neo-Thomistic circles, hampering new perspectives for our new problems. The author has been at his task for several years now, and half the present book, the part corresponding to an epistemology, has appeared previously. We must await still a third "volume" to complement the two triptych panels now available for viewing. As a search for a new definition of man, as individual existing consciously with others, Desan's thought proceeds from a very ancient idea: the one and the many, the part and the whole, or as he has it, the fragment and the totum genus humanU'rn. For the present reviewer, Desan's is a thought in search of a metaphor equal to it: he has not yet hit upon a language vehicle capable of covering the expanse of this thinking. As a consequence, it is the reality of the terrain he moves across that needs justification before his conception of man as fragment will be seriously considered as mobile for the journey. Somehow the term " fragment " comes across with a mosaic-like physicality and inertia one does not recognize, or more rhetoricaly important, wish to recognize as himself. This is unfortunate, since Desan in warring against this notion of isolated conscious beings inhabiting what is indeed a very small planet. The reviewer is willing to accept the value of his alternative conception but is uneasy with his metaphor. However, the whole of his project is of such distinct orientation that many readers are not likely to quibble over imagery, while those who consider themselves abreast of current theology will be wondering whether to give this approach a place wd, if so, how to label it. For the above reasons and because half the present book has already submitted to critical evaluation, the present review will attempt to render Desan the sympathy and perspective his thought deserves in the light of developments outside the narrow confines of contemporary Christian discussion. The ethical study, newly appearing as the second "volume" here, requires separate discussion. What Desan needs at present is a gracious hearing; if this is forthcoming, the final panel of his triptych may profit. Desan wishes to have us conceive a humane ontology. There is in the last analysis no danger in commencing the wonder which is philosophy with man rather than with Being so long as man's knowledge of the real is not held to be a problem. Much of recent humanistic philosophy is still wedded to the notion that such knowledge is a problem, that an authentic philosophical stance must dialogue with Cartesian man and his descendants even unto the neo-Kantians and Marechal. Desan's past writings and his study of knowledge in the first panel. A Noetic Prelude to a United World shows him completely cognizant with phenomenology, yet not enamored BOOK REVIEWS 251 with it as a starting point; as he notes: " ... even the most extreme phenomenologists ' reason ' a lot and there is more than one syllogism Implicit in Desan's analysis hidden in their descriptive approach." (p. of human knowing is an understanding that some struggling to ground scientific theology in a realistic philosophy might well reflect upon, even explicitly, that to defend the authenticity of human knowing today is to protect a castle that is not under seige, even if word has yet to reach certain continental out-posts. If theology, and philosophy-unless it is concerned to eliminate itself as a human endeavor-wishes to address the problems of our day, then it had best look at our planet rather than watching those of Copernicus along with Descartes. "The times favor new ideas," Norman Cousins wrote in his opening editorial for the new World magazine (July, "Compartmentalized man is giving way to World Man. The banner commanding the greatest attention has human unity stamped on it." Three years earlier to the month Astronaut Aldrin set a first human foot upon the moon and undid Cartesian doubt and uncertitude by empirically verifying that a small step for him was in fact a giant one for the rest of us. Popular culture, however reductionist it may be, has not let the underlying theme here die. Why begin a search for a definition of man with the paradoxical complementarity of his unique yet communal existence? Why invert the tradition's concern for Being, with man as one manifestation of its compass, into a perspective proceeding from the human in terms of the human? Simply because in our culture this idea's time has come, and some philosophical articulation must spontaneously follow upon it. But there is difficulty in doing this for the Christian theologian and for the philosophical sources to which we find him turning today. Major efforts these past years have been expended in regaining a biblical perspective and in deepening appreciation for the historical developments of faith formulations. Method, meaning, horizon, and historicality have become code words for an approach to human understanding which, it is hoped, will reveal modes in which historic faith might be presented to contemporary man. It becomes increasingly clear, however, that contemporary man has not waited for the debut of this re-conceptualized theology, that present discussions refer to needs he had experienced in the early decades of this century, to problematics arising from scriptural research and evaluations of the believing community's past and from the philosophic and scientific influences that bore in upon these questions. But if our culture speaks at all today, it is not in terms of certitude nor of recapturing an authentic past. The need for grounding belief in a Transcendent or searching out an historical Jesus and a discipleship arising from his life are no longer the bases from which queries arise. The symmetry of our planet's curvature may now be experienced through a 252 BOOK REVIEWS camera as a " live communication," and consequently the mystery of inhabiting this sphere in space will never again be private but always shared. True enough, Cartesian man may have doubted his ability to know the real when faced with the enormity of the deception the universe had imposed on him through appearances. But contemporary planetized man looks for help with difficulties of a different order. How is he to conceive himself precisely as present with others in time and space while all are aware of the same " mind -expanding " experience and aware of it as a communal experience? Endowed with capacity to enhance his own existence or cripple it and to do the same for others, he is aware that this power is no more his than theirs. For Cousins, this is the alternative possibility of habitat or battlefield, of community or wasteland. For Theodore Roszak (Where the Wasteland Ends, 1972) this dilemma is incipient: it is present to the young, not yet grasped by their elders, among whom he would place many who consider themselves socially, politically, and religiously progressive. There is an isomorphism, and one not so oblique, between this " elder " population's world-view and what passes for response to present problems in the Christian theological and philosophical population. If man can be assisted in understanding his own horizons, it is argued, then openings for faith and for ethical norms adequate for the age will appear. In this outlook, concern for planetary man, or any feature of one-world-ism, is legitimate as an ethical orientation, but with an eye for past detentes, it responds mainly to epistemological thinking as a prologue to the ontology which in turn will render us an ethic for the day. This is to be expected from systematic thinkers who regard the continuity of the past with more interest than they do present random developments. Desan's futuristic philosophy speaks to the situation now arising; the journey of the individual mind henceforth will know three stages in its attempt to ocvercome insularity. As homeless, planetary man has insight into his present suffering: he realizes much of what he now assumes about himself and his genus will not do. Therefore he questions but also realizes his agony is necessary at the threshold of a wider outlook respecting his existence in space and time. As builder of a synthesis, he must place himself outside the singular elements at his disposal. Rather than reduce these to complementarity, or search fol' an essential nature belonging to the world, man as synthesizer is willing to co-ordinate diverse perspectives-angular truths-which do not merge into a singular visionary phenomenon, except for the tatum as such and, of course, for Absolute Truth who gives rise to fragmentary knowledge by creating a being other than himself. Conscious of this diversity, the individual goes along with diversity, variation, or angularity in truth. Ontology is constituted out of this realization of reality's possibilities for inspection and profits thereby: "An ontology built upon the choice of the multiple coadunate transcends any one ontology BOOK REVIEWS 253 caught up in the angular." The whole argument of Desan's first "volume " treating the noetic of planetary man serves to defend this position from changes of idealism, relativism, and psychologism. Critical estimates of his success have varied; let it be said here that he carries the ta.Sk off with reasonability because he does not presume the Cartesian knowledge problem as a consequence of modern man's psychological dis-orientation. We may be in search of an understanding broad enough for our day, but we are not in search of the real; of this each of us has knowledge and as a totality we know it as familiarly as non-absolute minds might expect. The third stage, that in which man expresses his preference for some particular angularity while aware of other possibilities, reveals him as a fragment unique in his freedom. In this attitude he realizes both his creativity and his finitude. It is apparent that this triangle of perspectives is cumulative, not successive, and Desan concludes his noetic discussion in the first volume with reflection on the paradox this involves and on how distinct this situation is from contradiction: He is, simultaneously, inquirer into the generic and, through his necessary choice, prisoner of the angular; he is detached from any particular solution, yet striving towards it; he is dedicated to the planetary and the universal, yet engaged in his own free choice and creation. It is not necessary that this paradox be solved, for it contains a definition-the definition of the planetary man, who is both a flexible understanding of the many and a selfish drive against the many. His second panel, new to print at this time, explores the ethical aspects of this definition, aspects which begin to emerge in the noetic discussion as illustrated in the above passasge. Here man is true to his dwelling place, his planet, in the special sense of the Greek planetes: in space he is nowhere and in time he is never. Since he is aware of the tatum to which he belongs and of the tatum truth his multituda lacks as individuum, he is wanderer with purpose, he is pilgrim. With respect to the angular character of his knowledge, the individual is Observer, as participant in the collective moral drama, he is Actor. If Desan's first panel comes onto a epistemooglical scene that listens for the echoes of Cartesian man, his ethical study arrives at a time when many moralists look for some grounding as starting point for future problems. It would seem that the ethicians are already being faced with the advanced moral problems of a planetary society and Desan's venture in thinking is likely to be better received among them than among those still activating epistemological munitions. We can do little more than pass over the themes and treatments in this ethical vision, culminating as it does in an image of the planetary man as saint. In progress, Desan borrows and de-sanctifies a number of other traditional religious concepts: love, sin, the erotic, freedom, responsibility, and redemption. It is intriguing to follow the emerging outlines of these revisited notions. This sort of procedure can be done badly and can BOOK REVIEWS irritate; Desan does it with mixed results. Unlike his noetic study, he seems anxious to " get in " every topic the theologian includes in the discussion of morality. Thus, his equivalent of moral consensus is " tradition" and means: cohesion through time as nationalism in certain groups is a cohesion on the space level. Tradition can also be called a form of love. It is a love of what was with the hope that what was is also that which will be. It results from a certain sameness of living and thinking which, tested on the touchstone of time, has appeared to be the best way of surviving. This mode of surviving is the original form of natural law thinking before it was conceptualized in paradigms borrowed from the civil realm at the time of Justinian. The presupposition here was a universal human nature, one which runs counter to Desan's notion of an additive physical totum which contains the similar and the dissimilar and which continually changes on this account. This idea will be to ethics what that of angular truth is to epistemology. What natural law implies as such or in the abstract is a secret hidden in the totum genus kumanum just as the fullness of truth resides there, and because it is a knowledge it is part of that generic truthfulness. Although the author does so only in passing, we might pay heed to his discussion of what the concept of "Christian" implies: here we have both epistemic and ethical dimensions brought together. This concept, like the physical totum kumanum itself, is additive: it includes differences rather than excludes them, so that the diversity of individual Christians gives rise to the universality of the notion. Yet this universal character is available only to the totum and not to the individual's angular perspective, however much he is aware of and sustained by the universal understanding of what " Christian " means. Thus: The indiidual himself knows that this way understanding is never totally exhaustive-it is only angular vision-and he knows the notion of Christianity needs the plural to obtain its full meaning. He sees the concept of Christian as being incarnated in a variety of ways, and, for all his impotency, recognizes that through the diverse one constantly emerges, that of charity and forgiveness towards one's fellow man. Beyond this common note, says Desan, it would be difficult to maintain that any particular mode of Christian living is so truthful that it would bear export into cultures where it does not yet have a tradition, a way of surviving developed in time. The theological thinking of our day, as contoured above, or philosophical thinking done as preparation for this, will have misgivings with Desan's portrayal unless it is kept in mind that for him there is no knowledge problem: truth resides in the whole of kumanum and this is neither the existential individual nor the logical universal (humanity) but the physical totality of our planet's dwellers. The clarity of certitude Cartesian thinking demands in the individual is. freely BOOK REVIEWS 255 granted to the whole, with the individual man limited to his preferred angle of vision (the third stage of a simultaneous psychological development). Desan is a realist because he presumes certitude in knowledge and in ethical sensitivity; by attributing these qualities to the physical multitudo rather than to the individual, he avoids the pitfall of idealistic mind-ism. He has a spontaneous confidence in the community of human knowers and doers, of Observers and Actors. The theologian's concern with belief as permeating the individual salvifically causes him to place the belief of the community-ecclesial tradition-in a supporting role. Yet his moral doctrine will rely more upon the communal insight than upon the individual's intuition. In a reductionist way, this can be seen in the individual focus of the query " What must be believed?" and the communal focus of "What if all men did this?" Desan has taken full advantage of this disparity, although he disclaims any effort to re-construct the thought categories of religious thinking. This advantage shows forth clearly in his treatment of ethical absolutes. How can a moral requirement for the very existence of the tatum, such as " do not kill," be verified in the individual as an absolute within the common understanding of what it means to kill? Desan is able to speak about this by transferring into the moral life of the individual a sense of the authentic -but-limited vision he has allowed him noetically. Traditional ethics attempts this by permitting the historical community of humans an agreed upon certitude, call it natural law, tradition, or consensus, which it has difficulty allowing the individual in the realm of knowledge. This latter hesitation, of course, stems from his presumed Cartesian alienation from the real. In a final section of An Ethical Prelude to a United World Desan offers a cameo of the planetary man as saint in the ethical dimension of that world. Preceded by a outline of the moral rebel, this figure reminds us of Camus' later philosophy. Perhaps Desan might have done better to avoid homo sanctus in favor of homo justus in this analysis; even his disavowal of intent to realign religious categories is not sufficient to permit sanctity in secular relationships without introducing a radically distinct Power. We await the third panel of this work, tentatively titled A United World, and apparently the completion of this humane ontology. Strands of thought in the two panels at hand deserve to be brought together and if the third revisits with penetration the key junctures of the journey made in its predecessors, then Desan's opus will be considerably strengthened. Hopeful the author will by then have discovered an image for a definition of man worthy of his quickening thought. JoaN B. DAvis, 0. P. The Pennyslvania State University University Park, Pennsylvania 256 BOOK REVIEWS Ibn Tufayl's Hayy Ibn Yaqzan. Translated with introduction and notes by LENN EvAN GooDMAN. (New York: Twayne Publishers, 197fl), Pp. fl55. One of the most fascinating works of medieval Arabian philosophy is the philosophical tale which is here presented in a new, complete English translation of Leon Gauthier's edition of the Arabic text. Written in the twelfth century by Ibn Tufayl, who was councilor and physician to an Almohad sultan in Muslim Spain, it tells the story of the infant Hayy Ibn Yaqzan ("Life Awareson "),who was cast adrift in a box and carried by a powerful current to' the coast of an equatorial island. There a doe that had just lost her fawn mothered the infant and enabled him to survive. He learns to provide himself with clothing of leaves, feathers, and animal skins, tq make use of fire, and to fashion simple tools. The death of the mother-doe leads him to the awareness of soul as the source of life and motion. Considering the differences and similarities of inanimate beings, plants, and animals, he comes to see both the diversity and unity of being. Seeking a cause of being, he looks first to water, earth, and air, but finds that they are subject to at least partial destruction, and that even heavenly bodies have extension and motion. He comes to realize that the cause of the world's existence and motion must be a perfect, non-corporeal, uncaused, eternal Being whose essence is necessary existence, and that since the only way to apprehend such a being is by a non-physical means, his own true self is incorporeal. He draws up for himself a systematic program by which he hopes to achieve a state of continuous awareness of the Necessarily Existent Being and comes to experience a mystical vision. With an abrupt turn of events the story next tells of the arrival of Absal, who had come from an inhabited island seeking solitude for contemplation. After the two men meet and Absal teaches Hayy to speak, they discover that they hold the same doctrines: that the religious traditions which Absal had learned about God, his angels, prophets, Judgment Day, Heaven and Hell were symbolic representations of what Hayy had seen for himself. Hearing of the people on Absal's island who contented themselves with relying upon symbols and performing ritual duties, Hayy wished to teach them to seek the Truth. Though warned by Absal that his mission might fail, the men go to the inhabited island ruled by Salaman, who lived in society and practised traditional religion. Though Hayy was at first well received, men turned away from his teaching. He saw that he was attempting an impossible task and that for the masses of people all that could help them was already contained in the words of the prophets and religious traditions. Hayy and Absal leave society, return to their own island and devote themselves to the contemplative life. This story of a man who by own natural reason reached a knowledge of nature, man, God, and truths harmonious with the teaching of traditional BOOK REVIEWS 257 religion, appeared in a complete English translation from the Arabic in the early eighteenth century. (The reviewer has seen a 1708 edition of the English version by Simon Ockley.) But Dr. Goodman has given us a new translation of the entire work which achieves its purpose of being a readable version in modern English. The translation itself constitutes less than one-third of the present volume. It is preceded by long introductory essays by the translator, and it is followed by copious and scholarly notes. First, a word on the notes. Some of the notes are brief commentaries; some identify references; some suggest comparisons or contrasts with Avicenna, Averroes, and especially with Ghazali. One small correction is needed. In Note 39 (on p. 179) Avicenna's Shifa, the " Book of Healing," is said to have been known to the Schoolmen of the Latin Middle Ages as the Sufficiencia. It was not, however, the whole Shifa, but one part of the Physics section of the Shifa that was known as the Sufficiencia. The introductory essays which occupy about ninety pages of the volume are, after a brief account of the life of Ibn Tufayl, on the following subjects: educational philosophy, religious philosophy, man and society. Their purpose is to suggest the relevance for our own times of the thought contained in the story. The essay on " Educational Philosophy " begins with a summary of Hayy's development from early childhood, through his periods of practical reason and metaphysical contemplation, to the stage at which he relates to God not only by knowledge but by love. Noting that Hayy's achievement is meant to represent the highest point that man can attain, Goodman asks what sort of educational philosophy permits belief in the possibility that a child left utterly alone will develop into a fulfilled human being. After making a brief comparison with the educational philosophies of Dewey and Rousseau, he suggests that Ibn Tufayl has given his Hayy a greater freedom for learning than either Dewey or Rousseau would advocate. What sort of faith, he wonders, made Ibn Tufayl able to wager that a child, even a well-endowed child like Hayy, could realize his potential without society and without a preceptor? His answer is that Hayy is never alone since the context of the story is that of a " radical monotheism," the belief in a Deity so great that his presence pervades the universe and yet allows for human freedom. He tries to show that Ibn Tufayl is not untrue to the spirit of Muhammad's teaching in accepting human freedom and resignation to the will of God as mutually compatible. Since, however, Ibn Tufayl is elsewhere referred to as a rationalist and since some of the more conservative traditions in Islam seem to stress divine causality almost to the denial of secondary causality, the reader might wish for a fuller treatment here of Ibn Tufayl's position on man's causality in relation to the teaching of orthodox Islam. More than half of the essay on " Religious Philosophy " is devoted to 258 BOOK REVIEWS distinguishing and describing three types of religion: rational religion, mass religion, and mystical religion. After acknowledging that these categories are not necessarily exhaustive nor mutually exclusive, and that one type can change into another, Dr. Goodman then shows how Ibn Tufayl's religious philosophy relates to these categories. He notes that the author's express purpose in telling the story of Hayy is to reveal as best he can some of the secrets of the " oriental philosophy " or " eastern wisdom " of which Avicenna had spoken. Though Hayy's attainment of a beatific experience might imply that he was a mystic, the role of reason is stressed. Goodman sees the religion of Ibn Tufayl as a synthesis of mystical and rational religion. Ibn Tufayl's view of mass religion is evident towards the end of the story where, though realizing that a reliance on concrete representations and ritual practices would not be sufficient for him, Hayy nevertheless sees traditional religion as harmonious with his own insights and suitable for the great mass of people. This conclusion has led Gauthier and others to think that the whole book was written to show the accord of revelation and philosophy. But Goodman sees the last few pages as only a formal show of respect to the powerful Islamic tradition. He agrees with Hourani that the main purpose of the work was the depiction of the highest truth as conceived by "oriental" or "eastern philosophy." In " Man and Society " Goodman suggests that a question at the heart of Ibn Tufayl's concern was: "What is essential in man?" He notes that for some philosophers essence has become a metaphor, identified with " what lies at bottom," with what is " natural " versus artificial, with what is simple, with what is primitive, with what comes first. Though the use of such metaphors could result in the confusion of essence and origin, it can also give rise to a unique conceptual tool, the thought-experiment. To reveal the essence of man, one can postulate a natural, simple, primitive situation in which that essence could develop unimpeded by foreign influences and then try to discover what most likely would follow. Goodman sees Hayy Ibn Yaqzan as a member of this genre of thought-experiments. To elucidate the meaning of Ibn Tufayl's thought-experiment, Goodman compares and contrasts it, at some length, with two recent thoughtexperiments: B. F. Skinner's Walden Two and William Golding's Lord of the Flies. Ibn Tufayl postulates a bountiful and balanced natural environment and a man with an upward drive towards perfection. Golding postulates a hostile natural environment and a Freudian view of man as basically cruel and aggressive. For Golding the aggressive elements will rule; evil will triumph in society as it does in man. For Ibn Tufayl, man is essentially good and perfectible, and there is a positive value in living in solitude, apart from society. But if one should deny, as some have, both that man is essentially good and that malli is essentially evil and hold that man is essentially nothing; BOOK REVIEWS and if one should deny Sartre's thesis that every man chooses himself, makes himself what he will be, then another alternative must be considered: that is, that society creates man. This is the alternative presented in B. F. Skinner's thought-experiment, Walden Two. Here the experiment is no longer a means of discovering man's essence, since no such essence exists. It is a way of illustrating the thesis that man can be made anything, if the method of engineering is applied to man. Man need not be extricated from society like Hayy but should be imploded into a society where everything will be controlled. By way of contrast with this view Ibn Tufayl's Hayy is a symbol that man is not just what he is made by society; man is not essentially social. Independence of mind and spirit from social myth and civil coercion is set forth as an ideal. Goodman compares and contrasts the life of Hayy with the experience Henry Thoreau records in the first Walden to show the extent to which Ibn Tufayl's ideal can and cannot be lived. He notes that Ibn Tufayl himself was a scholar, physician, teacher, and active participant in national affairs as councilor to the sultan. But, in the story of Hayy, Ibn Tufayl is suggesting that there are times when a man must withdraw and meditate. There is something a man can learn when he is alone. The three essays just summarized help to illuminate the ideas contained in Ibn Tufayl's story, with the third, most outstandingly, fulfilling the editor's aim of stressing the relevance of the thought for our own culture and times. In volumes prepared for a Library of Classical Arabic Literature it would also seem appropriate to include an account of the various editions of the classic presented, together with some indication of what readers at different times and in different countries have found especially interesting in that work. Even a bare listing of the many editions and translations of H ayy Ibn Y aqzan would help to reveal the fascination that this work has had through the ages. We might mention just a few of these here. Moses of Narbonne write a commentary on a Hebrew translation of this work in 1349. A Latin translation by Edward Pococke Jr. appeared in 1671 was reprinted in 1700 under the title, Philoaophua Autodidactus (" The Self-Taught Philosopher ") . This Latin version was translated into English in 1674 by George Keith, a Quaker, who found in it a support for the " enthusiastic notions " of the Society of Friends. Simon Ockley was so concerned about the " bad use " of this book that he added an appendix to his 1708 English version to refute Ibn Tufayl's thesis that the individual man left to his own inner light can reach ultimate truth. Ockley's translation was reprinted in 1711, 1731, and, in a revised version, in 19fZ9. Translations into Dutch, French, Spanish, German, and Russian, as well as the 195fZ critical Arabic edition of Ahmad Amin followed by translations into Persian and Urdu, also bear witness to the perennial interest in Ibn Tufayl's Hayy. BOOK REVIEWS Though the history of the influence of this work still remains to be written, the student of medieval Arabian thought can be grateful to Dr. Goodman for the new English translation of H ayy Ibn Y aqzan, together with its accompanying essays and notes. BEATRICE H. ZEDI,ER Marquette University Milwaukee, Wisconsin Loving and Curing the Neurotic. A New Look at Emotional Illness. By ANNA A. TERRUWE, M.D. and CoNRAD W. BAARs, M.D. New Rochelle, N. Y.: Arlington House, 1972. Pp. 495. $14.95. On the dust cover, this book is described as, "This breakthrough book is the product of years of rethinking the psychology and psychopathology of the normal man .... " This leaves one somewhat confused because one does not expect " psychopathology " in the " normal " man. From this disappointing beginning the authors then attempt to introduce a new terminology for mental disorders, dealing almost exclusively with the neuroses and personality disorders. This might have been satisfactory if they had carefully defined their new terms. As it is, their definitions are poorly and incompletely stated. This reviewer found great difficulty in transposing these terms to a more modern nosology. The average student of today would have difficulty in following the text. On page 92 the authors state," However, neurasthenia is an illness which at present is generally considered to have a primarily somatic basis." To the best of this reviewer's knowledge, neurasthenia has never been considered to have a somatic basis, and the term is very rarely, if ever, used today. Another example of this confusing terminology (p. 98) speaks of " fear neuroses," which apparently applies to the more commonly used term, "anxiety." I will not spend more time on the terminology, but these examples point to the confusion today's student might have. Another problem which this reviewer has with the text is the absolutes given by the authors in regard to emotional or mental disorders. For example, (p. 109) they speak of "a personality which is completely different .... " (italics mine) On the same page they speak of energy which " dominates " and also of energy which is " always tempered." (p. 129) "Persons with a frustration neurosis . . . are absolutely incapable of establishing such contact." (p. 182) " Frustration neurotics ... never develop emotionally satisfying friendships." (p. 188) " Marriages in which one or both partners are frustration neurotics are BOOK REVIEWS 261 therefore always defective." On page flfl5 they state that a therapist must be absolutely emotionally mature. I am somewhat at a loss to understand the authors' description of "love and tenderness." For example, (p. flflO) "The fact that the frustration-neurotic patient has to grow emotionally demands, in many severe cases, that he must experience the feelings of love and tenderness which were denied him in infancy. This is particularly true for female patients and, in most cases, an absolute requirement for their successful treatment .... There has to be someone who, first ofall, really possesses motherly affection for the patient, and, secondly, is ready and willing to give expression to this feeling and to treat the patient more or less as a child." I find it hard to understand how a therapist "really possesses motherly affection." Further on in this section the authors state, "If a person caresses a girl solely for the purpose of helping her, without a feeling of love, as a therapeutic gesture, the intended effect will certainly not occur." I wonder what the authors mean by "caressing a girl." If they mean what they seem to mean, I would consider this unethical. At the bottom of page flfll the authors speak with some disapproval of psychotherapeutic sessions conducted in the nude. The author's further caution that it is necessary to have a therapist who really loves the patient may not be intended the way it sounds, but it seems to follow the previous admonition that the therapist should caress young girls. On page flfl4 they speak of neurotic girls who want to "drink from the therapist's breast." " Drink " is an unusual term for use in regard to the breast, but it is used consistently by the authors throughout the rest of the chapter. I wonder if such a practice is sufficiently common to deserve mention in a book such as this. On page fl3fl the author states that "in girls the sexual development is often insignificant. Masturbation frequently does not occur at all." Even if this is referring only to frustration neurotics, I do not believe it is true. On page fl47 the authors refer quite favorably to sub-coma insulin therapy. I mention this only to say that such therapy has not been used in this area for many years, and I do not believe its value has ever been demonstrated. On page fl48 the authors speak of continuous sleep therapy for depression. I have not seen this therapy used for many years. The section on drugs, pages fl46 to fl50, is very poorly written. On page fl53 the authors state, " we take this opportunity to advocate its (hypnosis) use in the psychotherapy of neurotic individuals." This is not in accord with general practice today. Pages fl58 to fl61 deal with the prognostic value of tendon reflexes in therapy. This may be a new discovery on tht'l part of the authors, but I have never seen it noted elsewhere. It is my opinion that this book will have very little value for today's BOOK REVIEWS professional. The attempts to change the terminology for the neuroses could have been more forgivable if the authors had given better definitions. It is hard to read. Even a psychiatrist of 42 years practice had trouble with its lack of clarity and definitions. To this reviewer, the need for an " absolutely mature " person to do therapy is beyond my comprehension. JOHN R. CAVANAGH, M.D. The Catholic University of America Washington, D. 0. Psychology Series for Church Leaders. By GRAY R. CoLLINS. Vol. I. Man in Transition: The Psychology of Human Development. Vol.ll. Effective Counseling. Carol Stream. Ill.: Creation House, 1971 and 1972. Pp. 202 and 203. $4.95 each. Man in Transition is written for pastors, missionaries, lay church leaders, and theological students. Its purpose is " to summarize the basic principles and latest findings from the field of psychology and to present these in a way that will be meaningful to church leaders who are not professional psychologists and who have little or no background in psychology." (p. 9) Both this book and the entire series is intended as a presentation of psychological conclusions which have direct or indirect application to the problems and work of the church. Gary R. Collins tells his readers that he writes from a conservative theological position and is sympathetic in his writing to biblical truth. This theological bent is evident in his writings. He also succeeds well in addressing his pre-determined audience in a style that is free from complicated· psychological or theological jargon. The author's treatment of the psychological and physical condition of man extends from conception to the grave. Attention is paid to areas which are frequently neglected, such as the unmarried adult. Some sound advice is also given to the pastor who has too many expectations set for him by himself or by his parishioners. The final chapter on " Making the Best of Stress " has value, but it seems like an after-thought which could have been more helpful had it been integrated into the entire volume. Effective Counseling seeks to impart a knowledge of counseling techniques and discusses the various kinds of counseling: vocational, marital, mentally and physically ill, dying, bereaved, physically handicapped and socially deprived, as well as presenting ideas on preventive counseling. This overview is good as an introduction, but group counseling, which is treated briefly, should have been given more extensive development. Collins stresses BOOK REVIEWS 263 that a religious counselor should let his personal values be known while preserving the freedom of the client. The client seeks out a religious counselor because he has a set of values, and the counselor who hides his values does a disservice. His writings draw on Scripture, but its use is somewhat forced at times. Collins gives some consideration to spiritual counseling or direction. It is unfortunate that he did not incorporate some insights from masters of the spiritual life such as Francis de Sales and Theresa of Avila. Perhaps he will co-author a future volume in the series with a spiritual or ascetical theologian. Although Collins gives an occasional illustration from his pastoral practice, some church leaders may find his books too theoretical. It is hoped that future volumes will be enriched by case studies drawn from his pastoral experience and that of other church leaders. The outlines, summaries, and charts throughout both books are excellent for immediate understanding and future reference. Each chapter has a short annotated bibliography, and the general bibliography and indices in each volume are good. Man in Transition and Effective Counseling are very good as an introduction and overview and should be beneficial to the student or church leader with little background in pastoral counseling. It will be of limited value to either the experienced pastor or trained counselor who has kept abreast with the field. For Roman Catholic church leaders it may have the special value of introducing them to some writings which may not have been a part of their pastoral training. WILLIAM J. NESSEL, O.S.F.S. Oluater of Independent Theological Schools Washington, D. 0. The Mystery of Christ and the Apostolate. By F. X. DURWELL. London and New York: Sheed & Ward, 197Q. Pp. 190. $7.50. Among the most discussed problems in the post-Conciliar Church has been the question of the Church's apostolate and the role of those who are engaged in it. Durwell frankly states in the preface to this book that his interest is not to give a novel answer to the nature of this apostolate but to restate it in terms of the person of Jesus Christ: "union with Christ in his mystery of salvation." In Chapter One Durwell treats of the paradox of God's greatness and infinite power, emphasized in the Old Testament image of God and the 264 BOOK REVIEWS humility of God made visible in the paschal mystery of Christ. " In this image of God the divine being is expressed simultaneously by these two extremes: power and weakness, universal lordship and absolute humility." (p. 5) Throughout his earthly life, Jesus, in his self-giving, consummated in his death, reveals that the greatness of God is ever combined with a loving service of his creatures. From this great revelation of Christ, the Church receives its mission to love by giving one's life and, in this very giving, it lives anew. Participation in this apostolate demands today, as it has always demanded, a descent into " the glorifying death of Christ " where one receives God's saving power. In Chapter Two Durwell treats the relation between creation and redemption, human and Christian values. In his exegesis of Pauline theology he suggests " that the apostle knows the Son of God only by his intervention in the work of God, both creative and redemptive. In this sense he is the incomparable image and the first-born of creation both by his transcendence and by his immersion into our world." (p. 25) There is a cosmic role for Christ but the full subjection of criterion, while present in its source, must await the last day. Hence, there is only one plan which is both creative and redemptive. This unity of plan does not reduce the mission of the Church to a merely horizontal plane. The Church's apostolate is to announce to men the reality of Christ's redemptive death and to enable men to enter into that mystery by incorporation into Christ. In Chapter Three Durwell explains that a juridical theory of redemption fails to emphasize the full meaning of the glorification of Jesus in the Resurrection, the drawing of men into his own glory. "Redemption is not a gift offered to God to appease his justice: it is the total gift of God to the man Jesus and Jesus' total acceptance of this gift." (p. 36) Integration into Christ demands that the individual Christian enter into the paschal mystery to participate in Christ's glory. While the Church is a community built onl the apostle's Durwell insists on the apostolicity of the mission of all Christians, namely, to bear witness to his resurrection. It is the whole community of the Church which shares with Christ in his death and resurrection, and the Church by her nature cooperates in the salvation of the world. (p. 79) The apostolic mission of the Church is not merely to be a distributor of graces merited by Christ but " will always consist in being herself faithful, in being the bride reunited to Christ, making one body with him in his glorifying death." (p. 96) The apostolate of the Church will be personal, and the fruits of the individual Christian's apostolate will be proportioned to his own entrance into the mystery of Christ. The Church, like Christ, does not exist for herself but to give herself for the salvation of men. These first five chapters serve as a basis for the concluding chapters on the need for evangelization. Rejecting the theory that the missionary task of the Church is merely to make the anonymous Christian conscious of a BOOK REVIEWS 265 grace already possessed, Durwell cites the change in the life of St. Paul which implied the awareness of a new reality: the Christ of glory. (p. 1fl3) Through this revelation the Christian who accepts the glorified Christ puts on a new nature and his light takes possession of men. Hence, the mission of the Church is to bring the gospel to men, a revelation distinct from that of the Old Testament both in its object, the risen Christ, and its effect, fellowship in the resurrection of Christ. Evangelization is more than merely preservation of the gospel and its transmission. By the commission of Christ " he became himself the gospel that she must preach." (p. 149) Faith is more than assent to doctrinal truth, it is a faith response to the person of the risen Christ. Preaching demands the conveyance of the person of Christ. Such preaching can only he effective through the power of God. Such preaching is reserved not solely to the successors of the apostles hut to all Christians as they constitute the body of Christ, the sacrament of Christ's presence. Since the volume contains articles written over a period of time in various journals, it labors under some discontinuity and repetition. But the single theme is that through the glorification of the risen Savior salvation is offered to all men. The Church's mission, shared by all the members of the Church, is to witness to the person of the glorified Christ who lives in the Church and the faithful. REGINALD MASTERSON, 0. P. Director of Renewal Archdiocese of Dubuque, Iowa The Bible Now! By JosEPH GRISPINO. Notre Dame, Ind.: Fides Publishers, 1971. Pp. 138. $U5. This series of ten essays, directed to college and adult study groups, presents the author's illustration of the recent Council's teaching on the nature of the truth revealed in Scripture. Using examples from current theological problems, numbering among them, polygenesis, divorce, resurrection, and church government, the author presents a new format for dealing with the age-old question of biblical inerrancy. Inerrancy is no longer a question of trying to explain away certain errors hut of realizing that what the Bible reveals is there for the sake of salvation. Thus, no truth is revealed in Scripture except in the context of this general truth: the salvation of all men. A particular Biblical passage is to he judged true, not insofar as it is historically or scientifically accurate hut insofar as it is accurate for the sake of salvation. The sun standing still in the heavens at Joshua's command may he erroneous from the BOOK REVIEWS scientific point of view, but it does tell us something about om" salvation: how God cares for those he has chosen to be his own. As a consequence, Grispino re-examines some Biblical notions that have been uncritically accepted in the past as " dogmatic truth " and points out that, in the light of Vatican II, only truths which are clearly necessary for the sake of salvation can be so regarded. The bulk of this brief work is then spent defining what exactly Scripture is teaching, for the sake of salvation, in certain problem areas. The author's succinct style and ability to synthesize the latest theological thinking meets the needs of his audience rather well. In some cases, however, as for example, in the discussion of Jesus' consciousness of his divinity, brought up in the last chapter, merely summarizing the theologians' different views is not easy, nor does it do them complete justice. This reviewer feels that the author used better examples of what he is about in other parts of the book. Finally, although the handling of the themes might seem untraditional at the context of his inquiringwhat salvific truths are contained in Scripture's treatment of these themesGrispino gives accurate and thoughtful results. THOMAS P. McCREEsH, O.P. Dominican House of Studies Washington, D. C. The First Desert Hero: St. Jerome's Vita Pauli. With Introduction, Notes and Vocabulary by IGNATius S. KoziK. Mount Vernon, N.Y.: 1968. Pp. 67. This pleasant volume is a most useful and careful rendering of one of the medieval "best-sellers." Fr. Kozik's edition of Jerome's brief, lucid text is meant for beginner's in Latin. There are copious notes, with questions about syntax which the reader (or student) is left to answer for himself. Altogether this is a fine example, handsomely produced, of good, basic pedagogy. Variant readings from the 6th-century Verona MS. are printed after the text. There is an exhaustive and punctilious vocabulary. LEONARD E. BoYLE, 0. P. Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies Toronto, Canada BOOKS RECEIVED Appleton-Century-Crofts: The Problem of Evolution: A Study of Philosophical Repercussions of Evolutionary Science, by John N. Deely and Raymond J. Nogar. (Pp. 486, $12.95); The Problem of Scientific Realism, ed. by Edward J. McKinnon. (Pp. 301, $4.95). ·The Bobbs-Merrill Co.: The Unity of the Platonic Dialogue, by Rudolph H. Weingartner. (Pp. 215). Centro Superiore di Logica e Scienze Comparate: The Meaning and Structure of Time (English and Italian text), by Franco Spisani. (Pp. 161, L. 2.500). William Collins Sons & Co.: Common Bible. $7.95 hardbound, $4.95 paperback. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones scientificas: Jacobus Ramirez. Opera Omnia Tomus II DeAnalogia 4 vols. (Pp. 2000, 2.000 pesetas paper, 2.200 cloth); Tomus III De Hominis Beatitudine. In I-II S.ummae Theologiae Divi Thomae Commentaria 5 vols. (Pp. fl552, fl.500 pesetas paper, 2.750 cloth}; Francisco Suarez. De Legibus II, ed. by L. Pereiia, P. Suner, V. Abril, C. Villanueva, E. Elorduy. (Pp. 380, · 600 pesetas). Creation House, Inc.: The Cross and the Flag, ed. by R. G. Clouse, R. D. Linder, R. P. Pierard. (Pp. 261, $2.95). Cromwell Books: Late Afternoon for the Nation-State, by Sam Darcy. (Pp. 408, $8.95) . Dell Publishing Co.: Plato, by George Kimball Plachman. (Pp. 543, $1.95). Ediciones Universidad de Navarra, Values in European Thought. I Antiquity and Middle Ages, by Fritz Joachim von Rintelen. (Pp. 576, $8.50). Edizioni Abete: Il Problema deUa Conscenza, by G. Blandino. (Pp. 481, L. 4.000). Exposition Press: Problems of Marriage and Sexuality Today, by Peter J. Riga. (Pp. 126, $5.00). Fides Publishers, Inc.: Theology Today Series. 6 Theology of Evolution, by Ervin Nemesszeghy, S. J. & John Russell, S. J. (Pp. 96), 26 Theology of Confirmation, by Austin P. Milner, 0. P. (Pp. 127); 37 Theology of Mission, by Aylward Shorter, W. F. (Pp. 92). 95¢ each; The Crisis in Priestly Ministry, by Charles E. Curran. (Pp. 146, $1.50). Fordham University Press: God Knowable and Unknowable, ed. by Robert J. Roth, S. J. (Pp. 280, $10.00}. 267 268 BOOKS RECEIVED Harper & Row, Publishers: Brother Francis: An Anthology of Writings by and about St. Francis of Assisi, ed. by Lawrence Cunningham. (Pp. 233, $5.95) . Harvard University Press: Il Moro. Ellis Haywood's Dialogue in Mernory of Thomas More, tr. & ed. by Roger Lee Deakins. (Pp. 155, $10.00). Humanities Press: The Life of Desiderius Erasmus, by Albert Hyma. (Pp. 140, $7.75). Inter-Varsity Press: Genesis in Space and Time, by Francis A. Schaeffer. (Pp. 167, $2.25); Back to Freedom and Dignity, by F. A. Schaeffer. (Pp. 48, $0.95); The Dust of Death, by Os Guiness. (Pp. 417, $7.95); Revolution in Rome, by David F. Wells. (Pp. 149, $4.95). Les Presses de l'Universite Laval: Savoir et Pouvoir. Philosophie Thomiste et Politique Clericale au XIXe siecle, by Pierre Thibault. (Pp. 290 $10.00); Teilhard del Chardin. Nouvel Index Analytique. (Pp. 289, $5.00). Loyola University Press: The Self Beyond. Toward Life's Meaning, by Benjamin S. Llamzon. (Pp. 209, $5.59). Lumen Christi Press: Process Theology and Secularization, by Edwin C. Garvey, C. S. B. (Pp. 22, $0.50). McGraw-Hill Book Co.: Oppositions of Religious Doctrines, by William A. Christian. (Pp. 129, $6.95) . The Marquette University Press: Christian Philosophy and its Future, by Gerard J. Smith. (Pp. 144, $3.75); A Trio of Talks, by G. J. Smith. (Pp. 44, $1.25); Psyche and Cerebrum, by John N. Findlay. (Pp. 52, $2.50). Orbis Books: Foundations of Mission Theology, ed. by Sedos. (Pp. 180, $3.95); A Theology of Liberation, by Gustavo Gutierrez. (Pp. 334, $4.95 paper): A Theology for Artisans of a New Humanity. Vol. I The Community Called Church (Pp. 183), Vol. IT Grace and the Human Condition (Pp. 221), by Juan Luis Segundo, S. J. ($6.95 each). Propaganda Popular Catolica: Repertorio de Historia de las Ciencias Eclesiasticas en Espana. Siglos I-XVI. (Pp. 361). D. Reidel Publishing Co.: Faith and the Life of Reason, by John KingFarlow and William N. Christensen. (Pp. 253, 68 florins). Sheed & Ward: Invitation and Response. Essays in Christian Moral Theology, by Enda McDonagh. (Pp. 215, $8.50); Dogma 4 by Michael Schmaus. (Pp. 228, $3.95) . Tulane University Philos. Dept.: Knowledge and Value. Essays in Honor of Harold N. Lee. Tulane Studies in Philosophy. XXI, 1972, ed. by Andrew J. Reck. (Pp. 201, $4.50). Twin Circle Publishing Co.: The Story of Dan Lyons, S. J., by John D. McCallum. (Pp. 461, $7.95). Universita Gregoriana: Organized Religion according to Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, by Thomas Paul Urumpackal. (Pp. 302, L. 5.500). BOOKS RECEIVED 269 University of California Press, Logic Matters, by P. T. Geach. (Pp. 847, $11.50). The University of Michigan Press: Causality and Scientific Explanation. Vol. I: Medieval and Early Classical Science, by William A. Wallace. (Pp. . University of Minnesota Press: A Companion to the Study of St. Anselm, by Jasper Hopkins. (Pp. 300, $10.50). University of Nebraska Press: Whitehead's Philosophy. Selected Essays, $7.95). 1935-1970, by Charles Hartshorne. (Pp. University of Notre Dame Press: Language Truth and Meaning. Papers from the International Lonergan Congress 1970, ed. by Philip McShane. (Pp. 351, $1UO}; Language and Belief, by Jean Ladriere. $10.95}; Methodological Foundations of Relativistic (Pp. Mechanics. by Marshal Spector. (Pp. 191, $10.95). University of Santo Tomas Publications: Facing the Drug-Abuse Problem, ed. by Fausto Gomez, 0. P. (Pp. . University of Washington Press: The "Spiritual Regulation" of Peter the Great, tr. & ed. by Alexander V. Muller. (Pp. 188, $10.00). Vanderbilt University Press: Cardinal Newman in his Age. His Place in English Theology wnd Literature, by Harold L. Weatherby, (Pp. $11.50).